Mitch Lieberman

It is time to move on to ‘How’ – Where the Rubber Meets the Road for Customer Service

by Mitch Lieberman, on May 9, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , , , , , .

From products and pricing to service and social, there is no shortage of talk on what companies need to do to achieve service excellence. For the past many years, specific to ‘social’ the number of people who are more than willing to share ‘what to do’ is staggering. It is easy to say what to do, to be an advice giver. That said, telling someone how to do something is not nearly as easy.

There is not only a tremendous difference between ‘what’ and ‘how’, the ability to cross the chasm between is where companies succeed or fail. Transitioning from what to do to how to do it takes hard work, planning and execution – especially in the realm of customer service!

Customer Service Mission:
A mission is the very big, long-term end-result or achievement in your sights. A Customer Service mission is the biggest and most important thing you and your team aim to accomplish. Mission statements can be tied to financial metrics, directly or indirectly, but financial metrics can also get in the way. A mission is a ‘what’ not a ‘how’. What is your customer service mission? Do you know it by heart?

(A quick sidebar regarding a mission: The company certainly needs to have a mission, but that is not the same as the customer service mission. For example, a company mission may be to reduce the need for customer service. That is not going to fit for the customer service team, now will it.)
Service Goals and Objectives:

With respect to customer service, goals and objectives are often interchangeable – just as long as you are clear. There might be a slight nuance that goals are customer facing and objectives are internally focused, but they should be very well aligned. Each is an end game towards which actions and activities are focused. But, we are still in the land of ‘what’, not yet progressing to ‘how’; that said each should be smaller than the mission.

Customer Service Strategy:
Here is where I think organizations lose sight of their purpose. If there is not a clear mission, or set of goals (or objectives), a strategy is almost a waste of time. The idea of a strategy is to focus the team towards achieving the goals and objectives, towards the mission. I believe too many people jump to strategy, when they mean mission. The importance of strategy, is that we finally have moved from ‘what’ to ‘how’, hallelujah!

What is a strategy?

A well thought and constructed plan of attack with actions that will be used to achieve the desired objective. The strategy is the first, most important step in the ‘how’ process.

Customer Service Tactics and Actions:
Simply stated, tactic and actions are what is done to deliver on the strategy. This is where the rubber meets the road. Although tactics and actions are more about doing (versus thinking), in customer service, poor execution of tactics and actions will have far reaching consequences; leading eventually to inability to succeed at the mission. The inability to succeed at the customer service layer will impact the ability for the organization to achieve the higher mission as well.

The Outline

Mission = the most important thing you and your team aim to accomplish

  • Goals = an end-game towards which actions and activities are focused
    • Strategy = the plan of attack
      • Actions and Tactics = the execution of the strategy

What it Might Look Like for You

Customer Service Mission: We at <company name> believe that you, the customer, are part of our family. We are dedicated to treating you with respect; being courteous towards you and creating a positive experience for you each and every time we connect. We hope to convey that we are a caring and genuine team, here to help you to the best of our ability; in-person, on the phone and across all digital channels.

  • Goal 1: Increase Customer Satisfaction
    • Strategy: Improve Service Experience
      • Be responsive and courteous
      • Offer Chanel Choice
      • Remove or reduce problematic metrics (AHT, FCR)
    • Strategy: Improve Self-Service
      • Offer How-to guides
      • Increase use of Video
    • Strategy: Focus on Product In-Use Experience
      • Facilitate online community
      • Incent to contribute, engage further 1:1
      • Encourage social sharing; product
  • Goal 2: Increased Loyalty and Retention
    • Strategy: Create Passionate Customers
      • Offer extra value to repeat customers
      • Train Customer Service Reps as brand advocates
      • Reward Agents with a positive experience
    • Strategy: Facilitate Organic growth
      • Encourage customers to share brand stories
      • Encourage social sharing; experience
      • Recognize Super-users
  • Goal 3: Meet Customer Expectations
    • Strategy: Manage expectations
      • Publish response time service levels
      • Consistency across interaction channels
      • Hit response targets
    • Strategy: Service with a smile
      • Empower agents to make decisions
      • Rewards agents who go above and beyond
      • Remove robotic scripts
  • Goal 4: Bring Social into the Process fold
    • Strategy: Operational Efficiency
      • Web-Self-service, let people help themselves (WSS is the doorway to SCS)
      • Decide on the Proper Process for Social Contacts
      • Proper Process to capture knowledge and reuse
    • Strategy: Offer Channel Choice
      • Deflection as an outcome, can be right (caution advised)
      • Understand your customers, where they want to talk to you
      • Active Pull to proper channel (Content /Value) – not push

So What?

