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.

Some time back, I wrote about CCC’s latest research on proactive contact and alerts. Our research indicated that most companies focus on providing critical proactive alerts, but hesitate to extend proactive contact to value-added (seemingly “non-critical”) areas. But…our research found that two kinds of value-added messages can create tangible value for the customer AND the business:

• Proactive messages that pre-empt inbound calls
• Proactive messages that increase the utilization of products and services

Since we have already highlighted how companies in developed markets are using these two kinds of value-added alerts in our research, I thought it’d be interesting to see similar execution in emerging economies. Here are my favorite three uses of value-added messages from India. Read More »

When you rub elbows with customer service execs from 400 different companies every day you hear a lot of issues and challenges that group together into common themes.  Some of the most common:

• How can we reduce our costs, without damaging the customer experience?
• Is there a way to create a consistent customer experience across multiple channels?
• What’s the best way to create customer loyalty?

There are a few different ways to word these questions — i.e, loyalty, satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth. However, there’s one group of questions that inevitably start with the same exact words:

How can we get our employees…

(to create a better service experience?) (become more engaged?) (be more efficient?) (go the extra mile for customers?)

Of all those words, the one that jumps out is “get.” How can we GET our employees…?

Here’s the thing. I’ve been doing a lot of work this past year in the areas of human behavioral reinforcement and employee psychology, and what I’ve been learning is that…

…you…can’t. You (as a leader) can’t GET anyone to do anything that they don’t want to do. Read More »

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: Read More »

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a few general trends for 2012 that I saw in our annual agenda poll of the CCC

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. Read More »

CCC has partnered with Iconoculture to bring you the latest in global consumer trends.  Below is our bi-weekly update featuring the latest Iconoculture insights available now on the CCC site.

The rise of location-based daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial reflect an increasing customer focus on local products and services. According to Google, 20% of all PC-based internet searches are local in nature. On mobile phones, the number is as high as 33%.

And that’s not all. From local deals to local food, customers are increasingly using the web to interact with businesses right outside their doorsteps.

This is good news for retailers – many have started to capitalize on the shift to local consciousness. Walmart, for example, recently launched a “My Local Walmart” app that allows Facebook users to connect with local stores. Accessed through the store’s Facebook page, shoppers can input their zip code and “Like” their local store to get promotion details, event information, and region-specific product offers. Walmart is also working on a feature that will let shoppers use the app to interact with area sales associates. Read More »

In my twenty-minute morning commute to work, I encounter at least twenty advertisements by ten different banks. They’re pasted on the sides of the bus I take, splashed on the back of sidewalk benches, and interjected into the stream of my Internet radio.

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. Read More »

The buzz around proactive service has been increasing across the past few years. But….most companies focus on providing critical alerts – think flight cancellation messages or power outage alerts. Fewer companies extend proactive service beyond critical to value-added areas — such as helping customers forward resolve issues or educating customers on how to use products. We found that most companies are just not convinced that offering value-added contact is a viable business strategy.

However, our latest research indicates that, implemented correctly, value-added proactive contact can unlock substantial efficiency and effectiveness gains for the business, and also improve customer experience and lower customer effort.  That said, implementing value-added contact is complex, since customer preferences of the right contact reason, frequency, and channel can differ widely.  

Here’s how you can make value-added contact relevant to the customer and profitable for the business: Read More »

“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: Read More »

In unstable economic times, it has become especially important for financial services companies to focus more attention on serving their customers.

Given the unique issues that customer service professionals in the Financial Services industry face – including customer privacy and financial risk regulations – it can be difficult to know what CCC resources would be most helpful.

Wondering what others in your industry are reading? Here is a list of the CCC resources that your industry peers are downloading most often.

Top 3 CCC Resources for Financial Services Customer Service Professionals

1. Engineering a Low-Effort Customer Experience

What it is: A popular CCC download, this research outlines the most effective, up-to-date strategies for customer effort reduction.  In today’s competitive banking landscape, differentiating the customer experience may be a great way to win and retain customers.

Why your peers use it:

• To understand the sources of customer effort.
• To identify ways to reduce both the objective and subjective sides of effort.
• To coach frontline reps to employ techniques to reduce “in-the-moment” customer effort.

You might also be interested in: The Customer Effort Score – a customer experience metric that accounts for ease of customer interaction during a service request. CCC research has found that this is the most accurate measure of loyalty in a service organization.  Read More »