Customer Retention: You already have enough segmentation, take action!

May 31, 2011 By 1 Comment

Think quick: to drive customer retention should you focus on a deeper understanding of your customer segmentation or take action with the data that you already have?

If you said segment your customer data base with greater accuracy you probably picked the wrong answer. According to research by Aberdeen Group (“How the Best in class use customer data to boost retention revenue in 2010″) best in class organizations focus on “doing” more than they do on analyzing. This certainly has the ring of truth to me.

It is a scene that we have observed many times in our customer experience management consulting practice. As we sit with the customer discussing what they would like to achieve we are met with a barrage of “can’t be done” because “our data is no good” or “we don’t know enough about our customers”. The desire to analyse, segment and target with ever greater depth is almost impossible to resist. More data piles on more data but we often seem to lose sight of the customer forest for the data trees.

As an example of this issue I’ll relate a recent customer experience. A few weeks ago I was running a workshop to design the high level segmentation fields that they wanted to use to describe their customers. After the initial flurry of segmentation style data was written up on the board I started to ask: “What will you do differently knowing that piece of information?” Applying this to each data field in turn, we ended up removing all but one key segmentation field and a couple of transactional indicators.

That one key field held the vast a majority of “how should we communicate with this person” information. The additional transaction indicators were then used to tweak the message to that person. All of the rest of the information was interesting but ultimately would never be used to change how they dealt with the customer.

Getting clarity on what drives customer purchases was good but the real value was to dramatically simplify their customer segmentation to the bare essentials.  At the same time they made their ability to execute, simple, straightforward and easy to implement. It is now clear how they should communicate with each customer based on one key segmentation variable.

I think that this is indicative of many customer data segmentation projects and discussions. The desire for an ever more complex, elegant, mathematically perfect segmentation model is almost overwhelming but at the cost of making almost impossible to implement customer communications. When you have 20 segmentation variables you feel the need to use them all in your communications plan but that is hard to do in practice.

Building a solid interactive and relevant communications strategy with just a few variables is complex enough. As you increase the number of variables the design complexity becomes exponentially more complex until it is just too hard to implement.

So have a quick look at your customer database. How many of those segmentation variables actually impact on the messaging that you send to customers and how many are molasses in your process — they are sweet but just slow you down?

If you’re looking to implement a customer experience management project why not start by downloading our free 4 Steps to Great Customer Experience Management report.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Customer Analytics, Customer Experience Management, Customer Retention Tagged With: , , ,

Best practice organisational structure to deliver Customer Experience Management

March 27, 2011 By 3 Comments

Over the past week or so there’s been a really great debate on the organisational structure to most effectively deliver Customer Experience Management going on over at LinkedIn.   With more than 70 posts by wide range of experienced professionals in the field, it’s been one of the most interesting discussions I’ve seen on LinkedIn.

However, with 13 pages of content and so many comments it’s hard to get handle on what is being said.  So, I thought I’d summarise the post into a best practice organisational structure approach to delivering customer experience management.

There were some differing opinions, as you would expect but the key items of general agreement are:

  1. CEO/CxO Support – this is not negotiable.The senior leadership of the organisation must fully support the idea that a focus on customer experience management can driver higher share prices and profits.Further, they must walk the walk not just talk the talk.

    If that person does not believe that improved customer experience leads to greater profits the process is pretty much doomed to die a slow, unbudgeted, death.

  2. The organisation must have consistent, and simple to understand customer centric values that are genuinely held by staff and senior management.If you can ingrain this into the organisation then the rest of the process will be simpler.Think Disney or Apple.
  3. Operational Departments are responsible for implementing CEM.They have the critical departmental domain experience to understand their business better than anyone else.The CEM Department (see below) understand CEM and has the tools to support the Operational Departments in implementation but at the end of the day the buck stops with the people that know their part of the business the best.
  4. Operational Departments must have CEM KPIs.These are rolled down from the C suite and go hand in hand with the standard KPIs that they have.The key understanding here is that CEM KPIs are not just an interesting diversion they are  lead profit indicators.  That is the key importance of Net Promoter Score for instance.  It’s not just interesting, it leads revenue growth.

