Latest Updates: Feedback Management RSS

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  John Chmaj 09:09:07 pm on December 9, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: best practices, Feedback Management, KM, Knowledge Management

  KM Governance: It’s a Lifestyle, not a Project

  I’ve had several requests lately to address the issues and approach to knowledge management “governance” — the practices, commitments and plans that define how organizations work together. Aside from the many tactical issues and details an organization needs to address, there are a few things about knowledge management governance that are worth considering at the outset whenever you think about how to initiate or improve it:

  1.  Knowledge Management doesn’t exist or belong to any one group — it’s the COMPANY’S job to do it.

  Because content usually surfaces through search tools and websites, it’s often lumped in with other IT or web initiatives in terms of who owns it, how it’s governed, etc.  The limitation with this approach is it doesn’t address the fundamental organizational alignment necessary to achieve effective knowledge management.  The content stakeholders, support organization (these two usually overlap), and support mechanisms (e.g. technology) all play a part in getting ‘knowledge to market’.  It’s not any one group’s assignment.

  That being said, clear leadership and drive has to be centered somewhere in the organization to create and sustain this alignment.  This usually happens at the executive level within or among some part of the services and support organization, in conjunction with the products group.  But the scope and responsibility of creating and delivering knowledge MUST involve ALL the stakeholders involved — marketing, products, support, content groups, IT, etc. — from the outset in some capacity, otherwise KM forever swims upstream against the other priorities of all the other core initiatives of the company.

  2. Knowledge Management is a LIFESTYLE, not a PROJECT:  Take a program approach.

  While individual content or technology initiatives may well be performed in project mode, the actual long-term capability of developing and delivering knowledge is a core organizational competency that requires ongoing investment, commitment and monitoring.  The most effective way to approach it is as a program – draw a circle around what is to be accomplished, engage all the stakeholders in the life cycle of knowledge (see item #1 above), and create an internal branding, awareness and energy around it.

  This is not foreign to organizations:  cross-group marketing, product development and sales programs happen all the time.  Seek out allies and long-term partners across the business, and just keep at it — it takes years to establish an ongoing cultural commitment to something in any organization.  As long as the goals and outcomes are clear and compelling people WILL come on board as more and more stakeholders get involved.  Which leads to another principle of KM success: show success!

  3.  Focus the program on the higher organizational goals served, and build commitments continuously towards achieving them.

  Often there’s a disconnect between the day-to-day, mundane tasks associated with creating content, managing KB’s, etc., and the critical organizational capabilities that are served by the KM program.  The fruits of Knowledge Management are the successful outcomes: customer sat, efficiency, better resourcing, agent productivity.  THAT is what the organization truly cares about.  The more clearly, compellingly and continuously KM owners and stakeholders can keep the organization focused on resourcing the program towards these objectives, the more KM seeps into the organizational culture as a fundamental enabler.

  This is more than just proving a business case – it’s getting the organization to see and believe that knowledge delivery drives value to the business.  Here’s where good metrics, clear reporting and analysis, and outright evangelism and communications come in.  People in the organization are busy, they have a lot on their plate already, and many other objectives happening at one time.  We have to GET and KEEP their attention on why they should care about KM, what it’s done for them lately, and how they can help get it to the next level with their resources, content or support.

  At the end of the day (or month, or year) KM is a core organizational competency.  Self-service has finished a process that began decades ago when online information began to become available on networks, then intranets, now the web and customer communities at large.  Very few organizations do not need to create and share knowledge to enable their services and support process in some regard or not.  Whether that activity is ad hoc, weakly managed, and drives inconsistent results, or is well managed and drives value and differentiation is up to the organization.  Hopefully thinking about these principles will help you think about approaching KM as a way towards building a more knowledge-centered organization. Good luck — remember, it’s happening whether the organization wants to acknowledge it or not!

  John Chmaj
  “The Knowledge Advocate”
   
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  Esteban Kolsky 06:49:27 am on March 3, 2009 | 7 | # |
  Tags: CEM, CRM, customer experience management, customer service, experiences, Feedback Management, service, service and support, Voice of the Customer

  The End of Customer Experience Management?

