Ever wonder how much of an impact “the little things” have on the customer experience?  Although many customer contact organizations are awash in data, most do not have the luxury of conducting scientific testing to find the answer to that question.  Until recently, CCC hadn’t conducted any tests either.  But, we had an opportunity this year to deploy a simple A/B test to test the impact of different rep behaviors on the customer experience.

In our experiments, both test groups received the same problem—and at the end of the day everyone got the same resolution outcome.  The only difference was the rep response.

Here’s an example of one “test”:

1. Remember, both groups received the same scenario:
   You ordered a sweater online.  This is the second time you’ve ordered that sweater.  Both times you’ve received the correct size, only to realize it fits loosely.  You call customer support because you want the company to ship a different size.
2. Survey Group A received this rep response:
   “Ok.  Do you want to try a smaller size?  I could place that order, if you want, and it should be there in 3–4 business days.”
3. Survey Group B received this rep response:
   “I know that can be frustrating, but you’re lucky you got connected to me—I’ll make sure we get you a sweater that fits.  Let me quickly see if any customer reviews tells us if the next smaller size tends to fit a bit more loosely too…okay, it looks like the smaller size should work—customers are also saying it fits more loosely.  I’ll make sure that ships right away and you should have it in 3–4 business days.

Remember, both groups got the same outcome—a new sweater in 3–4 business days.  But the Group B response was an example of a rep advocating for the customer.  [Side note: I think that this approach is one that cannot be faked.  Reps cannot deliver a monotone “I’m sure you’re frustrated” and expect to see the same results.  Many companies I’ve encountered as a consumer get this very, very wrong.]

The question, of course, is if this made a difference to the survey scores.  The Group B response (the advocate) scored 7% higher for quality of experience and 2% lower for customer effort.  Not a bad pay-off for merely skimming a few customer reviews.  We had to ask, however, was this just an isolated example?  So we conducted more tests.

Here’s a second example, which uses a different type of call handling that we refer to as anchoring:

1. Customer scenario:
   You’re scheduled for a 2pm flight, but you just learned it’s cancelled.  You call the airline to arrange another flight.
2. Group A rep response:
   “It looks like the best I can do is put you on the 8pm flight tonight.”
3. Group B rep response:
   “It looks like the best I can do is put you on a 9am flight tomorrow morning.  Hang on a minute… it looks like I can actually get you on an 8pm flight tonight—would that be better?”

In this situation, Group B received a response that anchored the customer expectations.  The result?  Group B’s quality of the experience was 46% higher than Group A’s and customer effort was 33% lower than Group A.

So what do these two examples have in common?  In each Group B response, the rep is engineering the customer experience.  And by “engineering”, I mean that the rep is staying one step ahead of the customer—anticipating the customer reaction and proactively handling the situation to a mutually beneficial outcome.

For what it’s worth, we conducted six of these A/B tests.  The engineered experience scored as higher quality and lower effort every time.

I know some of you are thinking we shouldn’t manipulate customers like this, particularly when it comes to anchoring.  And there is certainly a line where such techniques cross a moral threshold.  [Lara created some strong reactions with her blog post on this topic]

My point here, however, is to illustrate just how simple it is to shift between a standard customer experience and one that is slightly engineered to provide a substantially different customer outcome.  It isn’t a 180° change in your reps’ approach, instead it’s a slight shift to focus on the words your reps use –  but the customers certainly noticed (and appreciated) the difference.

What do you think?  Is it feasible to teach reps to approach situations as genuine advocates or anchor expectations when they know the customer will be disappointed with the available options?  We believe this is a lot easier than you might imagine.

CCC members, want to teach your reps how to use these subtle experience engineering skills?  Take a look at our research on Engineering the Low-Effort Customer Experience, particularly the profiled best practices from Osram Sylvania and Loyalty One.

Related posts:

1. How Call Centers Use Behavioral Economics to Sway Customers
2. When 3 is Less Than 2
3. Solving the Customer Puzzle
4. Making the Most of Proactive Alerts
5. Customer Surveys: Can Less Really be More?