Why wouldn’t the social customer be right?

September 27, 2011 — Camille

One of the articles in the August 2011 issue of Customer Interaction Solutions struck me as particularly interesting, “The (Social) Customer Isn’t Always Right” by Brendan Read.

The reason I found this article interesting, other than the fact I work in marketing for the call center industry and social media is a hot topic in both arenas right now, is his argument that invalid complaints are clouding social media.

I’ll be the first to admit, there are people out there that take advantage of companies and bend and break rules daily.  Complaints from these customers, and complaints that say nothing other than “this company is horrible,” really aren’t worth focusing time and effort on.  However, unless you see nothing but suspect complaints on a person’s Twitter feed or Facebook page how do you know their complaint is invalid and not worth pursuing?

From a customer satisfaction perspective, and from a brand management perspective, I would argue that until you see a particular individual taking advantage of your company’s goodwill in responding to social media comments, every complaint is worth pursuing.  If for no other reason than the fact that other people will see the complaint and potential customers will see your response.

I’d also like to give a little credit to the “street smarts” of social media participants.  People actively engaged in social media are very adept at weeding out, and ignoring, those that aren’t adding to the conversation.  If a person uses social media to do nothing other than complain about one company after another people aren’t going to listen.  This is where I agree with Brendan, those individuals aren’t worth wasting your company’s resources on.

As call center technology advances, it will be easier to weed out the invalid complaints and focus on the customers, and prospects, that are valuable over the long haul.  Products like Cisco SocialMiner and real-time reporting solutions that incorporate social media feeds are well on their way to making social media management in the call center much easier.

What is your company’s policy on reaching out to customers through social media?

Posted in Business, Customer service, Social media. No Comments »

A Compendium of Call/Contact Center Industry Statistics

May 31, 2011 — Tom
  • Bolster brand image. Assuming a large call center with 3,000 agents and an average of only 50 calls per agent per day, a company has the opportunity to make 1.05 million customized impressions each week – and 54.6 million personal connections each year.  Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
  • Create an emotional connection. American Express used to allocate roughly 70% of its training time for industry- and company-specific technical skills and 30% for softer personal skills – but it’s flipped the equation around.  Today, 70% of agent training time focuses on skills such as actively listening to what the caller is saying and helping customers understand the value of their relationship with American Express.  Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
  • Ditch the one-size-fits-all mentality. Many companies aim to answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds.  But a large telecom company found that up to a certain point, time to answer had absolutely no bearing on customer satisfaction – as long as agents could resolve the callers’ problems.  And a large parcel shipper found that callers’ tolerance for wait times varied by the type of issue they were calling about.  Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
  • Resist the urge to give explicit AHT targets to agents. A large utility company dropped AHT as an agent target, and while call time increased by 20 seconds, the number of repeat calls dropped by 40%.  Source: Forrester Research, Inc.
  • Pay attention to Web 2.0 channels. While phone and email are essentially ubiquitous, web-based channels have seen a steep rise as channels of concern to contact center managers, and five new social media and Web 2.0 channels – relatively unexplored in 2008 – have reached over 50% penetration into contact center operations: web-based technical forums/discussion boards, live video conferencing, SMS/texts, live chat, and social media (third-party applications such as Twitter and Facebook).  Source: Aberdeen Group
  • Become world-class. While world-class centers certainly don’t abandon “availability” metrics, such as service level, average speed of answer, abandon rate, et. al., they focus even more on such measures as first-contact resolution, quality, customer satisfaction, and agent adherence to schedule.  Source: Cooney Solutions Group.
  • Drive additional revenue. More than 70% of consumers stated that they would increase their purchases with a specific company by 10% or more if that business delivers a superior customer experience.  Source: Strativity Group.
  • Reduce customers at risk. If the customer’s inquiry or problem is resolved in the first call, only 1% of those customers are at risk to go to your competitors.  Conversely, 15% of customers who did not get their inquiry or problem resolved are likely to go to your competitors.  Source: Service Quality Measurement Group

Posted in Call center KPIs, Call Center Management, Call Center Resources, Customer service, Performance Management, Social media. No Comments »

At the Nexus — The Contact Center, Marketing, and Product Management

March 28, 2011 — Tom

Let’s not beat around the bush.  Social is not going anywhere.  Whether we like it or not, the new norm in customer relationship management is centered on deeply personalized customer interactions.

