This Thursday’s Tip
Tips for your Call Center and your business released on Thursdays.
Listen to the voice of your customers when they say, “Get the Basics Right First”
Lately I have found that too many organizations are jumping on the social media bandwagon before ever mastering the basics of serving customers. The result is an incompatible experience that leaves customers wondering about an organization’s priorities.
Earlier this week I was reviewing my insurance bill and was surprised to find it had nearly doubled. Those of you who know me, know that I drive “with personality”, but I had not been fined recently for my driving style, so there was no reason for the premium increase. I called my insurance agent and was informed that according to their records I had acquired another vehicle. Part of me was very curious to find out what I’d purchased (I hope it’s a Mustang!!). The more pragmatic side of me was quite concerned. It turned out that “I” had acquired an automobile the exact same year, make, model and color of the car I already own – how boring. I should note that this insurance agency sends me a card each year on my birthday, meets with me annually to review my insurance needs, sends me quarterly electronic newsletters, has its own Facebook page, and yet it’s employees find a creative new way to mispronounce my name every time we meet.
Companies need to take a few steps back from the glitz and the glam of social media and really examine how they are doing on the fundamentals. Billing is one of those basics that must be done right the first time. What the impact of this billing debacle to our relationship? I’m wondering if anyone’s paying attention to the important stuff. I find myself irked by little things that would have not even occurred to me before this incident and now I’m poised to quickly escalate if this billing error is not corrected next month. In short – I’m scrutinizing the relationship and even my choice of insurers. What is the impact of failing to send me a birthday card? None. Nada. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. A single negative event can knock an otherwise content customer down a few levels on the loyalty ladder, so organizations need to stay ahead of such incidents by ensuring that they’ve mastered the basic before expanding into new ways of engaging with their customers such as social media:
1. Money is important – to customers and to organizations. For many of our business partners, the concept of money is tracked in customer surveys by classifying the data as “Billing-related”. Thus far in 2010, those with the ability to segment feedback into the “Billing” type know that 23% of all call center contacts are related to billing inquiries. Banking customers have enjoyed the ability to set up automated alerts for large withdrawals, low balances, overdrafts and the like for a number of years now. Why not use the same logic to alert customers if their bills change more than expected based on forecasts, historical spend, seasonality, etc.? As an organization you can choose to allocate resources to being proactive on behalf of your customers or you can allocate even more resources to solving problems you created while angry customers yell at your delegates.
2. People are fairly predictable creatures. Make it easy for your customers to get the information they’re looking for. Every call center has a handful of questions to which answers can be recited by agents in their sleep. Put those FAQs prominently on your website, include answers to these questions in your welcome calls / packets and play them in your IVR messaging (and if you can’t / won’t play them in your IVR, for gosh-sakes please don’t make you customers feel like they need a degree in abnormal psychology to get through your IVR).
3. Think one step ahead. As much as I hate to repeat myself, people are predictable. If a customer calls to ask what their deductible is, they likely have no idea what their co-insurance percentage is either. If a customer admits to not knowing what the transmission fee is on their utility bill, chances are they’re also unaware of what the generation fee is and why they’re being charged for it. Answer your customer’s immediate question as simply and completely as possible and then offer to answer the question they’re likely to have the minute they hang up the phone.
4. Do what you say you’re going to do (a.k.a – don’t lie to your customers). Customers would rather be told the truth than some too-good-to-be-true tale. Sure, there is a chance that they won’t like what they hear and that they will go comparison shopping. But if your customer leaves your organization for a competitor, at least they will remember you fondly and speak of your honest business practices instead of spreading the horrors of your deception all over the blogsphere. If your customer experience measurement suggests that delegates of your organization are setting unrealistic expectations about your product / service and/or failing to take accountability for customer issues, you may consider incorporating and honesty and accuracy criteria into your quality monitoring form that has some teeth to it. Your agents should be more fearful of being caught lying to a customer than losing one.
If you have not already taken the social plunge, now is a good time to ensure you have the basics in place before you do so. Your customers will appreciate the attention you’ve dedicated to serving them and your satisfaction scores will reflect it. Of course if you’ve already executed your social strategy, it’s never too late to place yourself under the microscope to examine the way you do business and the message your approach is sending to your customers.
Photo Credit: MessageWorks Communications
Are your Call Center Survey Questions Delivering the Wrong Answers?
Using biased post-call survey results is highly dangerous as operational and call center agent decisions will be based on flawed information. The following are some of the common pitfalls you may not have considered with your call center survey.
Biases and errors can arise from a variety of sources. Authors of literature on research methods and survey construction vary on the exact terms used and number of biases and errors to avoid, but it’s safe to say that there are a great many pitfalls and few safe roads when constructing survey questions. It is beyond the scope of this text to provide a comprehensive review of these, but some of those that are most likely to occur with question construction in a call center survey program will be discussed below.
