Frost & Sullivan Announces 2016 Customer Service Excellence Recognition Program

By Stephen Loynd
Global Program Director - Customer Engagement
Digital Transformation Practice
Frost & Sullivan

In response to great interest from our customers, Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce the launch of our 2016 Customer Service Excellence recognition program. This program will identify and recognize best-in-class companies, organizations, and leaders for excellence in customer experience strategy and implementation.

Digital transformation of customer experiences is a major strategic initiative for B2C and B2B organizations across industries. Based on our research, we have identified five key areas that businesses are looking at to drive differentiated customer experiences in 2016 and beyond. These are:

1. Omnichannel Customer Experience
2. Mobile Customer Care
3. Web Customer Care
4. Social Media Customer Support
5. Customer Engagement Analytics

Best-in-class brands continue to raise the bar for highly personalized and effortless customer experiences in these areas. These experiences help cement long-term customer relationships and build greater brand loyalty and advocacy. As a result, these companies are able to attract, retain, and grow more customers than their competitors, while keeping service costs lower.

Companies will be vetted through a rigorous two-stage evaluation process. The first stage will involve completing an application questionnaire. The questions posed will cover a range of customer engagement capabilities and business outcomes.  Responses will be scored and graded against other applicants within each of the five categories.  Companies can choose to apply in one or more categories, provided responses are complete for each section.

Companies that qualify will then move to the second stage for evaluation by a judging panel. The panel of judges will include experts from the industry and Frost & Sullivan research analysts.

Selected winners will be recognized at the Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact West Executive MindXchange in October, 2016.

Brief Description of Recognition Categories

1. Omnichannel Customer Experience: This category will recognize companies for excellence in Omnichannel Customer Service strategy and implementation. This takes into account current and future customer engagement capabilities in traditional and digital channels.
2. Mobile Customer Care: This category will recognize companies for excellence in customer care in mobile customer interaction channels. These include mobile apps, messaging, and integrated self-service and assisted service capabilities.
3. Web Customer Care: This category will recognize companies for excellence in online customer engagement. This includes web self-service, chat, and integrated customer collaboration and support capabilities.
4. Social Media Customer Support: This category will recognize companies for excellence in social media customer service. This includes internal channels such as customer communities and support forums, as well as external channels such as Facebook and other social media sites.
5. Customer Engagement Analytics: This category will recognize companies for excellence in leveraging analytics to deliver differentiated customer experiences, while driving improvements in operational KPIs for the organization.

To apply or learn more, please contact Caryn Brown at:
caryn.brown@frost.com
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Stephen Loynd, Global Program Director, Digital Transformation Group, Customer Contact, Frost & Sullivan, will be leading a VISIONARY INSIGHT session on Game Changing Technologies on the Horizon at our 12th Annual Customer Contact 2016, East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. Click here to register or learn more: www.frost.com/ccs
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They Said What? Three Tips for Leveraging Social Media to Bring the Voice of the Customer into the Call Center

By Katie Laird
Director of Social Marketing and Public Relations
Blinds.com






With the rise of Social Media, your customers have a platform to amplify their feelings, needs and wants on a scale that no businesses before us have ever had to contend with.  While the vast majority of businesses understand the importance of listening to their customers online, many still keep this valuable feedback in a silo within their Marketing or PR departments – never to see the light of day in the contact center.

Here are three tips to help you bring the Voice of your Social Customer front and center within your call center so that customer-facing contact center employees may also grow and learn from the candid observations and questions customers share on the social web.

1. If it matters, visualize it – Be strategic in the way that you communicate information that matters to your organization across your call center floor.  If customer feedback on social media is important to your leadership, make sure the communication method matches the importance you place in it. Translation: Don’t stick it in an occasional email and hope everyone ‘gets it’.
   
   At the Blinds.com office, we prominently display live feedback about our brand on an enormous wall of monitors near the sales department entrance to ensure our salespeople understand the importance of their jobs to the overall customer experience.  This has prompted many interesting conversations around trends that sales reps are noticing on the phones as supported by social chatter and more than a few proud moments when a particular rep is praised online to an audience of thousands.
   