The Product Management group is interacting daily with key customers and non-customers.  The Marketing group is focused on marketing communications and sales objectives.  And, the contact center, long the owner of the customer, is in many cases still floundering, trying to figure out how to best meet the needs of an increasingly social customer.

The next-generation contact center will be multichannel, multimedia, multiplatform, and social media fluent.  It will also have intimate ties to the Marketing and Product Management groups in the organization.  Here’s what will change, as these three groups sit at the nexus of customer relationships in the future:

  • Contact centers will evolve to become relationship platforms, with a focus on building personalized and collaborative customer interactions.  Top priorities will involve improving the customer experience and more deeply engaging with customers to strengthen the bonds of loyalty.
  • The responsibilities of the Marketing group will evolve to include not only outbound communication, but also inbound customer care.  Gone are the days of email blasts and PR campaigns.  Welcome to the fold: flash mob focus groups, Twitter campaigns, and video-initiated lead generation.
  • The Product Management group will be tasked with reaching out to non-customers more and more.  User groups and cold emails will become things of the past; welcome to the era of real-time Facebook conversations with non-customers.

We know that customers are communicating in a social manner – in real time.  Unfortunately, many Customer Care, Marketing, and Product managers still approach customer communications in the same old way, with an emphasis on the telephone.  While still an important form of communication, the web has surpassed it in many industries as the dominant form of communication between the customer and the organization.  For example, in the technology sector, customer interactions on the web far surpass support phone calls.  And I’m not just talking about the corporate website, either!  Many technology customers also research information on products and services from social networking sources, such as blogs, wikis, and online user ratings.

So what am I suggesting?  That these three groups will become more closely aligned as social becomes even more prevalent?  Exactly!  It’s time for the contact center to take the lead here in strengthening customer loyalty.  What are you waiting for?

Posted in Call Center Management, Customer service, Social media, Web. No Comments »

Facebook: Too scary for business use?

March 11, 2011 — Kelly

Given that Facebook seems to be among the fastest growing trend across many demographics, it seems to me to be an obvious part of any business marketing and customer service plan.  I recently asked my brother, the media buyer and marketing guru for a company with millions of dollars in annual sales, why his company doesn’t have a Facebook presence.  I was surprised when he answered that the company is just too apprehensive about the possible backlash that could be unleashed with this sort of presence.

I was surprised, but the more I thought about it, I realized that their hesitation actually shows a lot of wisdom.  The company does not have a dedicated customer service department and marketing is very heavily focused on TV, radio, and print ads.  They have asked themselves some key questions and, not finding satisfactory answers, have decided to wait until they can better guarantee that a Facebook page would improve, and not hinder, business.

Imagine some of the possible scenarios of a poorly planned rollout on Facebook:

  • The company develops targeted ads, which are an unbridled success.  However, the company does not have staffing or product inventory to adequately handle the new influx of interest.
  • The company offers coupons or discounts, but does not account for some people’s willingness to manipulate bargains.  Online grocery coupons have evolved to an extremely sophisticated level, where barcodes only scan once or twice before being rejected.  Many smaller companies are not aware of this technology, or simply don’t have the capability to replicate it.  Poorly planned coupons or discounts can become practically viral online, putting the revenue benefits of such promotions at serious risk.
  • A brand new Facebook page rolls out, but there is no plan or personnel to manage it.    Given the option to post on a business’ wall or add reviews is a wonderful option for satisfied customers. Even the companies with the best customer service always have a few customers who refuse to be satisfied.  In Facebook world, the unsatisfied customers have the potential to become a dominating presence on the company page.

