Original Publication: Customer Management Insight - July 2007
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Are your customers happy? Six best practices for providing top-notch support — and ensuring a long-lasting relationship.
If this were Cosmopolitan magazine, you might be taking a quiz right now — something like “How to Tell If Your Spouse Is Happy” — then, on the opposite page, you might see tips for “Keeping Your Spouse Coming Back for More.” Well, we’re not too far off here. Customers are a lot like spouses: You need to know what they’re thinking and how to keep the relationship going.
Customer support is the contact center’s — and the organization’s — lifeline in the relationship: It keeps you in control. If you want to keep them coming back, you put on your best outfit and your best party manners; you hang on their every word, taking note of what they like — and dislike — you always want to know if their happy (with you!).
Operational efficiency and effectiveness are important, no doubt, but it takes more to build solid relationships with customers, says says Barton Goldenberg, president of ISM Inc., a CRM strategic advisory firm.
“It requires well though-out business processes that put needed information at your customer support agents’ fingertips, and triage processes that escalate calls quickly to the right person for prompt resolution,” says Goldenberg. “Achieving these business processes can be a challenge. Tip: Start with the customer in mind, document the different scenarios that the customer seeks support for, and build your business processes to address the top 80 percent of these scenarios.”
That so many customer support organizations seem to be overwhelmed amazes Goldenberg. “Too many organizations see their customer support organization as an expense to the firm, and work hard to drive efficiency and effectiveness into their operations so as to keep costs down. Some organizations see their customer support efforts a level higher in terms of driving customer loyalty. Too few organizations have crossed the bridge from achieving efficiency and effectiveness (to keep costs down) to achieving customer loyalty to the next level, namely using customer support as a strategic driver to help an organization achieve its long-term business objectives.”
Kristyn Emenecker, director of solutions marketing for Verint Systems Inc., says that such a new vision of customer support must be realized for organizations to truly serve their customers — and reap the benefits. She says the notion of customer care is changing and expanding with increased Web usage and growing mobile trends.
“But this multichannel environment means that ideas must also expand,” says Emenecker, whose background includes stints in contact center operations (both running and consulting) and on the tech side of things, working in quality monitoring solutions. She offers the incorporation of back-office processes as an example. “You can’t keep everything siloed: Customers want you to know what they’ve already done in every channel, and they want you to know what they’ve already been told or what’s already happened since their previous contact or contacts — no matter what channel they’re using or have used during other steps of the transaction.”
She emphasizes that, as a strategic partner, the contact center practices should drive the enterprise.
But for those contact center practices to work in the enterprise, they must be best practices. Here are some of the best practices in customer support — and the organization that are using them — which we have identified over the past year.
Recruiting and Hiring: Getting the Best Onboard
It’s not easy to build and maintain a high-performing frontline staff. But putting the right people into the right positions is a good start. How? By building a strong and effective recruiting and hiring program that pulls the best candidates into the pipeline and helps you to carefully evaluate each individual. And consider that you need to assess candiates for more than the technical skills to do the job.
Since U.S. Cellular implemented its formal “Five-Point Strategy to Agent Acquisition,” the center consistently meets or exceeds its performance objectives, agent retention rates are higher than industry norms, and customer satisfaction — based on direct feedback survey — “rates us around the threshold of 100 percent consistency,” says Manny Torres, the company’s senior HR director of talent acquisition.
U.S. Cellular’s Five-Point Strategy comprises five critical stages: 1) Announce, 2) Attract, 3) Source, 4) Assess and 5) Acquire.
Another company that looks beyond technical proficiency is Davis Vision. When hiring for the contact center, its managers seek spirit rather than skills. “Finding people who possess qualities that are in line with our corporate credo and values is more important to our organization than obtaining a candidate with the right skill set,” says Tom Iachetta, assistant vice president of customer service. “People can be taught the business processes, but they cannot always learn to be positive, … to treat each other with respect, and to understand that ‘quality’ is doing the right thing.”
The hiring program at Davis Vision is multifaceted and includes input from employees at every level — from existing agents to senior management. Job candidates are given a ringside seat on the contact center floor to observe agents at work so that they can better understand the role.
