Admittedly, this is a relatively generic framing, but supplement it with data around rapidly increasing contact complexity, far more nuanced products and solutions, and complicated technology—not to mention customer expectations that now are dramatically heightened—and it quickly becomes apparent at how drastically different the service and support function of today is from that of even a year or two ago.

In fact, in some recent research, CCC highlights the function’s shift to what we call the “Quality 2.0 Era,” which is characterized by both complex issues and heightened customer expectations.  This is a long way from the “Productivity Era” of the late 1990s, early 2000s, when fast resolution of simple issues was sufficient.  As is it distant from the “Quality 1.0 Era” of the mid-2000s, where customers increasingly wanted successful resolution of more complicated issues.

Yet these changes have largely happened under the noses of most service and support organizations, many of which have not transformed their organizations to align to the changes in issue complexity and customer expectations.  In reality, many organizations have been caught offguard by how quickly customer demands and expectations changed.

Which begs the question: What does the next era of service and support hold?  And how should we prepare for it?

A few hypotheses, informed by me and colleagues on the CCC research and advisory teams:

I. Service and support increasingly becomes a learning/teaching function.

As companies continue to work to make it easier to self-serve on simple issues, and the number of live or assisted contacts decreases, companies will increasingly look to help customers optimize their use and knowledge of products and services.  This could happen either on a 1:1 level or even 1:many level and could entail teaching about functionality and integration.

This is not to say that the service and support function will go away entirely, but it will have an altered mission.  This trend has immediate application to the business-to-business world but you could also imagine consumer customers engaging to learn more about products and services as well.  Self-service and multi-channel tools would be very relevant here.

II. Service and support will create greater focus on enabling customers to solve problems as opposed to the company always providing the answer.

In a world where issues are rapidly becoming even more complex, customer knowledge can actually outpace that of organizations, which means service and support cannot always give customers an answer (or the right one).  Furthermore, social media has in large part led to customers enjoying and desiring to connect directly with each other.

Social media, networking, and collective problem solving could well become not just another channel or nice to have, but really a philosophy and focus for the organization—and the olden days of staff solving problems will really give way to communities solving each other’s problems.  We’ve seen similar changes happen at technical support organizations where companies enable customers, and it’s quite probable that this could transcend to the service world as well.

III. Service and support becomes a very narrowly focused organization.

Too often today service and support ends up taking on one too many new responsibilities—generating revenue, differentiating the customer experience, collecting and analyzing voice of the customer—with the organization’s mission constantly expanding and often leading to “scope creep” and potentially hindering organizational performance.

As organizations gradually learn the “jack of all trades is the master of none” philosophy, there is a good possibility that the organization will shed some of its excess responsibilities, or at least start to prioritize its efforts (something that remarkably few organizations do).  My hunch is that revenue generation (not just cross- and up-sell, but also lead generation and qualification) and/or process improvement (largely through voice of the customer) will become the top priority.

What is your prediction about the next era of service and support?  Where are customers and the service and support function headed?

To help you prepare for the year ahead, CCC’s research and advisory team is putting its heads together to give you some additional perspective on areas of opportunity we see across a variety of companies—fresh ideas on how to enhance the customer experience and improve operational performance.

The intent here is not to increase your workload, of course, but to give you additional perspective on continuing to improve your service and support operations in the year ahead.

So let me start here with the recommendation of a relatively simple tweak: Ensure that all staff know how to navigate your company’s website.

It is a basic idea, but conversations with numerous service and support organizations reveal that most companies—both B2C and B2B—have not properly taught staff to use their own websites.

And this is becoming an acute problem as forecasts indicate that self-service increasingly is a preferred channel of resolution (CCC research historically has found that the preference for self-service is equal to live service, if not higher).  And we’re continuing to work on new research on customer expectations for self-service, in which I would be highly surprised to find the trends reversing.

This change among customers—but lack of change among service and support organizations—inevitably leads to a well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful customer interaction along the following:

Frontline Staff: “After next week you’ll be able to check your account online to make sure that the changes have been updated.”

Customer: “OK.  Thanks for the tip.  And where do I go online to find that?”

Frontline Staff: “You’ll need to log in and you’ll find it on your account page.”