  My former colleague at Gartner, and good friend, Ed Thompson is an exceptional analyst.  He probably did more to advance the understanding and knowledge of Customer Experience Management that just about anyone else in this world.  He is the one who got me more interested in this aspect of life, and we wrote a lengthy paper together on how to do CEM properly which is still one of the best read documents at Gartner.  He used to have a set of slides to explain Experiences that was outstanding, and in one of those slides he had examples of people paying more money for more exotic experiences.  For example, people that would pay more to go to an ultra-luxurious hotel instead of a 5-star hotel – just for the added experiences.  He reasoned that customers were willing to spend more in better experiences and if you provide better experiences to your customers you can then charge more and justify the cost of the extra benefits.

  I  agree with the concept, and I have helped countless clients do just that.  They enjoyed great benefits for their commitment to the idea of providing a superior experience at the same or higher cost, and their customers saw that and gladly paid for it.  Fast forward to today’s depressed economic situation (no, I did not say depression – we are a long way from that).  I wrote an entry last month about how some companies are realizing these days that they need to preserve their customers and they need to improve customer service with better experiences.  Back then I said that this behavior probably would not last the downturn, and as soon as things got back to “normal” and revenues increased these “new” experiences were gone and service would go back to what it was.  Service providers had not made the necessary investments in superior experiences, they merely had more time to provide better service (less customers, more time spent per customer).

  I have been thinking lately about all this and where does it end, or where does it go.  My conclusion? Regardless of the outcome of these economic hard times, customer experience management is approaching its long, but certain, end.  Hear me out.  I was listening to the radio today and someone was talking about “the thrift syndrome”, whereas people in bad situations committed to saving money and change their lifestyles, spend less in the future regardless of their situation (the theory is that they lived well with less they’ll continue those habits to be ready for the next downturn).

  Now, this is where it all comes together… 1) people spend more money for a better experience, 2) companies see they can provide a better experience without spending oodles in customer experience management, and 3) “the thrift syndrome”… get it? people will spend less and won’t care about the experience, companies will do better without caring about the experience – and we have the end of customer experience management!

  What are your thoughts?  Am I wrong? Am I a sophist in the making?
   

• Esteban Kolsky 07:08:32 am on February 10, 2009 | 3 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, enteprise feedback management, feedback, Feedback Management, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 4 – EFM Best Practices

  Ok, final part of this series.

  We so far have covered point-of-service surveys, customer-satisfaction surveys, and best-practices for surveys.  On to the best way to implement enterprise feedback management in your organization.  This is a set of best practices I use with all my clients to get them to understand what is the best way to adopt an Enterprise Feedback Management initiative.  Since I was told the previous posts were too long – on to the rest of this!

  Most organizations embark on feedback management programs with no clear objective or purpose, except to simply collect information from the client. This results in long, rambling surveys, improperly worded questions and poor response rates. More importantly, it results in an annoyed customer who must put up with an ill-prepared organization as well as valuable feedback being discarded because the organization doesn’t know what to do with it.

  Best Practice 1 – Determine the W’s

  Who: Most important in a feedback management program is determining the specific customers involved by segmenting . All other questions – what, when and why – are derived from knowing your feedback collection target. Some customers and segments will be more comfortable answering short surveys, while others won’t take the time. A survey for customers whose historical response rate is less than 10% would be a waste of time. However, direct feedback collection (via a conversation or call-out campaign) may yield a higher rate, as well as more feedback. Throwing a survey “over the wall” to see who answers is inefficient. Different users should be targeted using different methods. This most critical “W” must take precedence.

  Why: The most complicated question to ask in determining whether to collect customer feedback is why. Specific reasons for collecting the data (such as improving profile, maintaining customer satisfaction and ensuring compliance) tend to be overlooked once the project starts. Lack of a reason for collecting feedback leads to similar problems as a lack of purpose or an objective: messy, complex feedback events that achieve little success. World-class organizations focus on the specific reason to conduct the project as a way to determine the best questions to ask. This piece of data relies on knowing who is being asked for feedback and, along with the response, makes up the basis for answering the last two questions.