   It’s important to note that this visualization doesn’t really require a serious investment in video technology, if that’s not in the budget this year.  It’s all about customizing the communication to your company’s style and voice.  Perhaps you have a ‘Facebook Feedback’ whiteboard where you quote the latest happy customer and share some Facebook customer-generated ideas on how to improve in the future.  Or maybe it’s as simple as printing screenshots out and posting them on a break room bulletin board to honor the reps that provided Twitter mention-worthy service.  The point is, regardless of the medium, if you care about it – show it!  And show it consistently, frequently and strategically to drive the point home:  We value customer feedback from all channels in all forms.


2. Bake Social – and customer feedback – into your culture! – If your company has historically eschewed Social Media for marketing or employee personal use, it may feel a little foreign to openly and actively embrace Social Customer feedback.  Take a couple of steps back and see how you, as a company and contact center, might be able to re-visit your approach to Social Media usage and monitoring.
   
   Cross-departmental collaborations with our contact center and Social Marketing departments have made it easier to not only find effective ways to get our customers to pro-actively share feedback, photos and videos on social media about their experience with our brand and products – but we have also, together, found interesting ways to encourage sales and customer service reps to happily push those social channels when they work with our customers.
   
   This collaborative approach to the Social Customer voice further increases the likelihood that we’ll get customer feedback worth talking about AND gets employees talking about it too!  We complete the circle by featuring contact center rep stories, photos, videos and customer projects on our social channels to help them grow their personal brands and further increase the attention our contact center pays to social channels and the customers that prefer to engage there.


3. Think beyond the comment card – One last thought on allowing the social customer voice to play a larger role in your contact center is to re-think what it means to receive customer feedback.  At a certain point, your standard QA-ing of phone calls and post call surveys will only get you so far in learning what your customers love, dislike, need and desire.  And, let’s be honest, sometimes we get bored seeing the same old reports with the same old kinds of content.  Let’s get creative in how we bring the customer voice into our daily conversations.
   
   Consider how and what you solicit from customers and what an easy test to gather unique customer content might look like using social as a data gathering platform.  Think beyond the typical kind of customer feedback you ask for (‘on a scale of one to awesome, how likely are you to…’) and take advantage of the mobile nature of social to ask customers for richer content.  Nearly every one of our customers has -- or has access to -- a smart phone with a great camera for photos and video.
   
   Our Blinds.com contact center reps respond incredibly well to the variety of customer photos, video testimonials, Tweets, voice mails and hand written thank you cards that we collect and share.  Different employees respond to different kinds of feedback and different customers prefer to leave feedback in different ways – so it works well!
   
   Whether you display this data on a Jumbotron or simply find unique newsletter content that strikes up conversations and healthy competition (who received the most Facebook mentions this month?), there are few more cost effective and downright interesting ways to feature the voice of your, very social, customer.

Katie Laird is the Director of Social Marketing for Blinds.com, the world's largest online window covering store that was recently acquired by The Home Depot. Katie oversees public relations, Social Media Marketing and customer referral program efforts.

She is currently most excited about building personal brands within the Blinds.com organization to grow community outreach and sales.  With an extensive background in web marketing and social media strategy, Katie is a champion of connecting smart people with brand experiences and products that matter.

UPIC Health Focuses on Culture Social Takes Care of Itself

By Mary Tucker
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
UPIC Health






My company doesn’t have a social media strategy. And we are overwhelmed with growth (best problem to have!) having increased our topline revenue by 24% in only our first year of operation, with another 30% increase on track in 2016.  

My company doesn’t have a social media strategy. And in an industry where employee engagement is low and attrition is high, my company suffered a minor 10% attrition in 2015 – and we learned some lessons from that 10%!  
Our remaining team consistently brings new ideas to better serve our clients, their patients and each other.

What’s going on here?