Historically, in an effort to overcome the myopia stemming from sole reliance on internal quality monitoring scores, companies have turned to customer satisfaction post-call surveys to augment their understanding of the customers’ perception of the service delivery.
The customer surveying effort is directed toward understanding and the questions are the elements that seek those answers. The questions are the core; the heart and soul of the survey. Although every aspect of the research requires careful planning and execution, the closest possible scrutiny must be reserved for the survey questions as they clearly are the most essential component. As Pamela Alreck and Robert Settle, authors of The Survey Research Handbook claimed, “Their performance [test questions] ordinarily has a more profound effect on the survey results than has any other single element of the survey,” Without valid, reliable questions, nothing of any use can be learned.
Have you Missed any of the Big 3?
Questions need to have at least three core characteristics: relevance, clarity and conciseness.
1. Relevance means that each question must have purpose within the context of the survey and then be focused on that purpose.
2. Clarity implies that each question must be clear as stated to all customers. Note that some words have different commonly understood meanings based on geography or demographics and customers rarely understand internal lingo.
3. Conciseness implies brevity. Essentially say what is needed, all that is needed, and nothing more. In general, the longer the question, the more difficult the response task will be. Longer questions increase the likelihood of misunderstanding overall, while increasing the likelihood of forgetting the first part of the question by the time the customer hears the end.
Beyond relevance, clarity and conciseness, special attention needs to be taken with vocabulary and grammar. Using customer verbiage is the key. Items must be written at a sixth grade level, difficult to do, however, this must be considered. Toward that end, it is important to use simple sentences. Complex, compound and compound-complex are the other sentence structure types. While occasionally it may be necessary to use a complex sentence construction, compound and complex-compound constructions must strictly be avoided. Not only are they too long and confusing, but they nearly always contain multiple ideas that truly require multiple questions in order to access the desired information.
While there are a multitude of elements that must be considered when constructing a customer satisfaction post-call survey program for your call center, when it comes to decreasing the opportunity for employees to disbelieve the results, the wrong questions will leave your heart and soul empty.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
The Rest of the 13 Practices that Prove Your Company Cares about its People
As promised, here are the remaining 6 practices that prove your company cares about its people. We covered the first 7 practices already and those can be found here. As you may recall the entire 13 practices are an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Survey Pain Relief.
8. Self-Managed Teams. It’s one thing to form a team and quite another to allow the team to manage itself. While the team structure will not fix everything and definitely requires executive sponsorship, nevertheless, there have been many highly positive outcomes from the institution of self-directed teams. These teams set their own standards, handle their own problems, and are responsible for disciplining and rewarding the members. Such a structure can eliminate several levels of management, as well as the resources needed to sustain them and the bureaucracy that inevitably emerges to prop them up. In addition, members of self-managed teams tend to be engaged, cooperative and loyal.
9. Training and Skills Development. Managers often complain about wasted training and development dollars, when the real issue is that, once trained, the employees are given no opportunity to use the skills they’ve acquired. By definition, training is expected to have a short-term payback, while the payback for development is longer-term. Both require the opportunity to practice, first-hand or by assisting others, for the learning to be properly internalized. “Skills” acquired and never used are soon forgotten, and the money paid to acquire them is truly wasted.
10. Cross-Utilization and Cross-Training. The motivational effects of variety are not to be underestimated. Cross-utilization and cross-training help employees to “stay fresh” and engaged in their work. Performance and results are improved as fresh eyes have a chance to look at old problems and new ideas filter into the work process. From a labor management standpoint, cross-training ensures that the necessary skill sets will be available on the floor at any given time enabling properly trained staff to step in and work effectively in times of emergency with little or no warning.
11. Symbolic Egalitarianism. There are various ways to signal that we are all on the same team, all of which have in common the idea of tearing down barriers between people. The CEO of Wal-Mart has a very modest office in Bentonville, Ark., which looks more like the office of mid-level manager at a moderate-sized firm, instead of the spacious quarters one would expect of the leader of a company whose annual revenues exceed those of many countries. The lack of barriers and obvious modesty represented by these leaders send unmistakable messages to the employees.
12. Wage Compression. According to Terry Halbert and Elaine Ingulli in Law and Ethics in the Business Environment, “Plato believed that the rulers of the ideal society should be paid no more than four times more than the lowliest member of that society.” This would be an extreme example of wage compression. What we see in big business today is often the direct opposite.
13. Promotion from Within. Such a policy automatically puts a premium on training and development, long-term planning, and seeing the bigger picture. It also avoids all the negativity that can accumulate in good people when outsiders are brought in over them.