I cheated a bit, and used the results of our research with thinkJar to drive the conversation. Well, maybe that is not cheating, but the results did show that organizations are focusing heavily on the Goals I listed above. Gartner (8 Pillars of CRM) and Forrester also have been know to recommend building the Customer Service program with specific goals and objectives in mind – no, not just operational efficiency, but how the impact can be felt directly by the customers.

What are your Goals and Objectives as an customer service organization? If you are Vendor or Analyst reading this, what how do your clients articulate their Goals and Objectives? Do they have a Customer Service Mission Statement? Please, feel free to add to the list and do not beat me up too much for missing something. To give credit where credit is due, thanks to Clare Dorrian for editing help and good ideas!

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Mitch Lieberman

Who is the Social Customer?

by Mitch Lieberman, on April 24, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , .

First and foremost the social customer is a person.

This person would like to control the intensity and frequency of their interactions with you.  They do not think of it in these academic terms however. Consider the person: a stay at home mom, 20 something with their iPhone glued to their hip or a business professional. Each has learned how to leverage the social web in their own way.  The change from customer to social customer and now transitioning to engaged customer is fascinating to insiders. This shift in culture, which has been enabled by technology and peer influence, is critically important for your business to understand. In some ways it is all very new. In other ways, it is very old.


How do you have a relationship with the ‘Social Customer’ – give them control and they will give you their loyalty. I would add that you should give them (the person) value and they will give you loyalty. As a business, there is a balance, after all, businesses are in business to create value. At the moment, the social customer has a disproportionate amount of influence within your organization – fact. The reason is simple, they tweet, blog and share their opinions very vocally. Add to that the simple fact that your marketing and PR team are the one monitoring the channel. Does you PR team listen to all the phone calls in your call center? Didn’t think so.

How does a company prepare to engage with a social customer?

First, it is critically important to understand that the customer will choose his or her level of interaction and/or engagement. According to Paul, here is what we need to do (and I happen to agree).

  1. Create systems that allow interactions where customer want, which will then foster engagement
  2. Capture information at each stage, across each channel, so that you can later refine the process of engagement

The core capabilities of a system of engagement are two parts technology, one part process and two parts people. Systems of record combined with systems of engagement (interactions/channels). The basics are really about the ability and capability to interact in a meaningful way with the each and every customer. The process needs to include putting the right two people in touch.

How important is this anyway?

Viscerally, many people agree of the importance of the social customer, yet it is difficult to see where and how to influence the conversations that are taking place. What level of engagement is the proper level? As Paul discusses, your tem simply needs to present the options. However, just how to measure the return is really hard, for now realize it is important and get it done.  The velocity of the conversations is tough to predict as well. They may occur over a weekend or over the course of weeks and months. They cannot be forced one way, or the other.

Customer Engagement is the extent to which an organization commits, both emotionally and intellectually, to communicating and interacting with their customers, relative to accomplishing shared goals driven by customer need. Engagement can be seen as a heightened level of interaction and ownership where the company wants to do whatever they can for the benefit of the customer.

In other words, proper customer engagement is the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation.

Social media is the the protocol of the social customer cannot be treated as a passive activity driven by managers in marketing. Social media channels are a new set of channels that need to somehow fit into your existing processes or you need to adapt and create new ones.  The social customer is extremely adept at curating knowledge about you, your products and your policies and procedures. They have very high expectations, and will make future purchasing decisions based not only on price, but service.

The implications for your company are very real. Systems of record have been the foundation of your organization for a long time. Systems of engagement are becoming increasingly important and will soon be on par with systems of record. The marrying of the two systems is what it is going to take; the problem is that systems of engagement live in marketing and systems of record live in IT and your customers are talking to customer service.

I have said before, what is really being described here is a maturity model; If Social CRM is about a company’s programmatic response to the social customer, then engagement is where the compromise occurs. Both customers and business need to mature and be willing to invest emotionally and intellectually.  Since the customer will mature at his or her own pace, your organization will need to adapt to the rate of change, as driven by your customers.

The effects of the social customer have been felt by most industries and by most organizations in the developed world. This customer type will continue to impact your industry and can be felt directly by your company. An engaged customer will have an even greater impact to your organization, with your employees and on your products and services.

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Mitch Lieberman

With IBM, the focus is the Customer – PureSystems

by Mitch Lieberman, on April 11, 2012, in Company Voice and Thought Leadership, about , , , , , , .

Mind-numbing complexity, combined with a lack of resources has created a ’situation’ in corporate IT: $2.5 Trillion – 70% of the global IT budget – is spent just making sure the status quo works. Your customers expect better – status quo does not cut it anymore!

Its time to reduce complexity and focus energy on projects that will help businesses innovate, adapt to the needs of the hyper-connected customer and focus on their jobs to be done; it always needs to be about the customer, no? With this in mind, Ciboodle are partnering with IBM, as the PureSystems initiative does just that, helps you to turn the focus to the customer.