  What: Asking for feedback with no specific purpose often leads to violating the simple rules for surveys. The best surveys have one specific purpose, and all questions or actions support that purpose. Knowing what is being sought, as in a piece of information or insight, goes a long way toward reaching this goal. “Fishing” surveys, which usually have no purpose, tend to irritate users and accomplish nothing. Response rates are higher for single-purpose feedback events, and insights are easier to come by than for complex, multipurpose or no-purpose events.

  When: The best time to capture and channel feedback varies depending on the situation and process. Organizations deploying a feedback project must understand that for each situation it is imperative to capture feedback at the appropriate time. Asking for customer feedback or capturing feedback four weeks after an event leads to faulty memory of the event, thus inaccurate feedback. Conversely, requesting feedback before an interaction is complete, even if it takes several days, yields inconsistent feedback. For each project, consider when and how to capture feedback from customers as part of the planning and decision-making stage.

  Best Practice 2 – Create an Objective and a Goal

  Once your organization answers these four questions, it has the necessary information to set the survey objective. Goals, such as collecting information, measuring customer satisfaction and understanding what customers want, do not make for acceptable objectives or well-measured goals. Specific objectives must be aligned with an existing, ongoing or impending corporate strategy. For the success of the feedback collection event, the goal must be related to a well-understood metric already in use.

  In determining the objective and goal for your project, it is not sufficient to ask, “What am I trying to find out?” Qualify the objective based on the purpose in obtaining the information. Determining overall customer satisfaction, for example, will yield only the number of people who are satisfied but not the strategic value of the data. Why is this data important? Do you want to up-sell or cross-sell based on satisfaction, improve target markets, or increase response rates by knowing whom to target? Knowing the answers to these questions is more important than simply knowing the overall satisfaction level of your client base.

  Best Practice 3 – Define the Insight You Seek

  Outlining the results sought does not mean knowing the number or metric that will result from the feedback event but the statement that needs data. Most organizations blindly implement a feedback event, then spend a lot of time analyzing the results in the hope of getting useful insight. World-class organizations, however, already know the results but are unsure of the data that supports the outcome. For example, an organization that conducts a survey in the hope of
  determining how many satisfied customers are repeat customers knows which data elements to collect, their lifetime, how often to collect data and repeat data collection, and the meaning of the results. The enterprise may not be sure if the number is 15% or 20%, for example, but knows the intent of gathering the data.

  Organizations that undertake feedback management based on specific insights sought spend less time analyzing the data in the hope of finding the insights and understanding the correlation between data points, insights and strategies. In contrast, organizations that don’t implement these processes tend to expend too many resources pouring over collected data trying to make sense of it and relate it in a manner that translates into insights.

  Your turn – what do you think? Have you done this? What results have you achieved? Please leave a comment with your impressions…

   

• Esteban Kolsky 03:58:39 pm on February 2, 2009 | 1 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer experience management, customer service, enteprise feedback management, Experience, Feedback Management, surveys, Voice of the Customer

  Surveys Done Right – Part 3 – Survey Best Practices

  OK, on to part 3 – best practice for surveys.

  I have been working on and off on this topic for a while, updating it and making sure it was still valid.  This is the knowledge I have gained over the years of doing surveys.  Enjoy, and do let me know what you think of it.

  Know What You Want. It is essential to know before crafting the survey what information you need to get out of it. Most surveys look for customer satisfaction, others are trying to determine how to improve the delivery of service. Yet others may be trying to determine the effectiveness of a certain service or program. The most important thing to know is that each of these goals should be unique and single – one survey per goal, with documentation before you release it.