There is nothing magic in these 13 practices. Research may delineate others in the future, and some of the ones listed here could arguably be condensed into fewer topics. But it’s the course set that matters. The above require less lip service and more concrete action. Value the human element, let it be known that this is a keystone of your organization and good things will happen.
Now that we have covered all 13 practices we would love to get your comments and thoughts on how you have seen these practices put into action and the positive or negative impacts. Heck, we even would love to hear about some of your own Knuggets and Knucklehead stories on blunders and benefits you have heard of a company making with its people. Some of the best we will highlight. We can keep you anonymous if you like. Looking forward to hearing from you.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
13 Practices that Prove Your Company Cares about its People
Below is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Survey Pain Relief where we focus in on how companies express the value they place on their human capital. The balance of the 13 practices that prove your company cares about its people is here.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, and a well-known and highly respected researcher and author, suggests that there are some 13 or so practices for managing people, which are key to retaining competitive advantage (from “Producing Sustainable Competitive Advantage through the Effective Management of People,” Academy of Management Executive). These suggestions seem to fly somewhat in the face of the typical ways in which we manage call centers, and so they’re worth a close examination.
Why should a review of these 13 practices be made? Interestingly, companies that invest in the human component and adopt a long-term investment perspective gain a competitive advantage that is very difficult for competitors to imitate. By contrast, new technology can be purchased, patents and licensing agreements secured, market share purchased through advertising and aggressive pricing, brands bought or sold — these are all tactics that can implemented by one firm and copied by the competition in a few months. But once an organization creates a competitive advantage through its people, it is rarely also achieved by a competitor in the same industry. Companies can maintain their HR-generated uniqueness — and high-performing competitive advantage — by expressing their appreciation to the people who make it all possible in both monetary and intangible terms.
1. Employment Security. Employment security signals to the workforce that the organization is making a long-standing commitment to their well-being. Firms that take a longer-term perspective demonstrate a standard of care for their people that goes beyond the contractual pay period requirements. When the firm makes a commitment to employment security for its workers, those workers, in turn, feel an obligation to reciprocate and take a long-term view of the needs of the firm.
2. Selectivity in Recruiting. If a firm commits to employment security, it behooves it to select wisely so as to only offer positions to those who at least meet minimum standards. Rather than assessing the job/skills fit, many firms are now assessing the person/organization fit and doing so with great care.
3. High Wages.In this day of offshoring to save wages, it may seem counter-intuitive to suggest paying higher salaries. But doing so can yield handsome dividends, as higher wages will attract a larger pool of applicants, which can lead to higher quality applicants and greater selectivity for the organization. Most importantly, high wages signal that the people are considered important, just as low wages indicate a perceived interchangeability and, hence, the lack of importance for employees.
4. Incentive Pay. Better performers should receive more pay.
5. Employee Ownership. There are two clear effects of employee ownership interests in the firm. The tug-of-war that often exists between labor and capital is largely avoided because each has partially become the other. The “us/them” delineations simply no longer apply. Secondly, employee-owners look to the future and the long-range effects of today’s decisions. While this has traditionally been a perspective only expected from managers, workers who are also owners often take it up, as well.
6. Information sharing. If people are to be the source of competitive advantage, then it follows that information needs to be shared and acted upon within the organization.
7. Participation and Empowerment. Decentralization of decision-making is paramount to getting people to take ownership of the firm’s processes and outcomes. Push decision-making power, as much as is practical, down to the agent level. Agents who see what needs to be done for a customer but have no power to give it feel frustrated over their inability to affect a positive outcome.
Now that we have covered the first 7 practices let’s take a little break. In the next post, we will cover the remaining 6 practices. As always we would love to get your comments and thoughts on how you have seen these practices put into action and the positive or negative impacts.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
Communicating the Results – Part 3 of a 4 Part Series: Supervisors and Agents
Over the last two weeks, I’ve covered how to communicate the results of your call center to both the Executive Management and to the Operations Team. Today we will turn our focus to the Supervisors and Agents in your call center. Again, it’s important that each group gets the proper information to perform to the best of its ability.
Reports for Supervisors and Agents
Managing a team of contact center agents requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative customer feedback to measure, track, compare and motivate. And the shorter the lag time between a call and the availability of the customer’s feedback, the better!
The availability of real-time data expedites a supervisor’s ability to identify trends in performance, provide feedback to agents and conduct service recoveries for defective service experiences.
Customer Comment Report
Customers are in a unique position to motivate agents through their positive comments. The knowledge that a customer was impacted by a service experience to the point where he/she would take the time to make it known, is often more effective than any praise given by a peer or supervisor. Conversely, a customer’s comment could also shed light on sub-par scores. It is the complement of this qualitative feedback to the quantitative data that allows for a holistic approach to the customer experience.