”Sword Ciboodle is now working with IBM as a certified IBM PureSystem Business Partner to introduce a new category of computing,” said Bruce Maule, director business partner programs, IBM systems and technology group. ”This category incorporates expert integrated systems to fundamentally change the experience and economics of IT.”

Sword Ciboodle is excited to participate along side IBM,  pioneering a new era of computing that will help simplify the complexity and fundamentally transform the internal experience and economics of enterprise information technology. Your IT team is worth thinking about because everyone plays a role in regards to enhancing customer experience. The IBM Expert Integrated Systems is a new category of smarter computing that combines the flexibility of a general purpose system, the elasticity of cloud and the simplicity of an appliance – Ciboodle expertise is part of the solution.

In case you are wondering, IBM PureSystems is a new family of expert integrated systems offered by IBM that combines hardware, software and expertise into one solution. The cool thing here is that this new system will simplify IT infrastructure by tackling the biggest, consistent IT pain points. Ciboodle bought into the idea early, and we excited to be taking part.

“Congratulations to Sword Ciboodle for being among the early adopters of IBM PureSystems,” said  Michael Riegel, vice president of global ISVs, IBM  “This will enable them to offer an industry leading solution to clients in a way that cannot be matched by competitors.”

The Ciboodle Platform provides a powerful framework for deploying and managing an integrated, multi-channel Contact Center Solution. Built and proven to scale in high volume multi-channel customer implementations, the platform conforms to all common non-functional standards and enterprise best practices.

Built to provide a solution for today, with a close eye on tomorrow’s challenges.

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Mitch Lieberman

From the Long Tail to the New Normal

by Mitch Lieberman, on March 26, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

This is a continuation of a series I started on my personal blog. That said, it can live just fine on its own – the idea is that I spend a fair amount of time ‘connecting the dots’. Working to bring either over hyped concepts or ignored concepts to a broader audience.

My objective here is to help people understand the importance of ‘New Normal’, in writing this I have a better sense of it myself. Working backwards, the ‘New Normal’ is very similar in concept to what Seth Godin calls “Weird”. The best way for me to describe ‘Weird’ is that it is the rest of the story, left out in most Long Tail discussions. The Long Tail, as discussed by Chris Anderson, talks about the outliers, the ones who live and purchase at the edges of the spectrum. In other words, the Long Tail does not talk too much about the rest of the distribution, at least not from the customer-centric perspective. While I have heard New Normal used before, I have not seen many illustrations of what it might look like (other than teenagers walking down the street texting from a mobile phone).

The value of the diagram is to illustrate to others, using specific examples and to talk about the ‘New Normal’, moving beyond buzzwords or hyperbole.

The New Normal has been and can be used to understand many of the changes and challenges many people have been talking about for a while now. Ideas such as; The Social Customer, The Collaborative Organization, Social CRM, Social Business  and more might be better understood with a simple illustration.  Think about the distribution of communication channels used 5 years ago, versus now. We simply have more choices. This is not only about customer communications, think about the ways in which you communicate with your peers now, versus 5 years ago. Would it be interesting to chart some this with your own data?

What exactly is ‘New’ about the New Normal

When applied to a business context, the bell curve is being ‘flattened’.  While Chris Anderson and peers talked about Amazon and Netflix –this is now about your products, services and your customers. The long tail is now the ‘tail wagging the dog’. Let’s bring this a little closer to home; the customer journey. What follows is an objective view, with some sweeping assumptions and data without research data as the foundation. For the purists among you, I am focused on the journey and channels of communication, not the product economics of weird, nor long tail.

Consider the number of modes of communication that a customer used from evaluation to purchase for your product 10 years ago (If you did not have a product 10 years ago, think of your own journey). There might have been a Yahoo search, then a phone call. Maybe an email and a website visit. For the sake of this conversation, let’s speculate that the number of channels used averaged 3 and for 70% of the customers they used between 2 and 4 channels. The rest likely used between 1 and 5 channels. This brings us really close to a pretty, normal distribution, though slightly narrow and steep.

How about today? What would the number of channels look like for the same (or similar) product purchase journey? Again, not scientific, but the data is likely available for your business – Could we guess average of 4 channels? This is just one channel more, on average, but it changes the game. Based on the flattening of the curve, to get to that 70% of your customer base it is likely something like “70% of the customers use between 2 and 7 channels; a pretty big range, not as simple as it used to be. The key point here is that you need to dig in deeper and understand what they are doing on each channel. How many channels would we need to include to get to 95% of your customer population (the -2σ to 2σ in the illustration above)?

The important part of the flattening is not only the reduction in the middle, it is the increase on the edges. I want to be clear on a few things. The new Normal for your customers is dependent upon where they have been. The pace of change is determined by you and your customers, not by a consultant or analyst. Just for fun, if you want to see a Normal distribution in action, take a look at this graphic of the snow in Vermont, as it careens off the bell curve in 2012.  All I can say is, I hope this does not represent the ‘New Normal’. There is a whole lot more to this story – just think about it.

