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Customer Experience Takes Priority in 2012

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Daniel Ziv, Vice President, Customer Interaction Analytics, Verint

As 2012 unfolds, the analyst community continues to reveal trends and predictions for the New Year. As analysts share their different perspectives, there is one trend that consistently appears across much of the research – the increased focus companies are placing on managing the Voice of the Customer (VoC), as well as improving the customer experience.

Saddletree Research Principal Analyst Paul Stockford identified Voice of the Customer Analytics as the #1 mega trend for 2012 based on end-user input. According to the research brief, “Contact Center Mega Trends 2012,” Saddletree “defines VoC analytics as a three-legged stool. The first leg is speech analytics; the second leg is customer survey software; and the third leg is text analytics. In summary, financial services will lead demand for VoC analytics in 2012 with strong interest also coming from both wired and wireless telecommunications companies, third-party outsourcing and the government sector.”

This is great news for the general customer population – we all have the desire to be heard by our respective vendors. It seems that more organizations are recognizing the demand for customer experience initiatives and are making increased investments to place their focus accordingly.

In the same Saddletree Research note, more than 25% of organizations interviewed will evaluate speech analytics for purchase in 2012, more than 23% will evaluate survey software, and more than 14% will evaluate text analytics.

In “Forrester's Top 15 Trends for Customer Service In 2012,” the leading customer service trend was this: “Organizations will internalize the importance of the universal customer history record.” This essentially translates to, “customer service agents must have access to the full history of a customer’s prior interactions over all the communication channels – voice, electronic channels like chat and email, and the newer social channels like Facebook and Twitter – to deliver personalized service and to strengthen the relationship that customers have with companies.”

This is an important expansion of traditional VoC practices, from a siloed approach of listening and mining each channel separately to a unified approach that takes into account the end-to-end customer experience across multiple channels – and the customer journey over time.

Another analyst firm highlighting 2012 trends is Ovum, whose research note, “2012 Trends to Watch: Contact Centers,” highlights that “enterprises will ramp up their use of contact center analytics” as a critical play moving forward. “In an uncertain economic climate, companies that want to grow revenue need to be able to identify sales opportunities within the existing customer base. Increasingly they are using analytics systems to find ‘moments of truth’ within interactions that can lead to more sales.”

The Ovum report further noted the shift from a silo-to-unified VoC strategy. “Over the next few years, we will see a dramatic increase in the overall use of analytics, which is already one of the fastest-growing segments of contact center software. As use increases, enterprises are going to have to be aware of the tendency inherent in many contact centers to create new silos when they add new data sources. The main benefits of customer analytics accrue when diverse information sources are pooled and viewed as a unified whole.”

A recent paper, “Nucleus Top Ten Predictions – 2012,” also highlights a “renewed focus on the customer experience” as a leading trend for 2012. “We expect to see more investment in analytics, activity monitoring, and big data crunching as companies aspire to the perfect combination of targeting, touching, and treating their customers.”

The bottom line: customer experience will take precedence in 2012 – and beyond. This is great news for VoC professionals, because it is one area where significant job growth is taking place around the world. These research reports and top predictions for 2012 demonstrate why.

Forrester’s report, “The Chief Customer Officer (CCO), 2012,” studied 165 executives in charge of enterprise-wide customer experience. “Over the past six years, Forrester has observed an increase in the number of companies that have a single executive leading customer experience efforts across a business unit or the entire company.”

This sparked my curiosity, so I looked up job posting trends on Indeed.com. During the last few years, when general employment opportunities have been in decline across many sectors, job postings that include the terms “chief customer officer,” “voice of the customer,” and “customer experience” have tripled – and more than 1% of all job postings include the term “customer experience.”

Perhaps we are at the dawn of a new “Age of the Customer,” as another Forrester report, “Competitive Strategy in the Age of the Customer,” suggests. This report goes back to the beginning of the 19th century and defines it as the age of manufacturing, which transitioned into the age of distribution in the 1960s, with the most recent decade being defined as the age of information. We are now starting a new “age of the customer, where empowered buyers demand a new level of customer obsession.”

Like all other predictions, only time will tell – but many analysts seem to agree that a more holistic customer experience approach, powered by analytics-driven VoC strategy, is top of mind for 2012. This will hopefully make 2012 a great year to be a customer – and a VoC professional.

What is Your Version of Multi-Channel Voice of the Customer?

