Seattle. The Emerald City – best known for its coffee, rain, grunge and … customer experiences? From September 28^th through the 30^th, the Hyatt Olive 8 in Seattle became the hub for connecting customer service professionals with their peers, creating engaging discussions around the trends, challenges and best practices related to the customer service industry. There was much to be gained at the Customer Response Summit, from conversations in the hallways to soaking in expertise at the panels and presentations. We combed through our notes to share our most valuable bits of information gained.

#1: Digital and Traditional Channels Need to Integrate Seamlessly

A strong and reoccurring theme throughout the Customer Response Summit was the consensus that a robust customer service strategy must assume a holistic online-offline perspective. With the proliferation of communication channels and devices, customers expect to be able to start an interaction in one channel and complete it in another.

In 2015, the customer service industry continues to think about ways to create customer-centric, omni-channel experiences. The end goal is to focus on the user experience and create one-to-one relationships with customers integrated across all their favorite channels – email, SMS, video, chat, social media, and phone, in-store and on desktops, mobiles, and tablets. For example, if a customer has been browsing your how-to videos on your FAQ page on topic A, and then turns to Facebook and asks a different question on topic B, the company should be able to bring together all that data and respond promptly with a concise and useful answer.

The customer expects you to know who they are, what they want, and how they last interacted with your brand. To help seamlessly integrate the multi-channel experience, allowing your brand to truly understand the customer, the use of a CRM was discussed. A CRM that captures data of all interactions will allow your phone agents to see social and online data and your social customer service agents to see phone dispositions, giving all of your team members access to the most up-to-date customer data.

 #2: Effortless Experiences

From multiple call transfers to slow systems, there are numerous causes to an increase in customer effort.  These obstacles are not always easy to identify, making them difficult to remove. To begin to reduce customer effort, you need to understand the obstacles that get in the way of an effortless experience.

Start by being your own customer. Use your customer service line, visit the stores, secret shop, and use feedback from disgruntled customers. This firsthand insight will help you highlight the biggest problems and will allow you to start strategizing a plan to reduce customer effort. An example that I discovered while researching the topic a little more was a story on how Ameriprise Financial sought to reduce customer effort. They asked their customer service reps to capture every instance in which they were forced to tell a customer no. While auditing the “noes,” the company found many legacy policies that had been outmoded by regulatory changes or system or process improvements. During its first year of “capturing the noes,” Ameriprise modified or eliminated 26 policies. It has since expanded the program by asking frontline reps to come up with other process efficiencies, generating $1.2 million in savings as a result (1).

This strategy is similar to a comment received at the Customer Response Summit. An attendee told the story of their “Kill a Stupid Rule” campaign with the goal of calling out rules that hindered experiences, reduced employee happiness, or increased customer effort. You may find that reducing customer effort starts by simply reevaluating your company policies.

 #3: Customer Experience Metrics Are Not “One Size Fits All”

Traditional measures such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and First Contact Resolution (FCR) seem to be the common measures to understand the customer’s perception of the support they receive. Are these the right measures for your business? Maybe, maybe not. Most organizations are trying to solve for (or should be trying to solve for) reducing customer effort, increasing the customer experience and increasing brand loyalty, but we have operational needs to consider as well like cost, handle time, and adherence to schedule. How do you balance both without hindering the experience?

During the Customer Response Summit, Scott Shute from LinkedIn gave an example that I can picture over and over again in my head. Scott was traveling with his wife and three young children during the busy holiday travel season. Their first plane was delayed, creating an incredibly small window of time for his family to get to the gate of their connecting flight. Scott was determined to make the flight as it would be incredibly hard to reschedule.  After running like a track star to the gate, Scott told the airline attendant his story and asked if she would allow his family 90 seconds to catch up and get to the gate. The attendant heard his story, looked in his eyes, and then, slowly walked over to the boarding door. What did she do next? Nope, she did not escort the family personally onto the plane; she closed the door to the jetway!

Can you imagine traveling for the holidays with small children, running across the airport, and making it to the gate in time – all just to miss the plane? Why did the airline attendant have no empathy? Simply put, it’s because the metric that she was being evaluated on was “on-time” flights. A perfect example of how good metrics go bad. While this is a good metric operationally, it can backfire horribly on the customer experience. We learned at the Customer Response Summit that metrics should be based upon the customer, not the operations, if you want to truly create a brand built on the customer experience.

#4: Happy Employees Deliver Happy Customers

The customer experience is nothing without customer-oriented service, and customer- oriented service is impossible without people. Consumers 2020 reports that by the year 2020, the customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. If this is true (and as customer service professionals, we are already seeing this upward trend), we need to treat our employees as we want them to treat our customers.

Some tips given at the Customer Response Summit to create a loyal employee experience include following a closed-loop process with your employees as you would your customers. Just like when addressing customer rage, when employees give you feedback, LISTEN! More importantly, it’s not enough to only listen;let them know that you hear them, and tell them what you are going to do about it!