Sources:

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Mitch Lieberman

A Conversation with Lynn Costlow

by Mitch Lieberman, on February 16, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

I had a tremendous opportunity to speak with, interview style, Lynn Costlow*, vice president of customer service for U.S. Cellular®. The conversation can be read in its entirety, but I wanted to highlight a couple of the questions and answers, as they really drive home some points worth noting. I want to again thank Lynn for her time.

Question: Some companies are using social media to get closer to their customers but they’re not succeeding because they don’t already have a strong connection with those customers. U.S. Cellular® has a strong personal interaction with its customers based on your high level of customer service. How do you transfer that personal interaction to an online forum?

Our customers are the reason we’re in business. It’s amazing to be part of a culture in which the customer is discussed in every conference room and in every meeting and in every conversation. I haven’t seen anything like it until I came here. As we embark on this journey into social media and online support, we would never take action to try to minimize the shouting that happens online in a way that would shut down our customers. Every word about our company on social media outlets offers us an opportunity to try to figure out how to help a customer feel differently about us. Obviously, we can’t be in every forum, but we respond to as much as we can. We want to help people and so we ask if we can call them. We invite them to be on our earnings call; we try to help them through social media.

My commentary:  Really successful companies put the customer at the center of every conversation. From Amazon.com to USAA conversations about customer experience, customer satisfaction and value to customer are the center of the conversation. U.S. Cellular is in great company with an approach like this. What the text does not highlight is the passion in Lynn’s voice when she was answering these questions. This was not PR spin or an angle, this was genuine ‘ this is how we do things around here ‘

How do you share your passion for customer service internally? What impact does that passion have on your customers and their experience when they talk to a call center representative?

You can apply the customer experience to anything in your business or personal life. I don’t believe you have to have a passion for what you do to get your job done. But when you do have passion for your job and you show it and articulate it and live it, it’s a catalyst for high performance. I have people who would literally follow me off a cliff even if they saw that it was a cliff. That makes things easier when we have really tough challenges because people know that I am in it with them and I support them. When they know that I have them in mind, they trust the decisions I’m making at the corporate level. It creates momentum and energy that helps me be more fluid in making business decisions.

My commentary: Again, with a question about passion, Lynn’s voice lit up and it was easy to hear. I found it interesting to hear Lynn mention that you do not need to have passion to get your job done. The ‘but’ is that high performers do have passion. I would also add that leadership with passion is contagious. Leading by example (a few members of her team were on the call, and the “off a cliff” comment was confirmed). The team also knows  that Lynn ‘has their back’ another critical internal trust issue. Lynn talks about creating energy. There are two types, this is the good type!

Again, the full text can be read here. I will be adding more commentary in the next few days.

(Lynn oversees customer interactions in the company’s retail, telesales, and care center environments. And she leads more than 2,100 associates who handle more than one million customer interactions every month.)

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Mitch Lieberman

Mirror Images – Customer Experience versus Employee Experiences

by Mitch Lieberman, on January 22, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , .

In my first Mirror Images post, I referred to Social CRM as a “A complex overlay” on top of customer service, customer relationships and the supporting strategy, technology and processes. If we can accept this, that Social CRM is an overlay, then we should be able to agree that it does mirror Social business (or Enterprise 2.0), as Social Business is also an overlay on top of many standard business practices and concepts. Diving deeper to a more definitive concept; is employee experience the mirror of customer experience? Unfortunately, most people who talk/write on the topic of ‘experience’ focus on the customer aspect and neglect the employee experience; the literature therefore is not as extensive. In this area, topics typically include empowerment, engagement, and satisfaction. There is very little that directly talks to employee experience, after all it is just a job, right – no, wrong. Moving forward, this is going to have to change.

Your own Marketing team is working very hard to enhance the customer experience, hoping to take advantage of what mobile and tablet devices have to offer (Cool UI) to build stronger relationships with people (customers and prospective customers). But, let’s not forget that before you drove into work this morning, you were a consumer, using these devices and you were the target of these efforts, by some other company. The number of connected TV sales is expected to double in 2012, these same people are highly likely to have an Xbox, an iPod, Kindle, KindleFire or some other next generation device. Now, you are sitting in front of screen, your team is sitting in front of an even bigger screen, maybe with a headset connected and they are using circa 1990’s technology to help your customers. What gives?

Think about it, all of this effort which is customer facing and your internal teams are frankly having a lousy experience. Can we gamify work a bit, to make it more fun? Or is that pandering to misaligned expectations of a certain employee type or demographic? As a did in my previous post, I turned to friend for some help and insight. I asked the question to Mark Tamis and we had a bit of an electronic conversation or Socratic debate. My going in position is the better employee experience will lead to a better customer experience, as this is the logical answer. But, as Mark points out, it is not that simple.