Customer: “I’m looking at your web page now and don’t see that option.”

Frontline Staff: “Unfortunately I’m unable to pull the web page up, so I can’t give you any more information right now.”

Customer: “OK….  I guess I’ll just call back if I can’t find the information next week….”

So what can be done to avoid this all-too-common situation?  A few ideas, arranged from least investment required to most:

1. Ask supervisors to do a coaching session on website navigation—Put out a memo to supervisors and coaches and ask them to spend some time orienting frontline staff to your company’s website, particularly the service and support functionalities.  A general introduction can be helpful, but also navigate the site based on a few issues customers commonly call about.  At a minimum, supervisors should do this once a quarter either in team or 1:1 meetings.

2. Tweak new hire training to focus on navigation—An entirely new curriculum isn’t necessary, but even creating a short module orienting new hires (and tenured staff, too) to the website, basic navigation, and important functionality to know about is a good start.  Supervisors and coaches can supplement this on an ongoing basis.

3. Integrate self-service steps into the knowledge base—It is helpful to have training and coaching on discrete website functionalities, but to truly ensure frontline staff can effectively advise customers on what to do on the web, knowledge bases should incorporate this information.  CCC members, learn more about effective knowledge management design principles here.

4. If staff do not have access to the external Internet, at a minimum grant access to your organization’s website—All sorts of historical reasons exist why some frontline staff have no access to the Internet (if you missed it, CCC’s latest research explains why this isn’t such a wise idea from an employee performance and engagement perspective).  Given the trend toward more customers going online and the large number of customers calling because they can’t find information on the web, this would be a good issue to put on the agenda for your next leadership meeting.

In the coming weeks, stay tuned for additional 2012 Resolutions to consider from colleague Rick DeLisi on why using the term “THE CUSTOMER” is not a good idea, and from Brad Fager and Judy Wang as well.

Happy New Year.

Another term that has lost its meaning is ‘Let’s exceed the customer’s expectations.’ …Customers almost universally never experience their expectations being met, much less exceeded. How can you exceed the customer’s expectations if you have no idea what those expectations are? I was at a [hotel] a few weeks ago. They had taken this absurdity to its logical end. There was a huge sign in the lobby that said, ‘Our goal is to exceed the customer’s expectation.’  The best way to start would be to take down that sign that just reminds me, as a customer, how cosmic the gap is between what businesses say and what they do…”

While this was a retail customer setting, the same principle holds true for contact centers.  Attempting to exceed customer expectations is a losing battle.  You’ll unnecessarily spend resources on trying to delight your customers, when research shows that doing so has only a marginal impact on customer loyalty.  The most economical thing you can do is to simply meet expectations.  And, as in the example above, highlighting your goal of exceeding expectations brings attention to service that will likely fall short of expectations for most customers.

One of the most important things you can do, then, is to understand your customers’ true expectations and then manage them appropriately, while providing service that simply meets those expectations.  To help you do this, I’ve pulled together some of our blogs on customer expectations:

• Customer Expectations: Speeding Out of Control?
  Picture a well-educated customer who has been an active consumer of your company’s products for 10+ years. What happens when that customer is having a (heated) dispute with a part-time hourly rep with 6 months experience?
• There’s Waiting and, well…There’s WAITING
  No one likes to wait, right? While almost no one would say they like waiting, the truth is a little murkier than at first glance. Learn ways to keep a customer waiting that can actually enhance the customer experience.
• What Customers Say…Isn’t Necessarily What They Need
  Customers typically reach out to customer service with a question or a request. But, what they tell our reps isn’t the whole picture – and with a few simple steps reps can get customers to open up and give the information necessary to achieve more holistic issue resolution.
• Estimated Wait Time: Not Just for Restaurants Anymore
  Setting expectations about wait time is not a new concept, but in the era of information transparency, estimated wait time has an increasing number of practical applications.
• Are Customer Service Commitments Just Nice Words?
  CCC members recently debated the best components of service mission statements and if such statements even matter. CCC’s take: If you’re going to create a mission statement, ensure that it’s concrete, concise, and memorable for both customers and staff.