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We’ve heard so often that organizations are collecting multi-channel information as part of their Voice of the Customer programs that we thought it was time to ask those who read the blog to weigh in. When you say “multi-channel”, what are the top FIVE channels you use as inputs to your Voice of the customer Program?

(This survey is now closed. Thank you for your input!)

Putting the Voice of Your Customers to Work for You

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In an extremely informative webinar entitled Putting the Voice of the Customer to Work for You, Gartner and Verint share the key components of a successful customer experience program. The speakers include Ed Thompson, VP Distinguished Analyst, Gartner; Jim Davies, Research Director, Gartner; and Ryan Hollenbeck, SVP, Verint Systems.

Gartner and Verint’s experts agree that today’s successful organizations recognize it’s no longer enough to differentiate products and services on price alone – making the customer experience a key imperative. Therefore, understanding what the customer experience entails, how it will be approached, and which groups in the organization will lead the effort are critical issues that must be addressed.

Gartner defines customer experience as “The customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, channels, systems or products.”

To tackle a customer experience initiative and ensure its success, Gartner has identified five key components. These include:

• Leadership and coordination – The head of customer experience is most often an appointed position; frequently, the position has line reporting into either marketing or customer service.
• Executive support – It’s important to find an executive at the Board level that takes the initiative seriously and supports the efforts of the person appointed to the position.
• Knowing your start point – Take an honest look at the organization’s customer experience status. This knowledge helps to determine first steps towards success.
• No silver bullets – There no silver bullets for customer experience initiatives! There won’t be one large program that solves all ills. Rather, it is a series of small fixes that will result in a changed culture.
• Metrics – These need to be coordinated with the overall goals of the program. The metrics will differ depending upon whether the goals are improved satisfaction, improved loyalty, higher retention or improving quality of a specific process. Again, there is not a “one size fits all” approach for customer experience.

Making Customer Experience a Priority

Senior executives should make customer experience a priority for two main reasons. First, customers have many choices and can change suppliers easily. Second, as it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate a business based solely upon price and product, businesses can differentiate themselves through a great customer experience.

The best approach for initiating an effort in this area is to follow this five-step process:

1. Audit the current customer experience – Which projects are in motion? What projects have just started? What is the purpose of the projects?
2. Collate the customer voice by getting one view of customer feedback – Where is feedback being collected? Has anyone collected all of the feedback into a single voice of the customer?
3. Secure regular executive focus – Is the head of customer experience reporting directly to the Board level? Is he or she able to tell a story that gives the Board a clear picture of what it is like to be a customer of that organization?
4. Move away from being a traffic warden – Are you moving toward being an advisor for the organization? Do you know which project will have the largest impact on the customer experience and are you focusing your attention on that?
5. Rotate the focus from department to department – Are you getting bogged down in one department? Or are you helping each department, rotating your focus about every 6 months?

After allowing for the five-step process above, any organization looking to optimize the customer experience must also consider three dimensions – before, during and after. Setting expectations is a key component to the “before” phase. The “during” is where you deliver the experience, and the “after” is where you collect feedback about the experience. Without collecting feedback, or hearing the voice of the customer, organizations do not know if the experience they are delivering is as it was intended and they don’t have the necessary information to continuously improve that experience.

Capturing the Voice of the Customer through Interaction Analytics

There are three broad categories of technologies that capture the voice of the customer: direct, indirect and inferred. Direct is where the customer is giving conscious feedback to the organization, typically through a survey or complaint. Indirect is where the customer is providing feedback about the organization, but it is not direct feedback to that organization. It’s about them, but not to them. This could include social media like Twitter or Facebook. The third category is the inferred area, where customers are not actually telling you something specifically, but it can be determined based on operational data associated with the experience. This could include IVR click stream, hold time, or any other operational data that gives clues to how the customer’s experience went.

Interaction analytics is a very powerful business solution that captures the customer voice across the direct, indirect and inferred categories. These include speech, text, emotion and sentiment, call flow, desktop activity and surveys. Insight can be captured from these solutions which automatically triggers some form of follow-up action. In the customer service environment, this technology can help identify opportunities that drive agent productivity, identify training issues, redefine processes, and other tactical and strategic initiatives. There are also benefits from the sales and marketing perspective as well as the customer provides feedback about the sales process and marketing campaigns.