Does better user (employee) experience lead to better customer experience?

MT: First of all, I believe the question leads to trying to compare apples to pears.

ML: That is better than apples to oranges, no?

MT: French expression badly translated

MT: The customer has gone through a journey and his experience has been shaped by interactions at every touch point (dealing with your company, in-store experience, exchanging with friends, family and peers and so on), whereas the employee experience is shaped the interactions with colleagues, suppliers, systems and – only at very precise touch points – clients. So although the customer and the employee are intimately linked, they are not on the same journey.

ML: Valid point, but at that critical point where the journeys intersect will define many things and likely be more impactful to the customer. We have both been known to say that the experience perceived is more important than the intended design. Like most of life we spend most of the time learning and preparing for those moments where we have to act. While not on the same journey, the journey’s are linked and aligned.

MT: By the very nature of company-customer relations, the employee journey is sub altered to the customer journey which leads to the chicken and the egg problem of when a negative customer experience is taken out on an employee who is not able to or not empowered to do anything about it, which in turn leads to a negative employee experience that negatively influences the way the employee deals with the following customer et cetera.

ML: Very interesting, and I agree that the employee experience impacted by the customer experience and journey. I will suggest that the employee would only partially hold his own organization accountable for the treatment by the customer, unless it is a trend, and they are not empowered to do anything about it. While valid, employees should be able move beyond this type of reaction.

MT: Partially, but up to which point? Either stop trying to fight it and become demotivated, go on a crusade and risk being shot down, or simply…leave.

MT: Breaking this vicious circle consists of first by understanding the customer’s journey and coordinating efforts to improve it and second by providing the employees with the infrastructure (data, insight, tools and processes) and conditions (work conditions, a company culture that facilitates collaboration) to do so. Ultimately it comes down to reducing frictions (for the customer and for employees) to help the customer in his job to be done and reach the desired outcomes.

ML: Who is responsible and accountable for removing the fractions? It must be on the employee side, management etcetera, driving for a positive employee experience.

Mark, great stuff and I do appreciate your time and thoughts. I believe we are mostly aligned, though I will admit it is bigger and more complex than I had originally thought. The two journeys are different but it is those all important intersections where things happen. The key question is what will the state of mind (on each side) be at those points? Business units and IT departments will need to invest more in the design of services, for the internal customer. The expectations by everyone; not just the younger or Millenial crowd, are higher, and need to align with customer expectations. In order for a true person to person relationship to be established, experience must be aligned on both sides of the firewall. This is clearly not all about technology (yes, we are a technology vendor) but at the same time, technology is a huge part of the equation, there is no getting past that point. For contact center agents, their experience is critically important, and I believe there is a connection to customer experience – a big one.

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Mitch Lieberman

Mirror Images

by Mitch Lieberman, on January 17, 2012, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , .

For a some time, I have been watching, reading, discussing and doing my best to understand the very broad field of customer service, customer relationships and the supporting strategy, technology and processes which go along with each discipline. Along the way, Social CRM – a complex overlay on all of the above, has become everything from a hot topic to nothing more than part of buzzword bingo and back again. At the same time I have also been trying to keep tabs on Enterprise 2.0, Social Business and Collaboration (not Emergent). Going back and reading my own early thoughts here I can see that in some ways my own thinking has changed, but in many ways it has simply matured. I have been saying for a fairly long time that Social CRM and Entperprise 2.0 are closely linked. In September 2009 I said it here and here. I am not patting myself on the back here, more being self critical. I said this 2.5 years ago and frankly we have not come very far.

This line of thinking have caused the following questions to nag at me a bit:

  • Does better agent (employee) engagement lead to better customer engagement?
  • Does better employee satisfaction lead to better customer satisfaction?
  • Does better user (employee) experience lead to better customer experience?
  • Is the collaborative employee the mirror image of the social customer?

Taking a bit of a leap from where my own thinking was a couple years ago to now considering how many elements need to be, or are essentially mirror images between inside and outside the organization. I am not going to be able to tackle all the questions in a single post. As any good learner does, I asked a few friends for some help.

Does better employee satisfaction lead to better customer satisfaction? Mark Walton-Hayfield of CSC had this to say (BTW – congrats to Mark and all of CSC on the Paul G Watchlist Review!):

“In summary YES! However, you need to make sure that people are empowered and that businesses deliver on their promises to customers too.

People who are encouraged to make decisions by themselves at work and who have the authority to solve problems with the outcome of keeping customers happy are generally more satisfied with their job than employees who need to seek out a manager for approval. Business owners who empower their employees tend to have both a lower staff turnover and higher customer satisfaction levels too.