Digital Disengagement

I proudly pronounce from time to time I was an early adopter of LinkedIn.  Early in 2003, I was living and working in Atlanta, GA and a friend and colleague sent me a note with a link to join because somehow he knew so and so who started this “company” and “its really cool – so just do it.”  I recall doing as I was told (I trusted my friend and colleague)  and once on the site recall thinking how much easier it could make recruiting and vetting potential employees! What a great idea - I needed to spread the good word!  And so I started sending notes to more friends and colleagues stating “a friend of mine knows so and so who started this company and it’s really cool……”  And these folks signed up and my network grew.

Jump to 2016 and only 1 of our employees has a LinkedIn profile, and it’s not up to date.

When I was dragged onto Facebook in 2009, I recall delighting in finding old friends I hadn’t seen in years and reconnecting in a way that satisfied my human need for community without actually having to leave my sofa!  Like a never ending cocktail party, I could choose which conversations to engage in and when to leave without having to suffer through long goodbyes and accusations of being a party pooper. 

50% of our team has abandoned Facebook altogether with the remaining 50% stating “I’m not really into it so much anymore.”

Twitter remains a mystery to me despite my having an account – a point of view shared by nearly everyone on my team.  We often laugh together at the idea that communication can be summed up as a “tweet” – as though we are all a flock of birds flying in formation, shouting instructions at each other through hashtags.

Social Service Myth

In September 2015, Marketwire published a study conducted by Mattersight* whose two key findings were:

• Only one percent of millennials want to contact a company via social media for service issues;
• More than half of millennials prefer to call a company for customer service, yet 85 percent report experiencing a negative person-to-person service interaction in the past year.

The study goes on to summarize that “millennials crave emotional connections from their communications.  Whether at work or in a social setting, with friends or with brands, millennials prefer direct human interactions that are based on respect -- and their expectations are rising every day.”

My company experiences this phenomenon every day as phone calls to our Patient Interaction Center continues to increase with each iteration of digital solution in care, optimized to simplify the patient experience.  Sometimes – most times – a patient just wants to hear a kind and caring voice assuring them the awful disease they think they have after exhaustively researching their symptoms on WebMD is very likely NOT what they’re suffering from but hey “why don’t you come and let’s get you checked out.”

Rethink Social as “Access to Kindness”

Armed now with personal experience validated by data we decided to focus our Brand position entirely on our culture and let social media take care of itself – as and IF it makes sense to our culture.  We are dedicated to continuously increasing team empowerment through continuous training and knowledge management;  we define our Brand through our “E’s of Use” – Empathy, Engagement and Efficiency – as our tongue in cheek nod to technology while celebrating the best of human to human contact; we drive the message that social engagement is ONLY valuable when in support of enlightenment and perpetuating good will toward each other.     We apply these ideals internally as well as in service to our clients.   We embrace conflict without falling victim to it – as so often happens on Social Media.   

Social Media for the purpose of collecting followers or “likes” is meaningless – and your audience knows it.  Using Social Media to simplify connecting to an empathic human being whose sole purpose is to serve – powerful.
 
*http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/new-study-debunks-the-myth-of-the-disengaged-millennial-nasdaq-matr-2051891.htm

Mary Tucker has over eighteen years experience successfully launching, leading and transforming award winning multi-channel consumer interaction centers. Her primary focus is delighting customers.

Before launching UPIC Health, she was Director, National Contact Centers and Patient Experience Consultant for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Previous positions include Director - Global Consumer Experience, Philips Consumer Lifestyle and Vice President, Computer Generated Solutions, Inc. 

She was recently named a 2015 Brava! Award Winner by Smart CEO Magazine.
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Mary Tucker, Chief Executive Officer & Founder UPIC Health, will be moderating Strategic Thinkers Only: A Forum for Seasoned Customer Contact Executives
at our 12th Annual Customer Contact 2016, East: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. Click here to register or learn more: www.frost.com/ccs
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Customer Service Reimagined

Davy Kestens
Chief Executive Officer
Sparkcentral






When was the last time you looked at your phone? According to Moment, the average American picks up their phone 43 times in a day, and analytics firm Flurry says Americans spend nearly three hours per day on their mobile devices. People are obsessed with their phones and brands know that in order to reach customers they need to step up their mobile game. Most brands offer mobile apps but they are missing one key component. Can you guess what it is?



