Closing the Loop: Customer experience insights.

Going from Lip Service to Real Service

 

How often as a consumer do you come away from an interaction with a company saying something to the effect of, "They only pay lip service to listening to customer!”? Unfortunately despite the best intentions of senior executives to make you feel otherwise, the "real" customer experience is often disconnected from the brand promise and marketing messages we see. Why is this happening? Do they really not care? The answer is often based on the fact that the executive wants the statement, "We deliver great service," to be true so much so that they send out the message without preparing the business to deliver on the promise. We all know that the experiences that frustrate us are not the ones the CEO believes are being delivered. So how does this happen? The answer is usually a combination of poor measurement of experience quality, poor employee engagement and a lack of accountability for closing the loop with customers. I recently wrote a short piece on this for
Bdaily News that digs into this topic in more detail if you want read it follow the link:

https://bdaily.co.uk/opinion/30-05-2014/going-from-lip-service-to-real-service-listening-and-acting-on-customer-concerns/ 

Top Tips for building a Customer Experience (CEM) program

When using a CEM solution to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, consider these tips:

1. Determine who owns the customer voice and why. The responsibility for customer experience should be with a high-level, cross-functional team that sees themselves as enablers of change for the entire organization.
2. Integrate customer experience insights with a knowledge base. A knowledge base will better serve customers and support employees with a library of answers to common questions.
3. Choose the customer experience metrics that matter. A variety of metrics can be used to accurately measure changes in customer interactions. By understanding the value of the individual metrics and choosing the most relevant mix, organizations will have access to robust insights necessary to develop solutions that impact ­the bottom line.
4. Measure experience at the individual customer level. Statistics, such as 72 per cent satisfaction among an organization’s customers, do not necessarily equate to happy customers. Customers know they are one of many but still expect to be treated with individual attention and care. When experiences are measured and reported at the customer level, action can be taken to intervene as needed.
5. Don’t turn a blind eye to customers. Companies can no longer selectively address the needs of their customers. It is imperative that companies listen to their customers and take action to offer better, personal service to avoid being faced with the harsh reality of losing business to competitors. This attention to customers includes feedback received through traditional as well as social channels.

 

How to stop your customers from leaving you.

There is something to be said about good customer service; unfortunately this is a priority that has fallen to the wayside for several businesses. As Damon Richards has said, “your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Businesses are beginning to shift their focus to a customer-centric model, further emphasizing the importance of Customer Experience Management (CEM) to an organization. CEM is the practice of measuring and closing the gap between the expected customer interaction and the actual customer experience. To successfully implement this strategy, organizations need advanced technology to collect feedback across business channels, evaluate it and disperse internally, allowing teams to enhance their customer service offerings and expand their customer base.

Every one of us has played the role of the consumer. In these situations, many of us have experienced customer service that was either superb or disappointing. The connected landscape is continuously evolving at a rapid pace, enabling consumers to voice their opinions more than ever before. However, due to the extensive social channels in which consumers can share their experiences, businesses are often the last ones to “hear” this message. A bad review holds a substantial amount of weight and can pose a threat to a company’s brand and reputation, putting them at risk of losing customers to their competitors. Businesses must utilize this as a call to action and focus on the needs of their customers.

In order to successfully implement this, it is vital that businesses seek a CEM solution that provides employees at every level from frontline staff to C-level executives, a single, consistent view of their customers and empowers them to deliver consistently positive interactions. Armed with this information, companies will be able to focus on areas of concern and make simple modifications such as updates to training materials or adding additional resources. Offering frontline employees access to feedback related to their customer exchanges makes them accountable to the key part that they play in the company’s performance. Allowing them to own these responsibilities draws their attention to how a single interaction can “make or break” the customer’s experience, ultimately affecting the company. With access to survey results as they happen, employees can better gauge their interactions and are encouraged to make alterations as needed.