A core tenant of modern leadership thinking is that you need to make people (at all levels) understand why they are being asked to do something and the part that they play in the bigger picture. By leading people through great communications which encourage motivation and with empowerment designed into the operating model you are creating an environment within which people can be proud and satisfied in the work that they do. For those people who are customer facing (and even those who are not) this will most likely translate and spill over into better relationships with customers. These customers will perceive that the representatives of the company are going the extra mile (and they probably are) and so over time this will improve customer satisfaction.

However, this comes with a warning – ensure that you have delivered upon your original promises to your customers and that you are responding to them in an effective manner on those occasions when you are not”

Mark Walton-Hayfield | Social Business Strategist | CSC | MarkW_H

I happen to agree with Mark’s thoughts, it makes logical sense, but why does it seem so difficult to carry out in practice? For commoditized products and services, where low cost is the differentiator, this might be very difficult to carry out, no? This is not a disagreement with Mark, more of an expansion of his thoughts.
Moving on to some other tough question, I posed the following to Laurence Buchanan of CapGemini (Also a CRM Watchlist winner): “Is the collaborative employee the mirror image of the social customer?” In hindsight, this was a bit of a leading question, isn’t it? In a way it is playing with buzzwords.

“Customers have always been social. For as long as trade and commerce has been around, customers have spoken to each other about good deals and warned each other of rip-off scams. But when we think of a social customer today we use the term to describe a customer who is a) connected to people and information via digital channels and social networks and b) someone who leverages that connectivity and information in their relationships with vendors and other consumers. For example, a customer who is connected to a network like Tripadvisor might use information from that social network to influence their choice of holiday as well to influence others in their network through their own contributions. The motivation of a social customer will vary greatly and may include simply getting a better deal, building up trust and respect from peers, or naming and shaming a poor product or service.

Employees have always been collaborative. Ok, perhaps not as collaborative as they could be (!), but we have always had to work with others to get the job done. The collaborative employee mirrors some of the traits above. Although the networks might be different, the collaborative employee is certainly connected to people (e.g. other employees, suppliers, customers…) and to information. In addition, the collaborative employee leverages that connectivity to help them work more effectively (e.g. breaking down internal silos), to build relationships or to build their profile within the enterprise.

However, the boundaries between the social customer and the collaborative employee are increasingly blurred and increasingly irrelevant. People play multiple roles in their daily lives (consumer, employee, supplier), information (and transparency) now flows much faster inside and outside an organisation and networks are increasingly interlinked. More and more it will be harder to separate the social customer from the collaborative employee.”

Laurence Buchanan | Principal, Digital Transformation | CapGemini | buchanla

Sharing the wealth a bit, I asked Prem Kumar of Cognizant the same question as Laurence, “Is the collaborative employee the mirror image of the social customer?”

“If you recollect the concepts in the book reorganizing for a resilient organization, orgs (organizations) need to have people with specializations, areas where they have high efficiencies, areas which could be highly routine and monotonous. There is not much need to take decisions, and even if any, they would happen with in a predefined scope, options. This is what brings the scalability, the industrial scale. Collaboration happens at a minimum in these organizations, especially between people who need to make decisions on non routine issues. These are the people who have been empowered to take decisions.

One of the reasons for this collaboration that Ranjay mentions in his book is innovation, to meet the demands of the evolving customer. I do not remember if he talks about customer support, but here is again an area where you need to take decisions as well as collaborate with various dungeons in the org. ‘Responsiveness’ is the key reason for collaboration I guess. That means responding, at speed.

Now cut to the era of the social customer as he is right now. What he asks is public knowledge, so add the PR angle if there was not enough pressure on being responsive already. No wonder you need to be even more connected, at speed. Collaboration has been clamoring for attention for a few decades now, but now it has become inimitable, unignorable.

Collaboration is no longer a motivating factor to do better, it is now a hygiene factor; you stay healthy if you do it, else you fall sick. It is not doing pilates, it is eating good healthy food. Which means, it’s not about putting extra efforts, it’s about changing our habits, or mind frame for the better.”

Prem Kumar | Strategist | Cognizant | Prem_k

I really like that last point by Prem, collaboration is now a hygiene factor, it is a requirement to doing business. This is actually one difference, where the characteristics are not mirrored. Customers do not need to be social in order to be customers. But, social customers do require the internal organizations to be collaborative. All that is left to tackle are the remaining two simple questions.

Links provided from Mark W-H

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Mitch Lieberman

Engagement, Intent Driven Involvement

by Mitch Lieberman, on January 9, 2012, in Company Voice, about , , , .

Recently, friend Paul Greenberg penned a short post (ok, a not short, 2-part series very worth reading) where he talked about the end of one era transitioning to the beginning of a new one.  The points are sound. But, I would like to explore a different viewpoint, or maybe just add my own perspective.  I believe that when we look back in a few years, we will see that the transition is going to take a bit longer than we imagined it would (In other words, it is not “the End” but it is “Ending” slowly). I am not going to nit-pick on words, this, is not about that. I might even suggest to Paul that he consider updating a Wikipedia entry (more on that in a minute). I will say that a more meaningful mutual benefit can be achieved if each side is willing to give more, as the value exchange equation is always a bit one-sided.