    It goes without saying that the CEM KPIs should be connected to remuneration in the same way that the other KPIs are connected to remuneration.

  5. The CEM Department should be an enabler or centre of excellence for customer experience management skills and systems within the organisation.The simple analogy is with the IT or Accounting departments.Accounting is responsible for counting the money, making sure it’s reported accurately, counselling the rest of the organisation on how best to use the money BUT NOT making sales.  Nobody thinks this is strange.

    CEM is no different.  It is a set of skills and systems that are used by the rest of the organisation to improve their individual CEM performance.

    The CEM Department staff should be viewed as consultants to the rest of the organisation: people with desired skills and the ability to add real value to the whole process.

  6. The CEM department should have CEM KPIs.These should be the same CEM KPIs as the Operational Departments.The goal here it to make the CEM Department and the Operating departments co-dependant.  Operating departments should be seeking out assistance from CEM to help them improve.

In terms of process implementation there are some gems of insight in the comments.

  1. If the CEM Department is large enough, consider having them hot desk around the organisation to become ingrained in the business.
  2. Where does the CEM Department report?  This varies but is generally either directly to a “C” level executive, even the CEO, or into Marketing.  Personally I am less keen on having it roll into Marketing.
  3. As noted above with the sharing of KPIs, the CEM Department is not solely responsible for the customer experience as this will relieve responsibility from the Operational Departments.
  4. The size of the CEM Department: This group does not have to be large.  It can be as small as an outsourced consultant to the CEO and up to 20 people for the largest of organisations.
  5. Cross-customer product silos can be of particular issue.  Consider banks who have mortgage, transaction accounts, personal loans, etc. all interacting with the customer.  These organisations have a particular issue and often the silos will need to report to the same person to allow a customer focus to override the product silo focus.
  6. Steering Committee: If you add a CEM Steering committee comprised of senior executives through the organisation you will also add a high level coordination function to the overall CEM initiative.

If you’re looking to implement a customer experience management project why not start by downloading our free 4 Steps to Great Customer Experience Management report.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Best Practices, Customer Experience Management Tagged With: ,

What is the role of Customer Feedback in the ITIL Framework?

March 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

itil frameworkRecently a colleague of mine had an interesting conversation with the service delivery manager for a well known IT company. The discussion turned to customer experience management and the service deliver managers noted that his only “measurements” of the customer experience were, essentially, the ITIL service delivery process.

If you’ve never heard of ITIL you probably don’t need to worry about it. It is a framework of concepts and process for IT systems development and management. If you’re keen to know more have a look on Wikipedia ITIL.

On the other hand, if you use the ITIL Framework in your business the questions you should be asking yourself are;

  1. How do you measure the customer experience and effectiveness of your ITIL processes;
  2. How do you know that system driven call management metrics tell the whole story.
  3. Is the list comprehensive; and
  4. Are you tracking the experience elements that are important to customers or just the ones that are easy to measure?

I’ve talked before on this blog about the need to know not just how you perform in a range of customer experience attributes but also how important a service attribute is to the customer. So the question becomes; if you are using the ITIL Framework how do you determine the right customer experience measurements to use?

The answer to this question is difficult because there is no universal, independent set of customer experience metrics. Each company has a slightly different strategy and so a slightly different set of customer experience metrics come into play. Unfortunately that means you can’t rely on a standard set of metrics.

ITIL v3 is the most recent version of the framework.  It defines;

  1. Incident: the occurrence of a symptom, e.g. an application crash or a network communication link failure;
  2. Problem: the underlying root cause of the symptom. e.g. an application software bug or a product defect or hardware failure; and
  3. Service Request: used to request new or altered services and can included requests for information or change.