Gartner’s perspective is that organizations should strive to obtain a single view of the customer voice spanning audio conversations, survey data, social dialogs and other currently siloed channels.

Contact Center Workforce Optimization (WFO)

Contact center workforce optimization (WFO) is the coming together of process-siloed, agent-centric technologies so that those technologies monitor agent conversations, deliver training, forecast, schedule staffing plans and provide performance metrics. Driving these functions centrally has tremendous business advantages. Also, when interaction analytics are embedded into WFO, all processes are super-charged with the intentional and integrated insights.

The contact center workforce optimization market is maturing rapidly. Gartner forecasts that by 2014, one in three contact centers will have a WFO deployment. Gartner also sees WFO moving strategically into other parts of the enterprise. Benefits of WFO in the front-office can also be seen by moving it into the back-office.

This excellent webinar concludes with a series of case studies with real-world examples of customer experience initiatives. In one of these case studies, VSP Vision Care found that through using workforce optimization they were able to save over $3 million in the first year by improving contact center hold times, CSR availability and shift scheduling. Other benefits included increasing customer satisfaction and gaining deeper insight into agent efficiency and productivity.

I suggest you take a moment to check out this Webinar, it is very informative about how put the voice of your customer to work for you!

Finding Harmony: When Other “Voices” are as Important as the Customer’s

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By Stephanie Thum, Guest Contributor

Voice of the Customer concepts aren't new to people managing health care organizations. Patient surveys, patient feedback, and patient satisfaction scores have been the driving force behind hospital operational improvement initiatives for years. But where (and how) do Voice of the Customer philosophies fit when it comes to something as seemingly basic as a hospital name?

Hospitals get renamed all the time for reasons including ownership changes, mergers, or large philanthropic gifts. In the last five years, for example, Columbus Children’s Hospital in Ohio became Nationwide Children’s Hospital after receiving a $50 million gift from Nationwide Insurance. Newton Memorial Hospital in New Jersey morphed into Newton Medical Center as part of a merger with Atlantic Health System. The University of Pennsylvania Health System changed its name to Penn Medicine.

So when name changes occur, should patients and local consumers have a say-so? Does a hospital’s name really matter?

During my research for an article published in Strategic Health Care Marketing, I discovered that – from certain angles – the answer is yes. As is true in any other industry, hospital names need to resonate with customers. Focus groups and surveys can provide a baseline understanding of how consumers view a hospital’s nomenclature. But in the healthcare industry, “Voice of the Customer” isn’t where organizational renaming decisions should begin and end.

Doctors, donors, trustees, board members, volunteers, and employees all need to agree on a name change, or – as Rick Jacobs of Denver-based Monigle and Associates said in a conversation for Strategic Health Care Marketing – “you’ll crash and burn.”

As one might expect, it is very difficult to balance the voices and please everyone.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Medical Center brand leaders rose to the challenge. Focus groups responded to a variety of possible name changes – most favorably to the simplicity of “UAB Medicine.” Leaders then took the name change to internal stakeholders and many responded well, but gaining buy-in took significant organizational patience, months of internal conversations, presentations, and repeated and consistent communications – driven by a strong chief executive officer.

Debbie Hunter-Snow, Associate Vice President of Marketing at UAB, shared that it was a challenge, but when the chairman of the department of surgery walked into a meeting wearing the new logo on his lab coat, it felt like a victory.

So, what’s in a name? In healthcare, it’s up to Voice of the Customer executives to find out by seeking out – and finding harmony among – the voices of patients, their families, and the internal groups responsible for pushing the hospital brand forward in the market every day. To be successful, everyone must understand the brand – and their place in it.

Stephanie Thum is an independent consultant based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter www.twitter.com/stephaniethum.

Putting a Bow on It

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So, my wife’s birthday is coming up in the next couple of weeks, and as I was wrapping my gift to her last night (and it’s a really nice gift, trust me – this is one of those milestone birthdays, and I cannot mess this up!), it struck me that “putting a bow on it” is a great way to sum up one of the real keys to staying engaged with customers (bear with me here...).

This time of year finds many of us individually and collectively reviewing the work of the past 365 days, and planning for the next 365 to come. It is also a great time to review with your customers the activities, research findings, and plans for the New Year.

I recently had the pleasure of co-hosting a “7 Steps to Highly Successful Surveys” Webinar with Sherri Greenhaus of CRMXchange. The final step is “close the loop,” and for many this step comes in several forms. When it comes to online survey research, it is obvious to most that it is required to go beyond a simple “Thank you for your feedback” message. But how, and via what means, were among the many great questions posed.