And the strategy has worked. Iachetta says that many candidates come through referrals from existing employees — a good sign for agent morale. The center’s voluntary turnover was just 16.5 percent in 2006.
Training: Learning to Help
In the evolving customer support landscape, the view of agents is changing. They need to understand their role in the customer support network — and in the enterprise — as well as the other roles, Emenecker says. “Agents need to know a lot. They must be able to walk a customer through a Web site, and be nimble at new technologies.”
As organizations continue to add customer support channels, the demand on agents to learn new skills and processes, and on managers and supervisors to leverage their frontline resources, will only continue to grow. “You’ve got to pack the house with multipurpose agents — or have in place an excellent routing strategy,” says Verint’s Emenecker.
Top-performing companies track and evaluate the impact that agent training has on organizational performance, according to research from the American Society for Training and Development. Many centers are measuring the effectiveness of new-hire training programs, how well new agents absorb the training and apply the skills, and whether or not overall performance improves as a result.
Take a look at McKesson Corp. Its contact center, with the help of its agents, implemented a measurable training initiative that
has resulted in significant gains in productivity, quality, employee morale and customer satisfaction. “All training is now tracked with a value that is consistent for all [agents],” says Susan Evilsizer, manager of support at McKesson’s Charlotte, N.C., call center. “We have assessments that validate their knowledge in each of the different areas they support. We have training agendas to validate what the instructor is teaching. And then there is a class assessment to ensure that individuals get out of the class what they need.”
Having a measurable training program in place also helped to expedite cross-training at McKesson. Identifying and grooming multipurpose agents enabled the consolidation of three groups into one.
Nationwide’s San Antonio Claims Center offers another example. Managers there recognize that everybody works (for some time, at least) at their own level. After a three-week initial training phase, new-hires move to a “nesting area,” a controlled environment where trainees are allowed to field select calls, supervised by a leadership team, as well as a group of senior agents, who assist with questions and coaching.
Surveys and Quality Assurance: Help Me Help You
Customer support can be a solid strategic driver for an organization, says ISM’s Goldenberg. Companies that have succeeded in exploiting the potential of this resource, in his 23 years of experience, view each call or contact as real-time market research. They use formal surveys, but they also add some info gathering on the fly.
“They ask a question or two to the customer or prospect each time they contact the organization. As a result, if there is an issue with a product or service, the organization knows about it soon and can quickly correct the issue,” he says.
“Moreover, these organizations encourage at least one new idea from each customer or prospect contact, and this ‘idea-gathering’ process feeds right into their business development process. The result is new products and services that typically take months to develop can now be achieved in weeks. This is a best practice that all organizations need to implement, but again it takes careful planning and execution.”
Canadian overnight shipping service provider Purolator Courier attributes its 95 percent to 96 percent FCR rate to its multifaceted quality program. A dedicated quality and training team and managers coach agents and look at trends and areas for improvement using call monitoring, customer/agent feedback and root-cause analysis. This information is used to create appropriate training modules that are delivered in monthly training programs.
GE Capital solutions also puts great store by customer data and actionable feedback. One way it uses its survey data — collected during they day and then evaluated overnight by an outside survey firm using random sampling — is to identify process improvement opportunities. “If we find customer satisfaction is lower than expectations on a particular call type, we will review the process around that call type to see what needs to be done to improve customer satisfaction,” explains Ed Faulstick, general manager of the GE Capital Solutions Customer Support Center.
Help Yourself: Self-Service
Self-serve customer support can be counterproductive to an organization’s goal of increasing satisfaction and growing loyalty, if its customers can’t actually serve themselves. For instance, cumbersome, difficult-to-navigate IVR systems have been a common obstacle to customer satisfaction with automated phone service.
That’s not the case for customers calling into Pacific Gas & Electric’s speech-enabled IVR system. PG&E’s sophisticated speech recognition application allows callers to quickly and easily take care of many of their needs without the help of a live agent, reducing operating costs, allowing agents to focus on more complex calls and lowering agent burnout. Overall IVR completion rates increased by as much as 10 percent to 15 percent (higher than expected) after implementation — and customer satisfaction rates have risen significantly across most of the utility’s business areas.
