Proactive Customer Service Part 2

To build off of my previous post about proactive service, I recently had a conversation with a company and they were interested in how other companies are using the idea of Proactive Customer Service in their organizations. They wanted some practical approaches. I told them that there a number of different ways people are getting into using Proactive Service and it just depends on what technology you may already have in place and what type of interaction you are looking to have with your customer. Let's look at a few examples.

Proactive customer service dates back a few years with companies and public institutions using dialing systems to make outbound calls to people in order to make them aware of some type of information that was important to them. The most common form of proactive service that most people know is the phone call that comes from the local school district that tells of a day of canceled school for the kids. But there are a number of other types of organizations that have used the dialing method to reach out and touch their customers. Hospitals call back after surgery to check in, the doctors office calls a day ahead of time to make sure you keep your appt, the cable company calls the morning of your appt to make sure you will be around etc.

But now, many other companies are jumping into the fray with newer technology that allows for a different type of experience around proactive customer service. Whether it be through the SMS channel, email, or the website, most everyone now is using service as a way to head off calls to their call centers or create a much more positive customer experience. Electric companies are sending SMS or Email to their customers when a storm rolls through to update them on status of electricity so that people don't call. Commerce sites on the internet are using Click to Call or Click to Chat as well to be proactive with potential issues that customers might call about. Regardless of the channel, people like to know when things are happening that might effect them and typically react in a positive way when they are kept in the loop.

So, many companies are using the technology to reach out and touch their customers before they lose them or before they make a call to the call center with a problem. But is it really working?

The straw poll that I have taken after talking to a number of leaders in a number of different industries is that, indeed, proactive service absolutely makes a difference. But each person also makes sure to caveat the statement with a word of advice.

To a person, each leader that I spoke with made sure I knew that the key to making the project go well is to make sure that the target audience is very much encouraged to participate. Some of them even go as far as automatically enrolling people in programs while then asking them after the fact if they would like to be enrolled or not.

That is how important getting the audience engaged is to these projects. Not only does the customer engagement lead to a better and smoother operational environment, but it also leads to a much better customer experience at the end of the day. We all want to be "in the know" and the more companies reach out to their customers with information that is timely and relevant, the more positive the customer experience will ultimately be.

Another story on my next post from a real world example of a great use of proactive service.

Proactive Customer Service Part 1

I was on two different flights this past week from two different carriers and I think the differences in the stories will help even the lay person understand what it means to provide Proactive Customer Service.

Carrier number one was flying a common route in the US from one big city to another. It was a flight I have taken a number of times and most of the time it is on time without any real major delays. So, I strapped in, got my headphones on (cause I am always scared of the real talkative guy or gal that may be sitting next to me) and pulled out my reading material for the flight. The closed up the doors, pushed the boarding ramp away and we were ready to go. Or were we? 15 min later we were still sitting in the parked position at the gate, ramp now pushed away but no closer to our end destination. 20 min later. 30 min later. 35 min later.

Finally the captain gets on the horn and tells us that there had been a minor issue with a component of the plane and he was waiting on that to get fixed before we could push back. But it took him 40 min to remember that there about 150 people on the plane that were trying to figure out why we were sitting on the plane for 40 min without getting closer to our destination. Everyone was frustrated, upset and angry. Because, of course, by the time he told us were were going to be on our way, we could no longer use our phones to send an SMS or make a call to tell that cab company or that co worker or that loved one that we were going to be 40 min late. Not a lot of happy campers.

Then, later in the week, I was on another flight from a different company. A similar delay apparently was hitting this flight, lucky me. We all sat strapped in and ready to go for about 5-7 min and then the captain got on the overhead and told us that there was an issue with flight control and were going to sit for another 15-20 min before we pushed out to the runway. He said for us to go ahead and turn on our phones and make phone calls or whatever we needed to update people on the other end who were waiting on us.

This is proactive customer service. Our nature as humans is that we desire to understand and to some degree, control the situation we find ourselves in. Typically we gain this control or at least the perception of control when we have information. With this information we can then make follow on decisions that will allow us to move out of the emotional state of frustration and into a mood of acceptance of the situation. All we want is to be "in the know".

Proactive customer service is not all about technology and process and flow charts etc. Proactive service is thinking about how you would want to be treated and then reaching out ahead of time and making sure your customer is informed.

How are you using Proactive Customer Service in your company?

