By Mark Edelman
Vice President, Digital Member Services
Stanford Federal Credit Union
This is not a math puzzle, but rather the way we need to approach our business if we are to be successful. Simply stated; you must consider your employees at least as much as you consider your customers. To remain relevant, we must respond to our customers’ needs in a manner that the customers perceive as timely and valuable. The market demands you develop a premier customer support system with quality employees and you’ll grow your customer base. Competition is competing on product, price and delivery. The companies beating the competition are doing it with service.
When we respond to our customers’ needs the way the customers want, typically with quick resolution to their requests, we gain promoters. Promoters will share online and offline – family, friends, virtual friends, co-workers, classmates, and your list of future customers go on! To make this happen, we must start by creating a working environment where our employees can succeed and thrive.
Here are some keys to balancing the equation:
- Have a clear strategy and clearly communicate that strategy to your employees and your customers.
- Customer support systems for employees and customer facing systems must be intuitive, easy to use, and provide pertinent data.
- Remember your customers and their preferences. Provide this data to your employees at the beginning of each interaction.
- Always look for ways to hear your customer’s voice. Make sure you hear what your employees have to say about the customer experience.
- Customers expect knowledgeable employees who have the authority to make decisions.
- Train your employees with the tools to make good decisions. Follow-up the training by giving the employees the authority for those decisions.
- Have one service level for all customer interactions; customers do not want to wait and employees will take the brunt of the customers’ frustration if the customers’ wait is too long.
We succeed with our customers through our employees…Not in spite of them! Your success starts by developing your employees and providing an environment where the employees can succeed. Leverage technology to enhance the experience for your customers and increase the efficiency of your employees. Technology without a sound service approach will be both expensive and ineffective. The great companies figure this out.
Mr. Edelman has over 20 years of contact center and operations management experience in the financial services sector. He has a passion for customer service and has a stellar track record with start-up operations and turning around poor performing service operations. Recently, he has been a featured speaker at numerous call center conferences and has handled consulting assignments to assess and improve credit union contact centers. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management from California Pacific University.
Reflections from The Chair: “Obsessed with Tools, Toys and Technology!”
By Derek Williams
Chief Executive, The WOW! Awards
International Speaker and Author
Regular Frost & Sullivan Event Contributor
Derek Williams chaired Customer Contact 2015, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. Read on as he reflects on the event and Big Data, (or is it just data?) outsourcing the customer experience, (why?) customer perceptions, (the reality?) the millennials (who will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025) and more…
Friends and newcomers. It’s always great to meet old friends at a Frost and Sullivan event. And so refreshing to also meet the virgins; some of them not quite sure what to expect and maybe a little daunted by a packed schedule.
The schedule does appear daunting. But everyone quickly gets into the swing of things and begins to realise that their time with Frost & Sullivan is going to be a fantastic investment. Every part of the three days is carefully thought through and structured to maximise learning, networking and friendships.
“Obsessed with tools, toys and technology!” Dr Phil Klaus explained how CEO’s see the functions of marketing and operations. “You don’t speak in the language of the board!” There is a challenge to understand our external customers and our internal customers so much better.
But marketing and ops are not totally to blame. 80% of CEOs say that their companies give a great customer experience. Only 8% of customers say that they receive a great customer experience! Spot the gap?
There is no Big Data! Just data. Trouble is that we are measuring the wrong things and don’t practice what we preach. Touch point management does not match customer expectations.
Why do we outsource customer experience? Outsourcing increases probability of churn and negative word of mouth by up to 5 times.
Blame the Finance Directors. Chris Brindley, Managing director at Metro Bank, accuses them of knowing everything about price but nothing about value. As a former FD can I just add in my defence, if all you ever ask your FD to do is count beans then all they will ever do is count beans. So my message to everyone here is bring your Finance Directors with you next time. Let them see the technology, the systems and the best practices in the world so that they can make better investments.
Customer perceptions are reality. Listen to your customers. Perhaps what surprised me most is that so many senior managers are not listening to their customers. Customer forums with senior management present are nothing new; are we really still thinking about it???
