Posted by Sean Mahoney on Tue, Oct 09, 2012
You have the panel management basics in place (a central email list for surveys; an ability to unsubscribe from the panel; and a record of panelist’ survey activity). You understand five panel management mistakes to avoid. You are ready to start experiencing the benefits of panel management!
With a basic panel in place, you can begin gathering research more systematically and more regularly. By doing this you hope to see greater response rates as panelists are randomly selected to occasional surveys rather than being invited to every survey. Having gone over mistakes to avoid, here are four best practices you should definitely employ if you are managing a panel at your organization.
1. Integrate data from your CRM system with customer responses
For panel management, integrating data from your CRM system into the panel has a positive correlation to customer loyalty. By integrating data, surveys appear smarter and more engaging to respondents who are not asked to provide information that they have provided in the past. Surveys with integrated CRM data can branch to relevant sections of the questionnaire based on that hidden data, making the survey more targeted. Just make sure to investigate the CRM data quality and verify the information you have in the system is not outdated.
And while “integration” might be synonymous with “wicked complex and expensive” in some minds, it’s certainly not with Vovici. In fact, one of the simplest means of taking advantage of CRM data in our panel management solution is by importing data from a text file (like comma or tab-delimited files you can get straight from Excel) into your profiles.
2. Coordinate feedback projects across the entire organization
Panel management enables organizations to coordinate feedback projects across the entire organization, reducing survey fatigue by minimizing surveying of the panel. By centralizing "touch management" for your survey research, you can make certain not to over survey panelists. Over surveying is a leading cause of declining response rates. These segmentation capabilities enable you to engage with exactly the right audience, at the right time. Using response weighting, you can be assured that the data you collect is projectable when building your analysis through our reporting engine.
3. Add all your customers to your panel
While trial lawyers might disagree with this practice, we say, “Empanel everyone!” Best case is every single one of your customers is on your house panel. This provides a sufficiently large panel to segment customers, to sustain a series of surveys to random subsets of the panel, and so you can conduct true probability sampling. With too small of a panel, you’re unlikely to have a sufficient sample to do research.
Panels are a rich source of quantitative information, provided they are truly representative of your customers. Adding every customer to your panel is one way to make sure they are. Give them an option to opt-out, of course, but with the existing relationship already in place, you’ll find that most customers are not simply willing, but excited to provide feedback on a regular basis.
4. Use the panel to develop a 360-degree, longitudinal view of customer experience
Because panelists agree in advance to participate in surveys and feedback efforts, they become almost a guaranteed source of information for your organization. Customers typically participate in the panel because they value their relationship with you, and they appreciate the additional information, influence and early access that comes from participating in the panel.
Use your panel to develop a 360-degree view of the customer’s experience with you and attitudes toward your organization. Organizations that have successful panel initiatives use the panel to conduct trend analyses – tracking customer attitudes over time. Tracking over time how customers perceive the experience your organization provides has a high correlation to customer loyalty. This is a critical component of any comprehensive and effective customer journey map, and essential to grow loyalty, satisfaction, and wallet share.
Once usage of surveys has spread across an organization, panel management is a logical next step for an organization. With the basics in place, these best practices to employ, and a heads up on mistakes to avoid – you have all the puzzle pieces you need to start a panel at your organization or improve the panel initiative you have in place.
Posted by Sean Mahoney on Wed, Sep 26, 2012
A panel is a group of people with relevant backgrounds who agree to participate in surveys. Businesses organize panels for various groups of stakeholders such as customers, employees, resellers, partners, prospects, etc. Because panelists agree in advance to participate in surveys and feedback efforts, they become almost a guaranteed source of information for the sponsoring organization.
But, borrowing a little from a Jimmy Buffet song “Panels – We all want them – We all need them – But, what do we do with them?” Many businesses often unknowingly make mistakes with the management of their panels. Here are five common panel management sticking points and how to get unstuck for good!
1. You built only opt-in house panels
You may have launched a recruitment campaign in order to build an ‘opt-in’ panel of customers, but had very low recruitment rates. In this case you simply have not been able to get sufficient samples to segment customers the way you want.
