November 11, 2010 Association of Customer Contact Professionals (ACCP) Lunch & Learn Highlights
Mike Garner, Chief Customer Officer at Cicero, Inc. facilitated an interactive session on the economics of delivering a great customer experience.
Mike opened with comments about the increasing importance of customer engagement, with four guiding principles for what customers want:
- Know Me – account information, my needs, my interests
- Know Your Stuff – have access to necessary tools and skills to handle the request
- Respect Me and My Time – validate needs/concerns and move through the contact in an efficient manner
- Keep Me Informed – of offerings, changes affecting my account, etc.
Top performing contact centers deliver tools to the desktop that enable agents to fulfill these customer must-haves. Mike gave a collections example that illustrates how these principles can play out.
- Know Me – “I’ve reviewed your file, and it appears that…”
- Know Your Stuff – “Here are some options you can consider to get this taken care of”
- Respect Me and My Time – “I know your situation is tough…”
- Keep Me Informed – “Here’s when this will be reported to a credit reporting agency…”
Mike also gave examples of how the Ritz Carlton hotel chain exemplifies this model.
Customer engagement and employee development focus are also driven from a company’s primary brand identity.
- Low Cost – e.g. Wal-Mart – level of greeter training more likely to be focused on theft reduction (keep prices low)
- Innovator – e.g. Apple – customer forums, be part of the “cool” group
- Service Based – e.g. Nordstrom – associates have latitude to help customers
And some brands like Southwest Airlines cross multiple disciplines.
Mike noted that in a recent Ernst & Young study, Quality of Customer Service was rated #1 priority by an overwhelming majority of CEOs surveyed. Companies with high levels ofcustomer engagement outperformed their peers on Gross Margin by 26% and sales growth by 85%.
When asked how to measure customer engagement, Mike recommended a Gallup publication – “HumanSigma – Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter”, John H. Fleming, PhD. Information on the book can be found at Gallup’s website in the link below, and purchased through a number of sources.
One final data point Mike discussed was the Customer Effort Score, and how it measures ease of doing business with a company. This measure is more powerful than First Call Resolution because is measures effort beyond the direct interaction with a customer service agent. For example:
- Ease in searching the company website for needed information
- Ease in locating contact information
- Ease in navigating an interactive voice response system
- Length of wait in a queue before being serviced
- Actions required by the customer after the call is completed
In this example, a call may last five to ten minutes, with the issue being resolved, but may involve several hours of customer effort before it is “closed” from a customer’s viewpoint.
Enabling Business Transformation of Enterprise Interactions
Cicero provides businesses the ability to maximize every interaction from intra-company back office applications to those that take place between employees, customers and vendors while extending the value of the best of breed applications in which businesses have already invested. We provide an innovative and unique combination of application and process integration, automation, presentation and real-time analysis, all without changes to the underlying applications or requiring costly development expenditures.
Our business integration software addresses the emerging need for companies' information systems to deliver enterprise-wide views of their business information processes. In addition to our software solutions, we also provide technical support, training and consulting services as part of our commitment to providing our customers with industry-leading solutions. Cicero's consulting team has in-depth experience in developing successful enterprise-class solutions as well as valuable insight into the business information needs of customers in the largest Fortune 500 corporations worldwide.
VITEC, your single source for contact center solutions
Initially we will begin a process of assessment by documenting and investigating all aspects of the communications and contact center systems at your company. We develop/identify measurable objectives and then investigate the known and unknown solutions that could be used to accomplish your company’s goals. Each solution will be evaluated and measured against the defined performance objectives culminating in a document that clearly defines potential options.
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