C-level executives can also benefit from customer insights. They will receive a cumulative data set, enabling them to perform a more in-depth analysis. From this data, they will be able to evaluate trends and key metrics to drive enhancements from the top level down to improve processes and customer satisfaction.

Evolving Telcos

The telecom industry is ripe for improved customer experience. With countless customers relying on mobile phones, the telecommunications industry, by nature, depends strongly on customer interactions. In a field where offerings are relatively uniform, telcos could implement a CEM solution to distinguish customers at risk and develop procedures to help reduce churn and increase customer retention.

Making a Difference: Finance

The demand for improved customer service does not fall short amongst the financial industry. By analyzing the metrics delivered by a CEM solution, financial institutions can pinpoint areas of improvement, thereby enhancing customer fulfillment and decreasing customer churn. A CEM program will also safeguard these institutions from the possibility of losing customers to other banks with better reputations.

The Future of CEM  

Instituting a CEM program and strategy has allowed organizations to witness immediate improvements in increased customer satisfaction and retention rates. Customer insight is indispensable to every decision employees make, from how they approach and interact with a customer, to how they allot their budget and train their team

Going from buzzword to mission critical: Customer Experience in Telecom

The customer is always right,“ is a saying that you have undoubtedly crossed paths with on several occasions. Many businesses today operate around a customer-centric model, which supports this mantra and is the reason why Customer Experience Management (CEM) is vital to an organization. CEM is the process in which companies track and measure customer expectations of interactions against the reality of these exchanges. In order for organizations to execute this, they need advanced technology to collect feedback across business channels, analyze it and disperse internally, allowing teams to optimize their customer service offerings and grow their customer base.

CEM is not just another buzzword; each and every one of us is a consumer, and many of us have encountered situations where we were either thrilled or disappointed with the customer service we received. In our connected world, consumers are not afraid to voice their opinions. The challenge for businesses is that often they are the last ones to “hear” this message. Praise and criticism are being spread by word of mouth or through social channels to family, friends and complete strangers which enables the customer to make complaints in real-time to an even larger audience.  Attacks have the potential to be quite influential, presenting threats to brands and reputations.

Companies can no longer turn a blind eye to or be selective with addressing the needs of their customers. It is imperative that companies listen to their customers and take action to offer better, personal service to avoid being faced with the harsh reality of losing business to their competitors.

To do this effectively, it is essential for organizations to seek a CEM solution that will provide employees at every level with insights regarding direct customer feedback and satisfaction. Equipped with this data, companies will be able to hone in on problem areas and make simple adjustments such as updates to training materials or adding supplemental resources. Providing frontline employees access to feedback related to their customer interactions makes them accountable to the essential role that they play in the company’s performance. This sense of ownership draws their attention to how one individual interaction has the ability to “make or break” the customer’s experience, thereby affecting the company. With access to survey results as they happen, employees can better assess their performance and are empowered make adjustments accordingly.

Upper level management and executives can also take advantage of these customer insights. They will receive a collective data set, with the ability to drill in for additional detail as required. This will allow them to evaluate trends and key metrics to drive improvements from the top level to improve operations and customer satisfaction.

What This Means for Telcos

The demand for improved customer experience is not a trend that falls short in the telecom industry. With countless customers depending on mobile phones, the telecommunications industry, by nature, relies heavily on customer interactions. In a field where offerings are not drastically varied, telcos could certainly make use of a CEM solution to identify customers at risk and implements steps leading to a reduction in churn and enhanced customer retention. There are various channels by which a customer can have interactions, through which they expect to receive friendly and helpful service.

Conclusion

Organizations that are adopting CEM programs and strategies are witnessing immediate and noticeable increased customer satisfaction and retention rates. Customer insight is essential to every decision employees make, from how they approach and interact with a customer, to how they allot their budget and train their team. 

Customer Experinece 101: What you need to know.