On the surface, Facebook and other social networking sites, offer a seemingly simple way to spread the word about your business or service.  In this case, the lack of a dedicated customer service department was part of the deal breaker; not having any personnel to manage the page and customer comments opened the business to the potential for an extremely negative online presence.  However, companies with a carefully developed plan to manage the new page on a regular basis can utilize social networking to ensure it serves as a benefit for business.

Posted in Business, Customer service, Social media. No Comments »

More Ideas to Align Customer Service and Marketing

February 28, 2011 — Camille

In my last blog post I discussed the importance of aligning customer service and marketing and gave a couple ideas on how to start a relationship with the marketing department.  Marketing departments and contact centers in businesses worldwide are finding a growing importance in this relationship so I thought I would share a few more ideas.

  1. The use of mobile devices, specifically smartphones, is becoming widespread and people are often contacting customer service centers from mobile devices rather than landlines (Apple seems to agree).  Mobile has become a huge topic in the marketing world, but many companies are still trying to figure out the best way to capitalize on this relatively new media.  So here’s my idea: work with your marketing department to figure out how your customers use their mobile devices.  More than likely, your marketing department is trying to figure out how to reach customers through mobile and you have access to customers while they’re on mobile devices.  If you have a satisfaction survey at the end of customer service calls, add a question that asks if the customer is using a mobile device.  Or, get your agents to talk to customers about their mobile usage rather than placing them on hold.  This will give you, and your marketing department, a starting point for deciding how to best exploit the mobile world.
  2. There are countless examples of companies that have faced huge public relations blunders thanks to an angry customer who shares their negative experience through social media (United Airlines, Maytag, and the list goes on).  When handled correctly, negative social media comments are an excellent opportunity for companies to resolve issues and publicly show outstanding customer service.  This is a great opportunity for customer service and marketing to work on a plan for handling potential social media problems.  You and your agents specialize in customer service and your marketing department specializes in branding so together you can formulate a proactive response to any potential social media crisis.
  3. Serve as a sounding board for each other.  Your call center team probably has more customer knowledge than any other department in your organization.  It’s very likely that you have answers to many of the questions your marketing department has about how customers use products and what common pain points are.  It’s also likely that they have answers to some of your questions; especially with things like social media and other customer-facing programs.

How else can customer service and marketing align?

Posted in Business, Call Center Management, Customer service, Social media. No Comments »

Aligning Customer Service with the Marketing Department

February 9, 2011 — Camille

A few months ago I wrote a post about how to get marketing on the call center’s side.  It seems this topic is becoming more and more popular thanks to social media exploding in businesses around the world.  I came across three separate articles just in the last week that discuss this very issue so I thought I would dive back in.

The first article I read was in this month’s issue of Contact Center Pipeline called “Setting the Bar for Multichannel Customer Contact” by Maren Symonds.  She discusses a survey of contact center practitioners conducted in November 2010 that focused on multichannel customer contact.  Symonds says one thing she learned from the survey is “the action in social media and mobile applications is happening largely outside of customer service.”  Another key takeaway is that respondents reported feeling “they are lagging in adoption of social media and mobile applications.”  Typically, marketing departments are charged with developing social media strategies and mobile applications, but customer service needs to part of that process too.

Another article in this month’s CCP, written by industry expert Tim Montgomery, points out that most of the calls made to contact centers are a result of activities in other departments within the organization.  Montgomery makes it clear that without “strong interdepartmental relationships” contact centers won’t be successful and neither will other departments within the company.  He says “contact centers have metrics and goals that connect all departments with the center, and vice versa.  This alignment allows for open communication across all channels, with conversations focused on the customer experience— not on individual department results.”

My last proof point for why customer service and marketing alignment is crucial is a blog post by Ernan Roman on the 1to1 Blog.  He gives a personal example of a poor experience he had with a chimney cleaning company that was quickly smoothed over by none other than the owner of the company who happened to answer Roman’s customer service call.  The owner of this small company understood that by acting fast to resolve the customer’s issue, and empowering all customer service reps to do the same, he had the opportunity to make Roman a long-term customer and earn his business for years to come.  Roman acknowledges one of the most important metrics for a successful marketing initiative is its capacity to generate repeat purchases.  However, having the ability to generate repeat purchases does no good if customer service and marketing are not aligned and working towards the same goal.

