Mitch Lieberman

Standardized and Automatic are not the same as Efficient and Consistent

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 31, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

Modern customers (aka Social Customer or 21st Century Customer) are demanding, multi-channel and empowered. Your customers, being modern, expect each experience to be positive, efficient and valuable. Finally, there is the desire that the brand experience will be consistent across the different points of interaction. That said, ‘consistent’ should not be confused with “the same” or “standardized” experience. When a customer logs onto a website via their mobile; a 2 inch by 4 inch form factor screen, there is no expectation that the experience will be the same as when this same customer logs on via their 27 inch iMac.

Expectations are funny though, because what this customer expects to accomplish (job to be done) ARE similar across channels. Every business needs to reconcile jobs to be done, customer experience and customer service. Put simply, there is an activity which your customer needs to get done, information to be found or a purchase to be made. Applying business rules and considered processes in front of customer interactions can increase efficiency and add a level of required consistency to each interaction.  Specific to customer service, business rules and process can help a service organization deliver not only consistent communications to their customers, but also personalized ones. The name of the game (if it is a game) is to empower the each agent with the right information, at the right time, in context. In this era, the “360 degree view” might be too much.

Worlds Colliding

In the context of this short article, Business Process Management (BPM) is to be taken at face value.  It is simply what it sounds like; how a business manages processes. Things like how an order happens, how a return happens. When those simple examples are given, you might think about policies and procedures, Visio workflow diagrams and rules engines.  These kinds of activities need to be reproducible and standardized.  But, this view also conjures up visions of command and control and rigidity. Automation might solve your problems, but it may or may not solve your customers problems. Add the modern customer to this discussion; the result is that command and control will not work, it just won’t.  Where is the balance (your balance) between flexibility and effectiveness?

In doing a bit of research, I like some of the thinking being done over at Forrester. In bringing the worlds together, Derek Miers begins to talk about business process as practices, not only a set of procedures. If you consider layers of an organization, yes, the further back you go, the more rigid (procedural) the process needs to be. As you move closer towards the customer, more flexibility is required as processes “are goal-centric and guided, rather than controlling”. Put this together with work that Kate Leggett is doing, with a strong focus on customer service and service experience:

“Companies need to queue, route, and work on every interaction over all communication channels in the same manner, following the company business processes that uphold its brand”.

Bringing it together

The future of exceptional experiences, both in customer service and more general brand interactions is about integrating the data, process and carefully considering and respecting your customer’s time as well as needs. Creating a more effective process is about the efficiency required by your customer, not your back-office team. Creating consistent experiences means that data and information access across and between channels meets the expectations of your customers and makes sense. From a customer service perspective, customer service needs to evolve

The parts of the organization that are positioned to support these customers needs to part of the development process (design and implementation) of the business process practice areas. Sharing a final thought: Traditionally, CRM has been data and record centric. More modern systems and practices are pushing towards process centric CRM. Actually, the right answer is the combination of data-centricity and process-centricity; it is called Customer Centricity.

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Mitch Lieberman

Is the Office of the CMO the Right Place to Drive Customer Engagement?

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 24, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , .

Primary sourced research is valuable, adding one’s own interpretations (which I will) is the added benefit of blogging. The most recent IBM research “From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study” (URL) is a good read. Research based on CMO conversations is arguably meant for a CMOs. As usual, I found myself considering this from a different perspective. The question which kept popping into my head was whether the office of the CMO is the right place to drive the call to action suggested by the report. I am not it sure is, there, I said it. The CMO should be part of the team, but not the leader of the team. I believe that the research needs to be read by others within the organization as well.

The three imperatives identified by the report, in no particular order:

  • Deliver value to empowered customers;
  • Foster lasting connections;
  • Capture value, measure results.

Being brutally honest, I agree with the first, not so sure about the second; at least not in the way the company will make it happen. Finally, while I agree results need to be measured, I am not sure what “capturing value” is about (in this context). The message that keeps hitting the reader over the head is that CMOs are more than a bit nervous regarding the new, cool ‘socially’, stuff and are now concerned about the amount of data coming their way; because of all this new stuff. There is a bit of parroting going on as well, talking about engagement, but, in my opinion, not a clue how to actually do it.