The ultimate lesson to learn from the example I’ve highlighted here is that in advertising your service, make sure you’re setting an expectation that is easily met.  Going beyond that threshold will put you in a hole that’s difficult to climb out of.  How does your organization try to set reasonable expectations?

I can’t believe 2011 is almost over.  Seems like just yesterday Lauren was blogging her predictions for 2011 customer service trends…and here we are again.

So, I polled the research team and chatted with a few members to get their perspective on what 2012 has in store for us.  I noticed a few topics that came up several times – some of which are ongoing over the past few years – and others that are newer, including:

• Investment in Technology (especially knowledge management, CRM, and workforce management (WFM))
• Organizational structure changes (primarily from B2B companies as they move from a service organization to center of excellence model)
• Expanding into new service channels (including mobile apps, Facebook, web chat, Twitter, and discussion boards)
• Sales (focused either on increasing cross/up-sell in the service organization or having a closer partnership with the sales team)

As I thought more about these things that service organizations are doing, I wondered to myself what could be driving all of these initiatives.  And I began to see some trends emerge that I think will be crucial in 2012.

So, in 2012 – I think that:

1. You’ll Have More ‘Competitors’ Than Ever Before: Your competitors (in the customer service realm) aren’t just your direct competitors anymore.  Now, your service is being compared to every other customer service interaction the customer has had.  And, many suspect that the customer is developing a ‘gold standard’ for customer service from their best interactions at some of the most progressive companies – and now expect all others to meet this new standard.
2. Your Customers Will Find Even More Advanced Ways to Game the System: Over the past year we have increasingly heard that customers do things like ask for pre-emptive escalations, using Twitter to simply get attention, expect near-instant response times, want to side-step regulations – the list goes on and on.  As customers get increasingly savvy, they’ll continue to find new ways to put you on the defensive when handling their requests.
3. You’ll Need to Proactively Get Ahead of Your Customers: Given these customer expectations, staying one step ahead of the customer will be crucial.  In calls, this means taking the lead to actively guide the customer to resolution – instead of simply reacting to customers.  It can also mean proactive alerts that can educate the customer or eliminate their need to call us.
4. You’ll See A Need for Transparency: As information is more readily available in general, customers will have access to all of the data and information – and they seem to like it.  So, they also want more of it.  Customer can now interact with companies in social media platforms and through other mediums, bringing the customer closer to the company.  And that often means that customers will be looking for transparency and information into your internal processes and workings too.
5. And…Your Reps Will Have the Key to Success: Besides your website, your reps (whether via the phone, web chat, e-mail, or social media) are your customer’s main touchpoint.  They not only need to have a different skill set for this more complex and demanding world, but they also have customer voice that is invaluable to success in the future.  Tap into what they have to say.

So, what does 2012 hold for you?  Share your thoughts!

CCC Related Resources:

1. The Next Frontier of Rep Performance
2. Voice of the Customer
3. Anatomy of a World-Class Contact Center
4. Keeping Pace with Today’s Demanding Customers

membership.  After a bit more data analysis and conversations with a host of members, we’ve uncovered a core area of focus for service organizations in 2012: understanding—and then keeping up with—customer expectations  (especially in today’s multi-channel environment).

The Current State
It turns out that today’s customers seem to be more demanding about service – savvier than ever and wanting a personalized, tailored interaction.  We hear everything from “the customer wants us to do everything for them – including calling a third party on their behalf – to resolve their problem” to “customers ask for escalation even before they interact with a frontline rep.”

That feels like a very difficult place to be – customers are selectively using outlier service experiences with other companies to define their expectations of service with your company.

And, there is a huge stake in meeting customer expectations.  If service organizations consistently don’t meet, they will see increased churn and lower customer loyalty as customers defect to companies who do meet their expectations.

Give Customers What They Want (?)
In response, many do what seems to be most reasonable – give the customers what they want to meet their expectations. Many are doing this by enabling the customer to resolve any issue in any channel at any time.  To accomplish this goal, there tends to be a three-fold solution:

1. Build out new channels: Increasingly, customers are interacting with companies through more channels – including web chat, video, text messaging, Facebook, and Twitter…just to name a few.
   
