All posts tagged Customer

'Tis the Season to Be Jolly…or in Queue…

by Mary Cook on November 30, 2011 in Call Centers, CRM, Industry News, Mary Cook, Retail, Varolii News with 2 Comments
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It’s that special time of year again, the 4th quarter. The quarter all of us call center, customer care and experience professionals live (and die) for. While many of us this past Thanksgiving planned out our shopping trips like the covert PMP multi-media-centric individuals we are (ok, perhaps it was just me…), my beloved and brethren customer service professionals were busy working. Whether they were in their retail stores, calculating their cloud storage to support their digital customers, or re-calculating their 15 minute interval call center staffing plans – the madness of the Holiday season has officially begun. So in honor of this most wonderful time of year (where as a call center professional you are guaranteed to catch bronchitis at least once from over working yourself amongst a set of snotty-nosed CSRs – and I say that with love – I buy Kleenex in bulk), I share with you some of my favorite 4th quarter meltdowns.

My Favorite Holiday Calamity

Once upon a time, years and years ago, I started a new job as a small BPO Call Center Director during the last week of August. Team of 50. Two clients. Two supervisors. Five days after I started my new exciting job, the company signed a deal with a direct mail catalog company.  The majority of their revenues were received during the 4th quarter. Within 24 hours of hearing this news I knew I needed to go from 50 to 250 FTEs by the 2nd week of November. To 315 by the 2nd week of December. And not just agents. We needed technology, networking, processes, support staff, allll the Holiday call center trimming. We accomplished our main goals. I hired an entire team who I still keep in contact with (so they can verify this horror story). We had a Workforce Manager, a Trainer, a Quality Assurance Department, more supervisors, agents, and a Staffing Agency on board.

So…What could possibly go wrong?

  1. The direct mail company forgot to mention the hundreds of thousands of faxed in orders they would also need us to support. No back order office support anywhere in the contract or SOW.
  2. And some of these faxed orders were from large Fortune 500 companies sending Christmas gifts to ALL of their hundreds of clients. Good old green screen data entry from back in the day…
  3. The call forecasts we were provided by our client were off. By over 40%. ABOVE. Calls in queue and upset customers were commonplace. I heard busy line signals in my sleep.
  4. The call center was in the basement. No windows. Heater broke – and it was 90 degrees on and off for days. We all wore shorts and baseball hats to survive the heat (in the dead of winter outside, of course) and to hide our perpetual bad hair days.

I worked a record 321 hours in 21 days straight. I got home every night and ate a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, apologized to my dogs, and cried. And then got up again and did it all over again. One would ask why, but the BEST memory that made this my FAVORITE 4th quarter story was the fact that I had temporary FTEs and supervisors, that despite the fact they knew at the end of January they wouldn’t have a job with me, worked every single day with me. Side by side. If I worked 16 hours, they worked 17. We laughed, cried, and survived together. And it wasn’t just about their overtime pay. It was about our indomitable spirit that we refused to fail the customer – and our customer was our client, their customers, and each other. It was the 4th quarter where all of my leadership education came to fruition despite the never ending holiday call center nightmare packages we were delivered.

Now I could share other stories…like the time 40% of our 800 volume was pointed to the wrong VDN and my Holiday Orders were going to Sears Appliance Repair. Or the year that we predicted that 20% of our order volume would be ecommerce orders and 80% phone orders.  Well, that year 60% of our orders were internet based. THAT was the year I learned to negotiate with my BPO providers.

But instead of sharing more of mine, I would LOVE to hear some of yours. Don’t be shy – all mistakes are merely stepping stones to successes.

Happy Holidays, and may your queues be managed and your network stable…

Call Center Book Review

by Mary Cook on October 5, 2011 in Call Centers, Mary Cook with 1 Comment
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If there’s anyone who knows a thing or two about contact center practices and strategies, it’s Greg Levin.  Voted “Most Likely to Write a Top Selling Ebook on Contact Center Best Practices”, he spent 16 years at ICMI witnessing and learning about the most effective practices with regard to workforce management, quality monitoring, customer satisfaction measurement, customer relationship management, agent hiring and retention, email/chat management, IVR and web self-service, outsourcing, home agents, and a lot more.  His popular ebook, Full Contact: Contact Center Practices and Strategies that Make an Impact, combines comedy with practicality.  His light-hearted approach to the topic has revolutionized the way that contact centers handle their business.