To solve this problem, empanel everyone. In the ideal world, every single customer should be on your house panel. As online transactions grow to represent a greater proportion of a firms’ business, they provide opportunities to synchronize a panel with the firm’s CRM system – thus, empaneling everyone. This provides a sufficiently large panel to segment customers and to sustain a series of surveys to random subsets of the panel.
2. You aren’t coordinating research
Sometimes we fail to coordinate all survey and research projects across the organization. One day you invite all 50,000 of your web site visitors to a survey and schedule reminders to be sent a week later. Right after the reminder goes out the Board of Directors has an urgent survey they want to send. Everyone who got it has just been sent two survey emails!
To solve this problem, prepare an editorial calendar in advance. Don’t treat ad hoc surveys as ad hoc, but prepare a monthly plan of segments being researched, leaving some room for last minute needs. Allocate samples appropriately across the studies. It may also be worthwhile to consider a piggy-backing approach – add the urgent Board of Directors questions to the already in-flight web site visitor project. Use branching to allow your audience to opt-into or out of the new section.
3. You are enforcing survey quiet periods
Setting up rules to NOT send a survey to panelists within a set period of time (e.g., 60 days) seems like a common courtesy, but this can lead to “holes” in the sampling frame. To solve this problem, you should randomly sample despite history. Randomly draw samples regardless of past survey participation. Considering the bell curve, this will lead to a few recipients receiving many survey invites, and some who receive few. Where this is impractical, carefully analyze the pool of available respondents to identify groups that might be underrepresented based on past surveys of subsets.
4. You are sending poorly written surveys
The most common mistake most organizations make is to assume anyone can write a questionnaire. Again and again, I see surveys that are so poorly written that they cannot answer the business questions they are meant to address. Not only do bad surveys collect bad data, but long surveys annoy customers and lead to low response rates in the future.
Your best practice is the respect the respondent by improving the way your surveys are written. Go ahead and let anyone in the organization write a survey – just don’t let anyone publish it! Set up a workflow process where an experienced survey author reviews the draft questionnaires for best practices. The expert author needs to be a champion of the respondent, stressing the need for a pleasant survey experience, free of jargon, confusing questions, contradictory response scales and huge grids.
5. You trust your IT systems’ data quality too much
CRM systems frequently suffer from many problems such as missing data, outdated information and duplicate fields. In some cases, showing respondents the information held on file about them can actually lead to dissatisfaction because the information is so inaccurate.
Your best practice is to investigate data quality. Don’t trust the CRM system — verify! Make sure you understand existing policies and efforts regarding data cleaning. For new studies, prompt the respondent to repeat information and then compare that against the CRM records to assess its quality.
These five missteps are incredibly common, so don’t feel bad if you are making some of them. If you want to have success with your panels, consider which mistakes you’re making and develop a plan to help you avoid them. If you are making several mistakes that need changing, just choose one thing at a time to improve and you will see improved panel management before you know it!
Posted by Nancy Porte on Mon, Sep 17, 2012
The question “What makes a good leader?” was one of the important questions brought up recently at a gathering of customer experience leaders at the Consero 2012 Customer Experience Forum. Lieutenant General Van Antwerp, Chief of Infrastructure and Executive Development at The Flippen Group led a session where participants discussed whether good leaders can develop great customer experience programs. We focused on important concepts such as attitude, teamwork, and identifying a leader’s strengths and constraints. Some key ideas from the session included:
Attitude Drives Behavior – There are 3 prevalent attitudes – I have to… I want to… and I GET TO. To be a leader you want to embrace the third attitude – I GET TO! Looking at every aspect of our work as an opportunity helps us engage with energy and positivity! And when hiring employees, listen for the phrase “I GET TO!” during the interview to identify top candidates!
Listen to Your Customers and Employees – Listening is one of the keys to being a successful leader. Feedback is the breakfast of champions! Find out what customers and employees are saying and act on it.
Embrace Teamwork Enthusiastically – It’s been said that Together We Achieve More (TEAM). When it comes to teamwork – steal ideas shamelessly, share ideas willingly, and work together for better results!
True Leadership – The four signs of a true leader include vision – leaders know where they are going; influence – leaders build teams that believe and perform; service – leaders have a mission; and, development – leaders invest in others and develop other leaders.