Seasoned marketers are having a tough time understanding social media and are concerned with multi-channel initiatives (called channel choice,  just wait until they try to solve cross-channel) and are unprepared for shifting customer communication preferences. I suppose that I should not be too surprised by some of the findings, as the areas of concern are relatively new (3-5 years) and were not top down initiatives; they came either from the bottom up, or from customers themselves.

Some issues and concerns

While I do agree, strongly, with the following sentiment, this is going to be a struggle of monumental proportions to execute solely within the marketing organization:

“The most effective CMOs focus on getting to know individuals, not just markets. They mine new digital information sources. And they use customer analytics to turn data into insights on which their organizations can act.”

Traditionally, marketers look at markets, while Customer Service talk to customers (Figure 6 in the report proves the point). How do you convince a CMO who has “Data explosion” at the top of her list of concerns to speak with and listen to individual customers? Without a doubt, the more customers you connect with, the more insights that can be gleaned. But, that does of course mean a whole lot of data, no? Please, do not get me wrong this is critically important but hard. The CMO cannot do it alone, nor should they try.

In the ‘Tough questions to consider’ area, I cannot help but to think that these are the exact same questions that customer service and multi-channel contact centers have been working to solve for the past 5-10 years (not that we are there yet):

  • How are you gearing your ‘teams’, programs and processes to understand individuals and not just markets?
  • Which tools and processes are you investing in to better understand and respond to what individual customers are saying and doing?
  • How do you safeguard your customers’ data and privacy in a multichannel, multi-device world?

Yes, the intersection of business process, CRM and contact centers is the future of customer experience. The umbrella term is Business Technology. These core elements are the center-piece of the contact center, now and in the future.

Does this map to earlier research?

An earlier IBM report, which I also wrote a post about (The Perception Gap), shows that many organizations are missing the point. “Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them”. It is clear to most people that talking is not the same as engaging. Here is what I think is not so clear, listening is NOT the same as engaging. Active listening maybe, proving you heard what was said (by actions and words), now that is engagement.

That begs the question: are the CMOs really the ones who are going to engage? If the objective is really about helping customers to enjoy the products and services they have just purchased and your desire is to collaborate and to co-create new products and services, is the CMO the right person (office) to lead this charge? I would say “No” because marketers are used to looking at markets, not engaging with individual customers! I am sure I will get a lot of flack for the blasphemous comments, but I ask you to consider it for a moment.

In the image to the right, the report suggests “Outperforming” organizations “invest more effort in capturing and using data to foster customer relationships”. Yes, the data does suggest that to be the case. However, they also invest more effort in Segmentation/targeting as well as Action/buy and I am hard pressed to see conclusive evidence suggesting which one of the investments is driving the success. Given what I like to talk about, write about and analyze, I would like nothing more than for the chart to prove a causal relationship. However, it does not answer to the needs of the customer either (this is an inside-out versus outside-in perspective).

The previous IBM research paints a different picture of what the customer wants (or at least what they say they want). Back to my core concern, do you trust the CMO to make the required changes to meet the customers where it will work?  If you are the CEO, are you driving the CMO in the right direction? Or, if you are the CMO, does it make more sense to get a bit closer to the contact center and work together to properly engage with the customers on their terms and offer the real value that they are looking for? (Too harsh?) It is always possible that my comments are also too myopic coming from the other direction, but I am not convinced that is the case.

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Liz Erk

Getting Clients on the “Fast Track”: Q&A with Dave Ballard

by Liz Erk, on October 18, 2011, in Company Voice, about , , .

David BallardIt’s always interesting to see the outcome of how a client fares with a company’s technology solution. But how about getting those clients up and running? This latest Q&A visits that exact subject with David Ballard, US-based Project Manager for Sword Ciboodle. He has been serving on strategic accounts for the past four years, spear-heading client projects such as VistaPrint and Sears. He is essentially the “genius” behind how major companies deploy Sword Ciboodle’s technology:

Liz Erk- What is the most critical element of any company’s customer service program? (This could be technology-based, people, more than one, etc.)