So what actions can you take to actually foster alignment between customer service and marketing?  Here are two steps you can take right now:

  1. Get to know each other: Walk down the hall, make a phone call or send an email and introduce yourself.  Let your marketing department know that you’d like to work with them to better the brand, increase customer retention or whatever makes most sense for your business.  And of course send them this article to help demonstrate how crucial this relationship is for your company!
  2. Set up regular meetings: Whether it be weekly, monthly, quarterly or some other time period it’s important to update each other and know what’s going on.  Is marketing about to start a new social media campaign?  Your agents should know about it!  Have you seen an increase in customer complaints about a particular problem?  Your marketing department should know about it!

Stay tuned for more ideas on how to align the call center and marketing department.

Posted in Business, Call Center Management, Customer service, Social media. No Comments »

2011 Contact Center Trends

January 11, 2011 — Maureen

‘Tis the season for both New Year’s Resolutions and miscellaneous punditry about forecasts, trends, and random guesses about every imaginable topic. So I decided to throw my hat in the ring and share musings from my crystal-ball-gazing into 2011 contact center and customer service trends. Here’s what I expect to see in the coming year:

  1. We’ve been hearing a lot about at-home call center agents, and I think the trend will really pick up in 2011. Remote agent programs allow employers to hire the best and the brightest with knowledge in specialty areas, and allows employees more flexibility that may lead to job satisfaction and lower attrition rates. Win-win. But employers must equip remote agents with all the tools necessary to deliver superb customer service, including access to real-time queue stats and messaging available to in-house agents. A tool like Desktop Presenter from Inova Solutions may fit the bill quite nicely.
  2. The next trend I’ve noticed in contact centers is a commitment to “going green” and adopting environmentally-friendly policies. This actually fits in nicely with the first trend on this list, because Donna Fluss recently listed a remote agent program as one way companies can reduce their carbon footprint. If your employees aren’t polluting the air and guzzling gas on their commutes to and from work, the earth will thank them. Fluss listed other ways to reduce energy consumption for companies with in-house employees, such as regulating building temperatures, turning off computers when not in use, and refraining from printing unnecessary reports.
  3. Social media has grown tremendously in recent years and the experts expect this trend to continue in 2011. Contact centers need to stay up-to-date on the way their customers are communicating, so I predict an increased utilization of text mining software for the purpose of monitoring and responding to social media. For example, when a customer blogs or tweets about your company, this type of software extracts relevant data and gives your agents the opportunity to reach out and proactively engage that customer in a conversation. The potential of this type of software is huge, but contact centers may be unsure at first how to build it into their workflow.
  4. I expect 2011 will bring a renewed focus on “going the extra mile” for the customer. An article I recently read in CRM magazine cited an example of a customer who forgot to send roses to his wife for their anniversary the previous day. He called a flower shop in a panic to have them ship roses immediately, and the CSR suggested they send roses with a note from the company apologizing for sending them to the wrong address the day before. That is more than the man expected and he will surely return for future purchases. Agents at Zappos are well known for their willingness to do whatever it takes to meet a customer need, including searching the web for competitive products if an item is sold out. There are always opportunities to “wow” your customers, but you need to be willing to relinquish some control and let agents be autonomous and creative in finding solutions.
  5. 2011 may be the year that many contact centers turn to a hosted provider. Hosting some or all of your infrastructure “in the cloud” may offer certain advantages, especially for companies with limited IT resources and those that need to get up and running quickly. Of course, you do have to sacrifice some functionality, but many smaller centers don’t have complex needs and can operate quite well in the cloud.

What do you think 2011 will bring for the contact center industry?

Posted in At-home and remote agents, Customer service, Performance Management, Social media, Technology. No Comments »

Get Marketing Onboard with the Call Center

November 9, 2010 — Camille

Ever wished you could get your marketing department on the call center’s side?  Here’s a short story you can share with them about the importance of customer service when it comes to marketing.