  Determine Effectiveness. Survey methods will be unique for each channel (for example, Web, e-mail, phone) and customer segment (geography/postal code, age, gender,  buying/service patterns). Each customer segment is unique and will react to channels and survey methods differently. For example, a customer registering a newly installed personal computer may or may not have a readily available Internet connection during the registration process. A survey that requires customers to go online to complete an installation satisfaction survey may be an annoyance. However, the addition of a simple question, such as “Connected to Internet?” or “Store survey results until next Internet logon?” will advance the process. Effective surveys are delivered at the conclusion of a service interaction via the same channel as the service provided.

  Adhere to the “KISS” Principle. The keep it short and simple (KISS) principle applies to these surveys. Customers are more likely to complete a survey when the time to completion is explicitly displayed at the beginning of the process, the purpose of the survey is clearly stated and the use of information is defined. For example: “To help us improve our service to you in the future, please participate in our satisfaction survey. The survey will take less than one minute, and no information specific to you will be shared or distributed to any third party.” We recommend no more than three to seven questions per survey, one common topic, and short and succinct wording. Furthermore, to make it easier to answer and to tally responses, multiple-choice answers are recommended. Writing questions is a complex and iterative process. The most critical step in the survey process is to test questions. Before implementation, survey questions should be tested in focus groups, followed by a small pilot survey run and measured against a real customer base for a short period.

  Ensure Consistent Gathering. Hand-picking the “right” respondents to achieve higher scores is a common problem when gathering responses. For example, enterprises that discard participant data because the customer appears upset, not in the right frame of mind, biased or not really friendly rob themselves of critical insight and end up with skewed results. Customers who are the least “friendly” or sympathetic are often the most honest in their responses and central to a better understanding of where service delivery may be failing. Survey response gathering should be done consistently, either to all subjects in the target group (if feasible) or by following a predetermined random algorithm that will be applied to all customers (for example, every fourth caller into a Web site or call center).

  Read the Answers. More than 60 percent of enterprises generate a single data point from a survey – one that usually supports their original view of the level of customer service satisfaction – and ignore an analysis of the possible implications of the data. A well-designed survey will reveal trends, patterns and outright new information that are valuable to improving the customer service operation. This information should be used as part of an EFM system (read “Finally, A Definition for EFM“) to better understand, know and serve customers.

  Act on the Information. Even the best surveys, designed and executed with the best of intentions, are a waste of effort unless a set of specific actions is put in place to respond to customer input.  Alas, the majority of organizations fail to change the customer service organization or workflows based on survey results. Conducting a survey just to know where things are will upset customers who believe that the survey is intended to improve things. An enterprise that surveys customers but fails to act on the data will actually damage the relationship with the customers more than if they had never been surveyed. Even if the only purpose of the survey is to capture the status of customer satisfaction, customers should be given the opportunity to suggest specific input as to how they would like to see interactions improved. In all cases, the end result should be the same: Whatever needs to be fixed should be fixed, and what should be improved must be improved.

  Repeat It. Improvements to the customer experience happen through an iterative process. Responses captured once will be inadequate for determining a trend. If we don’t know whether customers are more satisfied today than last quarter, we are bound to lose customers, and the purpose of the survey will be lost. At periodic business cycles (such as quarterly), as determined by the business, the survey should be repeated, and all the above steps should be done again – including knowing what we want from the survey.

  Let Customers Know. Improvements to customer service as a result of customer feedback should be communicated back to the customers. Let them know that their input is taken seriously and used. Few organizations that conduct surveys do this, yet it is a critical part of customer experience management and of EFM strategies, and it should be done to encourage future participation from customers and to improve customer loyalty.

  So, what do you think?  Am I missing something?  Of course, the bottom line is that you should only do this as part of anEFM strategy… right?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 05:58:58 pm on December 16, 2008 | 5 | # |
  Tags: Communities, CRM, enterprise feedback management, feedback, Feedback Management, social media, Voice of the Customer

  Shifting Priorities, or How to Become a Customer-Driven Organization

  So, how tired are you of hearing me — what’s the right word here… oh yeah — “emphasize” the need for customer centricity?  I wrote about it before in this blog, and I wrote and preached about it for over seven years at Gartner.  It was almost like a battle-call, each time I talked to a customer we always started with a discussion on customer-centricity.  So, with that in mind — how sad would you be if I were to tell you that customer centricity is a thing of the past?  How about if I told you that customer-focused organizations are not likely to make it either?  Shocking, I know… but let me explain.