Understand that your people are your only differentiator. Metro Bank use technology to do “the heavy lifting” so that their people can make the difference.
Are you B2B or B2C? Don’t even think about it. All businesses are People to People. And if you don’t have a Director of Customer Experience then your customers don’t have a voice at board level.
We do stupid things! Pens attached to the counter with a chain. Car parks “FOR BANK STAFF ONLY”. Do you have a Stupid Rules Policy; a systematic way of getting rid of stupid rules?
Did your customers ask for their calls to be answered by machine? Think about your investment in marketing and communications. Yet your ability to win business hinges on being able to answer the phone. It’s not about how much you invest it’s about how you risk that investment.
It takes two people to say, “NO!” to a customer. But only one person to say, “Yes!” at Metro Bank.
Is man challenging machine? Stephen Loynd tells us that Toyota is replacing robots with people and productivity is increasing.
The millennials are coming. 75% of the global workforce will be millennials by 2025. Employees of the future need to feel that their work is valued. “They don’t want to climb a corporate ladder. They want to play in a jungle gym!”
Tearing down the silos! Fabien Pelous is creating a one stop shop at Air France – KLM by focusing on customer segments. Will this only ever extend to Platinum customers? We look forward to an update next year. Customers only ever see one organisation and don’t understand silos.
“My problem is your challenge!” Don’t blame marketing or HR says Jan Smets. Life in unfair! Remember that the contact centre attracts moments of truth. It’s all about making the connection and bringing relief. Service is what people buy. Customer service is the complete experience including the human element.
Give your business two hearts. One for workforce and operational excellence. One for data analysis. Test everything using the data and don’t be distracted by “Senior Management Opinion Syndrome – everyone is entitled to my opinion!”
Word of mouth might be your greatest opportunity. Post purchase customer experience only produces 24% of revenues but 45% of profits.
Why don’t we ask “WHY?” When we measure customer experience we typically ask what, how and when. But we don’t ask, “Why do they buy?” and, “Why do they buy from us?”
E.ON are making it as easy as ABC. Alignment; help customers get what they want. Benevolence; be a force for good. Competence; be able to deliver what you promise.
Do we measure the right things? Too many organisations might be measuring and rewarding the wrong things. Good to see daily Net Promoter Scores being use at the frontline in Europcar and contributing to both positive and negative bonuses at management level. Probably not enough measurement of Customer Effort Scores for my liking. Making it easy has to be a focus for both external and internal customers.
Working smarter was the theme of Paul van den Berg’s presentation. Using real agents, Plantronics attitude is… “We don’t want to distract our customers from distracting the enterprise. We want to accelerate to engage with customers!”
Catching people doing things right! Maybe not. Most organisations still seem to be focused on catching people doing things wrong. More celebration needed. It doesn’t have to be big but it does need to be sincere and personal. Ties very nicely into what we understand about the millennials wanting to feel valued.
“We’re sorry,” said Kenny Jacobs from Ryanair. “We’ve not been listening to our customers enough. We started to realise that we had a problem when we had lower passenger occupancy than other airlines despite being the cheapest.” Ryanair’s “Always Getting Better” programme looks set to make Ryanair the world’s biggest airline. “Applying much better service to the cheapest service becomes an unbeatable proposition!”
The Ryanair story is another illustration of customers wanting to be smarter in their spending. Aldi, Primark, Hyundai and Ryanair are the fastest growing brands in the UK.
Listen to your customers. Know your place in the market. Measure and reward the right things. Engage your people. Differentiate your service. Use technology appropriately. Be prepared to change. Great learning and great networking with Frost & Sullivan.
Derek Williams is Chief Executive of The WOW! Awards. He is an international speaker, author and regular contributor to Frost & Sullivan events.
For more information about The WOW! Awards and “Catching people doing things right!” call Derek on +44 (0) 1438 310191 or
email Derek@TheWowAwards.co.uk
By Cippy Seidler
Call Center Director
Banner Health
In this session highlight from the 11th Annual Customer Contact 2015, East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, Cippy Seidler, Director, Contact Centers, Banner Health, shares the philosophy and practical takeaways that guided her organization to an 8% turnover rate in 2014.
