Niche branding and segmentation—differentiating customers based on distinctive characteristics—are, of course, the bread and butter of the marketing world.  But we’re increasingly seeing a greater focus on this in the service and support world as well.

Segmentation isn’t a new concept for many service and support organizations.  In fact, many organizations use a segmentation structure that often comes directly from the sales and marketing side of the company.  But in an environment where many companies are looking to service and support as a “competitive differentiator,” companies are rethinking their strategies, and in many cases, seeking to expand them.

The problem is that many companies are going about this typically based on visible customer characteristics or behaviors: like where the customer resides or how much the customer spends.

Such segmentation strategies can be helpful for other parts of the business, but they offer limited insight into where the best service and support opportunities lie.  Indeed, using a segmentation strategy based solely on visible customer characteristics can lead companies to misplace service investments specifically.

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Pick up any business publication and you can’t miss the numerous articles on mission statements.  Books on the topic abound, consultants offer services—the economic downturn seems to have left many organizations soul searching, questioning their purpose, focus, and value.

Service and support organizations are not immune from this, and we’ve heard several companies thinking anew about customer bills of rights and service commitments.

CCC members recently debated the value of even creating a service commitment in the CCC Customer Experience Forum, and we see two camps emerge:

1. Those who are in favor of explicitly publishing high standards and expectations for both customers and staff.

2. Those who prefer action to statements—living the right philosophy, not spending time mincing words.

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Ask any organization how to achieve customer centricity, and cost figures immediately come to mind.  Dedicated teams, comprehensive surveys, high-end analytics systems—it’s an expensive proposition.

A company recently asked what it means to be more customer centric, and the thought exercise resulted the company vowing to take a “back to basics” approach.  In fact, organizations with large and small purse strings alike should take the basics to heart before extensive investment.

So what exactly do we mean by “back to basics”?  There are many considerations, but among the most powerful: Simply ask the customer.

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It’s an interesting conundrum: Give staff time and focus to cultivate relationships and they still revert to their old transactional behavior.

What gives?

Recent conversations with B2B companies suggest that despite dedicated, top-tier account teams and lengthy training workshops on relationship building, companies still don’t see the quality of customer relationships improving.

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At a dinner party recently, a friend who is a high school English teacher lamented that his students often google answers to their English homework rather than take the time to read.

Of course plagiarism is terrible and it’s critical to teach students skill development through hard work, but another friend questioned his logic: “Is knowledge of an English passage that important?  Aren’t search skills critical as well?”

You can imagine the direction of conversation from here—the table was evenly split among liberal arts and math/science majors—but applying this thought to a service and support environment, it’s an interesting question: Do we need to train staff in critical thinking or do we simply need to provide better access to the answers?
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They say that strong communication is the key to any healthy relationship.  The principle holds true, of course, for both home and work.

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And while the role of the service and support organization is primarily to be a communicator—and in fact many organizations we work with have upskilled staff on all sorts of tactics for improved interpersonal communication with customers—we’re apparently doing a poor job when it comes to communicating with cross-functional colleagues, particularly as it relates to cascading voice of the customer data.

Here are the facts from this CCC  research on sharing Voice of the Customer (VOC) with internal business partners: Read More »

Procter & Gamble, Walmart, and Walgreens are all limiting customer choice in the grocery and drug store aisle.  Why aren’t their customer service and support organizations following suit?

In line with the economic downturn, many retailers and consumer product good firms have realized that limiting customer choice can actually help drive purchase decisions.

The “Paradox of Choice” movement has evangelized this idea.  But it seems the message hasn’t trickled down to service and support…yet.

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Last week a company asked me how much more first contact resolution (FCR) improvement it has left.  The company knows its FCR rates—the ability to resolve an issue on a single contact—aren’t perfect, but at 84%, it finds it increasingly difficult to move the dial.

As I shared some of our benchmarks, I couldn’t help but comment how inflated some of the figures are—95% and above in some industries in the phone channel, and even higher rates in the e-mail channel.

This wide benchmark variance results from highly diverse definitions and measurements of issue resolution, most of which are not terribly accurate or beneficial.

Most FCR metrics have a vital flaw–they track assumed issue resolution.  Customers typically believe that upon interacting with the service organization, the issue has been resolved.  And so asking the customer via a survey or frontline rep, “Was your issue resolved?”, as conventional wisdom dictates, inevitably leads to a “yes.”  Yet unbeknownst to the customer, he may have to call back for a related issue or obtain clarification. Read More »

I recently came across some data indicating Twitter’s user base has decreased by as much as 19% over the second half of 2009.

While many contradicting findings have been reported—and Twitter says usage is at its highest levels yet and expected to grow—if it isn’t already happening, user base consolidation likely will occur soon as growth cannot continue indefinitely.   Read More »