Common call management metrics include (by Severity Level):

  • Incident/Problem Response time
  • Incident/Problem Restoration/Resolution time
  • Service Request Resolution time
  • Number of Incidents raised and closed per period
  • Number of Problems raised and closed per period
  • Availability of Systems and/or components per period

While these are a good and interesting set of metrics they do not include some of key customer experience drivers of customer loyalty in the IT industry that we have uncovered over the years.

For instance, while Problem Resolution Time is important we have often identified that “closing the loop” with customers after problem resolution is at least as important and often more important for customers. While it may seem odd that solving the problem may actually be less important to customers than knowing what happened, it is true.

Also, delivering against customer needs, as scored by the customer, is also an important driver of customer loyalty. While incident response time and number of problems per period may be important, those values will be overshadowed if you are not delivering against customer needs.

So from a practical perspective how do you determine whether meeting the technical elements of your SLA equates to delivering a good customer experience? Well you have to ask your customers. No amount of internal review and bottom up analysis, regardless of how logical it is, can substitute for obtaining feedback directly from customers.

Determining what is important to customers is not straightforward but there are a few different techniques that you can use.

Once you have uncovered these key elements you need to embed them in your ITIL framework.  Including the key customer service drivers in Service Level Agreements is the simplest and most direct way to ensure that you are continually focusing on delivering the right customer experience to drive customer loyalty.

To see where you stand, start by reviewing your existing service level agreements to identify how each component explicitly links back to important customer experience elements. Then ask yourself how you know that element to be important to your customers.

If you can’t answer this second question then I suggest that you need to consider collecting information from your customers directly. Properly written and executed customer surveys are the most reliable way of collecting that data.

So in summary:

  • Just because you measure something doesn’t mean it’s important to your customers;
  • If you assume your perception of an issue is the same as your customers, you’re probably wrong; and
  • The best way to resolve the issue is to ask your customers.

Looking to develop your own customer feedback process. Download our free whitepaper; How to implement an effective customer feedback system. It provides a step by step process to guarantee success.

This post was co-written by John Greenwood and reviewed by Vincent Cleary. Thanks for your help John and Vincent.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Customer Experience Management, Customer Feedback Surveys Tagged With: ,

Mystery shopping or Transactional surveys: Which is better?

January 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mystery shopping has been with us for many years but recently a new way to measure the customer experience has become popular: transactional customer surveys.

Transactional surveys, such as transactional Net Promoter Score surveys, have only become practical in the last few years.  This style of survey collects customer views and perceptions in a short survey instrument just after the customer has passed through a key business touch-point.

Until recently it was more difficult perform transactional surveys for several reasons:

1.      Knowing when a customer accessed a touch point was difficult.  Now, almost every interaction (call centre, web, email, invoicing, payment, etc) with a company is logged via some type of back end CRM system.  Generating an outbound customer survey in reaction to a customer interaction is now much easier.

2.      Collecting survey feedback was expensive.  The widespread consumer acceptance of email/web based surveys has dramatically reduced the cost and increased the completion rate (when designed correctly) of customer feedback surveys.  Gone are the days of expensive, and low completion rate, mail/paper surveys which need additional data entry costs.

3.      Collating and using feedback in real-time was difficult.  Having the data is all well and good but making use of it requires that you be able to analyse and interpret the data quickly. Software as a Service platforms such as CustomerGauge (disclaimer – we re-sell this product) have now made real time analysis and action easy.

Now that transactional customer surveys are easy to implement does it spell the end of mystery shopping?  Not necessarily, as they perform different functions.

Put simply mystery shopping is about checking that a task is being done right and transactional surveys are about doing the right thing.

A mystery shopper will perform a test transaction with a company and compare actually how it was performed with how it was designed to be performed.  For each element of the interaction there will be a tick or cross: did they answer the call in the approved manner, did they sign off with “thank you for calling company x”, etc.