Right Channeling and Self-Service: Maximizing the Customer Experience at the Optimal Price
Lieutenant General Antwerp challenged us to become better leaders by focusing on these four important concepts – attitude, listening, teamwork and building our leadership skills. In addition, he told us to examine and take action on our limitations and constraints when it comes to leadership. While it’s easy to continue developing strengths, the true leader and his or her team benefit more from improving weaknesses and constraints.
While at the forum I tweeted many of the best customer experience nuggets I came across -- if you're interested you can follow me at https://twitter.com/nporte.
Posted by Nancy Porte on Thu, Sep 13, 2012
Recently an intimate group of Customer Experience leaders met in Phoenix to discuss the most current customer experience issues. Brought together by the Consero group, an organization that gathers executives for collaborative learning – I found it to be three days of interesting, thought-provoking and, yes, entertaining presentations and conversations!
Here are some highlights from a few sessions:
New Frontiers and Opportunities for Customer Experience in Social and Mobile Media: Is There an App for That?
Shervin Talieh, CEO, Drumbi, was the moderator of this session. Panelists were Banafsheh Ghassemi, Vice President, eCRM and Customer Experience from The American Red Cross; Neff Hudson, Assistant Vice President, Emerging Channels, from USAA; and Carolyne Matseshe-Crawford, Global Contact Center Strategy Services, from Orbitz Worldwide.
The panel had deployed mobile and social media strategies in their organizations. They agreed that these strategies should combine both reactive responses and proactive information and alerts to customers. For example, Orbitz found that it was important to respond to travelers when problems occurred. Customers were even more delighted when alerts were sent to let them know when potential travel obstacles might occur. And, when planning these strategies, it’s important to design so that information to customers is perfectly timed and easy to access.
Regarding social media, Pinterest, Yelp and LinkedIn are joining Twitter and Facebook as the sites to include for social strategy. Not all organizations need to include all sites in their strategies. It’s important to know what your customers need before deciding which channels deserve investment.
With new strategies and channels come new metrics. Although each organization used different metrics, here are some that were reviewed: average response time, overall customer satisfaction, containment success, first contact resolution, and number of executive escalations.
Right Channeling and Self-Service: Maximizing the Customer Experience at the Optimal Price
This session was presented by Stephen Gaskin, Vice President, Self Service Customer Experience, from Scotiabank and Carmine Izzi, Vice President and General Manager of Product Management and Consulting Services at Arise Virtual Solutions, Inc.
Right channeling requires an in-depth knowledge of your customer segments and their behaviors. Even within segments, customers will use different channels. For example, a college student may primarily use the mobile channel for their banking needs. However, for some transactions they may use the web portal or walk into one of the local branches. Strategies must be designed for this multi-channel use and the goal should be ease of use and consistency of experience.
And, while it is tempting to create self-service channels to lower operating expenses, it may not be possible with complex products and services. The quality of the experience should be maintained across all channels to assure overall customer satisfaction, so it is also important to align the self-service channels with other channels to assure consistency.
Integrating Your Customer Experience Plan into the Organization
This session was presented by Kelly Harper, Director of Customer Experience Learning at BMO Financial Group; Eric Seal, Vice President of Customer Experience from Constellation, An Exelon Company; Bob Sikora, Manager, Customer Experience Office at Rockwell Automation; and Brent Wickens, Vice President of Worldwide Customer Service at Netflix, Inc.
The session began with a view of the customer experience value chain:
Highly Engaged Employees --> Great customer experiences --> Customer Loyalty --> Business Growth
It was emphasized that executive level support is gained by aligning customer experience initiatives with organizational financial goals. And, in a real life example of aligning customer care with the business, Brent Wickens explained how the Netflix call center had recently been moved from Oregon to California. The physical move of the call center to be better aligned with business operations resulted in a significant increase in customer satisfaction.
All-in-all I found the Forum to be informative and thought-provoking. Meeting with professionals who are paving the way with new and creative initiatives is always interesting. There’s always something to take away!
While at the forum I tweeted many of the best customer experience nuggets I came across -- if you're interested you can follow me at https://twitter.com/nporte.
