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
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!
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.
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!
I am a patient person. Nevertheless, I've learned that I can also be an emotional volcano. I am very slow to anger, and I rarely erupt, but there is a limit to how much frustration I will bear before the explosion is bound to occur. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is true about me. Because of this, family, friends, and service providers will often misread me and my responses. I don't look angry. I'm not screaming and yelling. So, they conclude, everything is just fine when it's not. In reality, there's an eruption brewing just below my calm exterior.
You can't always tell what a person is thinking and feeling.
When creating criteria for your Quality Assessment (QA) scale or monitoring form, it's best to clearly define the behaviors you're listening for from the Customer Service Representative (CSR) on the phone. The easiest way to stay objective is to measure that which you can hear and know. Keep your criteria limited what the CSR says to the person on the other end of the conversation.
It's quite common to find companies or individuals basing their assessment on what they perceive the customer thinks or feels. I've seen QA scales that are based on how well the CSR met or exceeded the customer's expectations. However, unless you interview each customer, you're making specious judgements about what that customer thought of the experience. In addition, some customers will never be satisfied. It would not be appropriate to rate the CSR's effort based on an uncontrollable outcome.
People also like to make arguments based on the perceived response or lack of response from the customer. "I shouldn't be penalized for not saying 'please,'" a CSR might argue, "because the customer clearly didn't care whether I said it or not." But, you don't know what that particular customer thought, felt or perceived. Just like my friends thinking that I'm perfectly calm when there is an eruption brewing beneath the surface. QA is not intended to be a crystal ball that looks into the mind of each customer.
We can know, for a fact, what drives our customers' satisfaction on the whole. A good customer satisfaction survey will provide us with this information and it can be critically important in defining the elements we expect as part of our QA criteria. But to try and judge an individual call based on perception of the customer's response is an exercise in futile subjectivity.
We can't control or accurately read every customer's mind, but we can control what we say to each customer and how we say it.
Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and nancee_art
A few weeks ago I was fortunate to be in London for a few days with my wife, and I met up briefly with Jonty Pearce who edits Call Centre Helper magazine in the UK. Jonty and I enjoyed a follow up conversation over the phone. If you're unfamiliar with his on-line magazine, it's worth bookmarking and making frequent visits.
I loved their current article on how we respond to difficult customers. After writing a few posts of my own on some practical ideas to use with difficult customers, I appreciated Christine Knott's psycho analytical take on the subject. I believe we can learn a lot from looking at the same subject from different perspectives and disciplines.
Christine shares that, when faced with a difficult customer, we often unconsciously revert to one of three "ego states":
Parent ego state: represents the occasions when during conversations we respond in a manner that copies the behaviours and actions of parental or influential figures from our lifetime. Can you recall instances when you’ve heard yourself thinking ‘I sound just like my mother/father/teacher’? You are reflecting and copying their behaviour.
For example, during a conversation a person may display anger by shouting at someone because they learnt from an early age that when the parent shouts the child takes notice.
Adult ego state: represents the occasions when during conversations we draw on our lifetime of experiences as an adult to guide us objectively to a positive outcome. When we are in our Adult state we see, hear and respond to people as they really are, and have an understanding of why they are reacting as they do, rather than accepting at face value the way they choose to communicate.
For example, if during a telephone call our organisation is criticised we would respond with a calm, logical response which aimed at reducing or removing the emotion from the discussion in order to resolve issues in a logical and factual manner. We would adopt this state having learnt throughout our lifetime that shouting, sulking, answering back or other emotional states will detract from our ability to reach a solution, and extend the time needed to reach it.
Child ego state: represents the occasions when during conversations we revert to behaving, feeling and thinking similarly to how we did in childhood.
For example, during a conversation a person who receives criticism may react as they did in their childhood when they were reprimanded. This reaction may take on an emotional form, crying, sulking, answering back or perhaps feeling ashamed or angry.
I'm reflecting on conversations I had yesterday, and I can identify all three ego states in my reactions to different people.
How about you?