Since customers are not able to see and have never met the agents they interact with, they create a mental image of what this person must be like using expectations and prior experience as a guide. Consumers categorize others because it makes their lives simpler and provides a feeling of control. Callers, therefore, will know (or think they know) how to approach a situation in which they are dealing with people they don’t know because they have already categorized it. They begin with a prototype in mind of what the agent should be like and how the interaction should go. When an agent fits the prototype, and even goes beyond the customer’s expectations, then Wow Factor feedback is collected:
- “The young man who helped me was courteous and quite knowledgeable of the ways of the company. In fact, if I ever needed anything in the future I would be tempted to call back and repeatedly call back until I received him. I would even like to have him over for dinner. Maybe even some beer and watch some baseball.”
- “I found him to be intelligent, quick on the uptake, very pleasant, agreeable and had a sense of humor. That’s rare among bankers.”
- “Sharon was outstanding. She deserves some additional compensation. This is not one of her relatives. Thank you.”
- “I was very impressed with the service that I got today over the phone. There is no way we will ever leave you unless somebody really, really screws something up bad.”
This also takes a negative direction when the agent does not fit into the prototype.
- “Your customer service needs to do customer service. When they can’t help you or refuse to help you, they follow up with the question: What more can they do to help? Well they haven’t done anything to begin with. A bunch of Cretins.”
- “This rep treated me like I was stupid. I didn’t appreciate it. You should never treat a customer like they are stupid, even if they are.”
- “Your reps are the least informed, ill-equipped and most ignorant people I’ve ever run into. This bank is the perfect advertisement for any other bank.”
We have all suspected that satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction in one’s life role may be transferred into other life roles, like an agent taking a bad day out on a customer and vice versa. Frustration or dissatisfaction with a product/service may actually be the result of the consumer feeling frustrated in life roles other than the consumer role. Agents must not only manage the delivery, they must also detect and manage the issue for the caller — all with the company’s best interest at the forefront.
- “Thank you for making my depressing life a little bit better with the service that you have given me.”
- “The representative was very courteous and kind. I appreciate her. The only problem I’ve ever had is that our former banker had an affair with my husband. We divorced and now they’re married. So, in that area I’m not satisfied with the services the bank has provided.”
Customers also expect to be treated in a manner consistent with their role as the customer in the interaction. Research shows that consumers evaluate service institutions and personnel positively when the personnel treat them as individuals who have specific needs to be met by the service interaction. If agents do not, customers will let you know.
- “The representative was very efficient and this is true to your company’s form. Every time that I have called customer service I have gotten excellent service and today was no different.”
- “It took four phone calls to get a pink slip. I’ve paid the car off. I deserve the pink slip. The first call I made said I would get it in 10 days; it’s now been 6 weeks. This phone call said it was mailed yesterday. Somehow I doubt that, but we’ll see. If I don’t get it, I’ll call you back. I don’t mind. I’m retired. I’ve got nothing to do but call you folks until I get what I want.”
- “You can return my calls, which you don’t do. I’ve asked to talk to a supervisor a few times. I haven’t gotten a supervisor to give me a call so why should you ask me to waste my time on this survey when you won’t have a supervisor call me. I think that’s pretty rude. You can call me at XXX-XXX-XXXX. I doubt I’ll hear from you but it would be really nice if I did and it would make my day and might change my perception on how I’ve been treated.”
Why be concerned with the research behind customer comments? Well, it’s a component of increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty and creating a positive word of mouth. If you can better understand your customers, you can create a better environment for the service interaction. You can also educate your agents and use this information as a training opportunity for them to garner a better understanding of consumer comments. After all, customers do say the darnest things.
Real-Time Performance Dashboards
By viewing the real-time dashboard below, a supervisor could quickly surmise that today’s call resolution and call satisfaction statistics are trending below the month’s average. The supervisor now has a goal for the day, as well as a minute-by-minute indicator of his/her success in impacting these key metrics.
Real-Time Alerts
The availability of real-time data also allows supervisors the opportunity to recover customers who have had a dissatisfying service experience. Although the caller may not have been satisfied with the service experience in general, satisfaction with the service recovery experience is significantly related to their intention to repurchase [1]. If there is no process for service recovery, the relationships of 15 percent of your customers are at risk (if not 15 percent, insert the percentage of your callers who would rate the experience as poor). Customers who have had a service failure that was resolved quickly and properly are more loyal to a company than are customers who have never had a service failure — significantly more loyal [2, 3]. The key to success is a quick resolution. How quickly do you initiate a recovery plan after the dissatisfying experience? Is there a service recovery plan in operation?
