Latest Updates: service experience RSS

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  Vikas 04:06:53 am on March 4, 2010 | 0 | # |
  Tags: customer experience management, customer service, Customer Support, Knowledge Management, service experience, Service Experience Management, voice navigation system

  Call Center Agents Need a Voice Navigation System!

  Today’s voice navigation systems help you get to where you need to be and let you focus your attention on what’s important: driving.

  Think back to life in the old days, before GPS. You’re lost with a map open on your lap, looking for the right street to turn into and driving more slowly than rest of the traffic. Angry are drivers honking loudly behind you!

  This can’t be too different than how call center agents feel about their current tools and technology. Their typical desktop applications open up to reveal an ALT-TAB nightmare — 20 tabs with 10 tabs under each of those tabs. It’s not uncommon for an agent to have 15 of these applications open at once. Their desktop search function, if it works, returns a long list of possible solutions. Their knowledge solutions, if available, come in the form of long documents. And, they’re expected to figure how to navigate all this while trying to help a customer on the phone. Pretty grim environment to work in, eh?!

  Now imagine the equivalent of a voice navigation system for call center agents. A  system that presents the agents with an intuitive and interactive experience to lead them to the right resolutions quickly. By delivering the ideal blend of process, screens, and contextual knowledge, a service experience management system can act just like voice navigation system, letting agents focus on what’s important: the customer.
   

• 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 08:16:40 pm on December 14, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: CRM, customer service, service experience, social crm, web-self service

  Provide a Service Experience, Not just Customer Service

  We all know that the voice of the customer has disrupted the tight control that companies have on their brand. Bad experiences are easily amplified and heard round the customer community. Think of stories like Dell Hell and Yours is a very bad hotel . The fallout is that 55% of customer don’t want to talk to customer service reps anymore (Forrester, 2008) and 90% of shoppers trust community input more than your company’s input (Neilsen 2009).

  So, what does that mean for customer service? You now need to engage your customers in a collaborative environment, which melds community and company recommendations, and is as transparent as possible to your customer base who demand honesty as they ultimately control the conversation with you.

  It also means that customer service has become increasingly important compared to the sales and marketing pillars of traditional CRM. Customer service has morphed into providing a service experience. Your job now is to do better than to solve customer problems, as they can do this with community input – it is to provide them with an end-to-end experience that keeps them coming back for more. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos defines the customer experience as: “ it includes having the lowest price, having the fastest delivery, having it reliable enough so you don’t have to contact anyone. Then you save customer service for those truly unusual situations.”

  This means that you need to provide your support agents a new set of tools focused on providing a customer experience. Here’s a short-list some of what is needed in this new world

  • Your customer-facing web self-service site must include community content as well as corporate content, and your user base must be able to express their voice on your site.
  • Your search results are social – You let the community dictate important content on your web-self service site.
  • If a user chooses to interact with a customer service agent, your agents must have all the data and knowledge that they need to solve their issue pushed to them at the right point in the resolution cycle.
  • You must extend business process management to customer service so that agents solve issues in a consistent, reproducible way that doesn’t vary from agent to agent.
  • Your agents need to be cognizant of your customer’s emotion and satisfaction with the service process, and react appropriately so that the service experience keeps them loyal.
  • You need to monitor, measure how you do, and use data, including customer feedback to tune your service experience to be aligned with customer demands.

  In what other ways can you evolve customer service  offering into providing an experience?

   
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  Vikas 12:23:33 pm on December 2, 2009 | 0 | # |
  Tags: customer loyalty, customer service, customer value, evidence-based service, predictive analytics, service experience

  What Are Your Customers Worth?

  I’m a frequent business traveler who’s likely to rack up $30,000 in airline, car rental and hotel expenses each year. And, I take vacation with my family twice per year, which offers a potential value of $15,000 annually. That means over the next three years my value as a customer is approximately $150,000. I’d say I’m pretty valuable.

  So, while I’m navigating a travel vendor’s site (one that I use frequently) – looking at available fares and the cost of car rentals and hotels in the area – does that vendor know my value as a customer? It does not seem so. Do they offer me a service experience that’s tailored to my needs, based on my preferences or previous buying patterns? Nope. My experience is likely similar to all other customers, irrespective of my potential value.

  I’d love for this vendor to offer me SMS updates informing me of flight delays. When my flights are delayed, it’d be great if one of the vendor’s reps called me before I called them and offered to book an alternate route. These simple examples of a personalized service experience amount to what I refer to as delivering “WOW” through customer service. Consistently delivering this WOW-worthy service would certainly earn my loyalty as longtime customer.

  Speaking of loyalty – and by inference, the travel vendor’s marketing programs – I receive an email once a week offering me a deal for a trip that, without fail, I have no interest in taking. In fact, I have never clicked on any of their offers. My unresponsive behavior should serve as a clue. It offers ample evidence that cookie cutter offers are not working on me.

  The travel vendor should use this type of evidence, or predictive analytics, to make me a more relevant offer. For example, say I have been travelling to a particular city every three weeks for the last three months. It’s natural to assume that I’m going to continue this travel pattern in the future. So, why not use the evidence to offer me a package deal for that city?