   Our question is – which channels to prioritize and how do you build a strong business case for each channel?  Do customers really expect us to have a presence in all these channels, or are we actually teaching customers to expect more and more from us by merely operating in some of these channels?
2. Expand capabilities of current channels: Seems like every channel could be more robust – whether it is adding more functionality to the website or redesigning the IVR.  This makes it easier for a customer to resolve any issue in their channel of choice.
   
   Our question is – what functionalities do customers actually use and how do they use them?  How should companies design things like their service websites to make it easy for customer to resolve their issues without forcing the customer to take the path preferred by the company (not the customer)?
3. Integrate channels: Of course, with so many ways a customer can interact with us – it is crucial to make sure those channels ‘talk’ to each other so the customer doesn’t have to repeat themselves every time they switch channels.  Many say that customers want a seamless experience through those channels.Our question is – how should you invest in the technology or other solutions to accomplish this seemingly humongous task?  Are there any low- tech ways to bridge these gaps?

With these areas of focus – and questions – in mind, CCC is setting off to better understand customer expectations today, and how service organizations can consistently meeting expectations.  We have to wonder things like: are customer expectations set – or can we influence them?  Do customers prefer more choice or efficient issue resolution?  What experience best reduces customer effort?

Track our progress on this blog – plus our research updates that includes our latest hypotheses.  We’d love to hear from you – so let us know if you have any comments or want to get involved in the research.

Also, we’ll be releasing a Customer Expectations survey to test customer preferences for emerging channels and their expectations within each channel.  The survey is open to all members, so please let us know if you are interested in participating to get a custom cut of the data.

CCC Related Resources:

1. Shifting the Loyalty Curve
2. Boosting Web Self-Service Stickiness
3. Voice of the Customer

In the healthcare industry, recent data found an alarming new trend among U.S. consumers taking risks to avoid healthcare costs:

-There’s been a 10% increase since 2010 in the number of Americans who have done without or postponed healthcare-related expenses, including medical treatments, exams, tests, and prescriptions.

-Not only that, but Consumer Reports found that almost 50% of Americans who are on prescriptions actually delayed a doctor’s visit, declined tests, or bought their drugs outside the country.

-Plus, 25% of folks with prescriptions also scrimp on their prescriptions – skipping doses, not refilling, and taking expired medication.

All of this is to save on healthcare costs and avoid doctor visits.

While it is certainly a risky personal choice to view healthcare as a discretionary expense and hold off in the hope that one will stay healthy (and that’s a whole different topic that our friends at Iconoculture cover), today I want to focus on the additional potential impact to the company – especially the service organization.

I could imagine potential impacts to reps as both customer’s state-of-mind and issue type changes – plus a larger potential impact on the company.

Let’s take reps first.  As customers begin to view healthcare as a discretionary cost, they will need to think through their options and make trade-offs about their medical care.  They may:

-Turn to frontline reps for advice: Increasingly seeing reps as potential trusted advisors to help make those trade-offs and better understand the potential medical costs.  Customers may believe reps have all the information to help them make an informed decision.

-Bargain with frontline reps: Ask for and even begin to expect greater flexibility around costs, payments – and service in general.

-More urgent issues: If customers put off tests and procedures, or prescriptions refills until the last minute, they may require faster turnarounds and service when they call in a panic.  These customers need what they want – and they need it now.

Seems like our frontline reps’ jobs just got a whole lot more difficult.

And what about companies?  Well, if customers forgo follow-up or preventative treatments and indeed end up falling ill – they may not only put themselves in danger but can also end up costing the company more to serve.

So, given the increased pressures on our reps from customers and potential increased costs to the company, it starts to make sense to help educate customers about their options and advocate a more holistic approach to healthcare.  We’ve seen progressive companies do this either through value-added proactive alerts to customers that target specific segments for education or by arming frontline reps to have a more collaborative conversation with customers to learn more about the customer to position the possible options correctly.

Of course, there are legal restrictions around giving out medical advice itself – but here I’m wondering if we can educate customers better about their options in a smart way.  And of course, this would probably make sense for other industries too – what do you think?  What is the impact of these changing customer behaviors on your organization?

