This is a guest post by Corey Mull of the Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for heads of Marketing and their teams.

It’s officially 2012, and, again this year, we’re hearing “2012 is the year of mobile commerce“. We heard it in 2011 too. Did we hear it in 2010? Yep. In fact, as far back as 2007, pundits and observers have been prophesizing that the days of whipping out our phones to pay for all sorts of retail sundries are just around the corner.

First, I think it’s probably important to get some definitions right. As the Forbes link above says, I think it’s fair to say that mobile-enabled e-commerce does not equal mobile commerce, at least strictly speaking. When you buy a book from Amazon on your iPad, you’re not engaging in mobile commerce per se – you’re using an e-commerce portal adapted for your mobile device. “Mobile commerce” is probably best described as shopping that takes advantage of unique properties of mobile devices.

So, why doesn’t it ever seem to happen – and when it does, why does the development in the space seem to happen so slowly? Read More »

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)

It’s been a great 2011 at CCC as we teamed up with our members to help them address a year’s worth of challenges. We’ve already looked forward and shared our predictions for what 2012 will hold for service organizations, so here is a look back at our best research published in the past year. We’re hoping this list will help you refocus your priorities for the New Year and aid in your planning for a successful 2012!

• The Next Frontier of Rep Performance—when we heard from our members that rep performance was stalling despite continued investments in talent, we decided to take a closer look at what drives performance in the service organization today. What did we find? While traditional skill sets are still important, most reps were missing a crucial piece of the rep performance puzzle—one that has more than twice the impact on performance as any other factor. We call this set of skills and behaviors the Control Quotient (CQ), which quantifies a rep’s ability to exercise ownership over their day-to-day work, as well as to remain in control over themselves in stressful situations. In today’s quality-driven world, CQ is the number one lever that companies can pull to boost performance in their frontline. Read More »

In a clever April Fool’s post earlier this year, a colleague joked about the rise of DIY (do it yourself) call centers.

As it turns out, the prophecy has somewhat come true.

In this case, though, it’s not people setting up their own DIY call centers, but instead service and support organizations increasingly catering to DIYers.

In an interesting recent Wall Street Journal article, vacuum cleaner, lawn mower, and snow blower companies all report that they have seen an uptick in call volume from customers who increasingly are self-troubleshooting but getting stuck mid-way and calling for help.

Read More »

Anyone else curious to know what those squiggly box things are?  Yeah, me too.  Turns out they’re called QR codes (that’s, Quick Response) and they’re origin can be traced to the mid 90s Japan when they were used for internal tracking of materials.  Since then the QR code technology has been opened to the masses and is most commonly used today for marketing purposes.

But can QR codes effectively be used in service?

Read More »

E-mail is commonly used by customers for a plethora of reasons–general inquiries, account information, escalations, and much more. It is also considered an essential support channel by many companies today. But is e-mail really helping us provide good service to our customers?

Complaints about long e-mail chains, delayed responses, and unclear (or worse, scripted) information are earning e-mail a reputation of being ineffective in issue resolution. Indeed, CCC data shows that customers lack confidence in this channel’s issue resolution capabilities when compared to other channels such as phone or web self-service.

That said, with almost 1.9 billion e-mail users worldwide and 480 million new e-mail users added in the period 2009-2010, e-mail is a high potential customer support channel. So why are companies struggling to crack the channel? In fact, is it the channel the culprit at all or simply the way companies use it for issue resolution?

CCC’s new research helps companies rethink their e-mail support strategies by focusing on three considerations: Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Did you miss our webinar featuring what you need to know about social media?

If so, worry not—we’ve compiled key ideas and takeaways discussed during our Q&A with Cindi Freeburn, Director of Community at QVC, and Joanna Howard, Head of Strategy at BT. Cindi and Joanna told us how their companies are using social media as a customer service channel, including insights covering:

-Using social media to provide technical support

-How to measure the ROI of social media activities

-Whether reps should specialize in one channel or work across platforms

-Lessons learned and advice for using social media as a service tool

CCC members, find out the key insights you missed and learn how QVC and BT use social media as a customer service channel.

As healthcare insurers in the U.S. prepare for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to take effect, CCC is paying particular attention to how these changes to the law will impact the contact center and the relationship between customers and service going forward.

We recently had a CCC member in the healthcare insurance industry reach out to discuss her ideas and get our perspective on how to best prepare for these changes, and for the good of all of our members in the healthcare industry, I thought I would share some thoughts from that conversation:

One of the biggest implications of new healthcare laws is greater choice for consumers. This choice will come in the form of marketplaces, also called healthcare exchanges, that will allow individuals and smaller employers to shop for insurance coverage and compare plans side-by-side. The new laws will also enable greater mobility, allowing consumers greater freedom to switch plans and providers.

But with these new choices comes uncertainty for customers—and, more likely than not, additional calls for companies to answer. The question is this: are you prepared to deal with the influx of customer contacts resulting from the new legislation? And, more broadly than that, how should healthcare insurers adjust their strategy for serving customers under these new laws? Read More »

This post was written by Latika Mahajan, a Senior Analyst with our broader Sales, Marketing, and Communications research team.

In a recent blog written by Pete and Lauren, 55% readers voted for Social Media being a viable, long term customer service option. Given the growth of Facebook and Twitter accounts, the percentage of votes will probably only increase, if I had to guess. By linking social media channels with a unique objective (e.g. Twitter for broadcast notifications, and in-the-moment support; Facebook for engagement and discussions), companies are increasingly innovating on how they connect with the “socially-connected” customer to troubleshoot, engage, and build service differentiation. Here are some of my favorite examples of companies working with social media.

Facebook and Twitter are popularly used by the service industry for troubleshooting:

Mindful of Facebook’s viral nature, companies are linking complaints via social media with responses through traditional channels.

• A customer of home furnishing chain Pottery Barn, was fed up with the customer help line and in-store service, so she posted photos of a tabletop explosion on Pottery Barn’s Facebook Page. Within 30 minutes she received a call from a customer representative who worked with her to find a solution. This led to a negative experience turning positive, averting further negative comments on a public channel. Read More »

By Corey Stout

A CCC member—let’s call him John—recently shared an interesting observation with our team: 

We are seeing that the Customer Effort Score (CES) is worse in our chat channel than in our phone channel, but our chat beats the phone in terms of CSAT.

John’s survey results sparked some rich discussion among our team about the correlation of CES and CSAT across different channels.

Read More »