Should we use incentives, and advertise them up front (see Koma’s “Law of Incentives”)? How about using the survey as a recruitment tool for ongoing research panel membership? Do I “close the loop” immediately, or wait until final analysis is ready to distribute an executive summary?

Truth be told, you never really “close the loop” once and for all. The loop gets opened and closed dozens of times as you invite participation, exit a respondent from a survey, present an incentive, recruit into a panel, send out a summary report, re-engage though follow-up studies, and so on. What is critical is to recognize both that every interaction you have with your audience (and they with you) is part of a continuum of engagement AND that each interaction needs a corresponding transition to the next.

What I love best about the “close the loop” step is that even the smallest gesture can have tremendous impact. As a member of the NPR listener panel, I was pleased to receive a note from the team at NPR last week, linking to a neat little multimedia thank-you. Like each previous communication, this reflected what NPR knows about my listening habits and modes of consumption (I’m a commuting listener during the work week, and a satellite listener at home on the weekend). It is also a great example of how an intrinsic incentive can be used to effectively maintain a high degree of ongoing engagement (I keep participating because I want to both contribute and see what others contributed).

Along the way, NPR made sure that this critical “7th Step” was included in all their interactions. From post-survey “thank-yous” to periodic update reports to summary findings – to this end-of-the-year email to panelists – NPR stayed engaged and closed one loop by opening up another.

So, as you “wrap up” planning for your 2012 research schedule, consider putting a bow on your research year, as well. As you launch the next round of customer and employee engagement projects, make sure closing (and re-opening) the loop is part of the plan. You’ll see increased engagement, and likely increased satisfaction to boot.

Here’s your chance! Request for Feedback!

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Thank you for your continued support of the official Vovici blog. Renamed “The Listening Post” in 2011, we are consistently amazed – and humbled – by our ever-growing number of readers. Our commitment to providing interesting, relevant, useful content provides our motivation (and sometimes keeps us up at night!), but what really matters is what YOU think.

As such, your feedback is officially requested! We are in the midst of planning topics for the upcoming year and we would like your thoughts about what you think is working, what isn’t, and what type of content you want to see. If you’re willing to help us out, please take the following 2-minute survey and let us know what you think.

If you would prefer to provide feedback directly, please email me at nancy.porte@verint.com. Wishing you a happy and customer-centric new year, and – as always – thanks so much for reading.

Predictions for 2012

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As a Customer Experience professional, I am more accustomed to reading predictions than making them! (Which reminds me of some sage advice: "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove all doubt."). But after an exciting year of writing, presenting, and participating in compelling discussions with industry leaders, I remain passionate and committed to the field of customer experience.

So, while this may be called a “prediction list,” it is – in reality – as much a wish list for how I would like to see the customer-centric focus expand. My wish is for improved experience for customers everywhere, as well as the continued growth and maturation of the customer experience professional community.

Bring it on, 2012!

1. Customer Experience leadership will become a necessity for competitive businesses.
   
   A growing number of organizations understand the value of the culture change required to become a customer-centric organization. Such firms have responded by increasing the investment in retaining their customer base and by reallocating funds previously dedicated to pursuing new customers. For others, the customer experience program is a nice-to-have or “flavor of the month” program that receives periodic attention and dollars from the company’s executive team – but little true nurturing or targeted expansion.
   
   And you certainly don’t have to look far to see the business results (or lack thereof) when leaders turn a deaf ear to their customers. The New York Times recently published an article about the Worst CEOs of 2011. Three of the five CEOs were “highlighted” in the article because they outright ignored customer feedback and suggestions.

   Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie of Research in Motion (RIM) ignored customer preferences for iPhone and Android, not recognizing – maybe even ignoring – the blowing winds of change. Add to that the disastrous (and numerous) Blackberry outages, and the un-customer friendly response to said outages, and you come up with erosion of over 70% of shareholder value (ouch!).
   
   Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, rounds out the list of challenged CEOs who suffered by ignoring customers. Hastings chose to increase prices, make it more difficult for customers to do business with Netflix. Then he, too, responded poorly when customers voted with their feet (and their subscriptions). In what seems to be the magic number for failure, Netflix stock is down almost 70%.
   
