In case QAQnA readers are among the few who have not seen this YouTube video I'm posting it. Since I've had my own issues with United Airlines (and own a Taylor guitar, btw), I couldn't resist helping give the story legs.
Customers who find creative ways to tell their story sometimes get a better audience to their frustrations.
Thanks to Michael Libbie of Insight on Business for having me on his webcast to talk about customer service! The entire show can be viewed here.
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
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.
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
Another potential cost savings for large companies and call centers is found in the jungle of their telephony contracts. Bill Hansen of Teleplus Consulting is a long time friend and colleague who has an interesting business proposition that costs you nothing but can potentially save you a tremendous amount of money.
I find that the most profound things are simple, and Teleplus' business is simple. Bill and his team will pour over all of your voice, data, and wireless contracts. They actually read the fine print. They know the industry inside and out. They know all of the current schemes, scams and competitive rates. They find out if you're in a good position or if you're getting ripped off. They can point out places where you can save. If you're getting ripped off, they will go to bat for you to help negotiate or re-negotiate your contracts. At the end, all they ask is a capped percentage of your savings. If they can't save you any money, they simply congratulate you and walk away (and you never get a bill).
I know companies have saved millions of dollars. I know, if I was on the leadership team of a large company, I would want to be the hero who emailed Bill and recruited him to play for our team. He's someone you want in your bull pen.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and Tracy Olson
In this economy, everyone is looking to save a buck. Companies are slashing budgets and trying to salvage the bottom line.
So where is the savings within the QA program?
The biggest cost in most QA programs are the time, energy and resources it takes to sit down, listen to, and properly analyze a phone call. It requires man hours to do the task.
So start by looking at your sample sizes and crunch the nubers. Depending on the goals of your program, you generally don't need to analyze hundreds of phone calls to get an accurate reflection of a CSRs service. If you have a well designed, behaviorally anchored QA scale, then a small sample of randomly selected calls will do the trick. I have been in call centers who will measure hundreds of phone calls for a given CSR. It's overkill.
Consider the pollsters who can accurately guage the opinions of 175 million Americans by talking to 1,000. It's statistically possible to do so with a small margin of error, if you do it right. QA works in the same way. You can get an accurate reflection of a CSRs service over thousands of calls by listening to just a handful, if you do it right.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickrand Aaron Kyle
Gaelic Storm is one of my favorite bands. Amidst their catalog of excellent music you'll run across a song I love, called "Kellie's Wellies". The comic tune tells the story of a young lad in Ireland who was so poor that, when the winter was over, he chopped off his Wellington rubber boots, painted on some laces and passed them off as tennis shoes. As the boy grew, he continued with his unique and unexpected footwear. The songwriter is eventually surprised at the result:
The next time we found him, well the girls were all around him
He was busting the moves, he was happy as can be
One of the girls came near, and whispered in my ear...
"Only boys who wear their wellies have a chance wit' me."
In our pursuit of delivering a consistent, quality customer experience, it's easy to turn a service framework into a stale, robotic script. It may be an excellent service experience, but it doesn't really stand out as memorable. We can never forget that, while customers appreciate a consistently excellent experience, it is often the unexpected touch of individual style and panache that raises the moment of truth into in indelible memory for the customer.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and worldofoddy.
One of the most critical questions companies must ask is how to protect customer information that ends up on call recordings. Until now, most of the security measures are centered around who has access to recorded phone calls and screen capture videos.
A recent post over at Call Center Script made me aware of the fact that IBM recently announced that they are developing speech analytics software that will recognize when customers are providing critical, personal information and will block it in the recording - as well as blocking personal information from being recorded on the screen capture.
This appears to be good news, but there are two critical questions:
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and simeon barkas.
It's a common dilemma we all have experienced. You call a company and press or say your account number into the front-end IVR (usually after navigating through a few lists of options). When you eventually reach the Customer Service Representative (CSR) he or she then immediately asks you for your account number. After pulling up your records and determining that you really need to speak to another person, you are transferred to another CSR who asks you for your account number.
Clearly, the technology exists to transfer this information from IVR to desktop or from one CSR to another CSR, but there is often a breakdown in technology or in communication. What may seem like a back-burner technology issue for you is a front-burner irritation for your customers.
The transfer of customers and data may seem like a small matter, but it's a front-end matter for those who are calling you!
