Last week’s New York Times Magazine explored how Target used analytics to predict if a customer is pregnant and direct marketing efforts accordingly.  The article generated debate about whether the tactic was creepy, invasive, or downright brilliant – but one fact cannot be denied: customer data is easier than ever to obtain, and there’s more of it out there than ever before.

Some of the available customer data is based on behaviors – for example, purchasing habits of pregnant women in a Target store.  But the really interesting component for customer service is the second half of the data equation: information provided by customers themselves – in other words, voice of the customer. Read More »

(This post was originally written by Corey Mull of the Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for heads of Marketing.  The CCC team has updated it slightly from a customer service perspective.)

So, we’ve heard a lot about gamification in the past year or so. It’s nearly at buzzword status, with all kinds of consultants and vendors out there promising a magic bullet and a not-insignificant number of marketers hoping that embracing game platforms will lead to better message resonance and improved sales. And while they may well do that, advice from our sister program, the Marketing Leadership Council, regarding the hottest new trends stays the same: proceed with caution, and keep end goals in mind.

While gamification might not be for everyone, one very exciting emerging field is health-related games. Relying on a host of newly-popularized insights from psychology about human motivation and thought, as well as social and digital tools that enable users to track all kinds of outcome metrics from their own bodies, health games are developing into powerful platforms by which thousands of people are taking control of their health. Read More »

Recently I wrote a post about the keys to a good intro on a service call.  But even if a service rep nails these keys in the intro he can still mess up the rest of the call by misplacing the authentication.  My colleague and I engaged in a friendly point, counterpoint on the right positioning of the authentication.

Pete:  I don’t think there’s any reason to force a customer to authenticate before I know what their inquiry is.  What if they just want to know the mailing address of the company … why do I need to authenticate them for something like that?

Read More »

The first thing that hits travelers visiting India is the traffic! Mumbai, one of the world’s top 10 centers of commerce and the most populous city in India, sees an extremely high volume of road traffic at peak hours–and with high traffic comes increased instances of traffic violations and frequent police intervention. In Mumbai, it is not uncommon for motorists to have disagreeable showdowns and verbal slanging matches with traffic police. And the customary high handedness of many constables usually jars with the sensibilities of most commuters.

However, this is soon set to change. Traffic police officers in Mumbai are being trained to greet violators pleasantly before writing citations for traffic violations. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) will provide behavioral training sessions to police officers to make them a tad more genial. This ensures that officers resolve cases with the least amount of unpleasantness.

What this Means for Customer Service Read More »

Customer Service News

Create a customer experience that is achievable, not heroic; learn how Morton’s and Sainsbury carried out these different approaches [Customer Think]

How customer service is becoming increasingly global with the economic growth and development of Africa, Middle East-Asia and South America [Customer Think]

Integrating online communities into customer support can achieve cost reductions of up to 50%, says Gartner [My Customer]

How CVS is servicing customers on Facebook by responding to complaints real-time and alerting customers to product issues [1to1 Media]

British consumer will no longer tolerate poor customer service; social media platforms have given rise to a consumer who is more prepared to voice discontent, says UK Customer Satisfaction Index [Fresh Business Thinking]

It’s Oscars weekend, so predictions for the winners are running rampant.  Outside of the award ceremony, though, one movie-related thought exercise that interests me is speculation of which movie characters would be best suited for a job within a customer service organization.  While this is certainly just a fun exercise, it actually does get you thinking about the characteristics that are most desirable for service and support staff.  Here’s a list of the top five I came up with: Read More »

The beginning of a new year means the beginning of new research for those of us on the CCC research team.  Although we’ve already launched our primary research effort for the first part of 2012 (read more about that initiative here), I’m excited to let everyone know about our latest research project—focused on customer service and support organizational design.

Org design is a topic that comes up quite frequently during conversations with our members, and although the topic is not on the same magnitude as, say, customer loyalty, it is still a subject that can have a major impact on company’s effectiveness and success.  Realizing the importance of organizational design decisions, executives will continue to ask age-old questions about spans of control, centralization vs. decentralization, and specialists vs. generalists, but more recently we’ve also seen questions crop up about managing global operations, overseeing multichannel contacts, evolving support functions, and emerging roles (Chief Customer Officer, anyone?).

So we are embarking on a new journey to help answer some of these questions.  In our research (which CCC members can read more about here), we will be: Read More »

At a recent internal meeting, some colleagues cited the “Jennifer Aniston problem” as a challenge for many companies.

Given that the meeting’s agenda largely consisted of stuffy business topics, you can imagine how quickly colleagues perked up.  Consumer behavior trends, employee engagement drivers, sales competency diagnostics….Jennifer Aniston.

So why the Jen reference?  As it turns out, it wasn’t too out of place.  It’s an analogy for cross-/up-sell.

See, Jennifer Aniston has had a long career of acting in romantic comedies.  In fact, while she continues to have a lucrative career, she has acted in so many romantic comedies that she has become pigeon-holed and really now is limited to this genre.

In contrast, Anne Hathaway, who also began her career in the romantic comedy genre, has had a very diverse acting career, starring in action films, romantic comedies, drama films, and even cartoons.

The key difference between these two stars’ careers being that Jennifer Aniston has become typecast, while Anne Hathaway made more options for herself early on.

So back to business: Research indicates that as customers spend more time using a particular product purchased from a company, the more typecast the company becomes.  Simply put, the longer companies are viewed as good at supplying a particular product, the less likely customers are to consider the company for additional/complementary products.

Read More »

Customer Service News

• How to avoid these top five “stupefying customer service statements” [Forbes]

• Airlines hope to make traveling easier by investing in new customer self-service options [AdAge]

• Microsoft announces partnership with customer analytics expert 24/7 Inc. [WSJ Blog]

• 6 tips for uncovering more meaningful customer insights using VOC data [1to1 Media]

• And finally, just what is “customer loyalty”, anyway? [Research Live]

Recently, the Harvard Business Review published an article introducing the “Wallet Allocation Rule.” As the name suggests, this new metric measures the share of wallet that is allocated to companies – or simply, how a customer divides their spending among a company and its competitors.

The theory behind this metric is simple:

1. think about how much your customer prefers your company, and then
2. consider the number of competitors your customer is choosing between.

Knowing these two things will let you understand how your customers spend money, and how your company is doing relative to others. For instance, if you were the customer’s first choice and there is one competitor, then your position is different than if you were the second choice but there are many, many others behind you. Understanding this difference can help define strategy and hone in on certain initiatives.

Read More »