Many call centers have inadequate processes in place to capture, nevermind address, a failure in customer experiences. The process, and its timeliness, leaves too many customer relationships exposed. Service recovery should protect the exposed asset during the call experience (whether that exposure was a direct result of Agent behavior or caused by the organization’s process). Is recovery of the relationship even possible? It is unlikely if you do not know about it, as only about 5 percent to 10 percent of customers choose to complain to the company [4]. More likely, it results in negative word of mouth (market damage) and the discontinued use of your products and services. A lost customer is an easy, low-cost-to-acquire new customer for a competitor AND is customer value lost to your organization.
Components that facilitate timely notification of dissatisfaction enhance service recovery. By instituting a real-time survey, the amount of saved customer relationships will increase not only customer satisfaction, but have a direct link to an increase in customer loyalty. An immediate alert of a failed experience tells an important story. Is there a common issue with a particular agent? Ineffective behavior can be quickly addressed, minimizing the ongoing negative impact for the agent and the organization. Is there a common process issue? Caller dissatisfaction may be rooted in a new policy or procedure. Identify and change the procedure or identify and provide an effective Agent response to common aspects of customer dissatisfaction. Extrapolate the findings from the service recovery group and leverage this within your organization.
A real-time alert feature delivers significant value by proactively responding to callers who experienced difficulty with an interaction and are leaving the interaction dissatisfied. The EQM program contains a systematic approach to capture the reason for the customer-defined failure (people, process, or technology classifications) to highlight patterns for the organization. Without a framework, proving the effect of a process issue, for example, is more difficult.
We included the dashboard with this post because it communicates to center management the critical elements that must be chronically monitored and managed.
To wrap up this series next week, we’ll recap these three groups and introduce some interesting powers of persuasion to help you when communicating the results.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
References
1. Boshoff (1999). Journal of Service Research, 1, (1), p 236-249
2. Blodgett, Wakefield and Barnes (1995). Journal of Services Marketing, 9, (4), p 31-42
3. Smith and Bolton (1998). Journal of Service Research, 1, (1), p 65-81
4. Tax and Brown (1998). Sloan Management Review, 40, (1), p 75-88
Communicating the Results – Part 2 of a 4 Part Series: Operations Team
Last week I talked about how to communicate the results of your External Quality Monitoring (EQM) analytics to Executive Management. In talking about, “know your audience” I was reminded of a trip to Greece. Today as we turn our focus to the Operations Team, I recall a much more recent story. In fact, this happened two days ago while I was out shopping.
For an upcoming wedding, I was in search for simple black earrings. It was later in the evening when I entered the department store alone (which I like since there are less crowds, and I can be in and out) in search for my quick purchase. Now, typically in your big brand name department stores, there is NO ONE around to help you other than the required minimum Sales Associates on the floor mainly to man the fort behind the cash register. That night, there was a young lady in the jewelry department who was straightening out the display cases in prep for closing time. She asked if I needed any help. Shocked to hear such a thing from an employee in this particular store, I decided to take her up on the offer. I tell her that I am looking for simple black earrings to go with my dress. Well, 30 minutes later, I was back to where I started…looking for simple black earrings by myself. The sales associate showed me everything from silver sparkling, dangling earrings, to red hoops (“that really pop!”) to huge black flower earrings. All of these I’m sure would look great on girls in her age group, but I was very specific about what I needed for this occasion. She clearly did not listen and did not know her audience.
Reports for the Operations Team
The packaging of the External Quality Monitoring program is an important marketing tool for the contact center and the operational team responsible for its performance. A critical component of the reports is that the research has been executed correctly and the validity of the results is certain. This data inform operational decisions, populates performance management systems and calculates incentives/performance pay. The data are used along with the internal call monitoring data and the operational metrics to provide an accurate assessment of the service function, and to identify directives for each agent and each team.
In addition to providing a snapshot of the service the contact center is providing to customers, operational reports will likely focus on two aspects: location-specific analysis over time and location comparisons. Location-specific data compares the period just past to prior periods and perhaps even to the last year. Such a comparative analysis allows operational management to track changes over time, revealing which interventions yielded the most positive results for a single location.
From a comparison perspective, it is useful for specific locations to be able to rate their performance against their peer locations, as well as the contact center effort as a whole. It can be a source of pride for the successful locations and a spur to more intense efforts for those that lag the whole. Continue to make use of multiple formats for the presentation of results. Remember, some readers are more verbal, visual, or numerical than others.
The highest tier of the operations-level report is a summary of all feedback collected for all of the contact center locations and departments. This view of the data provides a status report of the past period’s performance, which can be compared to prior periods. The table below provides aggregate data regarding customer ratings on each question within the survey. The data found in this table presents % Delight (in this example scores of 8 or 9 on the 1-9 response scale used) and mean score, extrapolated to a 100-point scale.
