There is a simple governing fact that occurs during all service interactions: our companies are merely a means to an end for the customer. Customers don’t contact us to troubleshoot a television set – they call us so they can enjoy the latest sports event from home. They don’t log on to transfer funds, they log on to consolidate their down payment for their first home.

While this simple fact is often taken for granted during service interactions, acknowledging and understanding the customer’s situation and their end-goal presents a tremendous opportunity to improve the service experience.

For the past week, I’ve been working from our London office, and this morning I briefly visited with one of our European members. During that time, we discussed creative methods to make frontline reps’ jobs more fulfilling, engaging, and far less transactional. The conversation evolved into a discussion of the “customer puzzle” – the idea of determining the context, the situation, and the end-goal of the customer and tailoring the experience accordingly.

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Moment of honesty: when was the last time you stopped and considered if you were a good or a bad boss? Not whether your organization was hitting its goals and your MBOs were in good order, but whether you’re truly a great boss.

In a recent HBR blog post, Robert Sutton argues that most bosses believe they are far more effective than their teams perceive. 12 Things Good Bosses Believe is a sobering read, and I’d strongly encourage you to take a look if you manage any staff, period.

Sutton explores many counterintuitive views he believes great bosses embody. Among them, good bosses believe their success – and their team’s success – depends on mastering mundane tasks over breakthrough ideas. Or, bad is stronger than good – eliminating the negative has more impact than emphasizing the positive.

One rule in particular stood out to me given its relevance in service operations where bosses are several layers removed from the action. Sutton claims that many bosses live in a “fool’s paradise” but great bosses accept that they have a flawed, often skewed, sense of what it is like to work for them. They accept staff members having a far more accurate view of reality.

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When you step in the elevator at work, what’s everyone doing?  No, I’m not talking about that awkward shuffle to maintain appropriate spacing… Everyone is on their mobile device. Checking e-mail, reading the news, texting.

It’s habitual for me and I’m not alone. Say a friendly “hi” to a co-worker? Nope, gotta get rid of these e-mails burning up my inbox before the third floor. Yes, it’s pathetic.

Welcome to the era of the truly mobile customer.

It’s an understatement to say that we struggle to keep pace with how customers interact with our businesses. Six years ago, I remember advising companies to dive (not just dip a toe in the water, but a cannonball plunge) into self-service.

At the time, self-service portals were nothing more than glorified (and quite stale) FAQs. Most service organizations had minor input into this largely marketing-owned channel. The “call center” think about self-service? Please.

Just as we got serious about getting customers to the web, CCC data highlighted that need to shift focus away from migrating customers to self-service channels, toward getting them to stick in those channels. We discovered that nearly 60% of all phone contacts traveled through the web enroute to the phone, and yes, customers now value self-service just as much as live service. That study was another signal that we’re still playing catch-up with customers.

Last week, I read a startling finding – for the first time, customers are using cellular networks more for data exchange than voice.  Read More »

Service organizations are at the center of VOC, and unlike our counterparts in marketing and market research, we don’t have to ask for it! Yes – that was a bit of sugar-coating the type of VOC we’re most exposed to in service interactions, but the truth is that we have access to tremendous VOC.

As enterprise receptivity to customer voice increases, it’s noteworthy how often I’m asked about improving the customer experience beyond the basics. It’s almost as if VOC initiatives that don’t include the words “innovation,” “customer insight,” and “unstated needs” are insufficient. My advice? Careful putting the cart before the horse.

There is a greater degree to which service organizations can augment R&D or marketing efforts on innovation and unstated needs analysis, but let’s make sure we’re getting the basics right first. Based on several of our best practitioner’s insights, here are three questions you should consider: Read More »

Despite my background in sociology, I was always a skeptic of online dating. It just seems that using some personal data points to let an algorithm play matchmaker was missing something – the human element. But several of my closest friends have proven me wrong and are now happily married, and the track record for such services speaks for itself. It seems data can indeed broker the most human of interactions. 

Two weeks ago IBM announced the launch of the Real-time Analytics Matching Platform (RAMP) – essentially this is the next generation of skill-based routing systems. The basic idea is to route customers based on data such as purchase history, account information, even basic demographics, to representatives that have demonstrated the ability to best serve a given customer segment or type.

Yes, it’s kind of like a matchmaker for contact centers.

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Stop for a minute and ask yourself this – is “getting coached” a good thing in your organization? If you’re being honest, chances are it’s probably not.

Last week Pete and I spent an entire day running our latest workshop, teaching trainers to instill better coaching practices in their supervisor and team lead populations. We had 30 companies represented across nearly every major industry. It was a great crowd, with very energetic discussion.

The very first exercise of the day involved creating a goal for coaching. And while many participants jumped in an added their thoughts, two things were abundantly clear:

 1) Coaching is a misused word and concept. The outcomes, methods, and intent of coaching around the room couldn’t have been more diverse. Naturally, we assume when everyone nods their head in agreement at the word “coaching,” it’s universally understood. Well, you know what they say about assuming…

 2) Most organizations have not defined a true goal and purpose for coaching. We’re telling our leaders to “coach” without a sense of what that really means. Good coaching does not involve performance management, nor does it involve a conference room.

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Apple’s release of the new iPad has caused a stir well beyond the product itself. It seems several lessons are emerging based off this new launch:

• Marketing circles are reeling over how Apple created buzz without saying a word. 
• Revisited are lessons on researching customer segment reactions when naming a product.

But this release also highlights the continued emergence of the “Good Enough Revolution,” where feature-rich products are being replaced by lower-cost straightforward ones.

Compared to standard personal computers, there are a lot of things the iPad can’t do, and while it wasn’t intended to replace Macs or PCs, many are saying their next computer will be an iPad – it is good ‘nuff for what customers need.

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