Latest Updates: Customer Experience RSS

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  Vikas 04:29:06 am on May 20, 2010 | 0 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer service, Service Experience Management

  Questions for all customer Service Managers to think about:

  What if your every agent, could be your best agent?

  What if your agents didn’t need to ALT_TAB through 15 applications on the desktop?

  What if your agents didn’t have to “copy and paste” between applications?

  What if any agent could handle any call?

  What if your agents did no need to search for answers?

  What if quality and compliance was a natural part of agents work and not an afterthought?

  What if your agents could follow the right process, just as you had envisioned it?

  What if you could translate your ideas, adapt to change, in a short period of time?

  What if you could measure and achieve your Cost, Satisfaction and Revenue goals?

  What if you didn’t have to spend months and months on agent training?

  After every answer, ask:

  Why Not?
   
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  Kate Leggett 05:17:16 am on May 15, 2010 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Brand, Customer Experience, customer service

  Customer Experience vs Customer Service Experience

  Jeff Bezos says that Amazon’s customer experience is to deliver goods at the lowest price, fastest delivery, in a self-service mode that is simple and easy. Save customer service for when things go wrong.

  
  And, in times when customer service is needed, it needs to be fast, simple, easy – that is aligned with the experience that customers have when using Amazon, and reinforcing its brand.

  The reverse also applies. Bruce Temkin says that “Good customer experience management is about consistently delivering on brand promises that resonate with customers. You can’t rate a firm’s customer experience management efforts without fully understanding its brand strategy.”

  If your brand is low-cost self-service, then your customer service offering can reflect that with simple, self-help Web service and limited assisted-channel support. If you brand is expensive products delivered with the utmost care, then your service offering will likely require multiple high-touch channels including the phone and live chat.

  What is your customer experience? Is it aligned with your customer service experience? 
   
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  Vikas 10:32:34 am on January 22, 2010 | 2 | # |
  Tags: business, business process management, Customer Experience, IT, Knowledge Management, process

  IT Is from Mars, Customer Service Is from Venus

  IT and business simply do not speak the same language. Collaboration between the two groups is difficult. Often perceived as ‘lack of alignment’, it results in frustration for both sides. The problem has existed for ages. However, in today’s hyper-competitive world, where agility is one of the most important differentiators, poor collaboration between IT and Business holds huge repercussions.

  So much so, that in the recent 2010 State of the CIO Survey, two of the top three imperatives for CIO were identified as:

  1. Aligning IT initiatives with business goals

  2. Improving IT operations and systems performance

  3. Cultivating a better IT partnership with line of business operations

  (More …)

   

• Vikas 10:28:17 am on December 23, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Brand, Customer Experience, customer loyalty, service experience

  Define: Brand

  When I Google “define: brand,” I get the following result:

  trade name: a name given to a product or service

  Is this definition accurate?

  Traditional marketers would agree with Google’s definition. These individuals spend lots time and money developing a surface image of their brands. They create recognizable logos, catchy taglines, memorable ad campaigns and more to build awareness of their businesses and products. While this design, messaging and advertising might be necessary to promote a brand, they are not the key ingredients that dictate how a brand is established and perceived.

  To me, the Google definition seems incomplete at best, superficial at worst. It’s unfair and unwise to presume that good looking logos, clever taglines or high-profile ad campaigns are enough to win customer loyalty.

  Rather, brand should be defined as the sum of experiences customers have with a company. In this way, the brand is established and reinforced through every service experience and it embodies customers’ expectation for companies’ products and service experiences.

  Wal-Mart is a good example of a powerful brand. When I walk into Wal-Mart, I expect cheap prices and reasonable service. And, that’s what I get. FedEx consistently delivers on what its brand promises: timely delivery. Similarly, Starbucks fulfills customer expectations by offering good coffee and pleasant ambiance. Every Starbucks I’ve visited has the same menu, service and décor. With its hallmark blue box and white glove service, Tiffany’s signifies good taste and high quality. My wife has never been disappointed when she finds a Tiffany’s box under the tree; nor have I when I arrive at the jewelers in need of some helpful suggestions about what she might like.