Posted by Vovici Blog on Fri, Sep 07, 2012
By Ryan Hollenbeck, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Verint® Systems, Guest Contributor
*This is reposted from http://www.verintblog.com/
First, I would like to express my thanks to the industry experts who weighed in on my posting: Big Data, the Contact Center and the Intelligent Enterprise. It seems many of us are in agreement as to the value of big data that currently resides in the contact center and that we, as an industry, should be leading our customers to realize its untapped potential. Furthermore, as an industry, we loved big data well ahead of when it became fashionable.
To continue the discussion, I thought I’d share some key points delivered at this year’s Driving Innovation customer conference, by Matt Ariker as part of his presentation, “Big Data…Big Insights…Big Impact.” (Note: Since the time of his presentation, Matt has joined McKinsey & Company as Chief Operating Officer, Consumer Marketing Analytics Center).
Big data increases the importance of multi-point analytics – it’s how you develop big insights that deliver on the value of big data.
Similar in vein to the idea that Verint’s president, Elan Moriah, made about company information silos being the enemy of the intelligent enterprise, the value of big data will only be realized through multi-point analytics.
Ariker pointed out that while growth of structured and unstructured data is important and seemingly everywhere, its “promise” can be limited if organizations utilize “single point” analytics. They’re less predictive, useful, accurate and the discoveries will be less meaningful. To leverage big data for big impact - deep, broad, and holistic analytics are required. A good starting point is a voice of the customer analytics “hub,” which correlates speech and text analytics with enterprise feedback management, including Web, IVR, social and mobile surveys.
The people who run contact centers need to get on board and understand that because they are at the trinity of text, talk and transactions – big data can elevate the strategic nature of the contact center to have huge bottom-line impact.
When Ariker made the point to the audience that leaders in the contact center are in a unique position because they sit at the “trinity of text, talk and transactions,” I saw a lot of head-nodding. By leveraging the data in contact centers, companies can see what people are thinking and their sentiment, hear what they’re saying and see in everyday situations how it impacts a company’s bottom line. Very few areas of an organization sit at this unique crossroads.
The analysis of big data through speech analytics, text analytics and surveys typically handled through the contact center allows for simple questions that care center experts always wanted to ask such as...How many times does a customer call back about the same issue? Is there a magic number of repeat calls after which the customer churns? These questions are now easy to answer, whereas before they were nearly impossible. The answers to these questions can have huge bottom line impact.
Finally, Ariker made a very strong point that leaders of contact centers need to realize technologies now exist to “master” the data – even when it’s big data. Now is the time to move ahead with contact center-driven big data initiatives.
Big-data-derivative-analytics helps you to understand the “why” behind the “what” – where everything affects everything else.
A fascinating part of his presentation talked through the increasing level of insight gained through “big data derivative analytics,” which he amusingly refers to as “just fancy talk for asking the same question 5 times in a row.” But the point was made that by going through the process of “asking 5 times” in regards to Who, What, When, Why, Where, you see the inter-relationships of data that allows you to put it in proper context. When that data is placed within the context of products, services and customer networks – it provides incredible insight to customers.
Through the use of this derivative process, you uncover the “why” behind the “what” in:
- customer attitudes (motivations, stated needs and preferences, awareness and perceptions)
- customer behavior (usage, how/where purchased, attributes and company/brand loyalty) and
- customer economics (acquisition & retention costs, segment size & growth, current & future profitability, lifetime value, etc.)
Again, he made the point that the possibilities of leveraging big data – and by mastering big data – can be nearly limitless.
If you’re looking to start a big data initiative – the contact center is an ideal candidate to consider. It allows you to start small and deliver real impact, which will allow the program to grow. You need strong leadership!
While the possibilities may be limitless, Ariker also indicated that just getting started can be daunting. To overcome feeling overwhelmed, he provided the following advice:
- Before starting a big data initiative, have a crisp definition of success with a detailed understanding of how to measure it. This will have two benefits: 1) if you can define it, you can measure it; 2) knowing what you are measuring helps to ensure you don’t get stuck in “analysis paralysis.”
- Big data requires big leadership. A big data initiative requires high-level support and a day-to-day leader with the gravitas to move it forward. It will take a strong backbone, perseverance and intensity.