Dave Ballard- There really isn’t one single element, it’s finding the right balance between technology and process. And especially the right staff! It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies think technology alone can solve their problems.

LE- When you assess a company’s existing customer service center, what is the one common “mistake” or “missing piece” that you find?

DB- I’d say that’s a good question! Technology is moving at an alarmingly fast rate- faster than ever. Companies are continually trying to keep pace with this technology and their competitors by getting new technology. From my perspective, there needs to be a solid and stable backend process in place first. Particularly when it comes to adding the latest and greatest new technology channels like social media, chat and Flash websites. For example, it’s great companies are interacting with customers via online chat, but at the end of the day if you are using the same 20 year old broken process to issue a refund, are you really doing the customers a service? Or are you just trying to simply add a new channel for the sake of adding a channel? They really need to be able to support new channels in a smart and useful way.

LE- What industry sector has provided the biggest challenges when it comes to evaluating and recommending a customer service strategy?

DB- I’ve worked with a number of clients across a variety of industries, and I’ve found that organizations all face the same challenges, believe it or not. Generally organizations know their industries really really well. They all need guidance on how to create that “company-centric” strategy, and then also how to best use the different technologies to make the most of that strategy. All the information is there, it’s just understanding how to streamline those processes.

LE- Which industry commonly seems to “get it right?”

DB- I think it’d be unfair to pin one industry over another. I tend to find the organizations who truly get it right are the ones least resistant to change, and have buy-in from everyone who’s effected by the new software solutions from the top down, from executives right through to customer service representatives. Implementing a new CRM software solution is an excellent opportunity to overhaul a business and provide excellent customer service, and that should be embraced by everyone.

LE- What was the toughest obstacle or “worst nightmare” you’ve ever faced in getting a customer set up?

DB- I wouldn’t say worst nightmare, but I’d say one of the most challenging parts of the job is building a state-of-the-art solution out of a legacy system that hasn’t been updated for years. At Sword Ciboodle our solution integrates with multiple backend systems in order to provide a unified agent desktop to offer a 360 degree view of the customer, so at times it feels we can be limited in what we can achieve by the other systems, however I have excellent managers who are able to overcome this time and time again and we’re able to deliver strong solutions.

LE- Without naming the client, what’s a unique, funny or just plain odd experience you’ve had on a client site?

DB- You put me on the spot now, haha! Okay, here’s a unique one: I did work on a solution for an auto company and the customers send them audio recordings of their engines to help their engineers playback and diagnose the problem. It was certainly different and we were chosen because of our ability to adapt for this unique customer interaction.

******

It’s cool to see the trends and common denominators with clients. I’m hoping in the near future Dave can walk us a through “a day in the life of a client deployment…”

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Mike Havard

Make multi-channel multi-choice

by Mike Havard, on October 10, 2011, in Guest Blogs and Thought Leadership, about , , , .

There are a lot of ways to communicate with customers that are cheaper than the phone.  But forcing people to use them could cost you more than you think. 

We’ve been taking a long hard look at companies’ multi-channel offerings, and some of our findings might surprise you.  Companies that try to restrict access to the phone and force people to use lower cost channels rarely achieve the cost savings they were aiming for.  And they frequently manage to alienate customers in the attempt!

The message is clear.  If you don’t want to experience damaged revenues and customer back lash, you need to offer channel choice.  Not impose it.

Our research show that customers want to use new channels, but they expect you to provide those as well as (not instead of) more established ones.  They’ll choose how they want to you interact with you, thank you very much.  And they won’t take kindly to being dictated to.

How they choose to contact you will depend on the nature of their enquiry, where they are (home, work or on the move), and the time of day.  They’ll often use several channels to complete a single ‘transaction’, researching a new product online, purchasing it in store, then using forums to discover new features. Oh, and, if there’s a problem, they may just want to phone you.  Fail to provide even one of these touch points and you’re likely to frustrate the customer and lose this sale, the next one and the next!