  Brands like these have become powerful because customers get what they expect. Brand value has been established because these companies align their brand promises, or their surface images, with the products and services they’re offering. When they deliver on these promises, consistently over time and through every service experience, they’re able to reinforce and hone customer expectations. In this way, brand is formed through a set of ongoing experiences.

  It’s time to stop thinking of branding as a marketing event. Establishing a brand is a journey. And, it starts with aligning brand promise with the service experience a company provides.

   
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  Kate Leggett 05:57:09 am on September 22, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Communities, CRM, Customer Experience, customer relationship management, Voice of the Customer, Web 2.0

  Shopping, with a little help from my friends

  Even in this down economy, Forrester Research projects that holiday sales will reach more than $33 billion this season. That’s a lot of dough, and here are some guiding principles to help shape a successful online shopping experience.

  #1 – Make shopping fun. Entice users even before they are customers by using a consistent UI on all your site. Offer a variety of self-service methods, like visual decision trees that use pictures of products help orient users to their correct product, and guide them down a particular discovery path. Let them search by price range, color or even by personality like gadget geek, mom-to-be or fashionista.

  Interactive sites relying on technologies like AJAX work. You can drag and drop content on a page to where you want to interact with it. Use rollovers, sliders for price range pickers, or a color palette to search for items of a single color to make sites fun.

  Let peer pressure help you out by listing top searches or hot buys are – both which serve as good indicators of current trends..

  #2 – Let Users use their own words. Users don’t always think in the context of company-generated navigational topics. Let users tag content and browse tag clouds.

  #3 – Information on the User’s Terms. Push relevant service alerts or policy changes out. Let users create watchlists so that they can be alerted when an item goes on sale, or falls below a target price.

  #4 – Use the wisdom of crowds. You trust peer advice over company recommendations. Kaboodle, for example, touts “shopping is more fun with friends”. Append feedback forms and ratings to content and act on it.

  You will be more successful if you can streamline the shopping experience, and use community input to validate purchase decisions.

   

• Kate Leggett 04:24:19 pm on August 24, 2009 | 1 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer service

  Service = Brand, Part 2

  Customer service. We know that it is not one size fits all – it is the art of aligning your service with your brand. It’s the consistency of experience that a customer feels every time they interact with you. And what is brand? It’s what you stand for, it is how you differentiate yourself. Bruce Temkin from Forrester blogs a lot about this.

  We seem to agree that not all companies need to provide exceptional customer service – just good enough service that is in-line with their brand. Think back to the IKEA and Apple examples in my last blog.

  But what about industries where there is little differentiation between products and services? Like banks or telecom providers? Is there any true difference between the banking products and services at Wells Fargo, Citibank, or Bank of America, just to name a few? They also offer an undifferentiated customer service experience that makes it hard to for you, as a customer, to individualize them.

  One deviator in the banking space is ING Direct. They are a non-traditional, internet bank where all business is done via web self service, ATM or email. They have no branches, and you cannot visit a live agent. Even without this traditional personal touch, they know who their customers are, what they want, and deliver what they need. Everything about the banking experience is slick, comprehensive and targeted to a good customer service experience. However, they only target the tech savvy customer with relatively straightforward banking needs – they are known to fire “high maintenance customers” who do not fit into their service mold.

  ING Direct, in a sector of undifferentiated products and services, differentiates themselves by their exceptional service experience. This experience is aligned with the bank’s business model. And this service differentiation becomes their brand. Once again, service = brand.

   

• Kate Leggett 02:21:50 pm on July 2, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: Customer Experience, experience management, Web 2.0

  Breaking down the walls – a new approach to customer service

  This week, KANA announced its new ‘Service Experience Management’ platform, and so far the early reviews have been really positive (see here and here and here). What’s exciting about KANA 10 is that it lets customer service managers take control of the service experience by putting tools in their hands for them to be able to craft and deploy the service experience that they want their agents (or customers) to follow. Magic huh? Not really! KANA gives the service managers WYSIWYG tools to assemble a customer service process flow. The building blocks include, for example, standard customer service actions like “send email”, “search knowledgebase”, “open a case”, as well as customer specific steps such as “look up order history” or “track a package.”