Starting a business is by no means a small feat. Making sure it is successful is even harder. You rely on your team to be the face of the company, but with all the things needed to be done in a day can you answer the simple question of: “Did my customer have a good experience today?”  Consider this, if only 5% of customers formally complain, where do the rest go to vent their frustrations? Perhaps to a group of friends at the pub, posted as an #epicfail on Twitter (impacting image), or they may end the relationship and take their business elsewhere (impacting the bottom line).

Few have adopted an all-inclusive approach to customer experience data collection. This lack of information forces companies to make decisions based on an incomplete, and often misleading, view of customer feedback. With the wrong information, companies could be associated with neglecting their customer’s concerns, or providing “lip service,” where an insincere expression of support is not backed by any significant action.

Companies are beginning to acknowledge that waiting for the customer to initiate the conversation is no longer an option. The demand is there and businesses have the ability and technology to proactively ask for feedback immediately following an interaction. Companies need to start providing real service.

A comprehensive approach to Customer Experience Management (CEM) ensures a business is providing the experience customers expect, real service. The success of a complete CEM program requires significant organizational commitment, investment in a CEM platform and overcoming several challenging barriers, the most important being:

• Identifying the benefits of a CEM program
• Tailoring insights to be relevant for job roles
• Timely distribution of customer feedback
• Effectively driving improvements using customer experience data

What To Understand About CEM Programs Customer experience professionals will often run into push back regarding the justification of the investment of a CEM program. Frankly, establishing a customer-centric organization that can listen and quickly react to customer concerns will boost a business’ image and reputation.

Additionally, improving its services in areas where customers are dissatisfied, businesses can increase customer retention and improve revenue. In one example, a major European telecom implemented call center improvements driven by a CEM program, which resulted in a 3% churn reduction with a newly implemented callback process.

During the heart of the financial crises, a US financial institution used a CEM program to lower its operational costs related to employee training. Traditionally, they had used representative samples of customer surveys to determine areas of improvement for their call center. With a CEM program in place, they were able to drastically reduce their training costs, as employees only received training that was relevant to their individual scores. This visibility encouraged employees to improve their behaviors and knowledge, which resulted in increased motivation, decreased employee churn and overall improved customer satisfaction.

What Happens To All That Collected Data? To be effective, the customer voice needs to be heard across an entire organization. Employees at all levels of an organization need to know if their customers had a good experience today. It is also important to remember, the information relevant for the executive team won’t necessarily be the same as what’s relevant to your line employees.

For frontline employees, granular data delivered on a daily or weekly basis will result in immediately actionable information. Managers will gain valuable insight into their team’s scorecards and will be able to use specific examples and verbatim comments to pinpoint key areas to target for training and coaching, as well as to reward high achievers. The executive team will be concerned with high level aggregates and average scores focused on annual, quarterly and monthly timeframes broken down by region and segment.

By creating transparency and empowering store managers and sales reps to drive improvement, the benefits can be substantial. The diagram below highlights the difference in the sales rep’s customer experience scores provided by customers who have purchased a handset (sample size ~1,000,000 surveys for the time period indicated) in an integrated telecom’s retail store.

Surveys are completed within 24-48 hours of purchase. The sample looks at two timeframes – Q1 2011 and Q4 2011. The improvements across the year demonstrate the huge influence a CEM program can have on the customer experience when the information is not only disseminated to the front lines, but where the organization is supporting the program effectively.

Satisfaction Scores for Sales Reps (Q1 2011 v. Q4 2011)

Where To Best Utilize The Data Getting the right information to the right person at the right time is a key hurdle for organizations to overcome. It used to be that companies looked at customer satisfaction data months or even quarters after it was collected and compiled, long after the data was relevant. The timeliness of this information is imperative to immediately target operational areas for customer experience improvements. However, as previously discussed, the format may vary based on the employee’s role.