On this scale, the lowest service rating (a rating of 1) is equivalent to zero points on the 100-point scale, and the highest rating (a rating of 9) is equivalent to 100 points with the remaining point distributed across the scale.
You can classify customer ratings on key questions into loyalty categories to more closely examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. Combine key loyalty questions, including customer satisfaction with the company, the representative, and the call itself to create a customer loyalty index (CLI). Customer satisfaction directly relates to long-term customer loyalty that ultimately contributes to shareholder wealth. Trend analysis of CLI is critical to determining if change initiatives are being recognized by customers, reflected in service delivery evaluations, and positively impacting return on investment (ROI).
Four categories are represented in the CLI chart:
- Customer Delight (green in CLI charts). The top two categories on the scale (8 & 9) represent customers that are delighted with your company/service/agents. These customers are key company assets that have been preserved through the service experience. Their high scores provide assurance that they will stay with your company, provided you maintain a consistent level of service.
- Satisfied Indifference (blue in CLI charts). These customers (categories 5-7) represent the primary focus for the next evaluation period. They are generally satisfied, but cannot be counted in the completely loyal category. If presented with an opportunity, these customers may select a different provider. As such, the goal is to move these customers into the delighted category.
- Dissatisfied but Recoverable (yellow in CLI charts). Customers in this category (3 & 4) did not have a positive experience and would likely switch, but you may be able to reach out and change their perception by correcting the service experience. As such, timely and informed follow-up is the key to success with this category of customers. These customers should be the secondary focal group.
- Customer Defection (red in CLI charts). These customers in categories 1 & 2 were very dissatisfied and are most likely to leave your company for an alternative.
The examination of performance means and percentages for key survey questions as describe thus far is important, but contributes only part of the information regarding the callers’ evaluation of service provided by your centers. The survey data was collected to achieve the two purposes. One, how are we doing and, two, what is critical to the quality of the service experience?
- to provide a caller evaluation of the attributes of service, called a performance measure or the mean level of performance, and,
- to enable the analytics to identify the service attributes that statistically impact caller satisfaction, essentially the drivers of caller satisfaction.
The performance means and calculated impact values of each service attribute enable the quantitative identification of areas in which service performance may be below an acceptable level and the resulting impact on satisfaction is high. The process of calculating impact values is a little more intricate than the process of calculating mean performance scores. The regression analysis from the caller satisfaction data computes the impact values and identifies the level of impact each attribute has on overall satisfaction. This allows supervisors and managers to concentrate on the areas that are most important to customers.
The combined aspects of service produce an effect that is perceived by the customer. When determining improvement issues, you should consider how the attributes interact, rather than a static attribute-by-attribute evaluation. Therefore, use a regression model to examine the callers’ overall perception of the service received during the call. An example model, in words, is:
The rating of overall satisfaction with the agent (Q1) is a function of how quickly the agent understood the reason for the call (Q2), how professional the agent was during the call (Q3), the agent’s knowledge of products and services (Q4), the agent providing a clear and complete answer (Q5), the confidence in the information provided by the agent (Q6), and being treated as a valued customer (Q7).
That model, mathematically, is:
Q1 = f (Q2, Q3, Q4, Q5, Q6, Q7)
By running the regression analysis, you can determine which attributes impact caller satisfaction the most. Combine these drivers of satisfaction with the measures of performance to present a complete picture, as shown below.
Based on the multivariate regression model, “conveying confidence in the response given,” “taking ownership for resolving the problem/issue,” and “quickly understanding reason for the call” are the most important drivers of satisfaction with the representative for this set of data. The drivers-of-satisfaction results (presented with the impact/performance chart as above) will vary for different sets of data. One team compared to another may have very different strengths and weaknesses. The power of such analysis is that it narrows the scope of focal areas to a manageable number. The example below shows a drivers-of-satisfaction analysis for two teams. These teams differed only in their leadership and membership–average tenure. Customer types served and location were both similar.
Team 1
Impact Performance
Team 2
Impact Performance
Despite the similarities between these two teams, each team generated different performance means and drastically different impact values.
Comparative analysis of different supervisors, teams, locations and departments often reveals service segments that should be emulated and other segments in need of intervention. Based on the table below, only one of the four teams that represent the largest percentage of completed surveys is a top-performing team (based on mean survey scores). An analysis of the strengths, skills and approach taken by members of Team B could aid members of the remaining teams in improving their own performance levels. Conversely, analyzing the lower performing teams could identify the unique challenges they face in servicing customers.
Note: C1-C5 would be general satisfaction criteria; Q1-Q6 would be Agent attributes.