  Few businesses truly understand just how much a particular customer is worth! And even if they are able to recognize different customer values, they fail to tailor the experience to suit the diverse needs of these customers. When it comes to courting customers, this one-size-fits-all just strategy doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time we being asking the right questions, gathering customer data and applying the evidence intelligently. In doing this, we’ll be able to better quantify the value of our customers, offer personalized service experiences and launch more informed, effective marketing campaigns.

   
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  Kate Leggett 11:40:27 pm on September 4, 2009 | 1 | # |
  Tags: BPM, CRM, customer service, scorecard, service experience

  Can you monitor your service experience in real time?

  We know that:

  • Not all companies need to provide exceptional customer service – just good enough service that is in-line with their brand.
  • This service offering must work for the customer and work for the company.

  We illustrate this outward-inward tension using a balanced scorecard of (1) cost of service, (2) customer satisfaction with the service experience, (3) ability to comply to company policy (and in heavily regulated industries this becomes very important – think HIPAA standards for healthcare) and (4) the ability to generate more sales.

  These balanced scorecard metrics are hard to measure, and if they are measured, it is done after the service interaction has unfolded. But why can’t we measure them during the service interaction?

   – Cost of service – You should know the average cost of a process flow used to answer a customer’s question. What about measuring the cost of a single interaction as it unfolds and comparing it to this average? You could display this to the agent so that he knows how he is doing. And, if the cost of an interaction greatly exceeds the average, you could proactively route it to a Tier 2 agent or SME to ensure a good customer experience and a low cost interaction for you.

  – Customer satisfaction – We use enterprise feedback management to survey customers after the fact, but what about surveying them during an interaction?

  – Compliance – What about implementing programmatic ways for agents to follow company policy – for example applying BPM flows to customer service interactions, and not allowing an agent to proceed through the flow unless compliance steps are done?

  There are new technology solutions that help with these real-time measurement activities which would allow you to be more proactive in the way that you deliver service. Do any of you do this already?

  

   
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  Keith Holt 02:01:41 am on December 4, 2008 | 0 | # |
  Tags: customer expectations, customer service, knowledge, personal touch, service experience, value

  A Work of Art

  I got to see an artist at work today. He wasn’t a “statue” performer at Fisherman’s Warf in San Francisco. He wasn’t a street musician in Central Park in New York City. He wasn’t a mime in Covent Garden in London who offered for sale a CD of his performance. (I’m still trying to figure that one out.) He was a customer service rep for a rental car company at Atlanta Hartsfield Airport.

  Like all the great customer service experiences I’ve had or witnessed, this one caught me totally by surprise. I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve boarded the shuttle bus at the terminal, ridden to the rental car site, looked for my name on the board, hunted for my car in its space, (sometimes) found the car and driven away. This time there was an agent in the company uniform greeting customers when the bus arrived at the board.

  He had one, very specific job to do. You see at this site the layout is such that there isn’t room on just one level of the garage for all the spaces serving the premium member customers. So the premium spaces were split between two levels of the garage with two boards listing customers’ names. Not exactly rocket science but a situation quite likely to cause confusion and create problems. So the company had implemented a very elegant solution – they placed this individual there to proactively deal with the potential problem before it could develop into a customer service issue. In effect they provided the canvas on which this artist would work his art.

  And he went to work following three fundamental principles for all great customer service experiences. The first of these is . . .

  Give clear directions up front.

  He met the opening door with a smile on his face, got everyone’s attention and briefly and clearly communicated the situation and our instructions – “This facility has two name boards. The one in front of you is the first one. If your name is on it, please step out of the bus and tell me your number. If your name is not on this board it will be on the second board at the next stop. In less than 15 seconds he told us what the situation was, what to do and what to expect to happen next.

  The second principle is . . .

  Provide assistance based on accurate and timely knowledge.

  As each person stepped from the bus and told him the number next to their name on the board, the agent gave them simple but specific and usable directions to help them find their car. “3rd row that direction.” “Along the back wall.” This was all the more impressive because there were not an easily multiplied number of spaces in each row. He knew his area and had handled about sixteen customers in less time than it took me to write this paragraph.

  So far so good. Impressive? Enough to get my attention when I’m used to encountering similar situations where no help has been provided with the result being a regular stream of customers queuing up to complain to an overworked, stressed out desk clerk that they didn’t find their names on the board. But the icing on the cake and what made me certain of what I was going to write about in this blog entry tonight was that he also followed the third, and I think most important, and I’m certain most difficult fundamental principle of great customer service . . .

  As the last of the first group took their directions and went off to their cars, the agent had one final word for those of us left on the bus waiting for the second stop. “I’ve got another board downstairs with your names on it. Have a great day.” It was such a subtly different way of saying it but it made a huge impression. “I’ve got another board . . .” It was his board. He was taking personal responsibility for me finding my name and being on my way.