One of my favorite tips I heard at the Summit was to not assume that your employees know how they affect the customer experience. You need to tell them! At Dialog Direct, we have a “WOW story” program:every week, we share a story about how one of our frontline employees created a “WOW” experience for a customer or even for another employee. This reminds the team that each and every day, they personally have the power to positively or negatively affect someone’s day. It’s exciting to see the lightbulb turn on in someone’s head and watch them get really excited to make someone’s day. By setting the stage and removing the roadblocks, you allow employees to create remarkable experiences and feel empowered and more satisfied with their work.

#5: Follow the Data

Customer engagement strategies are fueled by customer data. Understanding what customers have done, what channels they’ve used, what products they’ve purchased, and what service interactions they’ve had are all important data sources that can be used to build predictive models. Leverage cookie data and past-purchase data to help develop and train models. These models are critical in helping service teams understand which customers need your attention, which customers are about to churn, which customers are most likely to purchase again or buy more frequently, and which customers are likely to call in and check the status of an order, claim, or billing issue.

READ: Predictive Analytics in Action: Implementing Strategies for Dramatic Sales Lift

As companies gain a deeper understanding of customers through research and predictive analytics, they will use that information to develop more individualized customer experiences, such as reaching out to the right customer at the right time, using their preferred channel, and delivering a personalized offer pre- or post-purchase. Another example: service teams will leverage the power of predictive analytics to route callers to the phone agents who are “the most likely to help” based on the anticipated reason for the call. Similarly, predictive can assist in finding which type of agents can be paired to the right type of caller to improve the FCR. They will use learnings from these proactive engagements to improve operational performance and to predict future customer behavior.

#6: The Whip and Nae Nae Is Not as Hard as We Thought!

We came, we saw, we nae nae-ed.

What do you have to add to this list?

But, wait … There’s more! 

We enjoyed meeting everyone at the show and would like to share with you our 2015 “Customer Rage” study. This free, detailed study offers primary research on the issues Americans are experiencing with brands and examines customer-complaining behavior.

Get your free copy of the 2015 Customer Rage Study

For more information on how Dialog Direct can help you implement these these and other customer experience strategies into your call center, send me a note at sara.wright@dialog-direct.com 

Sources:

(1) https://hbr.org/2010/07/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers

The post #CRSummit 2015: 6 Things We Learned appeared first on Execs In The Know.

The Empowered CX – Rethinking Service for Mobile & Self-Help Panel ft. HGS, Nintendo, Expedia, and Target.

The following is a guest blog written by Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention (TCFCR). To learn more about their solutions visit their website at http://tcfcr.com/.

Once again, Chad and Susan McDaniel orchestrated a stimulating and educational Customer Response Summit, this time in beautiful Seattle. The keynotes were insightful, panel discussions enlightening and thought-provoking and the attendees were always engaged. Of course, Chad and Susan know how to throw a party and every social event was fun, especially the extravaganza on Tuesday evening at the Tap House Grill. The 80’s were a great era and all the trinkets, music and dancing brought us right back to that decade. Without fail, the opportunity to network peer-to-peer was the pièce de résistance.

The conference began with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Envisioning Center and Digital Crimes Unit at Microsoft. Those of us fortunate enough to attend Monday’s afternoon event were appreciative of an inside look into this major corporation. A picture is worth a thousand words. Perfect way to begin.

Microsoft Tours During CR Summit Seattle

The 1980’s, the theme of the conference, highlighted where we were and how far we have come. Chad, our exemplary MC, began the symposium with several clips spoofing customer service, including one memorable scene from the Seinfeld TV series when Jerry was told there were no cars available even though he had a reservation. Apparently, car companies don’t always actually reserve a specific car; the request is only entered into the system; making Jerry extremely frustrated. The question to the audience: has service improved in the last 30 years? It depends!

The organizations participating in the Customer Response Summit are leaders in their industries. Every participant wanted to learn, share and brainstorm with the Best in Class so their company can improve and provide exceptional service across every channel.

The 80’s were a simpler time with two primary channels of communication: face-to-face and phone. Now, in addition, there is email, chat, text, apps, etc. Consumers are not only using various channels to communicate, they are vaulting between each one making it difficult, almost impossible, to track and serve consumers. It’s an especially laborious task when company budgets remain tight and the cost for technology increases exponentially.

Every survey is pointing to self-serve as a customer preference. But, when self-serve doesn’t provide the answer, consumers call. According to the report compiled and reported by COPC and Execs In The Know, Traditional Care still is the dominant player in a multi-channel world. Herein lies the challenge. Because the complexities of the issues are significant and consumers have many options for communicating with a company, knowing and tracking the consumer channel history is imperative. It not only helps provide a more personalized experience, it allows a company to target their resources and train associates in real-time.