By using a CEM platform that can automate the distribution of data and allow the configuration of alerts, the right people can receive the customer insights they need at the right time. Negative survey responses can be flagged for immediate attention, automatically notifying the appropriate manager. Dashboards to higher-level executives can identify business areas that are showing improvement, or need additional support.

The following case study looks at the impact that resolving issues quickly can have on the individual customer’s willingness to recommend a service, as seen by a top North American airline. Each customer in the below sample provided feedback about their experience that classified them as a detractor (rating 0-6 of 11 points) on the NPS™ (net promoter score) scale. Each customer within the sample was called back by the organization within 48 hours of completing his or her survey. Following the call-back, the customer was surveyed again to ask about their willingness to recommend.

The table on the left indicates the customer’s original rating and the chart on the right showcases their rating after having their issue responded to by the organization.

The impact resulted in a decrease of truly “at risk” customers (rating of 0-3) from 67% of the sample to 37% in a 48-hour period.

How Can You Leverage The Customer Experience Information? Let’s say half the battle has been won; a CEM program has been implemented to collect, measure and report on customer’s experiences. Now what? Next is deciding what to do with this information and how to turn it into actionable intelligence.

1. Review Satisfaction Levels Find room for improvement. In what areas are your customers unsatisfied? Observing the customer experience and satisfaction scores across various solutions, such as Purchase Experience, Contact Center Experience or Online Channel Experience, and then drill down further to see details on those various experiences to get an idea of which metrics are most important for your organization to improve on.

2. Find which Metrics Impact Customers Once you’ve identified which metrics to target for improvement, you must determine what impact these will have on key drivers. To find this, conduct correlation analysis to see which metrics have an impact on customers. From that point, it should become clear where to focus your improvement strategies.

3. Ensure Consistency of Delivery In order to ensure consistent delivery of your CEM solution, it is important to identify any significant outliers within your CEM reporting. These areas can be efficiently targeted through micro training specific employees to improve areas of low scoring.

Summary Companies need to clear four key barriers to successfully adopt a holistic CEM solution:

• Focus on real service, not lip service. The benefits of a CEM program must be understood in order to garner full commitment from an organization in delivering top service and quality to its customers.
• Information must be appropriately tailored for all levels of an organization, providing executives to frontline employees with the information they need to better their service, and their customer’s experiences.
• Customer experience information must be distributed in a timely and relevant fashion, utilizing a platform that can provide automation and preconfigured alerts.
• An understanding of how to leverage customer experience information must be acquired and acted upon, improving customer interactions with an organization.

When considering a customer experience program, the deployment may seem daunting. It is important to understand the key barriers described above, and how to overcome them, to deliver the best possible customer experience.

The power of text messaging for customer feedback

The last 12 months have been really exciting when it comes to use of text messaging/sms as a tool for customer feedback. At ResponseTek we have always held the opinion that the closer you are in time and channel to the customer experience the better the information you will collect. This has been easy in the web and call center channels but in the retail channel it has been a big problem. However there is good news, there is a quiet revolution happening in retail feedback management that is being led by the European Telco's and they are quickly being followed by other retailers. The revolution focuses on the use  of SMS to capture the voice of the customer at the point of purchase.

Text messaging is a great technology for certain types of retailers to collect large amounts of timely information that can be used by the front lines almost every day. In Europe the use of text messaging as a feedback tool is rapidly accelerating as companies move away from more problematic or expensive  programs such as outbound calling or receipt back messaging/surveys. It is also very effective, we have seen clients that can expect a 20-30% response rate from text message feedback programs if designed intelligently. The feedback can also be quite rich, with both quantitative and qualitative information being collected across up to 6-10 questions.  Where text messaging feedback was an experiment for lots of companies in Europe 12 months ago now it has become their core retail satisfaction monitoring method.

One thing I do still find surprising is that although North America is the icon for the iphone/smartphone generation there is very little (if any) adoption of this exciting technology this side of the pond. Even though this approach is an obvious fit for companies like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, etc.  they don't seem to be connecting the dots yet and continue to spend big on more expensive yet less timely research approaches.