 Let’s be realistic.  Its unlikely that any organisation has managed, or will manage in the near future, to absolutely predict and influence every customer interaction in every customer journey for every customer or prospect.  As the economist John Kay states, most are “hardly capable of asking the right questions, let alone predicting the right answers.”

So, your best way forward is to provide a range of channel options, signpost them clearly and let the customer decide.  Encourage them to use lower cost options by making them effective, efficient and visible – but don’t force it.  Stay flexible and agile when it comes to channel management and use the power of information and data to predict customer behaviour as best you can – knowing you won’t always get it right.  Life, and customers, are far too complex for that.

And, one more tip… Take the time to analyse how, when and why your customers get in touch.  You’ll likely find that you’re able to predict the causes of costly calls to the contact centre and then pre-empt them with proactive outbound contact – either by SMS or email, for example.  That won’t just cut your costs – it’ll boost your reputation for proactive customer service, too.   I think that’s what we call a ‘win-win’.

Our research has prompted some interesting discussions with large organisations, not least at roundtable meetings hosted by the report’s sponsor, Sword Ciboodle.  We’re interested in finding out more about how companies are using multiple channels and whether their investments are paying dividends.  Tell about your experiences.

And, if you’d like to read our complete research findings, just click here to download them.

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Mitch Lieberman

The Evolution of Customer Service

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 7, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , , .

Customer expectations are evolving and customers are more vocal and willing to share both when something is good and something is bad. Customer service is also evolving, frankly, in order to keep pace with customers; but is the pace fast enough? The pace of the change; driven by customers, is accelerating because the social web (commerce and network) has enabled and empowered customers. Try and think back 10-15 years ago; did you make purchases online? Other than ask friends, did you read online reviews? What levels of service were tolerable, did you accept?  When you needed to contact a company did you consider sending a text? You might have sent an email, but when something really needed to happen, you picked up the phone. You might have even sent a letter, you know, the kind requiring a stamp.

In the chart below, I worked to encapsulate and share my view of the top-level changes within customer service. I intentionally did not assign dates to the past, nor the future; the past could be yesterday or last year, the future tomorrow or 2015. This is a not an all or nothing phenomenon, your organization may have certain elements well within the futures bucket and others stuck in the past.  The chart is a refinement of my Evolution of CRM chart, published about a month ago. I am looking forward to sharing these thoughts and more at the Contact Center Expo next week in London.

Element One – People

The people involved in customer service, historically, had been the people with customer service somewhere in their title, yes that simple. Organizations need to change this, if they want to grow and prosper (survive?). Products and services are becoming more complex, other parts of the organization absolutely need to become part of the customer engagement process. I am not simply talking about transferring phone calls; it is much bigger than that. I am talking about collaboration and knowledge sharing. You might even call it social business, but I do not want to get ahead of myself.

Element Two – Process

Gone are the days of a paper manual with defined processes for as many scenarios as management can think up. Actually, for some those days are not actually gone. Customers are no longer interested in listening to the script, following the guided path nor being pushed towards the efficient route. If the ‘people’ part of the progression is accurate, then organizations will also need a way to coordinate activities with other parts of the organization. Yelling over the cubicle does not count as collaboration and sticky notes do not count as knowledge management.

Element Three – Technology

A technical discussion could be approached from many different directions. With respect to this conversation, the more interesting technical element has to do with the channel match which needs to occur between the desire of the organization and the needs of the customer; i.e. the channels of communication used by each. Not only do organizations need to adapt to the changing channel usage by their customers, they need to realize that customer ‘channel hop’ – changing their mode of communication even mid-stream within an interaction happens. Organizations need to consider active pull, versus push to optimize their channel strategy. Active pull means that the value offered on channels you would like people to use is valuable to them, not just you. Real-time, synchronous channels are more expensive, but studies show that satisfaction rates are also higher on these channels.