  It is often those very subtle – and sometimes inexpensive – touches that add the “wow” factor to great customer service experiences, that turn everyday customer interactions into art. Customers are hungry for a personal touch and will often go out of their way or even spend more to experience it. Great service is so rare that a business that practices these fundamentals can stand out from the crowd and dramatically improve their competitive edge – all the more important in this tough economic environment. My challenge to any readers of this post is to measure any process improvement or technology initiative against whether it better enables your organization to follow these fundamental principles:

  • Give clear directions up front
  • Provide assistance based on accurate and timely knowledge
  • Make it personal

  Consistently great customer service is attainable and it is worth the effort – both for the serving organization and the customer being served.

   

• Keith Holt 04:22:08 pm on August 26, 2008 | 3 | # |
  Tags: agents, assisted service, call center, case management, customer service, knowledge, multi-channel, replacement, Self-Service, service experience, warranty

  Sometimes it works

  “Don’t panic.  Just breathe.”  That’s what I told myself when the most unthinkable, darkest, most desperate of situations descended on me without warning:  My BlackBerry® died.  One minute I was master of my domain – making and receiving phone calls, handling e-mails from three different accounts – the next I was completely cut off from both my personal and business worlds.  Was the next draft of that whitepaper ready for my review?  Was I supposed to pick up my daughter from her Taekwondo lesson or was it my wife’s turn?  Was the band practicing on Wednesday night or Thursday night this week?

  It was already past 8:00 pm so I huddled into my pre-technology cave, built a fire against the dark and waited for the next morning when I could seek assistance at my provider’s local store just a few blocks from my home.

  Another day dawned and I wasted no time getting down to the store.  I was hoping they could fix the failed device but would have been perfectly happy with a replacement, even if I had to purchase it myself.  I went to the customer service desk, handed the BlackBerry® to the agent there, described the symptoms I was seeing and hoped for the best.  He took my phone number, opened my account on his computer and spent the next few minutes alternating between prodding different parts of the BlackBerry® and typing notes into the open session on the computer.

  “I have some good news and some bad news,” he said about five minutes later.  In that short amount of time he had:

  • executed a series of front-line troubleshooting protocols to rule out problems with my charger or the battery – causes that would have been easily addressed

  • examined the device for signs of abuse – crushing, cracking, chewing or dunking in liquids – and recorded his observations in my account record

  • been given a determination based on the first two steps and the purchase date that the unit was under warranty and eligible for free replacement (part of the good news)

  • checked his own store’s inventory as well as every other location in the city and determined that there were none available in stock (part of the bad news)

  He apologized that there were none available for immediate replacement on the spot but getting this news up-front and in so little time was infinitely better than calling around to the dozens of stores in the metroplex area and checking them myself.  He tore a sheet off a notepad on the service desk and wrote two numbers on it.  The first, he explained, was a direct line to the company’s handheld technical support call center.  The second number was my case identification number.  I accepted the piece of paper with all the care it deserved as my last and only hope to reconnect to my life.

  When I got back home, I dusted off the “land-line” phone on my desk and dialed the toll-free number he had given me.  “Hello, my name is Steven.  How can I help you?”  What was that!?  No IVR, no canned request to press a number for service?  I explained that I was calling about a warranty replacement and gave him my case number.  “I’m sorry to hear that you had trouble.  Please give me just a minute to read the notes on your case . . . I see here that our service agent has already verified that the phone wasn’t damaged and is eligible for free warranty replacement.”  There were really notes on my case!  And he was reading them to brief himself on my situation!  I didn’t have to repeat anything to this phone agent.  I didn’t have to convince him that I hadn’t somehow caused the problem myself.  It took only three or four more minutes to confirm that the physical address on file was where I wanted the replacement sent and to give me instructions on activating the new device and returning the faulty device.  I was to expect the replacement by expedited shipping early the next morning – at no charge.

  I thanked Steven and hung up.  Moments later an e-mail popped into the in-box on my desktop computer’s monitor with a complete record of the transaction and detailed instructions on how to activate the new device when it arrived.  The next morning, a well-known white van pulled up in front of my house and my daughter signed for the package containing my replacement BlackBerry®.  And you know what?  The activation process worked exactly as described in my instructions.

  I’m a little unsure why I had to make the call instead of the store agent triggering the replacement while I was there but given the level of coordination and smoothness of the whole process – spanning and linking an in-person visit, a telephone call and an e-mail follow-up to avoid the need for a second call – I’m more than happy to overlook one possibly extra step in the process.  Visiting the store service desk and giving them the chance to examine the device saved a major delay that would have been experienced had technicians had to determine warranty eligibility after I shipped the inoperative unit.  So I was rewarded for my effort and the seamless connection between the two events in the service experience made it completely painless to me.

  So sometimes, service does work right – even when something breaks or initially goes horribly wrong.  But what made it work in this case was the seamlessness of the process, the obvious connectedness of the steps in the experience from one to the next and the complete lack of need to ever repeat myself or deal with a clueless participant impeding the process and service like this is extremely rare.  You know what I did next?  Within an hour of successfully activating my replacement, I went to their on-line self-service site and ordered the new smart phone my daughter wants for her 16th birthday.  There are natural and direct rewards for outstanding customer service.

   

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