  We are entering a state of business that is way different that we have seen so far.  Until now, and for the most part still continuing for the vast majority of organizations, our approach to business has been us versus them.  Company versus customers.  Come on, be honest – even when you talked about customer-centricity you were still trying to figure out how to create the best possible solution for your organization – not your customers.  Still there are plenty of verticals where this is the norm rather than the exception.  We are, by nature, trained to seek our own benefit above others.  That was fine —  until now.

  See, among the changes brought by social media (you know, that whole feedback-driven, blog-centric, twitter-infused model of businesses) came the recognition that customers are strong. not one by one, but as a group.  There are plenty of examples of businesses that either took advantage (Comcast) and reaped the rewards, or failed to notice it (Motrin) and paid the price.  The social media “revolution” has actually managed to change the world of business for those astute companies that noticed it.  The new world is no longer customer-centric — it is now customer-driven.

  Converting your business to customer-driven means that what you do is what your customers want you to do, and tell you to do.  You make the decision, of course, to engage in that business model.  However, if you do – their feedback drives your organization.  There is no more ignoring what they tell you or what they need – instead those demands become your driving force.  The reward for that? Loyalty and repeat business.

  Are you still with me? Still interested?  Good, here is what you need to do.  You don’t have to change that much what you do, just how you react.  See, the core principle of customer-driven businesses is feedback.  No, you are not getting away from that so easy.  You have to create your feedback strategy (and I am not just talking about surveys here), deploy it, collect feedback and constantly analyze it and implement changes based on it.  If you cannot make your organization move dynamically, this is not for you.  If you cannot quickly react to changes in what your customers need and want, then don’t bother.  This is for dynamic organizations that want to hear what their customers have to say – and react to it.

  Here is an example of a customer-driven business model.  Egg Bank in the UK heard their customers’ complaints about the lack of a specific type of account.  They thought it would be a good idea to create it, but they also wanted to make sure they delivered it exactly the way their customers’ wanted.  They implemented a series of short surveys to collect input on how to deliver that service.  They put out the survey for just three days and collected all sorts of feedback.  They later analyzed the information collected and within a week they had created a new product, conforming to their customers needs and desires, and it was an instant success (guess where the initial marketing list came from… yep, the people who provided feedback).

  Are you ready to let your customers drive your organization?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 06:43:04 pm on October 21, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: Feedback Management, Green IT, Industry News, Remote Support, Show, SSPA

  Live from Vegas… it’s SSPA!

  OK, so it is not as exciting as New York — but the SSPA show is the pulse of the customer service and support world.  It has been great to be here, see some presentations, do another (second coming of email – slides available via email is you are interested or a post coming tomorrow in this blog), and end up exhausted.

  I like this show, there are some interesting things I can always find here.  In case you have never made your way here, you should consider it.  It is like a smorgasbord of case studies — all sessions are run by real customers, with real case studies, with real problems and solutions.  You want to see how to solve a problem? It is likely there is at least one aspect of it covered in one or more presentations.  Lots of really good data, good information – and all based on real-life!  Sure, the presentations tend to be sponsored by vendors… there is some vendor-speak in them.  But, for the most part, it is about users talking to users.  Very interesting.

  The bottom line: customer service and support is becoming more worldly, and there are three very clear trends to highlight:

  GREEN IS IN.  Lots and lots of companies dealing with remote support, remote troubleshooting, remote just about anything.  As organizations become greener and want to optimize their resources and get better productivity for what they use these vendors are blazing a new trail: how to take care of your remote employees, how to serve your remote customers with less resources, and how to optimize your field force to make them more productive and raise customer satisfaction.  Very interesting concept, and taking hold quite rapidly.