Element Four – Duration

Historically, the length of time spent by either side of an interaction was limited to the specific activity performed, or issue discussed. Customer Service metrics are often tied to duration, like average handle time. While not every interaction will take on a life of its own, interactions will create a string of communications and form the basis of an ongoing relationship between customer and organization. Enhanced, more sophisticated activities like co-creation and ideation will now take place as well, during product use when it can be most beneficial. This is not about creating life-long friendships, your customer does not want to be your BFF either, this is about working together to mutual benefit. Take the time required to solve the problem, and make sure the customer’s concerns are heard.

Element Four – Centricity

As noted above, metrics and KPIs have been driving Contact Centers since the beginning of time <hyperbole>. The truth is handle time and concepts such as first call resolution will continue to be used, but they will not be the only driving force. As a matter of fact, these metrics will move further down, possibly even to tertiary consideration. As opposed to simply figuring out how quickly they are able to get the customer off of the phone, customer service professionals will consider more than just the current case and will be given latitude to do the right thing and stay on the phone to help the customer. Insights towards customer need by the agent will be augmented by business intelligence both real-time and in aggregate.

Element Five – Approach

Few people appreciate being caught off-guard, unprepared or surprised. Customer issues are more often than not identified first by the customer. What if the customer service teams could identify potential issues and do something about them before the small issues become very large issues? This can be accomplished simply with operational metrics made available to agents (insights). Spending a few more minutes on the phone with a customer, to really understand the root cause of an issue is worth the time and effort.  Or, how about proactive notifications of outages, or product issues (positive call deflections)? Further, taking the time to collaborate with the internal organization, providing superior value to customers, will also reap rewards in the form of loyalty and future business.

Is it possible to put it all together?

Yes it is. It is going to take work? Yes it will.  I do not believe you can accomplish it all at once, nor should you try. That said, understanding how all the of the elements are interrelated is an imperative. Some of the elements are within the control of the IT department; some are in Sales and Marketing, while you can control some as well. In the end, it not really about control; Customer Service is about doing what is best for the customer. What do you think? Am I way off base?

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Mitch Lieberman

A Conversation Retrospective

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 5, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , .

Nothing is the same for everyone

Channel shift, simply stated, is where customers are changing their behaviour and choosing to interact (communicate) with organizations in ways (channels) that are altering the numbers. The web has over-taken phone as the most used communication channel. But, before you jump to making everything web, the satisfaction levels on web are not as high as phone. Some industries are seeing great success with emergent channels, like video and SMS – while others are not quite sure how that would work for them.

We hosted an executive round table in London a few weeks ago with representation from many industry sectors to take this topic to task as well as unveil some new original research we’ve sponsored on the channel shift phenomenon. The research paper, by respected customer management experts Ember Services shares some really great statistics:

  • National Rail Enquiries, has seen customer enquiries grow by 343% over nine years yet still achieved a fourfold reduction in operating cost by migrating 80% of all contacts to the web.
  • Home Depot estimates that it has deflected 15 million potential telephone calls and helped solve 8,500 customer problems via Twitter.

Now, to add some real color to this conversation; the channel conversation really depends upon what industry you are in!  Adoption across industries is not consistent –and I learned this first hand at our executive round table.  Retail is moving faster that financial services – but they do not think that they are moving fast enough. Telecommunications are also pushing the envelope; it is the nature of their business.

There was a fun thread to our round table conversation regarding email, which I admittedly did not drive hard enough (as chief facilitator). For as long as we have had email as a channel, many at the table seemed to agree that it is still an inefficient channel and they wish people would stop using it. My point of view here is that email is a great notification mechanism, telling the recipient to go somewhere else and do something. Some would like to push people off of the email channel altogether. This is an interesting perspective, worth exploring. While I am against ‘pushing’, I am a fan of ‘active pull’. Without getting too complex, active pull is simply making some channels more attractive than others. This can be a delicate operation though. Restricting channel choice should be done at your own peril.

What do you think; can you remove a channel? Should you?

If you want to find out more about the channel shift phenomenon and conclusions the original research reaches that challenges the current approach which many companies currently use to service and identify the channel needs of the modern customer, click here or feel free to get in touch.

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