Staff comes in at entry level – we need to train! What do they want? What do they want to do? Do they have the skill sets we need? Do they have the professional experience? – for example, do they know how to act in a meeting? How to make eye contact, use open / inviting body language, ask questions, show engagement and respect the meeting leader?
This training is really about skills that they can take with them anywhere they go. This is for them PERSONALLY. This isn’t related to their actual work, it’s about tools they need to be successful in other areas of the company or even at other companies.
“As director of the call centers, I am almost a recruiter.” We take the people in, train them, get them excited, they become advocates by telling others about their cool job and how much fun they have there – we want them to tell their like-minded, like-personality friends about it.
What is the effect of your non-job related training?
Audience answers included:
Recognition for top performers – they go to the different office with a mountain view, to see the product manager so they can see what they’re really pushing. They are treated like ROCKSTARS there and it gives them confidence. They are told to go with a voice. It exposes them to different folks, jobs, etc.
- Emerging Leader Program – In house leadership training in consideration for management roles. There are certain requirements but it motivates them, this is for THEM. They are spotlighted, have opportunities to interact with other leaders in organization and have additional opportunities such as attending classes etc….
- Internal cross training opportunities: Staff can get entry level experience working in a different area within the call center. An area of interest for them but also to gain experience
- Know your Agent –What are their strengths? What do they want to do? Then we give them those tasks. Want to be an event planner? Plan a department event.. Like interior design? Decorate the office. If they want to do these things though, they need to be hitting a certain work performance criteria. So it pushes them to do well so they can do what they want
- Career mapping
Why do call center routinely have 50 – 60% turnover? Why isn’t this working? Is this what the employee wanted? Did we ask them?
- What is something that they really want to do? The presenter gave an example of someone who she really wanted to make a “coach” but the lady was hesitant. Then, she was asked what she really wanted. She said CPR training. Cippy said okay fine – do it and this made the employee very happy. It’s not really related but because they gave her the opportunity, the retention of the employee was so much higher because she LIKED the company. The employee now has added responsibility because of her skill set in the office. Opportunity for growth, recognition and then she tells other people about it.
- What does it cost to replace a call center agent? Weight that against what it costs to give her two 8 hour shifts to go to CPR training? Partially engaged employee became 100% engaged employee.
- “I just saved us 30 thousand dollars today. Nobody quit today!”
- One of the audience members offered this input about their own company: Every employee in the company, every agent, is allowed to have a stake in policy and process making – by the end of the year there will be no managers in the company at all. It’ll be full democracy. They can go to and have a seat at any meeting.
Ask yourselves: What’s in it for them? Does it make their job easier?
People want to feel like what they do is meaningful and matters. Imagine what would happen if we closed our doors (call centers) for 1 day. You need to make it so that their job is so meaningful that the company literally cannot go on without them.
Moving staff from agent to ambassador. Ambassador is more of a role model --someone who welcomes new people etc… Advocate is someone who truly believes in your company’s mission, strategic initiatives, etc.
THIS STEP LOWERS YOUR TURNOVER – THEY ARE INVESTED HERE. THIS IS THE NUGGET!
An employee road map is what the agents can expect from their leader– 30 days, 60, 90, 1 year. RATHER THAN their road map of what they’re expected to wear, what they’re expected to do, etc. Customer agents are met with once a month in a one-on-one to make sure this is happening, let them know they have someone to talk to if customers aren’t always nice, etc.
It’s key to your team that you take calls every now and then so your team knows you are not removed.
Real proof – in 2014, Banner Health’s turnover rate was lowest in 10 years.
EXIT QUESTION: If your BEST employee told you they were leaving today? What would they say as their reason to leave?
Audience input - Even if you aren’t offered a promotion while someone else is (internally or not) –you will receive a in-perosn meeting explaining that in your interview we saw these strengths, here is how we think you can work on those. And, do you have an idea of how you want to work on those? Instead of leaving, there are little ways we can recognize an employee’s strengths and make them want to stay.