   With the obvious necessity of Customer Experience leadership, the field itself will feel tremendous pressure to mature in 2012. According to the 2011 Beyond Philosophy Global Customer Experience Management Survey, 78% of CE Executives were deployed having no direct background in the practice. Additionally, many Customer Experience programs are simply re-branded CRM programs. The result is limited progress for those organizations – and the industry.
   
   The formation of Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) in mid-2011 was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak horizon for customer experience professionals. Founded by industry experts, Bruce Temkin and Jeanne Bliss, the organization is dedicated to the advancement of customer experience management practices. Gaining over 1000 members within the first months of existence is evidence of the commitment many CE professionals have to rise to the challenge of maturing the field.
   
   We think it’s about time – maybe even long overdue – because no one wants to be the Netflix or RIM of 2012.
   
   

2. Big data becomes actionable.
   
   While many organizations recognize the importance of engaging customers, most find it difficult to evaluate interactions across surveys, phone calls, Web chat, emails, and social media. Typically, gathering customer feedback mirrors how an organization is structured. Either each business unit gathers information for their own use via their own methodologies – stranding business-critical information in silos – or all gathered information flows into a data warehouse, which dooms it to an uncertain (and often delayed) value to the organization.
   
   Formal Customer Experience programs bring some order to the chaos by developing the in-depth process of capturing a customer's expectations, preferences, and experiences – with the goal of linking them to business metrics. But there is still the challenge of what to do with all that data. To be effective in their roles in 2012 and beyond, CE professionals will demand a more intimate connection between business data and the people who need to understand it. They will look for an approachable solution wherein data analysis is conducted – by business stakeholders – wherever that data resides.
   
   Internally, CE programs will strongly align with IT, Market Research, and the business to provide effective – and timely – insights. Market Research will be a particularly important partner as collection and analysis of the data is designed.
   
   In 2012, vendors will race to provide the solution that will reduce the friction in data analysis, minimizing the barriers between people and their data. Like Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics^™, these programs will capture customer feedback across multiple channels, interpret it in the context of business objectives, and act upon it to drive change – change that results in improved performance and customer experiences. A single platform will conduct email, mobile, and IVR surveys; evaluate social media; harvest Web site visits; collaborate with online communities; mine customer calls; and analyze email, chat, and free form survey responses.
   
   
3. Loyalty metrics will mature by becoming more relevant, actionable, and timely.
   
   In his book, The Loyalty Effect, Fred Reichheld declared that a 5% improvement in customer retention rates will yield between a 20-100% increase in profits across a wide range of industries. Since loyalty is a strong driver to customer retention, we at Vovici have spent the past years debating which survey question best measures that loyalty.
   
   With access to better solutions that collect and analyze cross-channel data, organizations in 2012 will move beyond what question is best and start building unique loyalty metrics using more than survey feedback. These metrics will be available on a real-time basis, using interactive reports and dashboards that are tremendously flexible and customizable for each level of the organization.
   
   While traditional customer feedback will continue to provide the foundation, organizations will add results from other customer interactions to provide a more sensitive measure of loyalty in 2012. Social media metrics, Voice of the Customer through the Employee (VOCE), and Voice of the Employee (VOE) programs will all come together to provide a new metric – or set of metrics – for the organization.
   
   These new metrics will be unique for organizations, which means that while industry-wide measures will continue to be used for benchmarking purposes, competitive organizations will have unique measures enabling them to be more agile when it comes to improving business processes and transforming their culture.

Which of these predictions will turn out to be correct? That will only be revealed with the passage of time. But I know one thing for sure – it is an extremely exciting time to be part of the Customer Experience profession! 2012 will prove to be a pivotal year for the profession, and for organizations that choose to use customer experience as a differentiator!

Major Voice of the Customer Trends for 2011

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On December 7, Andrew McInnes, Analyst with Forrester Research Inc., presented a Vovici Webinar previewing his upcoming report on trends and best practices pushing leading Voice of the Customer programs forward – featuring real-life examples from prominent B2B and B2C brands.

Attendees learned improved methods of leveraging existing customer feedback, ways to incorporate new sources of customer feedback, and how to successfully implement customer insight to drive operational excellence and bottom-line results. Andrew framed the discussion by discussing the value of customer experience and Voice of the Customer programs.

Why does customer experience matter? Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart, said “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Clearly, a company cannot succeed without customers.