The (Incomplete) Promise of Mobile Apps

Brands quickly got on the mobile app bandwagon but forgot about mobilizing customer experience. Let’s use an example of a frequent experience. You are shopping in your favorite mobile app- scroll, click, add to cart. Alas, you click on your cart to buy your goods but unfortunately notice that the whole time your cart had not been updating. Help! Now you must reach out to customer service but that is easier said than done. You leave your cart, try to find that button with the three lines that someone decided means “menu”, click Contact Us and…oh. You are met with phone numbers for contact centers ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe, 28 different emails and an option to fax over your complaint. This may be just my opinion (doubt it) but we have passed the days of calling customer service to order items from a catalog received in the mail. Customers are mobile so shouldn’t customer service be mobile too?

There is an obvious pain in the customer service experience within mobile apps. The need to leave the mobile app to contact customer care is a massive disconnect and an irritatingly negative experience. From 2013-2014, mobile usage grew 76% and shows no signs of stopping. But how can brands turn contacting customer experience into a positive and easy experience? The answer is in mobile customer service.



Fitting Mobile Customer Service into the Contact Center

Sure there are in-app messaging solutions that exist today. But none of them have been specifically designed for the enterprise, until now. Our In-App Messaging solution has been weaved into Sparkcentral’s overall workflow that’s already deployed at many large organizations’ contact centers, such as United, Netflix, Uber, Discover and T-Mobile. Being able to message in-app means that when you have that question about your empty cart, you can click Contact Us and “text” your message to a customer care agent on the other side. An agent can respond to you in minutes which I think we can all agree is better than sitting on hold for 45 minutes until we are re-routed to another agent who may or may not be able to solve our problem.



In-App Messaging isn’t just for brands; it’s for customers too. Brands benefit by being able to scale their contact centers, perform at an accelerated rate and delight their customers, which means creating brand advocacy and lifelong customers. Customers on the other hand, continue frequenting your mobile app because of the additional value concierge-level personalized support brings. At Sparkcentral we believe great customer service makes everyone happy–I’m sure there’s a statistic on that somewhere– so, brands and customers alike, I’d like to introduce you to In-App Messaging.

Welcome to the future of Sparkcentral. The future of customer service.
 
About the author:
As founder and CEO of Sparkcentral, Davy is leading the customer service revolution. In 2012, immediately after founding the company, Davy moved from Belgium to San Francisco. He can get incredibly excited about Startups, enterprise software, and great food.

Delivering More Efficient, Mission-Critical Digital Services

By Victor Janey
Director, Operations
General Dynamics Information Technology

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) has been partnering with federal agencies continuously since 1983 to deliver mission-critical customer-facing support services. We have partnered with clients to transform the citizen experience to a web-first, mobile-enabled experience that has transformed services from largely paper-based and labor-intensive systems to more efficient, cost-effective electronic and Web-based systems.

GDIT implemented and operates large-scale, multi-channel contact centers that respond to traditional channels but also mobile interactions via Web Chat, SMS, and social engagement from more than 20 million customers annually who have questions about how to apply for, receive, and change Federal assistance and statutory benefits. For one Federal agency, GDIT innovation has built a service environment where more than 99 percent of 25 million federal benefit applications annually are submitted via the Web with built-in skip logic for faster, more accurate results.

Throughout our 30 plus years of partnership with Federal clients, we have consistently delivered contract services within budget while identifying and applying processing efficiencies and enhancements to reduce the government’s operational costs.   And throughout our performance of contract services, we have consistently met all critical annual and interim start-up deadlines for various projects. Each year, all changes driven by legislation and regulation must be fully developed, tested, accepted by clients with full Federal security  requirements in place, and implemented in time for benefits to be available citizens who rely on critical government program. 

An important aspect of service improvement is to keep pace with evolving citizen preferences and their need to communicate across new devices, platforms, and operating systems, in the channel of their choice, when and where they choose to interact.  The overarching mission is to simplify the customer experience to the highest degree possible, breaking down barriers and thereby reducing burden and time for citizen interactions.  A recent example of how GDIT delivered on this commitment for a key client and its customers comes from our delivery for a U.S. government civilian client, where we provide the application that unlocks access to federal funds for defraying the high costs of post-secondary education.   