Regardless of the differences in North America and Europe relating to text message feedback programs, what we have seen within clients is proof of a technology and approach that is here to stay and one that can dramatically change the way a company connects with it's customers and employees.

Syed

 

Rethink your Customer Value Management (CVM) strategies before it is too late.

Today’s competitive business environment means consumers and businesses have seemingly endless choices and products are commoditized quickly. Despite these challenges businesses must still strive to deliver growth in revenues and profitability.

 

Unfortunately businesses that are struggling to improve profitability are often guided to focus on the “profitable customers” or “high value customers”. This is often grounded in a misguided view that it is impossible satisfy all of your customers so you should just try to satisfy the high value ones. This approach is termed Customer Value Management (CVM) and although it seems logical it has some very severe side effects for the business.

 

The main problem with CVM is the message it sends out to employees and the effect on corporate culture of saying that, “we are not going to give everyone a great experience only customers that are high value”.  This gives everyone in the business a message from the top that great customer experience is optional depending on the customer value to the business. Once this message is in the psyche of a business it is very difficult to remove and it will impact all your customers over time.

 

Customer value management is not necessarily a bad concept in theory but it is very difficult to operationalize without impacting a company's brand perception. Focusing on servicing and retaining the “right” customers may help short-term profitability, but is unlikely to deliver sustainable growth, since resources are directed at servicing a narrow sub-set of potential business rather than building a large number of satisfied customers and customer advocates.

 

Customer value management also makes it too easy to justify poor customer service by writing off the “wrong” customer segment. Finally, by effectively ignoring a proportion of your customers, you will successfully motivate many of them to churn away from your company. Worse, if you give customers a bad experience, they tend to tell other people about it.

 

Today more than ever before customers love to share their experiences. We all know how easy it is to rant or rave on twitter, facebook, myspace, etc.. The challenge here is that when customers talk they don’t care about their own "customer value", they don’t know which segment they fit into, they just talk. And it is likely that your most valuable customers will be reading about your brand from the least valuable ones.  This is not a good situation.

 

So I think companies need to take a long hard look at how, where and why they use Customer Value Management strategies.  These strategies coupled with information in poorly executed CRM systems are probably doing more long term harm than good, both to the brand and the growth potential of the business. 

 

In the age of social media that we live in companies need to focus on customer experiences not customer value. Investing in delivering good, consistent experiences across the customer life-cycle will deliver far more value to your shareholders and be more sustainable than focusing on only serving high value customers well. Unfortunately delivering a customer experience focused strategy is much harder than a customer value strategy and perhaps that’s why companies have taken the CVM path in the past. The good news is that customers are not going to stand for that approach in the future because now they have a voice and it is getting louder!

Syed Hasan

CEO

ResponseTek

Customer insight strategy: Think Small.

 

Most small businesses still collect customer insights in real-time.  Every time a customer steps into a store, the owner can watch where the customer goes, offer help, and ensure they’re satisfied. Small businesses ask customers what they’re looking for and what they like, all as part of a casual conversation. 

Informal as it may be, most small business owners will tell you that these conversations are the heartbeat of the business. The information they collect from customers every day influence every aspect of their business, from staff training to purchasing to display.

Unfortunately, most large businesses have lost this connection with the customer. The conversations might still be happening at the front lines, but unlike small business, the customer conversations are not adding intelligence to the business. Valuable customer insights are lost. 

Companies typically think of the value of customer insights in a strategic sense for competitive positioning; hence, billions of dollars are collectively spent on market research to gain some insight from customers, even if those insights are skewed or manufactured due to the built-in constraints of surveys, focus groups and mystery shopping. 

There’s little value in “arms length” relationships that fail to recognize the sophistication, knowledge and technical competence of the customer. Big business needs to recognize that advances in technology now make it possible to capture these conversations once again and use them to make business – and the people who drive it – smarter about the way customers are engaged, every day.