- Start small before thinking about going big. Make sure to target an effort that will have an impact on increasing revenue or profit. In this way, you’ll be able to measure your effort and gain the legitimacy to expand your big data initiatives.
My thanks to Matt Ariker for sharing his views on big data and its impact on the contact center.
Once again, this just continues to reinforce that, for companies looking to leverage big data – the contact center is an ideal candidate.
Posted by Sean Mahoney on Tue, Sep 04, 2012
One way organizations are aiming to make a positive impact on their customer’s experience is by creating new, more interactive and engaging surveys and questionnaires. Improving the experience your customers have with the feedback instruments you employ is a great way to improve satisfaction and get improved response rates – one more “pencil in the box” if I can make up my own new analogy.
But it’s important to remember, there are just four fundamental question types to use when conducting surveys. These include essay questions, fill in the blank questions, choose-one questions and choose-many questions. The four basic question types can also be combined to create a fifth fundamental question type – a matrix question.
It’s valuable to refresh yourself on each of these basics, as well as when and where to use each type, before adding variations and interactive alternatives to your questionnaires. First lesson, then – the basic question types.
In an essay question respondents can enter a few words, a few paragraphs, and even a few pages. This type of question is usually displayed as a multi-line text area box. Typically essay questions store about 32,000 to 64,000 characters of text. Respondents can even copy and paste pages of text into essay questions. This question type is best used for understanding in detail what a respondent believes in their own words. In addition, gathering unstructured responses such as these provide context to other structured questions and exposes the “why” locked within customer responses.
A fill-in-the-blank question is displayed as one or more text boxes with short labels. This type of question is designed for gathering short responses, such as asking “What is your favorite color?” You would also use this question type to ask for contact or address information. Responses to text boxes are often validated to follow a common pattern, with validations such as email addresses, whole numbers within a range, real numbers within a range, dates etc. Open-ended questions such as these can be easier to write, but they are harder to analyze. Text analysis capabilities help analyze unstructured data in multiple text sources, extracting content using natural language processing to “understand” syntax and context.
The most common question type is the chose-one question type, where a respondent chooses one and only one of the available options. This is a single-select, multiple-choice question that is typically shown with radio buttons or dropdown boxes. Chose-one questions are a closed-ended question that can constrain the choices of the respondent. But, they are much quicker to answer and much easier to analyze. The difficulty in creating a closed-ended question is coming up with the appropriate choice list, a list that covers the most common answers and doesn't bias responses.
The fourth type is the choose-many question type which is a multiple-select, multiple-choice question that allows the respondent to check all the choices that are applicable to the question. Most survey software uses the standard checkboxes of HTML forms to show these questions. Always include "None of the above" as an exclusive choice when using this question type. If you omit this option, then a valid response is to not select any of the choices, because none of them apply.
These four basic questions types can be combined together to create fifth type – a matrix question. This is a concise technique for combining questions with common topics and can be 50% faster for the respondent to complete versus having to answer each question separately. Matrix questions do raise some concerns though. The faster speed of completion may lead to errors and respondents can become prone to “straight-line” their answers to matrix questions, meaning they select the same choice for each question in a virtual straight line down the grid. Also, splitting the matrix into its component questions has been shown to have greater predictive validity, maybe because doing so takes respondents more time to answer each question. Because of these concerns with the matrix question, it’s appropriate to use caution when including them in your surveys.
Customers' expectations have been shaped by word of mouth, their personal needs and their own past experiences. Routine transactional surveys after delivering the customer experience can be helpful for an organization to measure customer perceptions of service.
With these basic question formats mastered (which can only be said to be true once you’ve thoroughly tested your survey from the analysts perspective!); take the time to investigate the available variations on each. Examine how using media (images, audio, and/or video) and alternative response interactions (sliders, drag-and-drop, rotating content, etc.) affect the respondent experience. There’s also value in conducting A/B testing using standard versus interactive question types to measure response rates and data validity.
OK, schools out for the day! Make sure to review your homework, check your spelling, and practice your survey design basics. Any questions?
Posted by Mary Boozel on Thu, Aug 23, 2012
I’m happy with my phone company – no, really – I am.