His 145 page book is broken down into seven different chapters and addresses best practices in metrics selection and measurement, agent recruiting and assessment, agent training and development, and agent motivation and retention. There’s also advice about workforce management and staffing, quality monitoring and customer satisfaction management, and e-support, self-service, and social media.  Sample questionnaires, forms, agreements, and articles finish out the ebook and give you the tools that you need to lead your contact center to success.

Easy to follow and written in a language that you can understand, Levin explains the importance of educating new hires and reminding existing agents about the meaning and importance of adherence, reducing burn-out by encouraging agents to take longer breaks, involving agents in the scheduling process so they get the time off that they deserve, and coming up with new and creative ways to make the job more enjoyable.  By making the contact center employee accountable, he explains that, “agents are human beings, at least in most contact centers, and thus need to be treated as such when it comes to measuring and 'enforcing' adherence to a schedule.”  He also notes that, “merely telling agents that they need to be in their seats at certain times 'or else' will do little to foster agent buy‐in and commitment, and a lot to foster agent graffiti and arson.”

Levin also talks about “taking hiring by the horns” by always being on the lookout for exceptional individuals who would shine in a contact center environment.  He states that, “typically, an agent hunt does not involve the use of any weapons or camouflaged clothing, but if that’s what it takes to build your frontline dream team, then so be it.  I’m not here to judge.”  The ebook helps identify your ideal agent and states that there are 8 Elements of a Successful Agent Recruiting Program.  Equally important is the “very long engagement” period that it takes to win over and retain agents.

A resource worth checking out, Levin’s Full Contact: Contact Center Practices and Strategies that Make an Impact is a must-have in all contact centers.  If you want to change the way that you do business, you’ll learn a few tips and tricks by reading this ebook.  I’ve gotten acquainted with it and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Personalization Pays Off - Part 2

by Brian Moore on September 8, 2011 in Brian Moore, Call Centers, Consumer Svcs, Mobile/Telcom, Varolii News with No comments

When communicating with customers, does personalization  matter? Can you expect a return for the effort and expense of recognizing your customers as individuals?

In Personalization Pays Off - Part 1, we discussed the tension between your customer's desire for personal treatment and your company's need to keep costs low by delivering products and services that are essentially the same for large segments of your customer base.

Striking a proper balance between these two competing forces is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction and company profitability.

Whole books have been devoted to this topic; I'm not trying to boil that particular ocean here.

That said, there are a few practical adjustments to "business as usual" you can make that will pay for themselves by improving customer loyalty, lowering operational costs and driving better business performance:

  • Track and act on customer's explicit and implicit preferences. An example of an explicit preference is a customer request that communications be in a language other than English; an implicit preference might be inferred from the fact that they only answer your calls between 10AM and 2PM.
  • Provide time saving conveniences to reward customers who choose to self-serve. Offer to securely store their bank or credit card account information when they make a phone or online payment so they don't have to enter it again next time. Also, configure self-service menus on web pages or IVRs to provide easier access to previously used functions.
  • Look for any and every opportunity to treat customers as individuals. Start by using their name, not their account number, when you greet them. Reference the name of the unique product or service they are using. Be specific about account status, including reference to any recent conversations, payments and purchases - all the better to prove you are talking to them about their unique situation.

The importance of this last point is hard to overstate, particularly when you are automating communications via interactive voice messaging, SMS text or email. Personalization helps cut through the noise in these channels, allowing your message to stand-out as timely, relevant and respectful.

Consider the following experiment we ran with a wireless carrier (I'll call them XYZ Mobile) who uses interactive voice messages to encourage their prepaid subscribers to "top up" their accounts by making an immediate payment. In this experiment, the target customers were randomly assigned to either group A or group B. The only difference between the messages delivered to the two groups was in the greeting - Group A were asked to confirm they were owner of the assigned phone number, while Group B were greeted by name:

• Version A

“Hi. This is XYZ Mobile calling for the owner of <206-555-1212>. Press any key to continue.