CCC Related Resources:

Proactive Alerts

Teaching Frontline Reps Experience Engineering Skills

The Next Frontier of Rep Performance

Engineering the Low-Effort Customer Experience

And for good reason, too. According to research firm McKinsey, there has been a recorded 40% decline in loyalty among financial customers within the last four years. With so many banks touting such wide varieties of services—mobile banking, rewards points, free giveaways, and (most recently) top-notch security guarantees backed by ATMs with built-in lie detectors —there is more reason than ever to shop for the best bank.

However, while customers are becoming less loyal and more savvy in their decision-making process, they are not being swayed easily by advertisements. For example, research shows that urban adults in India are more like to follow the recommendations of friends and peers, evaluate banks for their specific service offerings, and consider the availability of the bank’s financial analysts.

What this means for the banks, and specifically for service organizations, is that it’s more important than ever to deliver a positive, low-effort experience. In an industry where automated services have become the norm, customers look now to customized, personalized interactions. In fact, a few of the top drivers of loyalty for financial services include flexible customer service, proactive alerts on products and services, and supportive frontline representatives.

What are your thoughts? What do you think your customers are looking for in a bank? Do you agree that there is a greater need for personalization and service?

Other Recent Insights from Iconoculture:

• Netherlands: Sat-nav system offers real-time travel reviews

• HHS brings simplicity to health insurance

• Urban adults shop for banks, favor personalized service

• Bank “truth machine” is tested in Russia

• You don’t know beans: Chipotle comes clean about bacon-laced legumes

Given the buzz around proactive service over the last few years, it’s easy to imagine that most companies proactively provide information and solutions to customers for critical issues as a minimum service standard. However, CCC’s latest research on proactive contact and alerts indicates that 45% of companies do not leverage proactive contact, even for critical issues. But maintaining a strictly reactive service strategy can cause an influx of costly inbound calls, negative publicity, and customer effort.

So, if you’re trying to move away from reactive ‘firefighting’ to proactive service, what are the things that you need to keep in mind?

Identify ‘critical’ issues for proactive contact
Over-contacting customers is likely to do more harm than good, by either confusing customers and leading to unintended inbound calls, or annoying customers with irrelevant contact.

To avoid this, member companies that we’ve learned from recommend categorizing events as ‘critical’ only if failure to proactively contact customers is likely to cause significant inbound calls and/or significant negative word of mouth. For example, one organization does not proactively alert customers of ALL issues – instead it uses three criteria to identify if proactive messaging is warranted.

In addition to providing critical information, think about how you can proactively help the customer solve the issue, if possible. So, when extreme weather forced Air New Zealand to cancel flights recently, it not only waived fees to rebook tickets for affected customers but also offered a variety of rebooking options. Customers could take the next flight out for free, reschedule their flight, fly to another destination, or ask for a refund or credit. Air New Zealand’s approach helped meet the needs of individual customers, improving the customer experience in an otherwise frustrating situation.

Don’t delay communication of critical messages
After identifying that the critical contact is indeed warranted, ensure that you don’t delay communicating the initial message to customers, or in providing updates. While companies prefer automated channels such as SMS or automated calls since they can quickly scale-up critical messages, our research indicates that companies should also consider size and value of targeted customer segments in determining the channel choice. Use this decision tool to identify the best-fit channel for your critical message.

Be concise, but clear
Make sure that the message is not overly verbose or confusing. But…although concise scripting is a must, you do need to include sufficient details to fulfill customers’ needs and avoid callbacks. Moreover, provide assurance to customers that they can ask questions or find further information via links to self-service (ideally) or via a provided contact number.

So, what’s the bottom line? Don’t wait for the customer to call you, leave you, or tell their extended social circle of their poor service experience. Instead – proactively provide them not only information, but solutions as well.

“People seem to want everything these days, and if we can’t/won’t/shouldn’t give it to them, they go ballistic.”

“Some customers call us still angry from their last issue and what they’re seeking feels less like resolution, and more like revenge!”

“We’ve got customers who think they’re smarter than our reps. And I think some of them actually ARE!”

At CCC, we’ve detected a distinct shift in the landscape  – a page-turn to a new chapter in our relationship with customers.  They’re becoming more demanding, or worse, even unrealistic about what to expect from us.