What is really being described here is a maturity model; on BOTH sides of the equation, this is new. If Social CRM is about a companies programmatic response, then engagement on the customer’s terms defines the format of the response. Therefore, Social CRM is different for every type of business. In order for it to work, both sides need to mature and be willing to invest emotionally and intellectually.  Since the customer will mature at his or her own pace, we <company> are often left to guess where they are along the maturation curve. It is also important that a distinction be made between engagement and involvement. For the sake of this discussion (ie, no primary research references) I will draw the distinction along a continuum, where involvement occurs first and then by the addition of an emotional element engagement happens. Engagement is a deeper level of involvement, by being ongoing (As Paul notes) or emotional, possibly even intent driven.

A Bit of Research

Looking at Wikipedia as a starting point, as I remembered friend Prem Kumar referencing Employee Engagement in a post a while back. The Employee engagement Wikipedia entry is rather nice, while the Customer version is utter crap.
First the Customer side:

“Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.”

Feel free to look for yourself. It misses the mark totally.  Friend Graham Hill had some thoughts on the topic as well -  Graham challenges the Inside-out marketing team only approach, and I agree. That said, what if the customer is able to define (control, augment) the rules of engagement, then maybe something has changed in the past 5 years, no? Conclusion; the maturation of the Social part of CRM part of the equation is to carefully manage actual engagement. Actual engagement is an actual bi-directional conversational flow/dynamic, input and involvement.

What if we tried to adapt the Employee engagement model for the customer? There would need to be some very obvious changes, but it is a much better place to start – and if after you take a look at this and then take another look at Paul’s post, you can see he is onto something. Take a look at the below and think about whether it is possible to alter some of the words, replace a few and begin to change the poor Customer Engagement definition above.

“Employee Engagement is the extent to which employee commitment, both emotional and intellectual, exists relative to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization. Engagement can be seen as a heightened level of ownership where each employee wants to do whatever they can for the benefit of their internal and external customers, and for the success of the organization as a whole.”

Employee Engagement impacts Customer Experience
There are lots of people writing about engagement, a term that is becoming as nebulous as social itself; but at least there is some history to work with here. Respected analyst/researcher Bruce Temkin has published a report regarding Employee Engagement as well. Bruce has spent many years thinking about Customer Experience. In the report, he draws a strong link between Employee Engagement and Customer Experience:

“The analysis uncovers a strong connection between employee engagement and customer experience as well as between employee engagement and productivity.”

Great, but…Where is the link between Employee engagement and Customer Engagement? Does strong Customer Engagement lead to a more positive Customer Experience? I am not going to speak for Bruce, but I am going to hazard a guess that the link is not there because Customer Engagement is nebulous at best and as I have stated very poorly defined with competing agendas. Employees have, in theory, a specific mission: do a job and help the company grow, right? According to Gallup, 86% of engaged employees say they very often feel happy at work, compared to 11% of the disengaged. There is also a direct link to the bottom line according to research.

In the end, being Social about being human. Social Media and Networking are really just some new channels that we are all trying to figure out how to use a bit better. ie. How can we be as human as possible using electronic means. The technology is new, we are just trying to figure it out. As we become better at the usage of the channel, then we can move from demands to requests, from hyperconnectivity to right connectivity and from being social to being engaging. Engagement in this context is not like the picture above, because it can end at any time, quite easily. While technology is only a part, it is still an important part.

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Mitch Lieberman

The Contact Center of the Future

by Mitch Lieberman, on December 16, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

* The future of customer service is agility; the ability to adapt to the changing needs of your customers
* The future of service excellence is differentiation, the ability to create personalized and engaging service experience
* The future of service process is contextual optimization; the capability to coordinate and/or collaborate, internally, while staying focused on supporting customer jobs
* The future of the service desktop is an intuitively designed, content rich, positive user experience
* In the future (now actually) your team needs to provide a faster, superior, efficient service experience every day, to every customer on every channel

A responsive organization is an integrated organization. The simple recipe here is 2 parts people 2 parts process and 1 part technology, all very important ingredients (after all what would fish be without the chips?). I am not convinced that an integrated organization equates to a social organization; but they are kissing cousins and my social business peers might be able to convince me if they believe it to be required. An integrated and coordinated organization are table stakes in order to service the ever more sophisticated, demanding and complex customer. Again, this might equate to be the social customer, that is TBD – but I do not want to get stuck on social this and that. For better or worse, each customer has the expectations of a preferred premium experience.

