In late April, CCC previewed its work on Ending the Customer Expectations Race in front of about 25 senior customer service leaders in our Washington, DC offices.  During the day, we talked about why ‘less choice, more guidance’ in service interactions not only improves the customer experience, but also reduces costs.  (If you want to partake in a future live meeting on this topic, register for one of our upcoming sessions around the globe).

And while those in attendance left with actionable, insightful takeaways directly tied to the idea of ‘less choice, more guidance’ – they also took the time to network and discuss other topics on their minds.

I was busy taking notes throughout the day – as I always do – to keep track of emerging member issues and common member challenges.  A few ideas had near-universal resonance with the crowd, so I thought I’d share them with you: Read More »

Managing a team is never easy. Between the careful scheduling and constant monitoring, overseeing an entire workforce can be a daunting task to say the least. Add to that the complexity of today’s customer service world – with dozens of customer touchpoints and unpredictable volume – and you’ve got a real headache on your hands.

It’s no surprise then that more than 70% of companies report using workforce management (WFM) technology as an aid. But, what we’re hearing from executives in our forums makes us think this tool may be creating more problems than it helps solve. Many admit they struggle to use the technology effectively. In fact, some even opt to forecast manually, saying that it’s more accurate than using expensive technology platforms.

So, what’s the solution? WFM technology is certainly designed to work effectively—but it requires the right inputs and necessary rigor. To fully utilize the promises of WFM technology and create a good workforce management strategy, it’s important to first get these basics right. Read More »

How many times have you heard a rep cite company policy as the reason the customer can’t have his/her issue resolved quickly, even though the solution is a perfectly reasonable and achievable one? Often, right?

Service organizations have long struggled with the burden of policies that unnecessarily delay the process of addressing customer concerns and thus adversely affect customer experience. While it might seem easy to quickly eliminate effort-inducing policies, the fact is, given the number of policies and regulations, it is hard to identify the ones that cause maximum client pain and are not necessary for compliance.  Moreover, the service organization was likely not responsible for creating the policy to begin with, making the task of changing said policies a daunting one.

Ameriprise faced a similar issue of rising customer frustration with inflexible policies. It also realized that taking an internally-led approach towards identifying such policies would not accurately pinpoint sources of client pain. To address this issue: Read More »

With the first quarter of 2012 behind us, we thought it might be interesting to take a look back at some of the one-off polling questions that CCC members have posted and responded to on our Customer Experience and Talent Management forums.

If there’s one overriding theme in the data here, it’s metrics—what to measure, how to measure it, and even who does the measuring are all important topics of discussion and debate among the membership.

We hope there is a little something for everyone in these numbers and that they serve as a good frame of reference for how service organizations are approaching similar challenges in some very different ways.

Without further ado, here are the numbers:

1.   Gathering Feedback on Phone Interactions

The post-interaction survey has become a hallmark of customer service, but the best method for administering that survey is still a question in some members’ minds. While new delivery channels like SMS-based surveying have become popular with a small group of members, the majority still prefer a phone-based survey, either before the customer disconnects or afterward with a follow-up outbound call. Read More »

Issue resolution has been a top priority for most service organizations for quite some time now. As such, organizations have traditionally tracked First Call Resolution (FCR)–an important and widely used metric for improving issue resolution. However, we find that the key to reducing overall call volumes is resolving not only the customer-stated issue, but also the implicit issues the customer may not state or be aware of—a strategy of next issue avoidance.

Consider these issue resolution scenarios when you call customer service:

a.)    The CSR provides you details around your current issue (the primary issue) but doesn’t mention issues that are likely to crop up (secondary issues) as a result of your primary issue

b.)    The CSR not only addresses your current issue but also provides instructions on ALL follow-up issues you are likely to face as a result of your primary issue

Scenario A seems fine as it supports the FCR strategy, however, it misses the mark by not forward resolving adjacent issues that lead to nearly 50% of callbacks. Scenario B, on the other hand, seems like an improvement over scenario A because the CSR is addressing follow up issues related to the primary issue. However, what most service organizations often do not realize is that scenario B might lead to even more callbacks since forward resolving for all possible follow up issues overwhelms and confuses customers—and, as a result, unintentionally leads to increased callbacks.

To address this issue, Bell Canada develops the following solutions to enable reps in indentifying which follow-on issues should be handled in the moment: Read More »

In the months since his death, a lot has been said and written about Steve Jobs, legendary head of Apple and the visionary behind its return to success. You’ve no doubt heard stories of his shrewdness as a businessman and his genius as an artist, and if there’s one thing that was true of the man it seems to be that he did things his own way, more often breaking the mold of the typical CEO than conforming to it.

