Does the "task list" feel like Mount Everest this morning?
The road to success is like any other road we travel. It requires us to take one step at a time.
Focus on one service skill today. Accomplish one task from your "back burner."
Slow and steady wins the race.
I'm cheering for you.
I recently read a great post by John Goodman over at The Retail Customer Experience in which he lays out Five Myths of Customer Service. It's a good, quick read and I particularly enjoyed his Myth #2: Price is the name of the game to expand share and profitability.
In over 15 years of measuring customer satisfaction and service inside client contact centers, I have learned that the easiest way to compete is with price - but it's not the most profitable way. Slashing prices is a sugar high. You get a quick infusion of business from those customers who scurry from supplier to supplier based on price. But, the same customers who came your way to get your low price will scurry right out your door when the competitor lowers their price. The crash comes just as quickly and may leave you lower than when you started.
What your competitor will have the greatest difficulty matching is a great customer service experience. Investing the creation and sustenance of a service culture within your company builds loyalty in your customer base. Customers keep coming back, even if your prices are a little higher than the other guy.
If you want to build long-term customer loyalty, learn to serve your customers well. Find out their expectations. Then build a service delivery system that will meet and exceed those expectations.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and ktylerconk
Heidi Miller has been a kindred spirit in the blogosphere since I first started blogging over three years ago. She has a great post over at the Spoken Communications Blog asking how we're supposed to determine where to cut when customers want us to go the extra-mile (I've always said that there are no traffic jams along the extra mile).
One of the reasons I've come to respect Heidi so much is that she get's it. She spins her own take on the mantra I've been repeating for years. If you really want to make strategic decisions about what your customers want, you should start by asking them - and carefully listening.
FYI: When you're ready to listen to your customers, please feel free to contact me. Getting actionable data from listening to customers is our specialty!
I was grieved to recieve a call yesterday informing me that one of the young operators at a client's call center was in a tragic car accident and is being removed from life support.
For all the numbers and data, Quality Assessment is, at the root of it, a human enterprise. Contact Centers become family. I have always attempted to treat every person I coach and train with dignity and respect (even when, in the moment, individuals may react in angry, disrespectful ways).
It's a sobering, but worthy reminder today. Life is fragile. Let's endeavor to treat each other with care.
The question has been debated for the better part of the last decade. "Does it make sense to send your customer service call center off shore?" It certainly made cents to do so. With lower labor and operating costs, the off-shoring craze saved a ton of money to the bottom line.
But, what is the cost in customer satisfaction? Some companies learned that the cost of customer ire was not worth the savings.
Now, there is more evidence that there is a specific, calculated cost in customer satisfaction when U.S. customers perceive that a call center is off-shore.
Does this mean that off-shoring never makes sense (or cents)? No. One answer does not fit all in this debate. Nevertheless, there is more warning than ever that companies should calculate the cost of lost statisfaction while they are calculating the savings in operation budget.
It's a classic debate in the world of call center quality assessment (QA). Do you use QA to praise Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) so as to encourage them and build their self-esteem? Do you use QA to be critical and hold CSRs accountable to keep them honest? Is there a happy medium, and if so, where is it?
When giving seminars, I often use the word pictures of the "QA Nazi" (who uses QA as a means of beating CSRs into submission) and the "QA Hippie" (who uses QA to give CSRs smiley faces and make their world a "happier place") to represent the extremes on both sides of the spectrum.
My coworker recently forwarded an article to me from NY Times Magazine about some research that's being done on the power of praise and criticism with children. While the research focuses on parents and their children, I would submit that there are some lessons for us all to learn in the QA, training and coaching arena.
The most recent research is finding that undue praise can actually have a negative effect. Those who are constantly and generally praised tend to become more competitive, less motivated and less willing to put out effort towards improvement.
Does this mean that praise isn't important? Not at all. What the research is discovering is that praise is a powerful force when it is specific and sincere.
I'm sure the debate will never end, and I'm not sure that it should. A professor of mine said, "truth lies at the tension between the two extremes," and I've found it apt in many situations. Finding that right balance between praise and accountability is elusive, but one to which all QA teams should strive.
I continually come back to a few key tenets:
No less than three alert readers forwarded me MSN Money's 2009 Hall of Shame. So, I'd better pass it along! Nine of the ten "winners" are repeat offenders. Some might argue that turning things around for some of these corporations is like making a u-turn in an aircraft carrier. Nevertheless, many companies and industries have taken the recession as an opportunity to improve customer service and win market share, and clear improvements have been noted by consumers in certain sectors. In seems, therefore, that annual designation on the Hall of Shame points to a lack of true commitment from the executive and management teams of these companies to make the changes necessary.
The Hall of Shame is a great reminder of the oft forgotten edge on the double edged Customer Service sword. What Customer Service Reps (CSRs) say and how they say it is only part of solution. Positive change in customer service requires an executive management team that is committed to correcting the failed policies and procedures that CSRs are forced to manage and support on the front lines.
A heartfelt "thank you" to Call Centre Helper magazine for naming QAQnA one of the web's "Top 10 Call Center Related Websites" once again this year. We are priviledged to have our little blog be among such great company!
Here's to another great year!
There's been an interesting conversation happening among the North American Call Center Professionals group on LinkedIn. The question originated with someone asking how you measure the effect that abandon rates and ASA have on Customer Satisfaction. In this case, the call center had implemented some internal initiatives to move their metrics, but wondered how it may have affected their customer's satisfaction.
Several have contributed to the discussion:
"This is the ageless question! The answer is like noodle soup. You run out of noodles or broth but not at the same time. My research found the following, 40% of abandons were wrong numbers, 25% solved the problem or did not need services or purchase, 25% called back, 5 percent were not sure why they called, 5 percent were drunk and just wanted to talk to someone! (Smile) We called every number abandoned during a week period to get this data!" - Arnold Talbott
"The correlation between ASA and satisfaction/loyalty can be measured and quantified, as can the correlation between other access-channels/issues and contact-handling attributes by correlated against satisfaction/loyalty and positive/negative WOM. It is an industry and company specific item to be measured. While generalized numbers (TARP's or anyone elses) can serve as a strawman, you really have to measure your customer's experience." - Jeff Maszal
I really liked Jeff's last statement, and completely concur. If you really want to know how your abandon rates or ASA are affecting customer sat, then a small, focused customer survey can easily do the trick. Over a period of time, call customers who abandoned the call and those who did not and ask them a few questions about their overall satisfaction with the experience. Do the same thing with customers who experienced a long wait in queue versus those who had a short wait.
These types of surveys can be relatively simple and do not need to cost an arm and a leg because you're limiting the scope of your inquiry to one basic question: "How satisfied were you with the experience?" The key is not to rely on industry wide numbers that may, or may not, reflect your customer's views. As our group regularly conducts custom surveys like these for clients, we find that there is no substitute for asking your customers about their experience and satisfaction when they called your call center.
If you would like to join my network on LinkedIn, you may use my email address tom@cwengergroup.com to send an invitation!
Mike Sansone linked a great post through Twitter last night. From SmartLemming: the 10 Worst Presentation Habits.
Here are my favorite three from their list (disclaimer: at one time or another I've been guilty of all of them!):
Failure to rehearse: bear with my while I get this to work, oops, sorry about that, I'm not sure why it's doing that. Hold on a sec.
Reciting bullet points: Dude, that's quite a bald spot on the back of your head. In fact, it's the most interesting thing in this presentation as you turn to read the paragraph off your slide.
Which presentation bad habits drive you crazy? Any others that didn't make the SmartLemming list?
Creative Commons photo from Flickr and photo mojo