In the example below, we analyzed the characteristics of a low-performing team in order to design corrective training. A drivers-of-satisfaction analysis revealed that “knowledge of the company’s products” and “completeness of responses” were the behaviors that had the greatest impact on the customer’s perception of the call. We plotted individual performance on these two key behaviors to create a visual profile of the team’s makeup. The team’s mean scores (on a 1-9 scale) on these two key behaviors divide the scatter plot below into four quartiles. Each quartile represents a unique agent profile, with a known set of strengths and weaknesses. For example, quadrant III, in the lower left side of the scatter plot, represents the call center’s risk. These agents are below-average performers on both of the key behaviors that have the greatest impact on customer perception of the service experience. While this quadrant represents a comparatively low percentage of this team’s membership, management must conduct an assessment of skill and desire to improve in a timely manner in order to minimize the risk to the contact center and, ultimately, the company’s revenue stream.
Let’s look at an instance where agent tenure was selected as the differentiating variable among agents. A great deal of time and energy is spent in the contact center industry empowering and developing agents in hopes of ensuring longevity. These actions do not always guarantee that the most tenured agents will be the best performing agents, as was the case in the example below.
The figure above clearly places peak agent performance at approximately 10 months of tenure. Introducing a performance intervention prior to month 10 of an agent’s tenure can extend the peak performance level.
Call resolution plays a key role in driving customer satisfaction. Significant differences in satisfaction scores exist between customers whose calls are brought to resolution and those whose problems/inquiries require follow-up. The table below exemplifies exactly why call resolution is such a key metric.
Repeat calls also have a dramatic impact on customer satisfaction. Repeated calls by customers are not only costly from the perspective of agent talk time, but also have a fairly severe impact on customer satisfaction with the company, the call and the agent.
With a representative sample, we can extrapolate the percentage of repeat calls to all calls taken during the month, in order to calculate the operational cost of repeat calls. The average cost per call is multiplied by the number of repeat calls (as determined by percentages below) for the second, third, etc., calls required. Keep in mind that the indirect cost is also a factor as it is associated with the significantly decreased satisfaction as shown in the section above.
An analysis of company-level data in this manner provides members of the operational team with a solid understanding of current customer satisfaction levels, the drivers of customer satisfaction and areas in need of improvement. However, examining the data longitudinally reveals performance trends and the impact of interventions.
The figure below is a control chart for call resolution. Control charts are often used in Six Sigma to differentiate between normal and abnormal process variation. Each point in the control chart below represents weekly performance on the key metric call resolution. The blue horizontal lines represent the upper (UCL) and (LCL) lower control limits for this metric, based on mean performance and standard deviation of weekly performance around this mean. Any point that resides either below the LCL or above the UCL indicates that the call resolution process is out of control, requiring an intervention.
Performance above the UCL indicates that agents are resolving an abnormally high percentage of calls. On the surface this may seem desirable, but further analysis reveals that resolution was gained at the expense of customer satisfaction. Performance below the LCL could have severe implications on customer satisfaction and contact center costs.
Next in the series, we turn our focus towards the Supervisors and Agents.
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
Communicating the Results – Part 1 of a 4 Part Series: Executive Management
A few years ago, my husband and I took a trip to Greece. We wanted to explore the countryside for a few days and decided to rent a car in Athens. At the reservation desk, the nice gentleman at the counter handed me a road map. Eager to get on our way, I thanked him and put the map in my bag, got into the car and away we went. As my husband was driving, I opened the map to take a look at where we were heading. It’s in English. I took a look out the window. The signs are in Greek. I could not translate the symbols in the Greek words to what I was reading on the map. As they say, “It was all Greek to me” and out the window the map went (not literally out the window). While it was considerate of the car rental representative to hand me a map in my own language, it was a totally useless tool regarding it’s intended purpose. In the end, he truly did not know what I needed.
Know Your Audience
We all know that in every situation, personal or corporate, you need to know your audience. This is not breaking news. However, do you know what information your audience truly needs? What does your Executive Team need to know to make strategic decisions versus what do your agents need to know to perform consistently well? Therein always lays the challenge. Analysis must be relevant to the decisions that the audience must make. Actionable data provides answers, direction and purpose.
Communicating the results of your External Quality Monitoring (EQM) research effort is a key but sometimes overlooked step in the process. Doing this right can be the difference between renewed funding and cutbacks that cannot be supported; the difference between usable feedback and mass confusion; the difference between having an engaged, motivated group dedicated to the Rally Cry for the customer and just getting by with handling customer interactions.
The audiences that are most likely to require feedback from the EQM program:
- Executive management,
- Operational management of each contact center,
- Teams and individual agents.
Each of these audiences will need analysis on different data and graphic or tabular presentations of the data. Additionally, consider when oral presentations will be needed and prepare for those in conjunction with the written reports. Never miss an opportunity to tout the advances made by the program and the benefits achieved.
This 4-Part series focuses on communicating the results that are needed to the appropriate teams and today, we place our focus on Executive Management.