Cippy Seidler is an enthusiastic leader focused on providing a high-level customer experience through employee engagement and a commitment to excellence. In the span of 28 years, Cippy has served in leadership positions with retail organizations such as Liz Claiborne, Allen-Edmonds, and Zayre with a specialized focus on front-end customer engagement and retention, and employee training and sales development. Currently a Director of Call Centers with Banner Health, one of the largest, nonprofit health care systems in the country, she is responsible for driving performance across multiple service lines.
By Rosetta Carrington Lue
Chief Customer Service Officer
and Executive Director
Philly311 Contact Center
City of Philadelphia
It Started with a Simple Idea
In 2008, Mayor Michael A. Nutter came to me with the idea for Philly311. The goal was to make city government more effective and transparent by creating a contact center that could manage all of the citizens’ requests. The system would improve efficiency by submitting the requests directly to the appropriate department in the proper format. He had a simple requirement – he wanted all calls to be answered by the third ring. That was his standard for service in 2008, but since then we have accomplished so much more. We have more than a 90% customer satisfaction rating. The contact center is available on many channels; including a mobile app that is one of the few 311 apps in the country, and our award winning social media services.
Anytime a service is being provided, the person receiving that service is a customer of the provider, even in the public sector. This article explains how Philadelphia became a more connected city by focusing on our customers, getting our staff to believe in our mission, and changing the culture of government to be more accessible, responsive, and adaptable.
Treat Citizens like Customers
This customer-centric model is still relatively new to government. We have taken a traditionally private sector ideology and applied it to the public sector. Using the private sector as an example, we re-evaluated local government’s relationship between citizens, visitors, and business owners. With this new perspective, citizens, visitors, and business owners are the City of Philadelphia’s customers, and their customer experience becomes a priority. The City of Philadelphia wants all of its customers to be satisfied and to continue to live, work, and play in our City. By incorporating new ideas and values into our process, we are reinvigorating city government in Philadelphia. We are creating a culture that focuses on our customers and that operates with integrity and responsiveness.
Get the Staff Invested
At Philly311, ensuring that employees are fully invested in our mission is key to building a customer-centric culture. We wanted to make sure that all of our employees and city departments understood the reason for and value of being a service oriented organization. This took time, planning, and consistent follow through. As a result of our efforts, we now have an amazing team of highly motivated individuals. When your agents believe in the work they are doing and understand our ultimate common goals, they can work more independently, and will strive to achieve the best results possible without being micro-managed. A staff that is inspired by what they do will always produce better results than a staff that is worried about consequences or meeting the bottom line.
Transform the Culture of Government
Philly311 is a vehicle to establish a standard of customer service for all of city government. Our customers are at the center of our day to day operations. Additionally, we are creating a new mentality of customer service in city government. Philadelphia takes an innovative approach to connecting the community to the City with dynamic communication models, and citywide initiatives. We offer resources and workshops to train city employees on how to deliver outstanding service. We help other departments set measurable outcomes, performance metrics, and share best customer service practices about how to meet their goals. We understand that any interaction a customer has with a city department or agency can impact the way they view city government overall.
Be Available at the Customer’s Convenience
For example, we have multiple channels to engage our customer. We want our customers to reach us on a platform that is comfortable and easily accessible. Anyone can submit requests through our call center, walk-in center, mobile application, social media platforms, self-service web portal, or email. Our mobile app and website are operational 24/7, the call center is active from 8am-8pm, and walk-in services are available from 9am-5pm. Our mobile application comes in 17 different languages to ensure that everyone has a chance to be heard, and to honor the incredible diversity of Philadelphia.
Be Responsive and Adaptable
We listen to our customers’ concerns, observing trends in request type and location, and obtaining meaningful user feedback by monitoring social media, reviewing reports to analyze data, and taking customer surveys. With these tools, we are able to adapt our system and our services to meet the customers’ needs. We want citizens to feel like government is really working for them. We aim to empower citizens to make a difference in their communities by giving them a direct line of communication to their government. We are increasing accountability and internal communication as well.
Be a Leader; Set an Example
More local government officials are coming to understand how a 311 system can improve the relationship between citizens and their government. Philadelphia is a national model because of our innovative strategies, successful growth, and high customer satisfaction. Putting our customers first revolutionizes the way that the City delivers important services that affect the quality of life. We hope that other cities can learn from, implement, and expound on the work we have done in Philadelphia to create a connected city.