Why is the Voice of the Customer important? If the customer is your boss, the voice of the customer is your performance review. Neglect what he or she says and you are likely to be replaced – by your competition.

Why are VoC Programs important? Focused VoC programs improve the customer experience by acting on feedback and making systemic improvements across the company. These programs help change company culture via the sharing of customer stories, providing recognition, and offering rewards around customer-centric behavior. Finally, successful VoC programs deliver business results by increasing loyalty and retention, lowering service costs, and increasing sales.

Andrew observed that many trends first seen in 2010 continued throughout 2011. In addition, following are six (6) new trends demonstrated by the finalists and winners of Forrester’s 2011 VoC Awards:

1. Tailoring VoC activities for specific customer segments. In 2011, many programs included the powerful element of tailored customer communication and activities. Activities were customized for frequency, content, and level of personalization. For example, a B2B company may identify their customer segments as Executives, Managers, and End-users. Executives may require more one-to-one communication (phone calls, site visits) at a lower frequency. In contrast, the end-user may receive more frequent communication requiring less personalization (surveys, newsletters).
   
   Adobe Systems invites customers to share product ideas via an online portal; product suggestions are then demoted and promoted by the votes of other customers. Feedback from the Adobe product teams is provided through the portal so customers know the status of their idea submissions.
   
   
2. Measuring the value of an improved customer experience in general. Good VoC programs regularly measure the overall value of customer experience efforts, most often linking customer feedback scores to loyalty and revenue. This measurement proves that customer experience and VoC are important – and relevant.
   
   Adobe Systems brought together customer feedback with customer lifetime value data to statistically demonstrate that the most loyal customers were also at the higher end of customer lifetime value.
   
   
3. Proving the value of the VoC program specifically. By linking interventions with cost, retention, and/or revenue, a VoC program proves that it directly drives value. Value can also be driven indirectly by linking the outcomes of VoC-initiated projects to business results.
   
   
4. Bringing the VoC to life for back office employees. It takes an entire company to serve customers well. In addition to front-line employees, back office teams – such as billing, legal, finance, IT, and marketing – make decisions that directly impact customer experience. VoC leaders can align employee behavior around VoC through a number of ways, including variable compensation and performance evaluations.
   
   Programs must bring VoC to life for all employees by creating a motivational, emotional connection to the VoC program. Intel gives every employee in the company two days off if they reach their “customer delight” goals. Adobe Systems built a customer listening post room; employees can visit and immerse themselves in customer feedback. Twitter comments, survey feedback, and call center data displays – in real-time – on television screens in what is, essentially, a customer NOC. Talk about being dedicated to the customer cause!
   
   
5. Building networks of VoC champions. VoC programs need four levels of ownership: Executive Sponsors, VoC teams, VoC Champions, and everyone else! As an example, Forrester’s award winners were very active in building VoC Champion teams in 2011. While the role and definition of “VoC Champions” varies from one company to the next, they are typically delegates from each business area who understand the operations of their team—and know what the VoC team is doing. They are able to articulate the importance of customer-centric behavior to other team members while bringing the voice of the customer into all business process improvement activities.
   
   
6. Aligning key functions around VoC insight and action. In 2011, VoC leaders engaged other business functions in VoC activities. They aligned closely with Business process (for organizational and procedure improvements), Market Insights (for survey design and analysis), and Customer Intelligence (for mining customer databases combining operational and behavioral data with feedback). This alignment demonstrates increased sophistication of VoC programs as they drive strategic initiatives and increase value for the organization.

Andrew concluded the Webinar by reminding participants to evaluate these practices in light of their firm’s customer experience ecosystem. Not all companies will benefit by implementing every item on this list. Rather, when evaluating a new activity, make sure it links to an important customer interaction or moment of truth. Also consider how employees can be empowered and influenced with data and communication.

Voice of the Customer through the Employee

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Sometimes customers just don’t know what they want. Steve Jobs told Inc. Magazine, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” To better understand and serve customers, many businesses are now turning to their front-line employees.

Voice of the Customer through the Employee (VOCE) is a program that seeks to better understand the customer through employee insights. There are a number of ways this can be done, including the use of online surveys, speech analytics, or text analytics. In other cases, employees are asked to share – in an online community – the questions, concerns, and frustrations of customers. Popular in the retail industry, this concept is simple. In-store staff are encouraged to submit their observations about consumer problems, issues, and complaints to a team that then directly addresses the issue at hand.

