The magic's in the details!

Rick Emery — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:34:00 GMT

Being in my job, I can’t help but focus on how companies treat myself and the people around me … both the good and the bad. While we will use this forum to share some of those stories, we welcome your experiences as well.

Click on “Comment” below to share a particularly good story … or email us at vocblog@knowledge-wave.com.

What were they thinking … II

Rick Emery — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 22:33:00 GMT

In general we like to keep this blog focused on the positive side of customer experience: Things that go well or how to help them go better. But every once in a while we have to shake our heads and wonder what (or if) the company was thinking.

Got a story to share? Email us at vocblog@knowledge-wave.com and we’ll share it.

What were they thinking … I

Rick Emery — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:31:00 GMT

Got a story to share? Email us at vocblog@knowledge-wave.com and we’ll share it.

Good experience? Delighted Customer? Why not both?

Rick Emery — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:58:00 GMT

The Customer Experience Management group on LinkedIn has a rather lively discussion right now triggered around the question: What is the relationship between ‘having a good experience’ and ‘delighted customers’? And, can you create an ROI around ‘good experiences’. For my two-cents, I felt it worthwhile remembering that the customer’s perception of the value a company provides is more than the interaction with an agent … it is the entire relationship, which is driven by your differentiation / innovation strategy.

Improving customer satisfaction ... one employee at a time!

Rick Emery — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:04:00 GMT

A B2B software and services company with more than 450 CSRs was looking to standardize the service experience, making it more consistent across all agents. When reviewing C-SAT results by supervisor, the Director of Customer Service was not surprised to note that the supervisors she considered to be rising stars in her department tended to have teams with higher-than-average C-SAT scores.

What caught her attention, however, was that the same supervisors also had received higher levels of employee satisfaction and loyalty in a recent HR-sponsored employee survey.

MAPPING CSR ENGAGEMENT TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Rick Emery — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:37:00 GMT

Employee engagement is often the primary determinant of customer satisfaction with the service experience. Innovative, valuable products and services are vital but without a friendly, helpful, knowledgeable personal encounter, those products and services quickly become commodities. In addition, it is those motivated and engaged employees who design and create and deliver those valuable products and services. The higher the emotional attachment your employees have to the company and its customers, the higher their dedication, creativity, and performance.

Looking at the call center specifically, our research has confirmed what most HR professionals have been telling us for a long time: If you give your employees incentives and opportunities they are more likely to perform well.

It’s all about the people … III

Rick Emery — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:31:00 GMT

About three months ago I was in Portland and stopped by a local music store looking for the sheet music to Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel my Love.” In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t play the piano as much as I hack my way through it. But I have a couple songs for which I can keep the butchering to a minimum and this was one I wanted to try to add to my repertoire.

The store was out and the clerk wrote my name on a sticky note and said he would check with the publisher and call me. A couple days later I had a voicemail on my mobile stating that that particular song was out of print.

Okay, not a big deal. Besides, Joan Osborne’s version was definitely better than mine would ever be.

Last week I had another call from the store.

It's all about the people ... II

Rick Emery — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:54:00 GMT

Last year as we prepared to move from Portland, Oregon to Charlottesville, Virginia, we went through that fit of unbelief as we slowly realized how much unadulterated stuff we had accumulated in 9 years of living in our beautiful Southeast Portland home. Not wanting to pay the freight for all of it, we did a pretty good job cleaning out the extra, the old, and the no-longer-needed (although the crew that moved us would probably politely disagree ... maybe not so politely).

So, my wife took two boxes of books to a local independent bookstore (the “largest independent bookstore in the country,” we’re told) to sell. They do both new and used books and make a big deal out of buying books back. After waiting in line for close to ten minutes, the clerk took a quick look at the title of the top few books in each box and said that they didn’t need any. Didn’t check their stock online. Didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t look at all the books. Didn’t even say “Sorry” or “Thanks”.

Uses of Text Analytics in a C-SAT program

Rick Emery — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:44:00 GMT

The following is slightly adapted from a post we recently made to a LinkedIn Discussion Group (NPS Forum – Generating insights from NPS open ended question) … the bulk of the thread was a discussion about how to analyze text analytics, the benefits (or problems) of analyzing free text over traditional quantitative questions:

We advocate moving beyond "analysis" and toward "action". While you need to understand the customer's opinions (both quantitatively and qualitatively) you will be better able to make improvements in the customer experience when you include operational and behavioral data in your analysis. Not just "what is the customer saying?" but "who is that customer and what does she mean to our business?"

[We have found increases in satisfaction with a feedback program among executive by as much as 700% when results include customer behavioral and company operational data along with customer opinion data. In fact, adding employee behavioral and opinion data into the mix makes the survey even more valuable.]

For example, traditional text analytics might reveal that 18 customer said some variation of "you didn't solve my problem" last week. By including operational data about those customers in your analysis, you can see trends in what kinds of problems or what kinds of customers are making that statement. Then you can drive action internally so these kinds of problems don't happen in the future. More importantly, though, is the ability to speed up the conversation and actually respond to what the customer is saying as fast as possible. If the customer is taking the time to tell you that her problem remains unsolved, that is a relationship you still have a chance to salvage. By automatically escalating issues from both numeric and text parts of your survey, you speed up the cycle and make it that much easier to deliver exceptional customer service.

[KWI recommends both these "service error" alerts and “Kudos” alerts … if the customer says raving things about the CSR, let that person know as soon as possible about the compliment. Nothing reinforces positive behavior like direct customer feedback.]

Effective customer feedback management means the ability to respond at the macro, analytical level and the micro, individual customer level.

Integrating survey data with customer data - Personalize the survey experience

Rick Emery — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 13:01:00 GMT

An often over-looked consequence of integrating operational data with the survey platform is actually one of its most powerful. If your questionnaire or interviewer is smart enough, you can ask different questions of the customer depending upon who she is, what experience she actually had, and what she means to your business.

Voice of the Customer - Customer Experience