  What do you know? I was right… CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and FEEDBACK MANAGEMENT do matter!  A whole other group of vendors dealing with feedback management and customer experience – but most of them are beginning to focus on the back side.  I said it before, and will say it again, anyone with a garage and a weekend can put together a survey package.  No genius there… what you do with your data is what matters. These vendors are focusing on both analytics as well as insight-driven actions – what to do with the results from your analysis.

  WEB 2.0 IS REAL.  Yes, I did say  before there was a lot of hype and not enough being done on W2.0.  Well, no longer the case… anything from social networks and communities being leveraged for service and support to killer applications that leverage W2.0, all the way to presentations showcasing case studies on W2.0.  We are finally seeing some delivery on the perpetual promise of distributed computing (I am sorry, did I just date myself?), and there is a lot more to come.  I will be really diving into this in the near future… stay tuned!

  Bottom Line:  after so many years of seeing customer service and support as a necessary evil, a cost-center with no purpose, and trying to find the best model to revert that notion it is refreshing to see some change.  Why, there are a couple of booths that even talk about making a profit!  Can you believe that?  Customer Service and Profit said in a positive way in the same sentence… what is the world coming to?

  Additional Resources

  John Ragsdale’s Blog (his impressions on SSPA are great) – http://jragsdale.wordpress.com

   

• Esteban Kolsky 04:56:07 am on October 7, 2008 | 3 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, dashboard, feedback, Feedback Management, scorecard, Voice of the Customer

  What To Do With The Feedback You Collect From Your Customers

  It has been crazy and busy lately with EFM; I have been traveling the world spreading the word — and it has been so interesting.  It has amplified my views of EFM and given me lots of new ideas on what to do with this blog.  It has also given me an idea on spreading the word even faster: Twitter.  Do you twitter?  If not, you should check it out.  I am starting to spread the word on EFM via twitter — starting Monday October 13th, a new EFM insight a day via Twitter… tweet me!

  I have been doing lots of thinking and working with EFM at the strategic level, and it led to me think about the need to implement EFM properly.  I am not simply talking about putting together a strategy for EFM, which I do endorse highly, but also where does it fit within the overall organizational approach to feedback.  In other words, why would an organization take on collecting, analyzing, and reporting on feedback?  After all, if you can do a survey and get some data – isn’t that enough?

  Well, not quite.  The most interesting part of the question is actually what to do with the data and (more importantly) the insights collected and analyzed.  Yes, you can distribute a survey, collect some results, and report on them – even analyze them – and consider yourself done… but there is so much more.  Listen to this crazy, crazy approach to using EFM.

  First, make a commitment to using feedback as valuable data.  That means you won’t just measure customer satisfaction, or yes / no to some inane questions that may, just may, earn you a bonus – but not create insights into your customers or products.  Make a commitment to using feedback wisely as a strategy, collecting and analyzing key business metrics over time.  Once you do this, you have the basis for the second step… building a dashboard.

  Dashboards? how can they be related to feedback?  Well, you could build a dashboard simply by using efficiency metrics (number of calls, average handle time, average wait time, etc.), but wouldn’t you want to build one that means something for your business?  If you strategically determine the metrics that matter about your business, your services, your products — and the effectiveness-based metrics you must follow for the health of your business, you can then prepare a great real-time dashboard that shows you the health of your business — and tie those metrics to the feedback you collect!

  Alas, once you create a real-time view of your important metrics, and use feedback to populate that – what about the long-term view?  Glad you asked (OK, you didn’t, I did).  Once you have a real-time, short-term view of your business it is time to make the jump to long-term, strategic measurement.  The tool we use for that is a scorecard.  Ah, yes… the scorecard.  You can use feedback to measure your key metrics over time, spot historical trends, and see where you have to invest time and resources to improve your products, services and resources.  And the best part?  You get to do this as your improve your use of feedback – from taking surveys, to adopting EFM, to implementing Dashboards and Scorecards.