The costs are high associated with adding new technology, educating agents how to respond with both empathy and constant new information, and hiring additional staff to keep up with demand. It is nearly impossible to close the service gaps. However, impossible is a word not in the vocabulary of the conference attendees. The goal is facing the issues and delivering solutions.

Scott Shute, VP of Global Customer Operations at LinkedIn Delivering his keynote

These were several major themes discussed at the conference:

• Many companies are relying on community forums to help provide support to their customers. In the past, it was possible to develop common scenarios and train staff to respond and be the only trusted source. Today there are so many combinations of software platforms, apps, etc., that relying on third party trusted advisors has become an essential and necessary way to conduct business

• Companies need to do an even better job of educating agents to focus on the emotional component in a transaction; listening to what the customers are feeling and acknowledging those feelings is an important first step. Soft skills are king

• Customers expect companies to track each channel used to communicate with the company. The desire is an easy transition from one channel to another. Very few companies currently have these capabilities

• Some attendees from the retail industry have found their NPS scores have plateaued. Explanation: overall customer expectations are on the rise, speed of delivery is a definitive competitive differentiator and multi-channel service is insisted upon.

• Most attendees are using NPS, but are frustrated when the customer is not able to make a distinction between their initial product quality concerns and how customer care handled the problem. Agents feel a disconnect.

• It’s important to empower employees to make out-of-the box decisions, but also set guidelines to ensure they are fair to the company.

• Customers like to be provided with options in order to make decisions, giving them a feeling of control.

• The trend is to employ remote agents, but the challenge is to motivate and train them when they are not located on-site.

Discussion During a Customer Experience Meet-Up

Other suggestions, comments or recommendations:

• Research has shown that providing additional useful information when responding to a customer’s direct question or issue improves overall satisfaction.

• Video chat is one of the best ways to sell devices; everyone concurred that offering video chat creates tremendous opportunities.

• Focusing efforts to serve people with disabilities should be more of a priority but staffing requires special training.

• Customers prefer social media communications that are more conversational and less corporate-speak.

• Using Gamification to train younger agents can be more effective than other methods.

• It is important to communicate to staff that every employee in the company must focus on the customer, even if their specific job is not in customer support. The goal is a customer-centric company culture.

• Many companies are using old school quality monitoring criteria that is tactical, rather than strategic. What information would get the attention of the C-Suite?

• It’s worthwhile for companies to consider developing a stand alone app for their customer support where the consumer’s history and preferences can be stored and tracked.

• Ensure all support has been designed for the appropriate screen size. Otherwise customer frustration is created and the support function diminished.

• Marketing should provide customer support with sufficient lead-time when releasing new campaigns so they are completely prepared to respond to questions or concerns. That must become the new norm.

• Onboarding new employees is even more important than ever. Most technical support positions are going to Millennials who possess great technical acumen, but don’t always have appropriate communication skills.

• Everyone is competing to provide the exceptional customer experience. Amazon has set the gold standard in customer service for innovation and speedy solutions and delivery. Every customer has high expectations. Any response other than now is regarded as slow and not customer focused.

• A major benefit of technology should be to allow agents to have more time to serve customers.

• According to the COPC & Execs In The Know Customer Experience Management Benchmark Series, 2015 Consumer Edition the percentage of customers using Twitter, Pinterest/Instagram increased 75 percent from 2014 to 2015. Text also saw a gain of 22 percent.

• There must be a security component to customer care. Customers want their personal information to be protected. How can we balance customer effort with additional layers of security?

• Associates should be encouraged to use LinkedIn as an important career tool. A professional photo should be displayed and your team counseled to keep profiles updated with detailed position summaries.

• A company’s success cannot always be judged by revenues; some customers stay even though they are dissatisfied and when there is a choice they will jump ship and do business elsewhere.

• Number one, most important question in every meeting: what’s in this decision for the customer?

• According to the 2013 Customer Rage Study, conducted by Dialog Direct, 94 percent of customers want to be treated with dignity and only 35 percent felt they received respect.

The conference closed with an inspiring presentation by JC Quintana, an innovative executive, author, speaker and founder of the Corporate Relationship Group. JC, a stand-up comedian on the side, concluded a long day with just what the audience needed. Although a comic, JC’s message was serious and relevant. He led a discussion about his Seven Unified Customer Strategies for Relationship Management: Relationships, Engagement, Centricity, Service, Support, Transparency and Experience. He emphasized CRM needs to be a collaborative activity, a unified approach to eliminate silos. JC’s closing remark, “A journey of a 1000 miles starts right where you are.”

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President of The Center For Client Retention

When is the next Customer Response Summit?

February 23 – 25, 2016 in Phoenix, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa.

Can’t wait!

To hear more about Customer Response Summit Phoenix, visit the official event website.

Richard Shapiro, Founder and President, The Center For Client Retention; author, The Welcomer Edge and the soon to be released, The Endangered Customer: 8 Steps to Guarantee Repeat Business

The post The Best of the Best – Customer Response Summit Seattle appeared first on Execs In The Know.