Interesting Article

For those in the software space and particularly those that are involved in new software companies, I saw this article today from last Nov that I thought was excellent. Ben Horowitz is reported to be a very sharp and extremely successful leader in the tech community. He has founded a number of large companies and is a well known Venture Investor now in Sillicon Valley.

So many companies are rising up out of no where with the advent of new cloud computing models and the cheap infrastructure that goes with it. Those that are focused on the enterprise space should heed this advice as I think it is spot on. There has been some very interesting press lately about this topic. Especially from the very young and what I would consider naive CEO of Box, formally Box.net.

Just something for all management to keep in mind when building a new company....

http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/new-enterprise-customer/

What Does All This Data Mean?

In the last few months, I have been blessed enough to visit and speak with leadership at a number of large companies, specifically leadership in the customer service arena. One of the things that I always make a point of asking them is, "What do you think of all this Analytics talk?". Invariably, they launch into a story, sometimes a story about the great usefulness they are seeing and sometimes a not so good story about how they spent alot of money and didn't see a return that they had planned for. In each case though, the company had done a lot of due diligence in finding the right vendor, finding the right technology and in their eyes picking the right partner. But, in both cases, the good and bad, the determining factor for whether or not their was success had nothing to do with the classic criteria that they were using to choose a partner/product. More on that in a minute.

Lets do a rundown again of the different solutions that are in the market today for customer service groups and "Analyitcs" solutions. I use the term broadly, because as I have said in a post earlier this year, it is hard to tell what company is providing Analytics and what company is just calling their reporting packages Analytics because it is the new buzz word. So a quick rundown. Again, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but only meant to highlight the couple that are seeing most traction today in the market.:

1. Speech Analytics- Using technology to analyze what both customers and agents are saying on calls. Or more broadly, using technology to analyze content in any type of voice based interaction (think video)

2. Text Analytics- Using technology to typically parse unstructured text to find trends or spot issues within all types of text sources (community forums, emails, chat sessions, blogs, social networks etc..)

3. IVR Analtyics- Using technology to analyze the IVR to understand why customers are or are not using the IVR in the way that brings the most benefit to the customers and company.

4. Customer Experience Analytics- Using technology to stitch together the customer journey to understand their total experience with a company over time.

5. Performance Analytics- Using technology to better understand and measure the performance of customer service representatives in an organization.

6. Multi Channel Analytics- This is kind of a catch all phrase applied to some companies offerings that typically represents some combination of some or all of these solutions mentioned above.

As I said, there are a number of options in the market today to fulfill any technology desire or wish that you might have. But my conversations again point to the tipping point being less a decision on technology and more of a decision on something else. That something else is the expertise that is needed to know what to look for in the data.

There are three companies in particular that I have spoken with recently that all told me that their projects for analytics all started out rather slowly and without a bang. The had expected so much more from the technology right away and what they all concluded was that if they would have had the knowledge or expertise about what to look for from the beginning, then they would have been much more successful, much faster.

All of these companies and many more are starting to see real returns from different analytical solutions that are on the market. But the lesson learned here for vendors is to do the heavy lifting and work for your clients up front. Put together best practices and lessons learned that can packaged for companies or industry types to help your clients get started quickly. And customers, make sure that when you are looking at these solutions and technologies, put the RFP matrices aside and focus on companies that can help you ask the right questions of your business because that will be the key criteria to whether you succeed in making analytics a

differentiator for your customer service team.

The question isn't who has the right technology. The question needs to be who helps me ask the right questions.

Back At It

It has been some time since I last posted on my blog, March 15th to be exact. I had taken a new job in Jan of this year which consumed alot of my time and also have been wrapping up some very exciting personal items that have taken me away from talking about customer service as much as I would like. But, things are getting more manageable now and I am back in the saddle.

For the next few weeks I am going to focus on a few topics that seem to be of interest when I talk with people who make customer service their profession. Some of the folks I talk with are strategic leaders of customer service groups, some are operational leaders, some are technology leaders and some are technology vendors or analysts.

Here are some of the things that are of interest in the broader customer service community and I will try to tackle them here in an interesting and informative way:

1. Analytics- I will cover the different types and how people are using them.

2. Proactive Customer Service- What does it mean and why does it matter

3. Six Sigma- Does this methodology have a place in the world of customer service

4. Customer Choice- What does this mean for business

5. Voice- Where does voice go from here in customer service

6. Ethics- Will dig into some stories

7. Web 2.0 Customer Service- Not sure it exists

8. Zappos- My tour and my thoughts

So that is where I will start. I hope that you will enjoy reading about what I am hearing in the market.