• Version B

“This is XYZ Mobile with an important reminder.  If this is <Brian Moore>, press 1.  Otherwise, press 2."

Which do you think got better results?

If you said the one that asked for the customer by name instead of by number, you're right! Over three quarters more customers indicated they were the right party and almost two-times as many topped up their accounts in direct response to the interactive voice message in Version B than in Version A:

Greeting Test2 Personalization Pays Off Part 2

Needless to say, our client concluded the experiment by treating 100% of their accounts with Version B, no doubt with a nod to Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

How do you measure customer experience?

by Mary Cook on August 10, 2011 in Call Centers, Mary Cook with No comments
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A friend of mine emailed me a few weeks ago with one question: “Mary, how do you measure customer experience?” My friend is a six-sigma black belt call center executive. Therefore, I naturally took this question as not only a challenge, but as an opportunity to provide him with an answer he could actually use. So…where does one start when wanting to measure their customer experience?

First, Start by Reviewing Your Current State

First, you need to understand your current customer experience situation – both externally and internally. More often than not, companies focus on external customer experience. This said, there is a correlation between internal, employee loyalty and satisfaction, and external customer experience satisfaction.

Next, Focus on External Measurement

You must measure and benchmark your customer focus on the activities that drive customer satisfaction and retention. These benchmark results are important to understand in order to determine which strategy is best suited for your company to deliver the best customer value both internally and externally. If there is weakness in the entire customer focus aspect, a complete customer experience management reengineering program may be necessary.

Then, Pay Attention to Your Internal Measurement

One of the most important aspects in customer experience management is creating an empowered workforce of employees who are committed to your customer and believe in your company. They need to be able to make a direct connection to how they contribute to customer value and satisfaction.

How Do We Measure It? Measurement Methodologies

Here are some of the top methodologies utilized to measure customer experience:

Quality Customer Experience Metric

No matter what methodology you use, remember to focus on the quality of your customer experience metrics, as well.

  • Credibility: How widely accepted is the measure? Does it have a good track record of results?
  • Reliability: Is it a consistent standard that can be applied across the customer lifecycle and multiple channels?
  • Precision: Is it specific enough to provide insight? Does it use multiple related questions to deliver greater accuracy and insight?
  • Accuracy: Is the measurement right? Is it representative of the entire customer base, or just an outspoken minority?
  • Actionability: Does it provide any insight into what can be done to encourage customers to be loyal and to purchase? Does it prioritize improvements according to biggest impacts?
  • Ability to Predict: Can it project the future behaviors of the customer based on their satisfaction?

In conclusion, you want to be able to leverage your customer experience metrics into superior business performance. These value metrics should enable you to identify competitive performance gaps on those factors that are critical to quality from a market perspective (CTQs, in Six Sigma jargon…). The nature of those gaps, whether positive or negative, will point you to the specific product (service), people, or process issues that you can improve to realize or sustain a competitive advantage.

You can read my complete research on this topic for free, including more in depth explanations around the measurement methodologies on the Contact Center Associations’ website. And don’t forget about the ROI behind customer experience. Forrester recently produced a study that showed, for example in financial services, that a small increase in customer experience could have an impact of more than $200M from reduced churn, word of mouth referrals, and increased purchases.

ACCE | Customer Centric Communications - Mobile, Social, Text, Email, Chat

by Mary Cook on June 2, 2011 in Call Centers, Mary Cook with No comments
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ACCE Show Overview

Produced by ICMI, the longtime leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals, ACCE is the premier global gathering for the contact center industry. Contact center professionals come to ACCE to discover how to improve their center’s performance by better managing people and resources, improving operations, properly selecting and implementing technology, and more. Continue reading →

Keeping Pace with Changing Expectations – The Ingredient for a Positive Customer Experience

by Mary Cook on March 17, 2011 in Call Centers, Consumer Svcs, Mary Cook with No comments
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Providing a positive experience for customers while also managing costs is one of the most vital, yet biggest challenges for any company. However, driving positive customer interactions and reducing costs do not have to be mutually exclusive goals. It just means communicating with consumers the right way at the right time. By creating a customer experience strategy that leverages consumer preferences, multi-channel communications and automation technologies, you can keep costs down while delivering results to your customers – the ultimate ingredient for a better ROI. Continue reading →

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