Customer Service Buzz

I’m 35, balding & overweight.  So, I recently decided to get a grip on the one attribute over which I have considerable control (and, no, I didn’t get hair plugs).  I began exercising, and I hired a personal trainer to assist me through my “get-in-shape” journey.

My trainer is providing me with guidance on where I can get better (shed some unwanted weight), and how specifically to do that (which exercises to perform, along with a proper diet). 

And this kind of guidance is exactly the same sort of help many contact center leaders are looking for now that the 2011 planning season is under way.  Interestingly enough, though, few companies have an effective way to identify and narrow their list of potential initiatives for the coming year.   

Instead, often companies have “strategic” brainstorming sessions resulting in a laundry list of initiatives to tackle.  This list includes “pet projects” and well known opportunity areas, but often doesn’t reveal what to tackle first, and rarely uncovers previously unknown opportunity areas.  It’s similar to a person in my situation (wanting to get in better shape) going about it without a plan or a solid understanding of what to improve/how to make those improvements.  Read More »

I saw an interview on CNN over the weekend with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. In this short spot, only a few minutes long, one of Dorsey’s few talking points was how wildly popular Twitter is as a customer service platform. 

We all know that Twitter is popular. And not just among the millennial generation—almost 65% of Twitter users are over 35 years old. Last month’s World Cup Final is a prime example of Twitter’s reach—people from 172 countries tweeted in 27 different languages, generating more than 2,000 tweets-per-second.

The opportunities in social media for customer service are many: drive loyalty, deflect contacts, educate customers, and capture VOC. Those are nice goals, but are they really different from goals of the live channel? Mostly not. But there’s something unique about the spirit with which Twitter accomplishes these goals.

Read More »

By Hannah Hellebush

In speaking with members we hear that many service center professionals are interested in the merits of rep-level certification programs. There are a lot of programs available—most offer an online course for frontline reps who become “certified” after the completion of a test. The courses take a few weeks to complete and are priced per individual rep.

Certainly, rep-level certification programs could potentially help in skills training and upskilling.  But many companies we talk to say it’s hard to measure the gains from these programs in terms of direct rep performance gains.  And of course, CCC has long held that coaching (not training) is by far the best skill development lever you can pull. 

So, I’ve got to wonder – if the jury is out on rep-level certification programs to drive performance, what are some other benefits the programs could have? Read More »

Having spoken recently with some of CCC’s European members (one from the Travel & Leisure industry and three from the Financial Services industries), one of the questions that invariably arise is: how should I use Twitter or Facebook or other types of Social Media for customer service? 

Photo: Andreas Praefcke

In my last post about Social Media, I didn’t address this specific question, only venturing as far as to say: 

Using Twitter [or Social Media in general] in the customer service realm is not about amassing the most number of followers or how many emails we send, it’s about measuring the number of customers we help and showing that to executives. Second, it’s using that customer feedback from Social Media to make real improvements, hopefully at the root-cause level, to our customer experience to boost satisfaction and loyalty.

That addresses what Social Media’s general goal/success measure should be, but that doesn’t address the question of how to take action in social media channels to achieve that goal. Read More »

I came back from vacation to discover I had racked up nearly 600 e-mails in my inbox.  I wasn’t sure where to start.  Should I look at my meeting invitations first, or clear out the spam?  Overwhelmed, I found myself reading e-mails haphazardly, picking up in the middle of conversations and getting confused.  Only later did I realize my fatal flaw – I tried to focus on everything at once, and ended up focusing on all the wrong things.

I see similarities between my situation and that of the frontline.  Measured and held accountable to 15, 30, or even upwards of 50+ metrics ranging from average hold time to FCR to adherence, frontline reps are inundated with long lists of their data points and trends. 

The result is that the staff feels micromanaged, and don’t know which metric to pay attention to.  They can’t focus on everything at once – there is simply too much.  So, they figure out which metric to focus on in an ad hoc way – maybe it was the topic of the weekly team meeting or it happened to be discussed during a coaching session.  And like me, sometimes they will focus on all the wrong things – metrics that are of lower importance to the customer or company, while ignoring critical metrics. Read More »

Review any service or support strategic plan from the past five years, and you’ll likely see the same priority repeat from year to year: Issue resolution.

No doubt about it, companies know issue resolution is important—CCC estimates that improving issue resolution can save millions of dollars each year and mitigate customer disloyalty by at least 219%.  But recent conversations with several companies suggest that when it comes to identifying first contact resolution (FCR) improvement opportunities, many companies are headed down the wrong path.

This is not due to poor data quality or improper data analysis; rather, many companies are merely scratching the surface when drilling into their FCR data, which is causing insufficient and even incorrect findings.  In fact, what typically comes to light as the primary obstacle to issue resolution is a laundry list of process and policy barriers. Read More »

Last week a manager at a member company told me, “We’re having trouble making consistent decisions about terminating staff.  How do you know when you’re overinvesting in one person, to the detriment of the rest of the staff, and you should just let someone go?”

The first thought that struck me?  Gardening.

I have a bit of a green thumb … not a “should’ve been a horticulturist” green thumb, but it’s pretty good.

And this time of year is prime season to decide “grow it, or get rid of it” with my plantings.  Some are thriving, others are obviously goners, and some reside in between.  These plantings may do well with some nurturing, or may be too much trouble, and I need to decide quickly, lest they cripple their soil-mates.

Now, this particular manager finds himself in a similar situation with his staff.  Managers need to invest energy into diagnosing and addressing staff members’ behaviors in order to improve performance, and while it’s certainly important to dedicate time and energy to coaching and upskilling, it’s important to know how much is too much. Read More »

(This is a guest post by Anna Bird of the Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for marketing leaders and their teams.)

Best Buy’s Twitter-based customer service tool has created a lot of buzz over the last year. We asked John Bernier, Best Buy’s Social Media Steward, what makes it work behind the scenes. John is the Digital Product Line Manager and Social Media Steward at Best Buy. He develops digital products and tools for Best Buy employees and customers, while shepherding social media initiatives, such as Twelpforce.  He has worked at Best Buy since 2004, playing a variety of roles in marketing communications and marketing strategy. We spoke to him early last month. Read More »

I just returned from a vacation at the beach, and even though I had grand plans for my days away from the office (reading a good book, catching a summer action movie with my wife) I found myself doing something that I wish I did more: observing my 5- & 3-year old children.

Too often I find myself involved in activities with my children where I’m just too close to the action, but this past week I was able to just sit back and watch.  And there were some terrific learnings.  For instance, my 5-year old is fearless and she’s a leader.  She has no problem walking up to children and opening the conversation with a zippy statement, like: “I’m 5 years old & I’ve lost 2 teeth.  How many have you lost?”

Also, I learned that my 3-year old is a bit more reserved, but she has an innate sense of humor with a penchant for one-liners & comedic timing that would make the cast of Second City envious.  Like when she told her 13-year old cousin to “Lock it up” because he wouldn’t stop talking.

And I learned these little insights from just sitting back and watching … not interjecting every 2 minutes like I normally do! 

Read More »

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.

Read More »