For anyone with kids, you’ve probably seen ‘Finding Nemo’ – perhaps many more times than you’ll ever admit to at happy hour. One of my favorite lines from the movie is when Marlin and Dory are searching in the depths of the ocean for a diver’s mask and they see an attractive, glowing light in the distance. They are initially very amazed and happy. “I’m feeling happy – which is a big deal for me,” Marlin says. Then they see the light is attached to a menacing angler fish and Marlin utters “Good feeling’s gone”.
I was reminded of this recently when I had a problem with my one of my phones (no lectures for still having a landline, please!). After I employed some basic troubleshooting tactics I called my service provider. I got their phone tree and it told me to try these same troubleshooting steps before it connected me to a live person. Having worked in a call center myself, not only was I, NOT annoyed by this, I was impressed. Fifteen years ago I was that customer service rep asking if you had unplugged your monitor or tried it on another computer. If they’d had that when I was the one answering calls, my job satisfaction and talk times certainly would have benefitted!
Once I got a human representative, he didn’t ask me to repeat the steps; and, once again, I was impressed. The rep scheduled a technician to come out to my house the next day. Great! But, he could only confirm the appointment would be between 9 am and 6 pm. Now, here is where the customer experience took a hit. Naturally, the phone company has to provide a wide range of times; but, emotionally this makes me feel like they don’t value my time, or my business. The awe over the great phone tree troubleshooting was replaced with a ‘good feeling gone’ moment.
As organizations we have to be mindful of where our ‘good feeling gone’ moments are along the customer journey. If they are always at the end – it doesn’t matter if the previous were outstanding, customers end up feeling displeased and unsatisfied. This is where a customer journey map or customer experience map would be helpful to an organization. A customer journey map is a graphical representation of the steps customers take to interact with a company.
Customer experience mapping comes in different forms, but the characteristics are similar. It turns the organization “outside in” and shows the customer perspective from the beginning, middle and end as they engage with a company to achieve their business goals. The range of tangible and quantitative interactions, triggers and touch points can be shown in sequence. Some mapping extends the experience to include the intangible and qualitative motivations, frustrations and meanings. The map can depict a timeline of interactions across the entire customer lifecycle and can be really helpful for uncovering the places there are breakdowns or inconsistencies in service.
Thankfully, my experience didn’t end here. The phone service rep showed up at a reasonable time, fixed the wiring in under a half an hour, and the fee was acceptable. He even locked my gate on the way out. Good feeling’s back! Of the six discrete events of my experience, only one wasn’t great. And if they send me a survey I’ll tell them so. For now, I’m still quite happy with them. Happy enough to keep my landline a little while longer – or, at least until my next phone company customer experience.
Posted by Nancy Porte on Thu, Aug 16, 2012
It was a busy Saturday morning with a long list of errands. I had just dropped off the dogs at the vet and my next stop was the coffee shop, for a much-needed cup of coffee! As I was closing the car door, I noticed the seat belt was hanging way out. Quickly, I reached for the seat belt, trying to free it before the car door closed. I wasn’t quick enough! In a gross miscalculation, I missed snatching the seat belt and closed the door – right on my fingers!
OUCH!!! Once I re-opened the door, it was clear that my red, swelling digits needed medical care. So, unfortunately, instead of the coffee shop, I headed to the nearest Urgent Care Center. As I arrived at the clinic, I was pleased to find no wait and a receptionist that welcomed me and processed my paperwork quickly. I was ushered in to see the doctor within minutes. An x-ray was taken and it was confirmed – one broken finger. The doctor recommended I see an orthopedic surgeon, and, in the meantime, the finger needed a splint. He told me to go to the nearest pharmacy, buy a splint, bring it back to the office, and he would place it on my finger.
Come again!? I smiled, thinking this was just some “doctor humor”. But, he wasn’t joking! The physician explained that insurance companies do not reimburse him for supplies, so he requires patients to purchase their own supplies and bring them in. With no other option at that moment, I took my sad, swollen fingers to the local pharmacy, purchased a splint, and went back to the Urgent Care Center. Now – I can’t wait to get a post-visit survey from the Urgent Care Center. But, not for the reasons you might think.
In a post-transaction survey I will – no doubt – be asked about the courtesy and professionalism of the receptionist, the length of wait, the knowledge of the doctor, and maybe even about the accuracy of the diagnosis. I will probably rate each of these attributes very high. But, what I HOPE, is that they have the Customer Effort Score on their survey.