Web self-service can also present navigation challenges for customers. The City of Minneapolis’s 311 contact center is addressing the issue of accessibility by offering its agents as guides, helping visitors navigate to the information they need (while resolving the issue) so they can go right to it the next time they need it.
Offering agents as a backup channel ensures a better customer experience and can potentially reduce the number of routine calls that come into the call center.
Development/Empowerment/Reward: Keeping the Best of the Best
Agents who perform well and inspire their peers are a valuable resource. Developing top performers requires a process for skills growth, engagement and rewards.
That’s what Canadian Tire Financial Services does through its dynamic skill path. The process enables agents to increase their pay in small increments after gaining valuable new skills and knowledge through experience and ongoing training. The company offers its veteran agents elevated roles, such as subject-matter experts and peer coaches (with incrementally higher pay). SMEs assist other agents with complex calls, while peer coaches participate in the quality monitoring/coaching process.
“We feel that the best person to help somebody to be better is someone who does the job very well,” says Scott Williams, CTFS’s director of customer service, “someone who has experience every day on the phone and who knows what it’s like to be [an agent].” Some 15 percent or more of the company’s 400 agents hold these special agent ranks.
Agents who top the performance scale and those that are on their way up need a little boost now and then. It doesn’t matter whether you recognize your agents with a gift card, a day off or a plaque — or just a reason to want to come to work every day and do well, find the rewards that appeal to your best and brightest.
At AMVESCAP Retirement Resource Center, agents who meet or exceed objectives for productivity, schedule adherence and quality can earn as much as $100, a half-day off and a slot on a perpetual trophy. Those agents who go above and beyond are eligible for prizes at a monthly drawing.
Duke Energy offers proactive incentives, focusing on health and well-being. Employees have fitness facility opportunities and a cafeteria that provides a full menu of nutritious food. Mini stress management and prevention seminars are also available.
“The focus on wellness promotes and environment that is less stressful and one of higher morale,” says Bill Mann, contact center manager for Duke Energy. “Employee opinion survey feedback supports an environment focused on increasing wellness. …It has become a way of life for our entire company.”
Mi Casa es Su Casa: Design for Accessibility and Comfort
If you don’t believe contact center facility design and ergonomics have a measurable impact on agent performance and retention, just take a look at Bell ExpressVu’s (a division of Bell Canada) contact center in Toronto, Ont.
When the center experienced a growth explosion, it moved to a larger facility. The new location increased the commute time for existing agents by 20 to 30 minutes. Bell ExpressVu knew it would have to do something to fight attrition, so it contracted with a local architectural design firm to transform the drab and rigid new contact center facility into a modern, high-tech space with a layout that fostered teambuilding with clustered stations opened up to 120-degree angles.
Other design elements improved the overall aesthetics, with interior treatments that made the space feel warmer, for example, by masking overhead cables.
The result: Agent attrition rates did not increase, despite the longer commute; morale in the center is high; and the creative design has become “the envy of other people in the building,” says Mark Knapton, vice president of call center sales and customer service at Bell ExpressVu.
Building Better Web Support
It’s not always easy to track the customer experience with an organization’s Web site, but the Association of Support Professionals, headed by Jeffrey Tarter, is helping to identify those companies who are succeeding at it — and a few best practices along the way.
ASP recently awarded its 11th annual “10 Best Web Support Sites,” which showcases excellence in online service and support, typically for technology providers.
“Most of these companies are offering customers a Web service channel to answer their questions,” says Tarter. “If tech notes are beyond understanding, for example, or if the searchable knowledgebase is incomplete or siloed, it can be one hell of a confusing transaction for the customer.”
ASP focused its awards on a specific set of criteria: overall usability, design and navigation; knowledgebase and search implementation; interactive features; customer experience; and the major site development challenge. Within these areas, support sites are judged on 25 separate performance criteria.
Judging service levels and customer satisfaction is difficult, points out Tarter. “It’s hard to tell when someone abandons the search for knowledge. Online retailers have it a bit easier, being able to track activity through shopping carts, but it’s still difficult.”
ASP offers a more complete description of its award criteria on its Website (www.asponline.com). Those seeking ways to improve their organization’s Web support channel can use these as a tool for self-scoring.