Rosetta Lue has over 15 years of hands-on experience in business operations and senior leadership in both the public and private sectors. She is recognized as an expert in customer experience management across diverse industries in both the private and public sectors, including domestic and international markets.
By Brooke Thorpe
Event Producer
Frost & Sullivan
Here are the top takeaways and dynamic customer-centric strategies discussed at Customer Contact 2015 East. If you didn’t attend this exciting event (and even if you did) you’ll want to review and leverage these wide-ranging and inspiring trends and ideas in your own organization or use them as guidelines to develop your own implementable action plan now that the event is over.
- The Millennial generation and their influence as employees in the contact center
- New trends in Social Media and their influence in contact center operations
- Innovation in contact center agent training methods
- Leadership, team work and maintaining a positive work environment
- New trends in data mining and the importance of using data effectively
- Using digital technology and multi-channel applications to improve the customer experience
- Fine-tuning strategy and new strategic insights of the customer contact industry
- The importance of company culture and its impact on operations performance
- Innovative ways of creating and increasing revenue through the contact center
- Aligning efforts across the company with the contact center to strategically achieve goal
Did you attend the event? Have a takeaway of your own you’d like to share? Have a great content idea for future programs? Email Brooke.Thorpe@frost.com with your feedback
By Lindsey Walker
Integrated Marketing Solutions Coordinator
Frost & Sullivan
On March 18, 2015, Frost & Sullivan’s Michael DeSalles , Principal Analyst, Customer Contact, led an engaging panel discussion titled: Next Generation Customer Care: 10 Strategies in 20 Minutes. Michael was joined by Derek Williams, Chief Executive Officer of the WOW! Awards, and Dr. Phil Klaus, a leading customer experience expert and keynote speaker. Both presenters delivered insights on how to truly focus on the customer experience. Below, are each speaker’s biggest takeaways from the webinar.
1. Focus on the journey of your employees
Williams’ main point was the importance of focusing on employee recognition. He referenced a quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, “I can get my men to die for a ribbon, but I cannot get them to die for money.” Creating a supportive employee environment, with an actively involved leadership program, is one of Williams’ critical recommendations for supporting employees. He quoted a Gallup study that said, “a 5% Improvement to employee engagement, can add a 2% increase in sales.” This statistic gives empirical evidence of the importance employee recognition. Derek also mentioned how recognition shouldn’t be attached to reward, for it to be a successful motivator. “Good” recognition, involves a compliment that is genuine, that will motivate an employee to excel. All of these save money by reducing “employee attrition and absence.” Most organizations find this a daunting task, but once the benefits are realized, it’s important to keep the recognition program going.
2. Explore the importance of the Customer Experience (CX) in your business
Klaus’s insight provided another outlook on focusing on the customer experience, and capturing the true behaviors of the customer. He led with the statement that “8 out of 10 customer experience strategies are not even profitable.” While customer experience is here to stay, sometimes gaining the support of stakeholders is a challenge. Klaus says “the business case can only be made if you make the case in terms of business, showing an ROI.” The impact of the strategy must be shown, in terms of spending and return. It’s important to learn about which process are working, and speak the language of the board you are pitching to. When asked if there are any “must-haves” in terms of processes that facilitate the customer experience programs, Klaus responded that learning about customer behavior as opposed to their intentions, is the most important measurement.
Visit www.frost.com/ccsweb to hear more of Phil and Derek’s dynamic customer-centric strategies, in addition to their answers from the audience question and answer session! Additionally, you can gain real world insight and experience by meeting the presenters in person at the 9th Annual Customer Contact 2015, Europe: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange on June 8-10, 2015 in Scandic Copenhagen, Denmark. Visit www.frost.com/cce for more information and for instructions on registering for the event.
By Derek Williams
Author and Creator of The WOW Awards
The WOW! Group
It’s your first day in a new job.
This is the job that you really wanted. The one that you saw advertised and immediately knew was for you. The one that you spent hours crafting an application letter for. The one that required you to beat all the other applicants at interview. The one where you anxiously awaited the postman or an email to see if you’d been successful.