One of the more interesting examples of this was his commitment to customer service, which ran much deeper than your average CEO pledge to put the customer first. Jobs ‘walked the walk’, going so far as to personally respond to customer complaints and issues directed at his e-mail inbox—and the responses weren’t always sugar-coated in corporate PR-speak, either.

This ‘hands-on’ approach was just one facet of Jobs’ effort to build what is now the world’s largest corporation on a foundation of serving customers, and I think it’s a great example of the perspective that most contact center leaders wish their internal business partners came to the table with.

The problem, of course, is that with a plate full of priorities that likely don’t have much to do with customer satisfaction or effort, it can be a real challenge to get executive leaders to adopt Mr. Jobs’ customer-centric mindset. But we’ve worked with companies that have made some big strides in bridging the gap between service and other areas of the business, and they all realize one of the most potent influencers when it comes to persuading internal partners: real customer voice.

Read More »

This is a special guest post from Dan Rourke, Vice President at Cadence Design Systems and a former CCC member.  Dan has over 24 years of leadership experience in the software industry, and as a CCC member became interested in the concept of customer effort and the Customer Effort Score. He recently wrote this post for his blog High Integrity Support.

Typically customer support teams spend large amounts of concentrated time and effort to improve customer satisfaction. There are many avenues to accomplishing this goal and many of them are quite effective. But, in terms of innovative approaches to the company / customer interface, there hasn’t been too much progress in the last five years or so. The exception is the customer effort work from the Customer Contact Council. Interestingly, they weren’t even aiming for a new approach. Rather they were gathering and analyzing data on traditional satisfaction measures and stumbled on an important correlation. The customer’s perception of the effort that they had to put in to resolving a service issue, compared to what effort they expected to put in, had a big impact. The impact was also deeper and broader than you might think. It did not just affect their satisfaction with support, but also their overall product /company satisfaction and loyalty.  At the end of this post, I’ve included pointers to the Harvard Business Review articles that share the research methodology, results, and case studies of implementation. As with any innovative approach, there are detractors who question the research and conclusions. You should review the material and draw your own conclusions.

As for me, I found the research provides a fundamental missing insight into a key aspect of the customer experience. Most satisfaction improvement initiatives rightly focus on the customer. But they generally do so through a somewhat distorted, dirty lens as to what really matters to individual customers. The initiatives end up trying to improve all aspects of the customer’s experience from the “prettiness” of the web site, to the effectiveness of the search engine, to the politeness of the phone reps. But without understanding the underlying customer needs and specifically exactly which stated needs actually drive loyalty (versus being nice to have), it is easy to optimize items that really matter in only minor ways. Read More »

Customer interest in reducing energy consumption is higher than ever.

In fact, “80% of US households recently [invested] in some form of energy-related improvements for their home,” according to Stuart Sikes, President at international research firm Parks Associates.

Many are also interested in the potential cost savings of energy efficiency. Parks Associates research found that while “80% of customers don’t know the price they are paying for electricity, 62% strongly believe that saving energy and lowering their utility bills are desirable.”

So with national attention focused on the need to reduce energy consumption and budget-conscious consumers paying attention, what role can utilities’ service organizations play in engaging consumers in energy management? Read More »

Just about a year and a half ago, we shared the Customer Effort concept through the publication of our article entitled, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers” in the Harvard Business Review.

In the context of online self-service, companies will often tell us “our customers like to do research online, but when they actually decide to fix their problem/transfer funds/purchase a product, they prefer to call.”  The big question in our minds, however, is this:

How do you KNOW that customers PRERER to call you?

The fact that customers still call (indeed, even that they call after having visited the website) should not be seen as proof that the live phone is the preferred channel.  In all likelihood, the reason why many of your customers still call is because your website has failed them in some way.

The key, then, to understanding how customers prefer to interact with your company—online or in another channel—is to ask the customer directly rather than making assumptions based on customer behavior.  This sounds like an in-depth survey process (and certainly it could be), but there are shortcut ways that companies are unearthing channel switching root cause drivers in a low-cost way.

Specifically, Fidelity Investments discovered a low-tech, customer-friendly method to capture customers’ reasons for abandoning Web self-service for live channels.  They use inbound calls as opportunities to conduct two-question surveys to gather in-the-moment customer feedback about the company’s online self-service and customers’ reasons for switching to the phone.

In addition, Fidelity is very careful about phrasing the questions so that the survey does not come across as an attempt to push self-service but rather a learning exercise.  We believe this is a big part of the strategy’s success—customers are not made to feel as though the company doesn’t want them to call.  Instead, the company simply wants to know more about what customers want from them.

CCC members, learn more about Fidelity’s two-question framework in a new summary here.

Related CCC Resources:

1. Improving Web Self-Service with Customer Voice (Event Replay)
2. Full Case Study: Fidelity’s Channel-Switching VOC
3. Diagnosing Online Failures (Study Chapter)