This application has had a reputation for being complex and is even by some to be a barrier to higher education pursuit.  GDIT ingenuity has helped to take the application from one that took upwards of 45 minutes to complete to one that can be completed and submitted in less than 20 minutes, with results provided to the applicant nearly instantaneously.  The simplified and streamlined online application has enabled more citizens to apply for aid.  There has been a 27 percent increase since the simplification effort began in 2010.  The improved form represents a major change from previous versions.

Highlights of the improved form include:

• Fewer questions. "Enhanced skip logic" lets students skip questions that don't apply
• Friendlier navigation. The different sections of the form are marked and color-coded, and screens include an easy-to-find "help and hints" section
• More information for planning. Citizens who express interest in particular kinds of available benefits now get an instant estimate of aid eligibility
• Less duplication. The form and application process now links to another federal agency whose data are required, vastly simplifying the process and creating a true “one-stop” experience for citizens relying on this essential federal service
• This inter-agency collaboration has been called a prime example of different government agencies working together in the interest of citizens.  It has resulted in more applications filed accurately, on time, and with higher levels of customer satisfaction.

There is also increased transparency for citizens as to where they are in the application process, essential for fostering trust in the government and ensuring that citizens follow through and get the aid that they are entitled to receive.  The online, mobile-enabled application is designed to allow customers anytime access to their data, to make necessary changes and edits to their online applications, with clear visibility to their status / point-in-process.  They can also receive electronic rather than paper correspondence, greatly increasing processing turnaround times and reducing costs.  In fact, GDIT worked with the federal agency we serve to build a system whereby citizens who interact electronically are thereafter offered online self-help, tutorials and virtual assistance that follows them through the application as they complete it, escorting their journey to ensure accurate completion.

 "Skip logic," which presents only those sections of the application that are determined applicable based on answers to previous questions, speeds completion of the form. Verification of data and security of private information are also built into the design.  The website that features the application for federal aid also serves as a central online reference site for citizens engaged in the process, including one of the largest deployments of electronic signature functionality in the federal government.

The innovations of this web-first, mobile-enabled design has:

• Increased on-line versus paper applications from zero to more than 99% since 1997
• Increased application submission success
• Reduced printing costs by 90% since 2008

In addition, simplification initiatives mean that applicant data are matched against other, multiple agency databases necessary for the eligibility determination and to ensure accuracy of identifier data for the disbursement of federal funds to qualified applicants.  Citizens also can begin the process with a prior year’s submission to reduce errors and the time to complete the application.

Through the simplification initiative, GDIT reduced the number of web screens on the application from 46 down to 10, cut by 50 percent the number of questions the average applicant must answer, and significantly reduced the overall application completion time. The application streamlining and improvements also enabled a streamlined and more efficient web application technology stack, delivering development cost efficiencies and more flexible feature delivery.

Additional, demonstrable, benefits to citizens and clients brought about by this overall improvement initiative include, at the end of the first year of the deployed simplified online application:

The Elimination of Unnecessary Paper Artifacts
These changes eliminated unnecessary paper notifications in the shift to bolster online help and the use of email communication.  Customers who interact electronically are thereafter presented on-line and mobile help experiences and outputs.

Password / ID Enhancements
Password Challenge Question Lockouts decreased 39%

Increased Electronic Application Signatures / Less Paper Processing

• Application Signature rejects decreased 69%
• Electronic Signatures increased by 2.4%
• Blank Signatures decreased by 55%
• Total Paper signatures decreased by 27%
• Encouraging Online Help
• Calls Offered decreased 45%
• Chats Offered decreased 68%
• Emails decreased 31%

Eliminate Unnecessary Paper Artifacts

• Since the changes were implemented, roughly 4.9 million fewer paper notifications were sent, compared to prior year
• 4.9 million * 40 cents for postage = $1,960,000 in savings

In the words of just one of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who have already completed the new online and simplified application process, Janice from Oklahoma said “The process is so easy! It took my daughter and me only a few minutes to complete and it was much easier than before. With so much to worry about it’s good to know that you are all making sure this part of the process isn’t one of them. This was really great!”