Best Buy launched a system, called “My Customer,” built upon the philosophy of VOCE. An onscreen widget makes it easy for employees to enter a comment about any consumer issue. The data is reportedly reviewed immediately, and decisions made quickly.

Steve Wallin – Senior Director, Voice of the Customer at Best Buy – was recently honored in the Management 2.0 challenge. His story relates how VOCE has unleashed the power of its 100,000+ frontline employees to share what they learn from customer interactions.

While they admit the program had challenges, there are documented results that have improved store layout and operations. For example, when it was reported that consumers were confused between the customer service and the Geek Squad desks, Best Buy changed the signage and added more informational kiosks throughout the store. They subsequently saw a 30% increase in that store’s customer service ratings.

Some critics say that VOCE isn’t the answer. They point out that the problem with customer confusion about store layout could have been solved if appropriate testing had been done in the design phases of the store layout. Perhaps. But testing processes aren’t perfect, either. And, more importantly, customer needs and wants change over time. VOCE appears to be a sound, reasonable option for tracking changing customer requirements.

As VOCE continues to gain popularity in the retail industry, it is intriguing to think about how it could be applied in other industries. Any business with a call center or field operations team can gather employee insights about customers’ day-to-day issues and behavior – which could lead to both product and service improvements. For example, what if a cable company call center employee could relate that a large number of customers – calling in about other issues – also keep mentioning they don’t understand the new billing format? What if a driver responsible for frozen food delivery could instantly inform you that customers have mentioned they would buy more if they could schedule the exact time of delivery? Those are tremendously valuable things to know about your business.

Capturing the Voice of the Customer includes many listening posts – surveys, social media, chat, CRM systems, and more. Cohesively collecting – and rapidly acting upon – employee insights about your customers adds yet another valuable source that rounds out your comprehensive program. Employee insight provides an organization with competitive advantage by receiving timely insights that can then be used to effectively improve the customer experience – across the board.

Book Review: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

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Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard

by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Broadway, 305 pages, $26

Reviewed by Nancy Porte, VP, Customer Experience

A company’s customer experience program can morph into a truly strategic business differentiator only by regularly collecting customer and employee feedback – and by turning that data into insight that the organization uses to transform itself. Process improvements can involve a single department or cut across the entire organization. But whether the change is small or large, increasing the chances of success takes careful planning. That theme is covered in detail by the Heath brothers in this, their second book (their first is called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die).

From the perspective of this customer experience professional, Switch provided a strong basis for understanding why change is so hard for people and organizations – and afforded solid advice regarding how to make change easier for everyone involved.

Observing that change is often misinterpreted, the Heaths write, “What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.” They go on to say, “When change works, it tends to follow a pattern. The people who change have clear direction, ample motivation and a supportive environment.”

The constant battling between the two is best captured by an analogy often used by Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychologist, in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, and the Heath brothers bring this model to life. Haidt contends that, "our emotional side is the Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader, but the Rider's control is precarious because the Rider is so small compared to the Elephant."

Changes often fail because the Rider is not strong enough to keep the Elephant on the road long enough to reach its destination. The Elephant's hunger for comfortable routines conflicts with the Rider's knowledge of why a new routine should be adopted – in other words, the ability to think long-term. The Elephant is the one, however, who gets things done by providing the energy (the people). The Rider provides the planning and direction, but can be a wheel-spinning over-thinker (the change agent).

To get things done, the Heaths propose the following three-part framework that can serve as a guide in any situation where behavior needs to change:

• Direct the rider. Provide crystal clear direction. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. Don't think big picture. Point to the destination and communicate why it is important. At the beginning stages, what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.
• Motivate the elephant. Connect on an emotional level, to keep the Elephant moving forward. Find the feeling. Cultivate an identity. Members of the team can't independently think their way into a new behavior. Shrink the change, so you get a reluctant Elephant to start moving.
• Shape the path. If you want people to change, make the process easy and plot each step clearly. When you set small, visible goals – and people achieve them – they get it in their heads that they can succeed. Small successes lead to moving to the next step with more confidence.

This was one of the most enlightening business books I have read all year (and I consume a lot of them!). The Heath brothers take a complex topic and simplify it by creating a very readable book featuring a wide variety of applicable case studies. They examine change from all levels, including individual, organizational, and societal. I have already incorporated a number of the recommended techniques into our own process improvement projects – with amazingly positive results!