I started this post with the thought that I was to write a bit of a prediction post for 2012. Thus, it seemed natural to write about the Contact Center of the Future. But, I have two major struggles with the task at hand:

  1. In the Future, there will not be a ‘center’ there will be sets of roles logically aligned and systems physically connected; the people will be everywhere, the data here and there.
  2. The future will obviously include 2012, but it also includes 2013, 2014, etc.,… The point is that 2012 will be part of the journey, but not the endpoint (we are only scratching the surface).

A well-structured, modern contact center allows for the emphasis to be properly placed on helping and engaging with customers; past, present and future. With each type listed, your organization needs to show value and establish trust. The contact center of the future will allow agents to more easily add that human element to each interaction, fostering relationships, and pushing the needle in the right direction. No matter what needle you look at!

A Scenario

As I am writing this, at least in part, on Cyber Monday, I am of course influenced by the latest and greatest of tech toys. I am not yet a fan of 3D viewing in my home, but I suppose all it will take is one grand experience at a friends house and then I will be sold. That of course got me thinking about how video will make its way into the contact center -err, communications hub, or customer service area. There will be a dedicated team for certain industries, where video will begin to make a big impact. Think business to business for auto-manufacturers or heavy equipment. As devices and technology get more complex, it will take better visualization techniques than we have currently to make things work.

Multi-channel and Cross-channel complexities go well beyond simply the scope of customer service, the contact center or marketing – these are company wide issues.

  • Fact: Customers expect to be able to make a purchase using a mobile device
  • Fact: Amazon allows anyone to scan a bar code in a physical store to compare a price
  • Fact: Displaying something in a store is more expensive than storing it in a warehouse
  • Fact: If you are planning to compete on price alone, you will lose

Here is the scenario

Customer A does some research on Google for a new television (the new 3D version I was talking about above). The customer notices that is available at the local Best Buy, around the corner. Since the new 3D glasses are involved, there is some hesitation to simply ‘pull the trigger’ online, as the glasses need the ‘will my wife actually wear these things’ question answered. Customer goes to the store, looks at the unit, tries the glasses on and begins to wander the store to ‘think things though’. Remembering the scanner application he downloaded last week, the customer scans the bar code sees that it is available at Amazon and also reads the reviews. The dilemma: The TV is available on Amazon for $200 less and it can be at the door in 2 days….

Amazon might be cheaper, but do they also have geek squad? Is Customer A confident that when he gets home he is able to mount the television on the wall, connect the wires to new fancy Dolby surround sound and internet devices. What will Amazon do when Customer A sends an email, rings the phone, looks for a forum or post the question on Twitter? Truth be told, I am not sure of those answers, but I do know that Best Buy has all of the these things as well as a contact center. I am not saying Amazon does not, I am just less familiar.

One final thought, the phone is part of the contact center of the future – just sayin’

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Mitch Lieberman

The Phone, It Still Matters in this Social, Cross-Channel World

by Mitch Lieberman, on November 16, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , .

First talked about in 1844, written about again in 1854, patented in 1876, argued about for another 10 years, connected across the US in 1915: The Telephone. We cannot forget the importance of Alexander Graham Bell (and many others, to be fair), a native of Edinburgh, Scotland a short trip from the Ciboodle HQ outside of Glasgow. So, here we are nearly 100 years from that first cross country call and the phone remains relevant, even more important than many communication channels which have come on the scene since.

A Chat With Paul Greenberg

“When push comes to shove, social stuff is still, and even email, is degrees of separation. People are nastier in emails than they ever are in person…Consequently, the real one-on-one interaction is always the telephone” Paul Greenberg

I had a great opportunity to spend a few minutes talking with Paul Greenberg while at the Destination CRM show in NYC. It just so happened that during this time we had a video crew on stand-by and were able to spontaneously capture the moments on film, with excellent lighting of course.

During the emergent phase of Social Communications, the phase we are in right now, the core objective of many social platforms is to go get something done on another platform. To some, this is go read this article, to others; this is please go buy something. In the customer service realm, this is often to shift the communications from a channel that is hard, like email or Twitter, to something synchronous and real-time. It is still too difficult to resolve a personal, complex or sensitive issue on a Facebook wall or in 140 characters.

Multi-channel customer service is the wave the present and we will certainly ride this wave into the future. We will see an increase use of social channels for many different things, but we will hop from one channel to the next (Cross-channel) and make contextual decisions based on many things. In the end, when there is an emotionally charged issue, or an urgent issue such as a service outage, insurance claim, bank issue – in person or face to face communication and the telephone will remain critical to problem resolution for many years to come.

“The phone is ultimately how things will get resolved, if it is big enough”

What do you think? Am I being over simplistic? Too conservative in my approach and thoughts? I invite you to give some feedback and challenge me a bit. If you are bold, take a few minutes and take the survey as part of the research we are conducting with thinkJar.

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