This is an audit process and does not take into account whether the process is “good” from a customer perspective.

On other hand a transactional customer survey gathers feedback on the customer perception of the interaction and lets you know if you are doing the right things.

Working together the two approaches make sure that you know the right thing to do and that you are actually doing it.

Want to learn more about how to implement an effective customer feedback system?  Download our report.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Customer Feedback Surveys, Net Promoter Score Tagged With: , ,

The 19 point call centre review you can do today

October 11, 2010 By 3 Comments

Recently I had to deal with my Telecom supplier.  As a result of the incredibly bad service I received I’m putting pen to paper to give you a 19 point call centre review that you can do today to provide better service;- from the customer’s perspective!

Speech Recognition Systems

A poorly set up SRS (Speech Recognition System) can be an incredibly frustrating experience for the customer!

My experience

Recently I called my Telecom provider to ask some questions: how could I increase my plan with them, and what did I need to do to ensure I had global roaming on my phone for my upcoming overseas trip.

I was answered by a Speech Recognition System that could not process my prompts.  Firsly, it was very frustrating talking to a Speech Recognition System that kept asking me to repeat my needs in “a couple of words” so that it could direct my call to the most appropriate person.

I was prompted 5 times for a response, and in doing so gave a different, shorter, more direct answer in the hope that the cheery automated voice would connect me to a live person.

All to no avail!

To make matters worse it couldn’t even understand my request to “talk to an operator”

This customer was already frustrated and annoyed before I got to talk to a person!

Call Centre Review steps

1)      On a regular basis you and/or your Team should play the part of a customer calling into your CC (Contact Centre) to ensure that your SRS is working for you and not against you to service your customer needs.

2)      Ensure that you SRS is able to understand the prompt “speak to an operator” and is able to push the call through accordingly.

3)      Always have an “out” prompt that allows a caller to move straight through to a live agent.

4)      Keep the prompt flows of your SRS system simple and concise.

5)      Ensure your SRS does not “loop” at any stage of the flow process so a customer is able to get back to a previous menu or is not left in a continuous loop.

6)      Check your IVR flows using this process as well

You may be amazed when you start playing the part of a customer trying to call into your business.

Meeting the Customers expectations of Service /Service Level Agreements (SLA)s

Exceeding customers expectations of service is a sure way to increase sales and ensure your customers stay with you.

My situation

Having finally reached an agent, I posed my questions to her about my plan; asking her to confirm the current details of it and how I should go about increasing my monthly spend.

By this stage I assumed that the questions would be easily answered and I would be able to finish the call, increase my monthly spend with the company and live happily ever after.

Nothing could be more from the truth!

The agent advised me that she couldn’t answer my questions as she didn’t have the information to hand and somebody would have to call me back – within the next 5 – 10 working days!

Doesn’t that seem like a long time to have to wait to want to spend more money with a business?

She also proceeded to confirm my current account information but advised me that my “data” allocation was more than the figure stated on the bill that I had directly in front of me.

When I questioned this she advised me that the bill was wrong and must of been an “old style bill” which showed the incorrect amount!

I began to wonder what else was wrong with the details on the bill but didn’t really have a chance to get clarification as it was obvious that the agent wanted to ring off the call and end the conversation.  Maybe there is a disproportional focus on AHT in this particular Call Centre.

The call ended with me being advised that I would receive a call back from the business within the next 5 -10 working days from someone that could advise me how I could increase my monthly spend.

12 days later, you guessed it I hadn’t received a call back, and so the story goes on.

Call Centre Review steps

7)      On a regular basis play the part of a customer calling into your Contact Centre to ensure that your business processes are able to support the most basic of customer enquiries and provide satisfactory solutions for your customers needs.

8)      Ensure that if an expectation is set for your business to call a customer back it is met and processed within the nominated time periods.  Make sure the turnaround times are reasonable and as quick as possible.