Customer Effort Score, or CES, was introduced by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) with the belief that service organizations create loyal customers by reducing the customer’s effort. In an article entitled “Stop trying to delight your customers”, authors Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman and Nicholas Toman state that delighting customers with extra products and services does not actually create loyalty. Rather, true customer loyalty is created by making customer interactions as effortless as possible. The CEB research went on to show that by removing obstacles from service interactions, a company could create a true differentiator – and, therefore, increase loyalty.
With the ever-present debate about the best measure of customer loyalty pressing on, I will stand by my theory that there is NO single question that can predict customer retention. The right series of questions may be different for every organization. At Vovici, we’ve found a combination of two questions – one about likelihood to recommend and the other about likelihood to repurchase – works best for us, generating an index called the Vovici Champion Model.
But, I’m also a big advocate for CES. I’ve found it’s very helpful for a transaction survey and we use a variation of it on our post-issue Customer Support survey. We’ve found that customer support representatives with the best scores tend to receive the highest overall satisfaction scores as well. Upon further research, we found that most high-scoring representatives not only receive positive comments about the quality and quantity of follow-up interactions, but also showed the ability to demonstrate competence, consideration and caring in their exchanges. In short, they provide great transaction outcomes, while also adding an emotional component that is often hard to describe, but makes all the difference to the customer.
The overall CES is not reported as part of our operational metrics; rather, results are used internally to assess and coach our staff. Staff members achieving the best scores are identified as mentors and trainers. Then, they are paired with new team members or with those that have been challenged to achieve better scores – not for product or technical knowledge – but for knowledge about how to make it easier for customers.
And this is why I hope the Urgent Care Clinic asks the Customer Effort question. I’m sure we can all agree that going to the store to buy your own medical supplies, while nursing a fresh injury, counts as a very sizable effort on the customer’s part! If they just ask about the elements of wait time, staff courtesy and outcome, they are going to inaccurately assess that the visit went very well – and miss a very important opportunity to create a loyal customer base!
Posted by Sean Mahoney on Thu, Aug 09, 2012
I know I’m showing my age here, as my fellow employees fervently reminded me of recently by taping giant fours and zeros all over my office on my birthday; but, remember those old commercials for the clothing store The Gap? These ads included a frustratingly catchy jingle that exclaimed we should all “…fall into The Gap”. It was perfect slogan for a clothing store named The Gap. Not so much if you’re talking about the customer experience one might have while actually shopping there. What I’m talking about here is the “Gap Model” of service quality.
The Gap Model defines five major gaps an organization faces when seeking to meet the expectations of its customers. All organization’s should seek to measure, manage and minimize these gaps – including The Gap!
First defined in a 1985 article published in The Journal of Marketing entitled “A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and its Implications for Future Research” by Parasuraman, Zeitham and Berry, it’s not exactly new. But the Gap Model of service quality is an important customer-satisfaction framework, one that is as relevant today as it was when my favorite jeans were Gap “baggies”. We’ve been able to measure and deliver quality in tangible goods since the start of industry, but quality in services had been largely undefined. Through an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses, the authors developed this model of service quality.
Gap 1 –The gap between what customers expect and what managers think they expect.
Clearly survey research is a simple way to narrow this gap. The best way to know what customers expect is to ask them!
Gap 2 – The gap between management perception and the actual specification of the customer experience.
Managers need to make sure the organization is defining the level of service they believe is needed. Determine actual specifications for what a great customer experience is for your organization and make sure it’s communicated.
Gap 3 –The gap between the experience specifications to the delivery of the experience.
Managers need to examine and review the customer experience that their organizations currently deliver to make sure it lives up to the specification. Find out what is really going on.
Gap 4 –The gap between the delivery of the customer experience and what is communicated to customers.
All too often organizations exaggerate what will be provided to customers, or discuss the best case rather than the likely case. This raises customer expectations and harms customer perceptions.
Gap 5 – The gap between a customer's perception of the experience and the customer's expectation of the service.
Customers' expectations have been shaped by word of mouth, their personal needs and their own past experiences. Routine transactional surveys after delivering the customer experience can be helpful for an organization to measure customer perceptions of service.
