A Story

I was listening to a friend of mine the other day tell a story that made me cringe for the company she was talking about. She had taken the time to purchase services from a mobile service provider and was trying to contact them about a question she had with her bill.

As a background to this story, this service provider, like all others, has built out there service channels to allow people to contact them in any number of different ways. They have a call center, an email support group, a chat team and of course the good old fashioned IVR.

Now, back to the story.....

So my friend had a question about her bill and started out using the email service to see if she could get an answer in that channel. She emailed the company, told them her issue and was expecting to hear back in a "timely" manner as the issue was not incredibly pressing. She got a response, but not a resolution.

So she tried another channel, the chat function on their site. She did not get the answer she needed from that service either.

So she moved to the voice channel because that is the only place where she thought she could trust that she would be heard and get an answer to her question. She finally did get her answer and moved on with her day.

What can we learn from this story that applies to the broader service world?

1. People are trying to use alternate channels to connect with companies but more often than not, these alternate channels are not as responsive as customers would like.

2. When my friend called the call center, they did not know that she had tried to service herself in other channels. So not only did the agent not have all the background, the management was not going to see that my friend didn't get her question answered the first time in the first channel she used.

3. Broadly speaking, people will quickly gravitate to the channel that affords them the quickest resolution to their issue at that moment.

4. This company and others are training their customers to avoid the channels that they have spent so much time and money on creating to try to cut costs.

It is unfortunate in this case that the experience was difficult and cumbersome. The sad part of the story is that this company will likely never know that it took three attempts by my friend to get this single issue resolved, which means they will likely never know how many others are experiencing the same frustration.....

Age Old Argument

Efficiency vs Effectiveness.... Which is more important?

This has been a question in the world of customer service for years and never seems to be fully flushed out with a clear winner. Maybe because, there really is no clear winner and there needs to be a nice balance for a customer service group to be successful in terms of their customer experience and their duty to the company to keep costs in check.

Efficiency metrics have for many years ruled the roost when it comes to measuring the success of a service environment for most any company. How fast did I answer my calls/emails/chats? How fast did my agents handle the calls that they took that day? How fast did my service reps wrap up a call and document the results of the call? How quickly were agents able to roll a truck for service when they found out it was not something they could fix on the phone?

All of these items are important in measuring the costs of your service org, but do they really measure the success of your service org in terms of your customers perception?

The position that I would take in this age old argument is that effectiveness must be the foundation of your service organization and then when that has been put in place, you should move on to creating efficiencies that build on that effectiveness.

I have said this before, but I will say it again. What do customers want when they call your service group? They want their issue resolved then and there. As we all know, that is not always possible, but it becomes much more possible when you start using that metric as your baseline for how you are servicing your customer. If they want their issue resolved the first time they call/email/chat, then shouldn't that be the metric that we are tracking to?

I would never make the case that we should throw efficiencies out the window, but I would say that they only become useful, when we have set in motion with our service reps and our management that we are going to try to solve the problem the first time and then get incrementally better and faster at solving the problem.

The Power of Data

I was thinking about all the data that lives in the world of customer service and how that data is used to manage to the goals of the business. But as I was thinking about how we use all this tactical data to make decisions, I wondered if the data could be used for anything else.

One of the key elements of most customer service groups these days is to try to solve customer issues the first time around and avoid multiple contacts with the customer over the same issue. This is classically called First Contact Resolution. When someone reaches out to my company, in whatever form or channel, they get their issue resolved the first time. That is what customers want and that is what companies want. So if that is what both of the constituents want in the interaction, why aren't companies using that figure or data point to market their company?

We have heard from just about every company in this economic downturn that the lifeblood of their company is the customer and their experience is paramount to keeping that customer happy. So if the data proves that people just want their issues resolved and companies just want to resolve issues to keep their customers happy, why don't companies tell people about their FCR figures? Why don't they shout from the rooftops that if you come and buy my product or service, I will fix your problem the first time 85% of the time.

Obviously, there are better and more marketing friendly ways to say this, but if you are really trying to keep your customers, why not make sure your FCR is the best in your industry and tell your customers this as much as you can?