New suit. Clean shirt and your favourite tie. Shoes freshly polished. Hair cut just right.
You’re keen. You arrive early. You greet each new person with a warm smile. Trying hard to build rapport without seeming to be over confident. You go out of your way for customers. There’s a spring in your step and a friendly ring to your voice.
Now look around. No matter what job you’re in and no matter how long you’ve been there. Does everyone around you have the energy and enthusiasm of new starters? Or has their energy and enthusiasm dwindled? Are they still there because they love what they do or are they simply there because they haven’t been able to escape yet?
Is there a link between leadership, customer service and business success? Absolutely! Research by the Strategic Planning Institute found that businesses which gave good service grew twice as fast as those with poor service. And, in all my years of researching customer service, I’ve yet to find a business with weak leadership giving great service.
So what are the qualities that I’ve observed?
Leaders need to have a vision of what they want to achieve. How will anyone ever sign up to a cause if there is no cause to sign up to?
The vision needs to be communicated. Let everyone share in it. Let them see what is in it for them by becoming a follower.
Great leaders have passion. The strength and the energy to work against the odds to achieve their vision.
Great leaders delegate and empower. That doesn’t mean that they simply dump on their people. But they create structure, they allocate responsibility, they help to create systems, they provide support and training and resources. And they empower their people to make decisions. This is part of what makes people feel significant.
There’s respect. Great leaders sometimes have to take tough decisions but there’s always respect for their people. They treat their employees as customers – internal customers.
More communication. How are we doing? What are we doing? What new is happening? Successful business leaders are masters at keeping their people informed. Notice boards are up to date and informative. Key performance indicators are understood and displayed. Targets are set and success is celebrated. This is how leaders create a sense of community.
People are motivated to do what’s important. If you believe that customer service is important to your business what are you doing to motivate your people to deliver great service? Bonuses based purely on profits are not the answer. In fact, monetary rewards for work that requires more than basic cognitive thought may be counter-productive. One of the key drivers of great employee engagement is simple recognition.
Great leaders stick to principles. One of my favourite organisations is Pret A Manger; I love the service they give their customers. I wrote to their Chief Executive, Julian Metcalfe, and asked if I could spend time in his business researching what they do and how they do it. I promised that I was only looking to report a positive view and that Julian would have the final say on anything that I wanted to publish.
The next day, Julian called me up to thank me for my interest but explained that he would decline my offer. He went on to explain that he is incredibly proud of his people and what they achieve but he could not collaborate on any project that might be seen to praise his business. Julian told me of an old Chinese proverb – “The higher that the monkey climbs the tree the more that you can see of it’s backside”. I understood what he meant and admired his principle.
Great leaders walk the walk and talk the talk.
There’s a famous story about a group of visitors to Disney. They were walking in the Magic Kingdom when they saw a grey haired man walk out of his way to pick up a piece of litter. One of the group approached the man and asked, “How many custodians are there here?” The man replied, “45,000”. The guest was surprised at so many.
The next day the group attended a Traditions meeting and the same grey haired man was there. His name was Michael Eisner, Chairman and CEO of Disney.
And great leaders keep the energy going.
I have been fortunate enough to spend some time at Richer Sounds. Richer Sounds is a hi-fi store that has been in the Guinness Book of Records for many years for the highest retail sales per square foot of any retail business anywhere in the world.
Throughout my day at Richer Sounds, members of the Team were regularly checking their performance against target. They kept reminding each other about hitting target and getting together for a drink at the end of the week. There was a buzz and the Team was loving it.
How would I sum up leadership in one sentence? It’s simply creating a Team of people with the skills and experience of older employees but the energy and enthusiasm of new employees. If you’re the boss, does this describe the people who work in your business?
Derek Williams is an author and international speaker on customer service and employee engagement. He is Chief Executive of The WOW! Awards; a process that allows customers to catch people doing things right. This highly motivational process is now being used by organisations as diverse as Durham Constabulary, Jones Lang LaSalle, United Utilities, Which? and Citizens Advice – all leaders in their field for customer service.