Reports for Executive Management
As a critical function within the enterprise, any report to executive management must summarize the contribution achieved for the investment made. Beyond a mere presentation of high-level numeric results, an executive-level report should include a summary of the mission, the investment in customer relationship management, the contribution to customer loyalty and sales, a summary of the product, services or process issues identified for enhancement and the results of those initiatives (beyond the contact center).
Looking first and foremost at executive management needs, a first-rate presentation is paramount. Looks matter a good deal at this level, so do not skimp on color graphs and high-quality paper.
In general, such a presentation will require an executive summary, a response questionnaire, a narrative, including tables and graphs, as appropriate, and a summary/conclusion section.
1. Executive Summary: Give an overview briefly stating the purpose and results of the research. The executive summary must be parsimonious. It should be brief and cogent, wasting no space or words. Make it as objective and clean as possible.
2. Response Questionnaire: Include the survey instruments next. Evaluators of the research need to understand exactly what was asked. It is generally a good idea to include an accounting of the responses to the questions. Those will be readily available from the frequency tables in the analysis printout. You can include both the questionnaire and the responses in this step, hence the name “response questionnaire.” It is also possible to include the means for each question if that information will be meaningful to the reader. Some people are sensitive to the order in which the questions are asked, so it is wise to use that order in this section and indicate this clearly. Avoid needless discussion on question order to save time for the important business of selling executives on the value of the research initiative. Below is an example of a response questionnaire.
3. Narrative: In the narrative, state the purpose at the beginning and the results at the end, but, in between, tell how the research was conducted: who, what, when, where, why, how. Expect to put every piece of important information in the narrative at least twice: once verbally, and at least once more in a table, graph or both. Remember that people do not process information the same way. Some are verbally oriented; others are visual learners, so graphs will be easier to absorb. Still others relate best to numbers — and a table that would put most of us to sleep will sing out loud and clear to them. Include a plan for how the results will be used and outline additional resources needed, including budget, time, space, etc. If the proposed plan can reassign already-available resources without incurring additional expense, then all the better. Put that information in and anything else that supports the argument. Sample components of the narrative section of an executive committee report are shown below.
Example 1
This past quarter, the contact center experienced an unexpected 40 percent increase in call volume, due in large part to the promotional campaign launched in early July. The impact of the large increase in call volume had an adverse effect on operational metrics such as average speed of answer (ASA), average wait time and service level, as well as customer satisfaction levels. As a result, the contact center fell below performance goals on External Quality Monitoring customer satisfaction metrics for the first time over the last five fiscal quarters.
Example 2
In an average month, 100,000 customers call into our phone support center. At an average monthly value of $50 per customer, our phone support center has the potential to impact approximately $5 million in revenue. This past year, our phone support center reached performance goals (customer delight of 60 percent, and customer dissatisfaction of 5 percent), representing a 15 percent improvement in performance over the prior year. The result of this improvement is the protection of $750,000 of company revenue. In comparing this figure to the operating costs for this same period, a return on investment figure of 138 percent results.
Example 3
During the first quarter of this year, our contact center once again exceeded the performance of our competitors in the industry. Our domestic location (location 2) contributed to this positive standing, while our offshore location (location 1) continued to struggle to meet performance goals.
4. Summary: The summary/conclusion should again state the purpose of the research, the results of the research, the uses to which the results can be put, and subsequent plans for implementation. This should be much shorter than the narrative, and should highlight what is successful and useful. It is mission critical to aid executives in understanding the research, so make it clear.
The outlined report is intentionally redundant. It is the writer’s job to make it seem less so. Making the same points repeatedly is necessary since this may be the only opportunity to win the case. The idea is to repeat the major points but with more detail from executive summary through narrative, and then summarize again in the conclusion, leaving the reader no choice but to see the absolute reasonableness of the conclusions. A report should not leave the reader with questions. Make all the necessary information available, place that information into multiple formats, polish the language and present it in an appealing report. Again, it is critical to hold this job to the highest standard. Allocate sufficient time for the best report writer and editor available to do this job.
Next in the series, we turn our focus towards the Operations team.
~ Dr. Jodie Monger, President
This post is part of the book, “Survey Pain Relief.” Why do some survey programs thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of success? In “Survey Pain Relief,” renowned research scientists Dr. Jodie Monger and Dr. Debra Perkins, tackle numerous plaguing questions. Inside, the doctors reveal the science and art of customer surveying and explain proven methods for creating successful customer satisfaction research programs.
“Survey Pain Relief” was written to remedy the $billions spent each year on survey programs that can be best described as survey malpractice. These programs are all too often accepted as valid by the unskilled and unknowing. Inside is your chance to gain knowledge and not be a victim of being lead by the blind. For more information http://www.surveypainrelief.com/