Victor Janey is an Operations Director with more than 20 years of experience managing large-scale, high-volume, multi-channel contact center operations in virtual delivery environments. He is an evangelist for best-in-business customer service delivery models, and a key contributor in developing and communicating best service principles and guidelines.

Before becoming Director of Operations at General Dynamic Information Technology, he was an Operations Director at Vangent, Inc., a Program Manager at Pearson Government Solutions and Deputy Program Manager at NCS.

Customer Experience Challenges for Large Organizations

 
By Burges Karkaria
Chief Technical Officer, Customer Experience
Intel


 



The statement ‘The bigger you are, the harder you fall’ (or fail in this case) is very applicable while talking about “Customer Experience” challenges faced by large corporations. Big corporations understand the value of providing superior Customer Experience very well. They also have immense resources at their disposal to tackle the problem. Yet somehow they find immense hurdles in nailing the customer experience challenge.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer Experience is several different things, but simply put, encompasses every interaction your customer has with your company. This could involve a retail shopping experience and the lines at the Point of Sale, or calling the help desk or trying to find some information about your products online. I will however focus on the digital experience portion in this article. The digital experience the customer has with your company spans many digital assets. Some assets are owned by you while some assets are not (think of review sites, or search engines or online stores selling your products). It also spans all parts of the customer journey. Right from researching products (both your and competitors’ products), to going through the inquiry and purchase cycles to actually using your products and dealing with any issues while doing so. For large corporations the “customer” could be a complex labyrinth of B2B customers, B2C customers, partners etc.

Why is Unified Customer Experience Important?

Well for starters, Digital Experience is the brand! Let’s say you are selling a wearable and your site is slow or complicated, customers will associate that with you and your products. They start thinking your wearable itself will maybe slow or complicated and may instead choose a competitor’s product. First impressions are the most lasting sometimes and the first interaction that the customer has with your company is generally before they have ever touched your product.

Customer Experience further needs to have a unified feel. Whether customers are researching or buying or looking for help your digital experience needs to be contiguous, consistent and familiar. Kim Kopetz, Director of Customer Experience Office at Intel, calls out the importance of Customer Experience via two vantage points. “From the company perspective, a unified customer experience is important so that we can better understand a customer’s end-to-end journey, and use that data to optimize engagement strategies and execution plans.  From the customer perspective, a unified experience provides a seamless, integrated, and ideally intuitive way to interact with a company that fulfills individual needs and desires.”

Why is Unifying Customer Experience so Hard- Especially for Big Companies?
 
Any big company starts off with a smorgasbord of customers as mentioned above. The requirements and needs of different segments are different. More importantly, the internal factors make the vision of a world class customer experience even harder. Most companies have different people responsible for different parts of the business, who touch customers at different points in their journey. The engineering teams expose the technical documentation, the marketing teams handle the marketing messaging, the sales teams handle the e-Commerce and order management, and customer support teams provide technical support.

Further systems used for these are based off of multiple vendor offerings each having a separate customer experience, out of box. For example the communities or service cloud experience offered by SalesForce (out of box) will be completely different compared to say the e-Commerce experience offered by IBM Websphere Commerce engine and so on. Changing the “skin” to rebrand and normalize is not trivial or cheap. Add to that the multitude of legacy systems, custom home grown systems etc. and the fact that the solution stack keeps morphing over the years and you have an interesting Frankenstein-ish setup as far as your customers are concerned. Trying to align funding models to change these systems in lock step is a huge challenge in itself.

Again, Kim summarizes this very well: “Unifying a customer experience is hard because organizations are often designed and optimized around functional silos, such as sales, marketing, support.  Getting siloed groups to align to a common “outside-in” perspective and understanding baton passes between groups is difficult, not to mention the challenge of comprehending the required integration of customer-facing systems, processes and communications.”
 
