Nearly all of my recent conversations and interactions of late have started with the same framing: The world has changed.

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?

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My two girls are close in age to one another, and they often get invited to the same birthday parties.  But, there are those occasions where one gets invited and the other doesn’t, and what follows is usually something along the lines of:

Daughter: “I want to go to the party, too.”

Me: “I know you do, but you weren’t invited to this party.  You’ll get invited to other parties, though.”

Daughter:  “But I really want to go to this one.”

Me: “I understand, but we can’t just show up at the door and expect them to let us in with open arms.”

And strangely enough I’ve found myself having a similar conversation with a number of business-to-business (B2B) companies in recent months.  More and more B2B service organizations are trying to discover how to better partner with their colleagues (especially in Sales) and are finding that they haven’t been invited to the party.  How come?

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As fashion experts Stacy London and Clint Kelly would tell you, sometimes folks simply need a little advice to make a big difference. So in borrowing from the TLC show “What Not to Wear,” we as customer service experts want to bring you our own, “What Not to Do” advice as it relates to customer surveys.

To conduct successful post-contact surveys, companies need to do more than simply “ask questions.” From conversations with member companies, we’ve come across some common survey pitfalls and mistakes that detract from a successful survey. Accordingly, here is our compilation of things that you as a customer survey guru should avoid:

• Don’t ask too many questions. We’ve all unfortunately been stuck in surveys that seem to never end. When designing your survey, remain cognizant of the survey length and only ask questions that are necessary. Taking steps like setting a specific survey goal, defining a question limit, or rotating questions can be helpful for avoiding this faux pas.

• Remove jargon from surveys. Company lingo is good for boardroom meetings (or is it?), but your internal jargon is meaningless to the average customer. Including this type of language in surveys causes extra effort for customers and can lead to poor-quality responses. Before deploying your survey, make sure to fit your language to different audiences, and use the customer’s language, not yours.

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For those of you who read this blog consistently, you already know that we were hard at work in the fourth quarter of 2011 compiling new research on measuring the customer experience.  And with a no-nonsense title like the one I’ve chosen here (“what you need to know”), I’ll cut to the chase. 

Our research is finished, resulting in a number of new tools and resources for CCC members.  And while surveys are not the most glamorous of research topics, there were a few interesting points that are, indeed, “need to know.”  So without further delay:

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Customer voice (VOC) is an extremely powerful tool.  It’s not just the raw customer voice, but the trends and data it can contain.  Anything from a break in a process flow to an emerging customer need for a new product could be just at your fingertips.

And, as customer service moves away from purely an order-taking, transaction-completing, productivity-based role and grows into a function that adds value to customer experiences, the potential of VOC has only grown.  Because, what better way to add value than to supplement market research or R&D and bring customers the next, big thing?

But in reality, all of this can/could/potential business is just that – sure it could happen, but it rarely does. Read More »

“What is the future of the customer experience?”

Seems like the $64,000 question, right?

Well, I had the pleasure of attending a summit on this topic a couple of weeks ago.  Sitting in with customer service executives from around the globe and across many industries – like financial services, retail, and telecommunications – it was a great couple of days away from the office to give me time to think about the answer to that question.

We talked about everything from big data to integrating service into the customer’s more mobile lifestyle to expanding into new channels to using VOC to, of course, social media.  We discussed customer expectations today, and how to drive change throughout the organization.

And at the end of the day, after having a chance to reflect on all the rich conversations – I had a few takeaway thoughts I wanted to share with you: Read More »

A colleague of mine recently moved to a different group within our company; so, as per tradition, he set out to write a goodbye e-mail to his local co-workers.  Instead of writing a goodbye e-mail, though, he decided to create a word cloud comprised of all of the goodbye e-mails he had archived from his past seven years at the company.  The result was a thorough display of the most common words contained within them.  By doing this, he was able to portray the prototypical experience people have when they reflect on their time with the firm.

While the idea of a word cloud is simple, it’s ingenious in its application.  Although tag clouds are frequently used (this site is an example), my colleague’s practical use of the idea really piqued my interested.  My next move was, of course, to figure out how to apply this idea to the service world.  Being a bit of a survey guru, the best idea I had was to analyze customer verbatim from the many customer surveys CCC has conducted over the years.

One of CCC’s more recent customer surveys has an open-ended question that I think would be helpful for all organizations to ask their customers: “In two sentences or less, please provide a bit more detail as to why you left the Web site.”  The answers to this question are an integral part of running a successful service organization, given the impact of channel-switching on loyalty and the huge cost benefits of Web self-service.  So without further ado, here is a word cloud composed of tens of thousands of customer responses to this one question: Read More »

Our parent company, the Corporate Executive Board, recently released some guidance about managing information and data.  Turns out, one out of three executives aren’t getting the insight they need to make good business decisions.  This ‘Insight Deficit’ can be turned around…but it’s not about more data.  It’s about combining data with judgment to make good decisions.

And how does this impact customer service?  Well, I can’t begin to count the number of conversations I’ve had with customer service leaders where something like this comes up:  “Lara, we give the business all the voice of the customer (VOC) data they could possibly need, but we don’t know what they do/they do nothing with it.”  One member even compared it to a ‘big black hole’ where all the VOC got sucked into, never to be heard from again.

No wonder, when only 38% of staff use that data effectively. 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 »

I’m excited to announce the CCC has partnered with the Corporate Executive Board’s (our parent company) newest offering for B2C marketers – Iconoculture to bring our members exclusive new insights.  Iconoculture uses consumer trends and cultural observations from around the world to inform business decisions and help you keep pace with ever-evolving consumers and their needs.

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, Read More »