  The magic of this tool is that as the service manager is building the process flow, the desktop for every process step is being created automatically with no IT involvement. Each process step presents to the agent the exact contextual information that they need at that particular point in servicing the customer. It’s not a mashup of say 30 different customer service applications – it’s targeted information pushed to the agent to give him the exact tools that he needs to help the customer out.

  The underlying technology is a co-mingling of KANA’s customer service product history in the ERMS, case management and knowledge space with IBM’s service oriented architecture and BPM know-how and even some cool Web development tools from WaveMaker.

  What this product does, is break down the walls between interaction-centric customer service and BPM that is typically found in the back office – it’s for the first time bringing process and governance to the front office. Judging by how customers are looking to use KANA 10, it’s also going to break down many of the traditional barriers between service and sales and even marketing as well. We think the advantages to this approach are numerous. For example, it cuts down on agent training time as agents are guided through the right process, instead of being left to ALT-Tab through all the applications they have open on their desktop. It helps with compliance to company policy (think about the cost of not following SOX or HIPAA regulations). It helps streamline the service experience, cutting costs and improving satisfaction. And it certainly will help boost up-sell and drive loyaly as customers get answers faster, and are treated consistently regardless of which channel or department they initially contact.

  And there’s much more to the product, like predictive analytics that help monitor SLAs in real time and built-in middleware to easily link in existing customer data stores and applications. Email me to organize a demo, or learn more about it. Or click here for a flash introduction to KANA 10 for more details.

  Happy 4th of July!

   
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  Esteban Kolsky 07:00:40 am on April 13, 2009 | 5 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer first, customer loyalty, customer service, experience management, loyalty, Voice of the Customer

  Customer First? or Customer Only?

  Been reading a lot lately, trying to get caught up after spending so much time in the trenches doing some real work.  Almost everywhere I turn I read about “Customer First”.  Putting the customer first, or ahead of everything else you do.  Why, there is even an entity in the UK that is called Customer First to ensure UK organizations remain true to their customers.  Closer to home, Continental Airlines has been talking about the great results of their Customer First initiative, as well as Northwest Airlines (which merged with Delta recently, another Customer First organization) and even an organization as distinct as the City of San Antonio has gotten on board.

  With all these people you’d think that customer first is all it takes to succeed – but I would like to bring up a more interesting point: it is not about putting the customer first, it is about making the customer the ONLY reason for your existence.  Putting the customer first means that there are other things to distract you from your commitment to your customer.  Making the customer the only thing means that their needs will supersede all others.  It may seem a trivial difference, and hair-splitting semantically speaking, but think about it for a second…

  Do you want to commit all your resources to making your customers happy – or just the ones you can spare?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 02:04:52 am on January 25, 2009 | 6 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction surveys, customer service, customers, enterprise feedback management, Experience, feedback, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 2 – Customer Satisfaction

  I have been dreading writing this entry since I came up with the idea for the series (have you read part 1 yet?).  It is not that I don’t know what to say, or that I don’t want to do it.  It is simply that my fear of providing “sample” survey that will later become “real surveys” for all people without customization or personalization really, really takes hold in this arena.  I mean, who has not had to write a customer satisfaction survey in the past?  It is probably the most used, misunderstood, and poorly implemented of all surveys out there.

  If we go by the surveys that I have seen, customer satisfaction surveys should only have one question since that is what most people care about anyways: “overall, how satisfied are you with us?”.  It seems that if the customer says they are overall satisfied then there are no problems.  Further, as long as we get a sufficient number of customers to say they are satisfied (somewhere in the mid-70s to mid-80s), and the number remains consistent or (gasp) even grows a little  we are perfectly set from the customer experience, loyalty, and satisfaction point of view.  After all, if 80% of people are satisfied – isn’t that good?  Well, yes and no.  I wrote about how you can ensure you will get a 90% of more in customer satisfaction surveys in the past (second most popular post in this site).  It is possible to score high – even increase your scores, and not be doing a good job.

  So, before we jump into the description of the survey and the sample questions (and before I beg you again to personalize and customize them), let’s make sure we understand one thing about this survey.  This “sample” survey is not intended to tell you how many people like you.  It is intended to, historically, provide a trending line of your customer satisfaction overall – but more important it is intended to give you real answers to partial satisfaction questions (e.g. were satisfied with the speed of the answer?) in accordance to your strategy (you do have one of those right?).  Finally, consider that I used these questions for customers that have customer satisfaction as a key metric and part of the insight.  I still believe that customer satisfaction is too flawed as a metric to be used reliably (also read this one), but a trending report cannot hurt – as it wouldn’t with any other metric.