  Have you tried this?  Are you interested?  Let me know…

   

• Esteban Kolsky 07:00:38 am on September 12, 2008 | 2 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer centric, customer satisfaction, customer service, enterprise feedback management, feedback, Feedback Management, Voice of the Customer

  How About Feedback From Passive Customers? Huh?

  I have been working on some research this week, trying to improve my three-layer model for feedback management which relies on point-of-delivery, customer-satisfaction, and planning feedback events.  See, for the most part I have been using it with clients to help them deploy feedback management strategies, mostly for support scenarios (it can be adapted to many situations, more on that another day).  We have been assuming all this time that if we survey the people who interacted with us, we actually have a very good representation of the issues and feelings from our customers.

  Now, this has worked very well in the past for lots of clients I helped.  Their improvements in retention, delivery effectiveness, and (gulp) loyalty have been impressive (I did not recommend the loyalty measurement – sorta snack in).  However, I could not stop from thinking in the back of my mind I was missing something.  Well, today as I was reading several articles, blogs, and journals about satisfaction, loyalty, feedback management, etc. when I had THE epiphany — I have been ignoring passive customers.

  What are passive customers? Glad you asked In all customer populations there is a small group (between 5-10 percent usually) that you almost don’t know you have.  These are the companies (B2B scenarios), or customers (B2C) that bought your product or service, use it all the time, and never require service (or self-support themselves through your self-service initiative).  These are the non-squeaky wheels – the ones no one pays attention to.  In words of loyalty and satisfaction, these are satisfied, loyal, long-term customers that we have no risk of losing unless we totally screw up — and even then, they are likely to call and get their problem fixed, since they never called before.  These are your safe customers.

  Since you know me, you also know I am going to say something different.  Something like “these are not safe customers”, or “you cannot take them for granted just because they don’t interact directly”.  Alas, I wont’ say anything like that.  What I will do is ask you a question: what is the value of these passive customers to you?  What?!?!?? You don’t know?  Tsk-tsk-tsk… shame on you.

  See, these passive customers for the most part don’t matter much to your organization.  They tend to be content with the product or service, they will upgrade or make incremental purchase decisions mostly on their own, and they just want to have a peaceful existence with what you offer.  In other words, they do tend to be safe,  Hard to lose them – unless you are trying.  However, their value to you is what you really need to know.  One by one, you need to know whether they are a top-tier customer or not, and what would their departure mean to you.  Then, you need to get their feedback – find out what makes them stay, what would make them go, and what you need to do to keep them where they are.  It is easier than you think, all you have to do is ask — we will cover in my next entry how to ask.

  Are you taking care of your passive customers? Huh?

  PS: don’t forget to request the EFM resource guide!

   

• Esteban Kolsky 07:00:07 am on September 4, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, feedback, Feedback Management, LinkedIn, Voice of the Customer

  The End of the Hype for Feedback

  I had it.  I keep reading all over the place how organizations measure their NPI Score and how to survey your customers.  I keep hearing talk about customer-centricity as if the mere act of pretending to care about your customers can get you there.  The words EFM, surveys, customer satisfaction, loyalty and NPI Score seem to be interchangeable in almost any business publication or blogs.  People are talking, and for the most part they don’t know what they are saying.

  It is true you have to collect and analyze your customers’ opinions.  It is totally true that there is more to feedback than just doing surveys.  Alas, it is also true that most organizations don’t know, or completely ignore, those facts. As well as the fact that there is total lack of understanding of what EFM stands for, how to implement it, and what are the advantages versus something like — say, surveys. Or analytical CRM.

  So, the question emerges… how to get EFM under control and understand the facts – not the hype?  Glad you asked… Since I had some time free last couple of weeks, I created a compilation, brief of the main points of EFM.  It is called the “Resource Guide to EFM”.  I know, catchy and original – thanks.

