Reframing Customer Experience: New Anchor Facts Drive New Solutions

The iconic 1940s baseball pitcher, Satchel Paige, once said, "It ain't what you know that will hurt you, it's what you think you know, that just ain't so". How very true. Many of us in the customer service business for 5, 10 or 20 years, think we know what drives customer experience scores. But what if what we thought was true - just wasn't? What if we questioned what we thought we knew, and found out that in fact, we’ve been wrong? What actions would we take? What new solutions would we come up with? What new conversations would take place with our technology staffs?

Having been a consultant for a number of years, I can share (just between us) one of the secret techniques used in innovation. Find a new anchor fact that can help reframe the problem, and thereby create new solutions. These anchor facts are often found deep in the research dungeons of noted consulting and research firms, but often unavailable to those who cannot afford the research report or the consultant. For example:

• What if you found solid research that quantified the percentage of calls that most centers are handling, because the company’s website failed to do its job? Failed to answer the question, or failed due to customer experience design flaws? Would you have an interesting and pointed conversation with technology and website design team? I think so!
• What if you knew the four front-line representative skills that made for a "WOW call"? That is right – a call in which the customer actually said – "WOW, you were so________". Most call centers only get 1% WOW calls. What if you could move that to 10%? You’d have to know what those four representative skills or attribute were, wouldn’t you? Do you want to know the four attributes customer usually site (in the fill-in–the-blank above)? Then you'd rush out and change your training and coaching programs, no?
• What if you knew that in general, customers said reps in call centers could not find the answers ____% of the time? (Hint – it is a very bad number!) What would you do? How would that change your training? Your knowledge management technology?

Many companies "in the know" don’t share what they know, because they consider it "competitive edge" stuff. She will share 18 new customer experience process metrics that contact centers could be measuring right now, but don't. These measures are projective of customer satisfaction and experience scores.

Several years ago, a new word was coined by the SNL late night comedy gang – "truthiness" – that is, something that sounds truthful, but in fact, is not. Let’s think about what we think we know. Let’s question the basics, in light of new research. Let’s think about measuring customer experience in a new way.