Strategies to Help Unify Customer Experience

Large Companies have finally started to recognize and address this problem with more vigor than ever. Following are some key considerations:

1. The first step is to acknowledge the problem and establish a central Customer Experience office that is empowered to guide a unified customer experience across the silos.
2. Next is identifying the clear areas where improving customer experience has direct ROI benefits. For example, simplifying the digital support that’s integrated with the order history, reduces support calls, resulting in huge savings. Or, integrating order history with technical documentation may provide ease of product use while helping cross sell opportunities. These then need to be comprehended as a collective roadmap impacting multiple siloed systems that change in tandem. 
3. Key vendors need to be brought together in partnership with your company to help shape their offerings to work well with each other.

In summary “Customer at the center” needs to move from rhetoric to practical implementation with Unified Customer Experience being thought of as a core differentiator for your brand.
 
Burges Karkaria is the Chief Technical Officer for Customer Experience at Intel. You can follow him on @IntelMktCTO or @BurgesKarkaria on twitter. The views expressed by the author are his own and don’t represent any official company views.

Intel, IBM and Salesforce are registered trademarks and reference to their products are just used as an illustrative example. 

EXECUTIVE INSIGHT: From Customer Agent to Customer Advocate

An Interview with Robert Gofourth
By Patricia Stamas-Jacoby






Robert Gofourth, Vice President, Operational Strategy and Performance, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, will be leading a session entitled EXECUTIVE INSIGHT – From Customer Agent, to Customer Advocate at Customer Contact 2015, West: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange.

In anticipation of the event, Rob Gofourth shared his insights and expertise as we posed the following questions about the latest innovations and best practices in the Customer Service arena:

How did your current customer service initiative—your service quality program—begin?  

We had a typical “check list” quality program.  Upon thinking about natural interaction, a check list simply doesn’t make sense.  The fact is our quality program was netting average scores in the high 90’s but First Call Resolution (FCR) was struggling. 

What made you decide to implement this program? 

We partnered with the Corporate Executive Board and examined a competency based quality program.  We ran a pilot with the competency based form and had a significant improvement in FCR. 

Can you share some of the process around creating this program? 

We selected 6 competencies and redesigned the form.  We then ran a pilot among like teams with like calls.  We did a post call survey.  We saw an increase in satisfaction as well as improvement in FCR.

At Customer Contact West, you will speak about turning customer service agents into customer advocates through a competency based approach. Can you expound on this? 

By switching our approach from a perceived check list to a competency based program, we move to a more natural interaction.  In addition to that, we added some minor but powerful empowerment tools like the ability to send out a congratulations or sympathy card.

Can you share some of the lessons learned and successes you’ve had with a competency approach? 

In retrospect, we should have taken a more simplistic approach to the competencies.  For instance, one of the competencies is Resilience.  We found that some of our agents had a difficult time with some of the descriptors and even definitions.  We recommend   keeping it simple.  We have had great success with agents who are “good” agents but under the old program, they could not be “themselves” and struggled.  The competency based program lets someone be themselves. 

As we all know, today’s customer is increasingly attached to their mobile device. How does mobility fit into the customer service picture at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina?

Mobility is extremely important to us and is a key part of our marketing and service roadmaps. 

Do you offer any “mobile-first” Customer Service options? 

We do offer mobile options to our customers as part of their member benefits.  This primarily focuses on services from their medical providers and wellness options. 

I recently read that most new Customer Service initiatives are not profitable. Has this been your experience in general? Has the Blue Cross quality program been profitable? 

From a profitability perspective, there are a number of inputs into the profitability of a health insurance member.  However, we have been able to anecdotally measure the leading positive impact which helps form value based decisions on offerings. 
 
How about retention rates? 

We have seen service quality as a differentiating element in retention in the traditional products offered.

Rob Gofourth is a multi-faceted Customer Experience and Operations professional who has provided Process Improvement expertise as Vice President of Professional Services at Insite Managed Solutions, led Enterprise Risk Management and Operations at Citizens Property Insurance and worked as an Internal Consultant at Sitel.