  Too many words to get here, so here are the the essentials of a customer satisfaction survey (part 3 of this series, best practices for writing surveys – stay tuned!):

  • First, the most important part – KISS (keep it short and simple).  I use the rule of 5+/-2 (five, plus or minus two), with five being the magic number, and three and seven the limits.
  • Second, you MUST personalize the questions to the specific items you want to measure satisfaction on – which is why there are some questions below to use, but they may not fit what you are looking for.  Tie your questions to your strategy
  • Third, send them out every business cycle (varies by industry and function), and make sure you use panel management tools so you won’t keep sending them to the same person over and over (we know what they think – no one should get more than one a year), and that you don’t send them to people who won’t respond.
  • Fourth, statistical significance is great for market research or election day polls, not so much on customer satisfaction.  Make sure you get a large enough number to make it varied (I suggest at least between 3-4% of the population) and I am talking responses – not invitations.
  • Fifth, make sure you use the same questions the next time you send them out (yes, exactly the same wording) so you can keep historical trends.  Remember, customer satisfaction is an OK metric to keep as long as you use it as a historical trending metric, not a KPI

  Those are the basic rules for these surveys, but more will arise as you begin to implement them.  Of course, best practices for EFM and Surveys apply, so those are to be considered as well.  Now, without further ado, the list of questions I’d like to propose for your consideration:

  1. Overall, what is your satisfaction with Company XYZ? (hate this question, but it is an easy one to answer)

  Now, this question is to be answered in a numerical scale, I favor a scale of 1-4, you can use whatever works for your objectives.  A scale of 1-10 is popular with people who endorse NPS (Net Promoter Score), but I don’t buy into that.  A different way to ask this questions, which I prefer, is:

  1. Overall, would you say you are satisfied with Company XYZ?

  This question is answered with a simple YES-NO.  Why do I like this question? Two things, first the wording predisposes the respondent to say yes (which is a positive score).  Second, you can setup your scripts to react in the case of a negative answer – and since the question predisposes the respondent to say yes, when someone says NO they really mean it.

  From the following questions, pick some of the ones that reflect your objectives, vision, strategy, and purpose for this survey.  Remember, personalization and customization are highly encouraged – so if these don’t fit your needs go ahead and change them accordingly.

  2.1.  What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ web site / self-service solution?

  2.2. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ representatives on the phone?

  2.3. What is your satisfaction with Product ABC from Company XYZ?

  2.4. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ return policies?

  2.5. What is your satisfaction with Company XYZ use of email for customer service?

  Well, you get the idea.  Keep in mind that how you ask the question is going to depend on the answer, and see Q1 above to see some examples of different ways to write the questions.  Needless to say, again, the questions you chose for the second part are related to your specific, strategic goals and are bound to change for your survey.

  This is the longest post I wrote since we started this blog, but I wanted to make sure it was clear and explicit.  There is, of course, lots more to read and write about customer feedback, customer service, customer satisfaction… well, anything dealing with customers.  You will read more and we move along – but how do you like this post?  Interesting? Are you using it?  Please let me know your thoughts and experiences… and thanks for reading!

   

• Esteban Kolsky 01:16:29 am on December 24, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: 2009, customer centric, Customer Experience, LinkedIn, predictions, process, process improvement, process management, social media

  I Spy, I Spy with my Little Eye… a Very Interesting 2009

  I have been feeling odd, weird the last couple of months.  Was not sure why, until I finally realized – I had not written my predictions for 2009!  Seven years writing predictions, year after year, it becomes second nature.  You have to figure out what will happen next year, write it down, publish it, and then become thoroughly humiliated 12 months later when you review your predictions.  Or, in my case, become satisfied of the wonderful job you did predicting the year 12 months before (yeah, right).