  In this guide you will find the basics of EFM, including the history, the definition, the components, the strategy, and the first steps to take into implementing it.  You will also get some best practices, advice, and recommendations… and when you are done with it, it self-recycles and comes back as a butterfly. Seriously, this is a nice, short (just four pages) document that will allow you to get the basics of EFM under your hat.

  My goal in releasing this is to create a level playing field; a common ground.  I want to be able to continue my diatribes about loyalty, satisfaction, and feedback management in a way that will make sure you get what I am saying, where I am coming from.  The only way to do that is to define what it is I am  talking about.  Would you like to get a copy?  No problem.  Simply send us an email and we will get it to you.  Of course there is no charge.

  The only requirement, make sure to come back and post a comment on your thoughts, or send me an email and either ask me what I meant, tell me I am wrong, or tell me what was good about it.  My email address is first-initial-last-name at evergance-dot-com (HA! try to spam that address).  Speaking of SPAM, we will not use your email address for SPAM, so no worries on sending the email to us.

  What do you say?  Are you interested?

   

• Esteban Kolsky 03:28:55 am on August 15, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: CRM, Customer Experience, customer experience management, customer relationship management, customer service, Experience, feedback, Feedback Management, voice, Voice of the Customer

  how to make sure your customer service is the best, and your customers remain yours

  First, the acknowledgment… I wrote this for a presentation I am doing next week at the DestinationCRM conference.  Yes, it is my original material but it is not just for this blog… then again, we’ll see if I get more readers here or people at the conference next week.

  As I started getting my presentation ready for the conference, I got to the same point where creativity begins: reading the abstract that was submitted, trying to understand what possessed me to write that, and wondering how am I going to deliver on that promise.  Then I started thinking… I promised to talk about service experiences – how breaking down customer experience management projects into “chunks” makes it more manageable.  Since I am not sure I can cover an entire presentation on that yet, I decided to instead focus on service experiences… but come to it from a Top-10 approach.  Yes, I have taken tons of poetic license from David Letterman’s approach to the Top-10 – not even close.  So, without much further – here are my “ten killer ways to make sure you service experiences are the best and your customers remain yours” (the official title):

  1. right channel, right time – always ensure you are offering to your customers all channels they want to use, how they want to use them, and when they want to use them

  2. right person, right time – use workforce management to manage your people, their skills, their training, and their careers – ensuring that each inquiry is answered by the best person to do it

  3. right answer, right time (yes, there is a pattern) – optimize your knowledge management and repositories to ensure that each agent, client, and system interacting with clients automatically always have the right, and similar, answer

  4. right experience, right? – implement an efm initiative to manage feedback from customers and agents, geared to improving and presenting the right experience, all the time to all customers

  5. improve, reduce, discard – use analytics across all interactions, to make sure your processes are working properly, optimize them by improving poor performance, reducing unnecessary steps, and discarding non-working ones

  6. constant monitoring, continuous improvement – manage by KPI – no, not Key Performance Indicators.  Instead focus on Knowledge, People, and Inquiries – focus on them and your experiences will be superb

  7. metrics, choose wisely – don’t use old and tired efficiency metrics (satisfaction, loyalty, handle time, hold time, total calls, response time, etc) instead use the new effectiveness-based metrics to ensure great experiences (did you get what you needed? did we do a good job delivering?)

  8. evaluate new, don’t implement… yet – unless you are in an industry where competitive advantage is a mandate (not many), implementing brand new technologies will only cost you money and resources.  Implement in the second wave and you will reap more benefits (this has a killer graph to go with it, email me for a copy of the slides)

  9. know expectations, surpass expectations – use feedback tools and events to capture and understand your customer expectations; modify your processes to accommodate them; write SLAs to make sure you surpass them

  10. MAKE MONEY – sales is a dish best served piping hot — you are in the hottest moment to recommend, offer, and sell to your customers… right when they need it!  Leverage it.  You’ll be surprised to see how many other problems disappear when you make money for the organization.

  So, what do you think?  Did I miss any?  Do you agree or disagree?  What do you think of Service Experiences? let me know… and remember to email me if you want a copy of the slides…

   

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