Each gap in the customer experience can be closed through diligent attention from management. Survey software can be helpful in assisting with this task. Intelligent surveys will help you to engage customers, address these gaps and close them. Feedback from customers will also help you make the right business decisions for your organization – and keep you from “falling into the gap”!
Posted by Vovici Blog on Mon, Aug 06, 2012
By Ryan Hollenbeck, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Verint® Systems, Guest Contributor
*This is reposted from http://www.verintblog.com/
Looking back upon the last 18 months, it could easily be classified as “The Time of Big Data.” It seems that every technology vendor, business, and industry expert is touting it as the next great “possibility” for changing the way companies affect business processes, products, services and customers.
Make no mistake, big data is an important movement. In the IDC study, “Extracting Value from Chaos,” it points to the overall growth of data – whether that be structured, semi-structured or unstructured. But it’s the unstructured data that is growing the most, and where insight and analysis technologies present the greatest opportunity. The firm claims “new capture, search, discovery, and analysis tools can help organizations gain insights from their unstructured data, which accounts for more than 90% of the digital universe.”
Much of the industry has come to accept the characteristics of big data, centering on the “three Vs” of volume, velocity and variety. More recently, another has been added to the list – complexity, which is now being penned as “three Vs + C.”
Perhaps no industry has more history in facing the challenges of trying to mine and deliver value by mastering the issue of big data than contact centers. For example, an Ovum research note titled “Contact Center Analytics Look a Lot Like Big Data” shares that “contact centers amass big data without considering it Big Data.” Yet, a vast opportunity exists. Ovum’s research notes goes on to state, “Contact centers have the data for Big Data, but most do not make use of the tools that could extract the most value from their stores.”
This view is backed up by other analyst reports. In the 2011, the Ventana Agent Performance Management report titled “Improving the Performance of Agents to Benefit the Customer’s Experience,” states:
“The research indicates that one of the most common applications in a contact center is call recording. However, it also shows that companies are not making as much use of these recordings as they might. These recordings contain vital information, not just about what the agents said and how they performed but also insights into why customers are calling, what their issues are, how customers react to what they are told and much more. Thus the more calls companies record and the more they analyze, the more insights they will gain and the better they can pinpoint areas in need of improvement.”
The overarching goal of analyzing big data is to create a more Intelligent Enterprise. At this year’s Driving Innovation customer conference, Verint’s president, Elan Moriah, outlined the key attributes of an Intelligent Enterprise which are as follows:
- Continuously strives for excellence in serving its customers and stakeholders
- Listens to customers and employees to inspire evolution
- Anticipates trends and builds proactivity into its operations
- Insists on collaboration – not functional silos
- Strives for business simplicity
It’s the last point that really hits home to the value of contact centers – and what organizations must realize. Company silos are a key preventer of company effectiveness.
The good news is that as an industry we’ve come a long way in “mastering” the data. The technologies, methodologies and mindsets are now coming to the forefront where organizations are taking advantage of the “big data opportunity” to mine information, share it across an organization, and act upon it in ways that change the very nature of the organization.
Forward-thinking organizations are investing in managing information and developing predictive insights to drive sustainable business results. Specifically they embrace and practice the following:
- Seize opportunities to generate information, creating a “locate and learn” culture, where big data-based decisions are part of the corporate culture and are continually evaluated against the backdrop of business outcomes.
- Seek leaders who make the development and upkeep of analytical capabilities a primary focus, and hire people with the very best analytical skills.
- Make quantitative analytical and actionable intelligence capabilities part of their company’s vision, moving beyond a narrow view of informational insights to include customers and suppliers.
Big data and the information collected within contact centers are indeed one in the same. In terms of volume, there may be no greater example of captured unstructured information (think recorded phone calls, emails, Web chats, social media, free-form survey remarks and more). In terms of velocity, the number of interactions with contact centers cannot be underestimated. In terms of variety and complexity, mastering the nuances of speech and text analytics do indeed need to be sophisticated.
Today, we now have the expertise to take advantage of it. The key to becoming an Intelligent Enterprise via the pathway of big data is knowing where and when to start. The time is now. The place: the contact center.