  This is going to be a very interesting year.  There are three major forces converging:

  1. Despite what you think or believe, we are deep in the middle of a global recession and no one knows when we will come out of this one.  The effect that this recession will have on all our lives, and our jobs, is not quite clear.  One thing is for sure – there is a financial consideration that will rule most of the decisions you will make in 2009 – regardless of other considerations.
  2. The role of IT in the organization has changed dramatically in the last few years.  While ten and 15 years ago you would have been very hard pressed to find any organization willing to place their IT above any other necessary function – or even call it a necessary function – we are now facing a world run by geeks (pardon the expression, run by technologists).  In addition, the value of IT in the organization has been proven time and time again (even if you choose not to ignore those 5-year, 50-million dollar CRM implementations to nowhere) as critical for the better working of the organization.  Finally, as the amount of data that needs to be processed increased by leaps and bounds with the complexity of the operations of most organizations, IT is not the place where you are likely to see cuts.
  3. Customers are driving decisions. Yes, we have said this many times in the past, almost to make it meaningless… but the social revolution is changing things.  Customers are in control, and they are realizing that.  They know they can make changes happen by blogging, tweetering, and expressing their views.  And they are keen on taking that forward.

  So, where does a business turn in 2009 when it has to use less money, rely on IT, and bow to customers?  There are two things that will happen in my opinion, and both make for a great and interesting year.

  The Corralling of Social Media. Ah social media, the last frontier.  The place where new technologies, at least these days, seem to go.  This is a conglomerate of many things (blogs, tweeter, social networks) and most organizations have taken the blind approach to it.  Either they ignore it or they try something without a real strategy or purpose.  The idea is that it will somehow profile itself better as time goes by, and more organizations will be able to figure it out.  After all, that is the way it has happened so far – right?  Well, this time is different.  See, in all those previous technologies we saw time being an aid since the organization had to discover the technology, figure out how to use it, and then make decisions about implementation.  This time, it is the users who are driving the progress.  Your customers have already adopted blogs, and communities, and social networks, and tweeter and all those technologies – they are now waiting for you to join them.  See, this about truly working with your users – not just saying it.  You dive into the social ether and take charge – and there are rewards.  All you have to do is have a purpose and a strategy.  This is what is going to happen in 2009 – a very large majority of organizations will figure out their purpose and create a strategy for social media.

  The Real Improvement.Really, we are going to change for the better – and that is not just another promise!  I promise (no pun intended, but well achieved).  See, we are getting to the point where we are constantly telling clients how we will change for the better – yet, we never get around to it.  The focus on the organization above the customer (away from customer-centric and customer-driven) means that we will only push so far in improvements, but they tend not to cause a change in either the corporation’s behavior or the customer experience.  And that is not real change, it is lip service.  Smart organizations are beginning to see that delivering on promises to customers, monitoring their needs and providing for them truly pays off by making customers more loyal and resilient to competitors.  The return on not having to regain customers (read my previous blog series), or get new ones to replace exiting ones is invaluable.   Now, in 2009 we will see more and more organizations become smarter about their processes, about their customers’ needs, and about their execution — they will become smarter, flexible, and will truly improve their processes to match their customers’ needs.

  And one more thing.  I keep getting asked whether 2009 will bring drastic cuts across IT, how deep they will be, whether they will be equal to the ones following the Internet bubble explosion.  I truly, honestly don’t know.  However, I know what I learned in seven years at Gartner – two make a pattern, three make a trend.  That means that if any data item is repeated three times or more, then it is likely to be the answer.  Why am I bringing this up?  One of the most valuable services Gartner offers their clients is as a repository of information.  By talking to vendors, providers, consultants, and end-users we get the truth about the market.  Alas, if my conversations with customers, colleagues, and my research through the last few months proves true (and I am way past three similar data items by n0w), then projects with true return on investment (that means, impacting the bottom line directly) will continue to be funded for as long as possible – regardless of the department or process they support.

  What did we learn in the last downturn that is proving valuable this time? That life continues and you have to continue funding your mission-critical processes.  In other words, make sure the projects you undertake next year have an impact on the bottom line and document (through continuous improvement, measurement and metrics) before, during, and after.  I know that is sounds simple and basic – but are you doing it?

  What do you think?  Am I wrong?  Of course, I don’t think so… but would love to hear what you have to say… did I miss something?

   

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  • Esteban Kolsky on Surveys Done Right – Part 4 – EFM Best Practices
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