Valued Customers

Does it really matter if a customer is "Hight Value" or "Low Value"?

This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately. For years there has been a continued effort on the part of most every company to identify who their most "valued" customers are and then treat them with a different level of service. Whether it be being part of an airline club, a credit card brand or a customer on amazon, many companies have segmented their service by who is more "valuable" to them.

My question is whether or not that segmentation in service is still an intelligent strategic practice for a customer service group and ultimately a company.

There is no doubt that there is value in segmenting your customers to learn more about their buying habits or to group customers together based on trends or offers that the company believes will be value to the customers. But with customers becoming more a part of the dialog in how they get serviced and ultimately leading the dialog on how that service made them feel, is it really still smart to give a lower quality of service to the "low value" customer?

Sales Processes Re-Visited for Telecom

In my work with Telcos, we have seen a real need to optimize the sales and customer retention process. Traditionally, sales/retentions focused on gleaning data from customer interactions and providing an optimal offer. Now Telcos are improving the mechanics of the sales process - optimizing applications and processes to deliver effective, efficient and relevant calls that end in a sale. Let's look at three steps in the sales process that result in a successful call, and how they can be improved:

1. Dynamic identification of a relevant offer is problematic, as there is little existing information outside of age range, geography, and other generic demographics. Sales agents are left to ask probing questions at their discretion, or rely on the “Offer of the Month.” This outdated model leads to less than optimal use of the business intelligence systems.
2. The order entry process is ripe for optimization. With the multitude of systems trying to help make the process effective, we see telco sales agents spending more time than ever trying to properly input orders.
3. Closing the call can be time consuming, but very important. There are FCC regulations, company policy, and customer security concerns to consider. Depending on the sales agents' memories to recall every closure item is dangerous at best.

To improve the sales process, I see Telcos focusing their time on the following process improvements:

1. Start the call with automated prompting and call guidance to walk the agent through qualification. The data gathered is fed back to the offer system to return the best offer based on 10-12 variables and not just 3-4.
2. Automate the manual parts of the order entry process to move agents through the process cleaner and faster.
3. Automate and prompt agents through call closing to ensure completion of required tasks and order quality.

Whether it's acquiring new subs, or retaining or up-selling current subs, optimizing the sales order process is a must. Improving order quality, speed and consistency leads to a better customer experience and more sales.

Nexus One and Simplicity

Last week, Google made a splash with their new Google Nexus One phone. Features are said to be out of this world, the open nature of it both with applications and also with the phone network is great for us all.

But when are technology companies going to learn that the magic of Apple is not that they have the best ideas around products or that their CEO is some incredible genius in a black turtleneck.

The magic of Apple since Steve Jobs has been around is that they understand the customer experience. They understand that if they make it easy and they make it enjoyable, then they will have customers for life.

Google is going to learn a hard lesson on this release of the Nexus One that email and community based customer service will only suffice for a small few. If they plan on this phone being something that can appeal to the masses, they will need a real plan for customer service. And a real plan is not email responses in three days or forums where people suggest the best answer to you. It also is not calling one number if it is a hardware problem that goes to HTC. Another number if it is a network problem that goes to Tmobile and then trying to get a hold of Google over email if it is a software problem.

People want simplicity in their lives, not more complexity.

What is your core competency?

Core Competency…. This was a key buzzword for many years and a majority of the reason why the whole industry of outsourcing has gained such momentum over the last 10 years. The key sales message and value proposition for the outsourcers was: “Manufacturing is not your core competency, we can do it cheaper” or “Let us manage your supply chain for you, and cut costs” or “ IT help desk is our bread and butter and not yours, let us take that over for you.”

But here is my question, Is Customer Service your companies Core Competency?

If it isn’t, should it be?

Why did Amazon pay $900 million for Zappos, a website and brand that sells things over the internet that you can get for the same price at your local Target or Walmart?

With the dynamics between companies and customers/prospects changing every day and more power and influence being put squarely in the hands of the customers/prospects, I would submit that every company should make customer service their core competency. No one knows or understands your products/service better than you. So why would you want to outsource one of your most critical points of influence and learning to someone else?

Zappos leadership understood this and are $900 million more secure because of it.