It’s the dawning of a new era, and it’s one we’ve all seen coming for some time:

• The distant past (the 1990’s) was most notable for the move toward greater economic efficiency in customer service.  That was The Productivity Era. Whatever we could do to resolve issues more quickly (reducing AHT, increasing FCR) was the focus of a successful CS operation.
• Then, in the recent past (the 2000’s) we saw a move toward an increasing emphasis on greater quality in our interactions with customers – The Quality 1.0 Era.  As more and more simple issues were now able to be handled WITHOUT the need for a live rep (IVR, web self-service) then the remaining live calls we did take were, therefore, more complex and required a higher-quality personal interaction.
• Now, here we are in the 2010’s and AGAIN, something is different. But this shift isn’t so much about technology or the complexity of customer issues (although these are contributing factors). The biggest difference is the nature of our customers themselves. We’re in a new phase:  The Quality 2.0 Era.  Here are some examples we’ve heard lately that point to this shift:

Some customers have more experience in issue resolution than your reps.
Picture a well-educated customer (lawyer, doctor, professor) who has been an active consumer of your company’s products for 10+ years. What happens when that customer is having a (heated) dispute with a part-time hourly rep who has 6 months experience? It degenerates into a verbal mismatch that ultimately results in a victory for neither side.

Customers are much better at “playing the game.”
We’ve been hearing that some companies are reporting an alarming increase in “pre-escalations” — customers demanding to speak to a supervisor before they even begin to describe their issue to the frontline rep who answered their call. Clever…but annoying!

Customers are issuing threats and ultimatums (correct word is probably ultimata, but c’mon!).
I have a good friend who is — let’s just be kind and say — a VERY ACTIVE customer/consumer. She is definitely smart (-er than most reps) and she told me about a recent experience with a telecom company:  At the height of frustration over her latest unresolved issue, she boldly declared to the rep, “Stop telling me what you can’t do.  And please understand that the very next thing you say will determine whether I will ever be a customer of your company for the rest of my life.”

What do you think that rep said? Exactly what he was trained to say, “I’m sorry ma’am, that’s not something we handle — again, you’re gonna have to call our technical support number and see if they can help you.” Bottom line:  My friend is now counting the days to the end of her contract, and has a new provider all lined up to handle her entire family’s business from then on.

But there IS hope. We’d love to share some of the solutions we’ve seen to relieve these growing frustrations.  Join us for one of our live full-day seminars, or upcoming “virtual” events on the topic of “The Next Frontier of Rep Performance.” We’ll reveal clear evidence that the way you manage your reps — and the work environment you create — can have a significant impact on improving rep performance in this Quality 2.0 Era of customer service.

HOW ABOUT YOU:  What evidence are YOU seeing that customers are acting differently, and in some cases, unreasonbly?

The best part is that while this data was originally intended for marketers, their insights cover a wide-ranging set of topics also relevant to customer service executives and their teams.  Everything from why Spain is laying down the law on improving customer service to how the airline industry is currently embracing customer service to information on what today’s retiring generation expects from companies – all to help you better understand today’s consumer and what they want.

I’m also happy to report that Iconoculture often reports on data and trends from global markets, gathering data from around the world to better understand regional or cultural impacts.

Every two weeks, CCC will offer a complimentary sampling of the latest and most relevant Iconoculture insights.  We’ll be blogging about some of them, and always visit CCC’s new Iconoculture page for the latest insights.

For example, this week one of the insights touches on a new app that allows customers to record calls.  The insight describes the app – which is available for Apple products and transcribes phone conversations straight to text – and also its implications to businesses.  In this case, as many service organizations record calls – this puts the same power of call recording in the hands of customers.  The app could be used to present evidence in escalated conversations or even for litigation purposes.

Interesting stuff, right?  These insights can be a great way to stay ahead in a fast-paced world, and we look forward to building out our Iconoculture library in the months to come.

CCC ’s First Release of Iconoculture Insights:

Geek Pride on the Rise – Young consumer would rather be called a geek as opposed to a jock

India: SM to Complain – In India, customers turn to Facebook, Twitter for product complaints

Complaints in Spain – Spain lays down the law on improving customer service

Positive Service in Russia – “Commercial smile” is being adopted by Russian businesses