9)       Have relevant information available to your staff so that they can easily process and answer any type of query they may receive.  At the very least give the customer the opportunity to be able to be warm transferred to someone that can help them.

10)   Ensure that your staff never utilise internal processes as being at fault for incorrect information being provided to the customer as it does not provide confidence for the customer.

11)   Always ensure that towards the end of the call your staff ask the customer if “there is anything else they can help with”.   You may be surprised by the number of instant cross-sell and up-sell opportunities you uncover.

Issue Logging / Complaint Handling

Capturing  relevant information about a customer’s issue ensures that they are resolved quickly and accurately.  The information gathered also allows your business to reduce like occurrences increasing the overall satisfaction of customers and reducing your costs.

My situation

12 days after my initial call and not having had a call back, I called again.

By this stage I was not expecting the best service in the world but was delighted to be able to get through to a very capable agent who was polite, helpful and extremely professional.

I relayed my needs to her and advised that I was still waiting on a call from her Company.

The agent accessed my customer record, confirmed my details etc, but then came back to me and advised that there was no previous correspondence on file regarding my initial enquiry and the planned call back.

Rather than be alarmed I was resolute that it was just all too hard to do business with this Company and they really didn’t want me as a customer.

Cutting another long story short this agent apologised for the lack of service I had received already, answered my questions and did in fact give me some solutions to my problems.

I felt incredibly sorry for her as she was totally let down by her peers and the systems which are meant to support her in her daily dealings with customers. What an environment for anybody to try and work in that is passionate about customer service and willing and able to help customers with their issues.

Call Centre Review steps

12)   Ensure that your agents are always adding and keeping comprehensive notes to your customer’s files to give complete visibility of the nuances of your customer’s transactions.

13)   Ensure that your Quality and Assurance system supports the capture of all relevant transactional data and notes to enforce the importance of this process from the customers perspective.

14)   Ensure that your systems support the commitments that you make in terms of being able to call back within nominated time periods.

15)   If call backs are not able to be achieved within the nominated period then contact the customer and advise that the solution is still being worked on and a resolution will be found within a newly established time period.

But wait there is more!

Customer Feedback Systems

Using Customer Feedback Systems can be a powerful way to develop your business.

However these systems can also; if incorrectly set up, be counterproductive to the intended outcomes.

My situation

Having almost completed the last call I was transferred to a Customer Survey via an IVR system.

The Customer Feedback System asked me a series of questions about my experiences asking me to key in a response to each question.

After answering these the system asked if I would like to leave any other comments regarding my experiences and if so that the system would record my comments.

So I accepted this invitation and started advising the IVR of my issues and concerns.

After a very short period of time (approximately 30 seconds) the system stopped recording my comments and thanked me very much for my time!

To me that just summed up my all of my experiences of dealing with this Company, and did not leave me in a very positive frame of mind at all!

Call Centre Review steps

16)   Test your Customer Feedback System yourself to see if it really is providing your customers with the right opportunities to give constructive feedback and relevant information.

17)   If you’re asking your customers to leave a voice message as part of that process then allow enough time for the customer to explain their issues and don’t allow the system to abruptly stop recording their information halfway through.

18)   Ensure that the data and information captured is properly utilised by the business to advance your provision of service.

19)   Best practice organisations will also ensure that any comments left by a customer will be acknowledged by the business back to the customer via closed loop reporting methodologies.

In Summary

So in a nut shell I highly encourage you to regularly review and test your customer touch point processes and systems to ensure that you are giving your customers a positive customer experience every time they interact with you.

After all happy, engaged customers means more sales,  customer stick ability, happy staff and a win-win situation for everybody!

If you would like help to conduct a comprehensive (or quick) review of you call centre contact me at info@genroe.com.au.  We have a range of call centre performance measurement and benchmarking services that can help you to ensure that you are operating at maximum efficiency.

By Adam Ramshaw

Filed Under: Call Centre/ Call Center, Customer Loyalty Management Tagged With: ,
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