 

Given the chance, customers will use phones, IVR, SMS, email, the web – and yes, even face-to-face interactions –  to tell you what they want, when and how.  At ResponseTek, we are helping our clients absorb, collate, analyze and distribute customer insights – both structured and unstructured – so they become part of your company’s customer intelligence  By opening up as many channels of communication as possible to collect customer insights, companies can stop viewing insights as problems, and start seeing them as opportunities for innovation.

We have seen that companies that recognize the need for continuous front line customer insights ( example: Lastminute.com) have a greater chance of getting back to the mentality of the continually improving and adjusting small business owner. The biggest challenge? Getting companies to recognize this as the preferred alternative to ‘traditional’ paradigm of periodic, centralized customer research, before it’s too late.

After all, in this economy, there’s always another company out there who’s willing – and able – to listen to your customers.

Best regards,
Syed

ResponseTek's 1st Annual Customer Exchange!

Hi everyone,

I am very excited to announce the first ever ResponseTek Experience Exchange CX Forum taking place in Vancouver, Canada on May 14^th.

This event creates an opportunity for customer experience professionals from various industries to come together in one venue to network and share expertise and best practices. Key themes we’ll discuss include CEM program design, engaging front line employees, and using customer data to improve everyday business practices.

Other exciting events we’re sponsoring and speaking at this quarter include:

• Customer Experience Strategies  Summit West – May 15-16^th in Vancouver
• CXPA Member Insights Exchange – June 19-20^th in San Diego
• 8^th Edition Customer Experience – June 17-18 in Chicago
• Customer Management Leadership Group Anniversary Forum – July 25^th at the Manchester Business School, UK

We have been in the CEM space from the beginning (1999) when we coined the term "Customer Experience Management". During this time we have seen the CEM space go from being ignored, to seen as a novelty, to becoming one of the most important areas of focus for today's large businesses.

We have learned a lot over the past 12 years and worked with many great companies in many different industries.  We have always tried to give back to the industry by supporting events and talking about our experiences with clients. However, this year we have really made a big commitment to sharing our learnings and talking about the best practices we see all over the world. Our first annual Customer Exchange is a really exciting opportunity for us to spend time with CX practitioners and leaders from our clients and get them to spend time with each other. I know that we are all looking forward to next week's events in Vancouver.

Let me know if you want to attend future events we organize.

Regards

-Syed

 

Integrating Voice Analytics with ResponseTek's Listening Platform

Thought I would post a short note on our recent partnership with Call Miner in the field of real-time voice analytics software. 

We have been working for several years in the call centre to help agents connect with the "real" customer experience and seen some fantastic results when agents receive closed loop feedback in a memorable time frame (24hrs or less). However one of the challenges for our large enterprise clients has always been call volume.  When you are dealing with thousands of calls on a daily basis how do you identify the right customers to follow up with?  This is where voice analytics comes in.  ResponseTek integration with Call Miner now helps clients identify if the a customer was happy or unhappy during the call and before the ResponseTek feedback solution is triggered.  This allows us to better target customers with the right questions sets that are contextual to their initial call experience. It also allows the ResponseTek Listening Platform to manage sample rates and quota's more intelligently so that clients are getting the right levels of feedback from the right types of customers. 

Integrating voice analytics into ResponseTek's Customer Experience Management solution is a really exciting new offering for us and the CEM industry. The great thing about ResponseTek's open software platform is that our clients can also integrate their pre-existing voice analytic solutions form vendors such as Call Miner, Nice, Verint or Nexidia relatively easily into the ResponseTeksolution as well.  This allows them to get a step increase in the benefits they can get from their existing investments in voice analytics software by adding a customer experience monitoring by ResponseTek.

As we roll out solutions with clients we hope to create some case studies to share with the CEM community.

 

Syed