Forrester’s Josh Bernoff recently wrote an article in the American Marketing Association’s magazine, Marketing News.  The article is called “Customer Service is Marketing” and Josh discusses a social media blunder by Maytag.  Heather Armstrong, a popular mom blogger with a readership of about 350,000 and over a million Twitter followers, tweeted about a bad experience with Maytag customer service and a Maytag backlash began.

Josh goes on to give stats such as “people generate approximately 500 billion online impressions on one another about products and services every year” and “Nielsen Online estimates the total number of online advertising impressions in a 12-month period at a hair under 2 trillion.”  Why does this matter to marketing and customer service?  Because 25% of impressions about companies generated online are from regular people and not the marketing industry. This means that if a potential customer sees four comments about your company, at least one of them is probably from one of your customers.

So when you need marketing on your side, remind them that your call center is working to create positive experiences with customers and the customer service provided in the call center has the power to make or break branding and marketing initiatives, especially in the world of social media.  And as Josh points out, customers believe other customers much more than they believe marketing messages.

Posted in Customer service, Social media. No Comments »

Motivating Call Center Agents with Social Media

August 31, 2010 — Camille

Social Media ChecklistI’ve been doing a fair amount of research lately on the various ways social media is used in the call center— common strategies and objectives, metrics, visibility, the whole nine yards.  I find it interesting that several years ago a select few companies dove right into using social media in the call center, in a no holds barred approach, while some are still sitting back and observing in terror (and of course all the stages in between). 

My research has shown me that one of the biggest fears call center managers, supervisors and executives seem to have is agents getting carried away with social media tasks and either not focusing on their customer service jobs (and instead checking in with their friends and tweeting nasty messages about supervisors) or putting out incorrect information that harms the brand.

While it’s true that not every Joe Schmo should be trusted to respond publicly on the internet to your customers, using social media as a motivational tool for agents that have consistently provided outstanding service should alleviate these fears.  Just like you wouldn’t hand the keys to your new Jaguar over to your 15 year old neighbor, you shouldn’t hand the “keyboard reins” over to every agent in your call center.

Focusing on agents who have proven they provide outstanding customer service, via phone or chat, will help you select the right people to be social media ambassadors in your center.  “Promoting” these customer service representatives to be your online brand ambassadors will motivate all your agents to provide outstanding customer service. 

Your new online brand ambassadors (fancy new job title optional) have already shown they know how to handle customers in a positive manner, now you just need to train them to translate those skills to the wide world of social media.  Be sure to work with your HR, marketing and public relations departments ahead of time to have rules and guidelines in place to cover everything from appropriately responding to negative feedback (especially being cautious of the tone your response projects) to whether agents can take time to use social media for personal use at work.  Make these guidelines (and the consequences if they’re broken) very clear to everyone that will be providing service and support through social media.

Just remember— it takes time to perfect new processes, but don’t let this deter you from diving in and experimenting until you get it right.  Who knows, you may end up setting the standards for your industry and having a blog post written about you on InsideInova.com one day!

How has your call center approached social media?  What rules and regulations have you put in place for agents that use social media for service and support?

Posted in Social media. No Comments »

Social media monitoring: What it is and why you should do it

July 20, 2010 — Camille

One of my first blog posts for InsideInova.com was about monitoring social media in the contact center.  I discussed three key ways contact centers can monitor social media in a very strategic way:

  1. Set goals and objectives
  2. Determine metrics
  3. Use a free, or paid, monitoring tool

I was thinking about this post and wondering if I had perhaps jumped the gun a bit.  Working in the marketing world I hear about social media monitoring everywhere— webinars, trade publications, newsletters from marketing vendors and the list goes on and on.  “Social media monitoring” is probably one of the newest and biggest buzzwords to drive businesspeople crazy.  If you’re a call center manager or supervisor, this monitoring task has likely rolled down from upper management and landed squarely on your shoulders as a customer service initiative.  If it’s not your responsibility yet, it probably will be soon.

So before you start planning your approach, what exactly is this social media monitoring thing anyway and why is it so important?

Monitoring various social media outlets (like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, digg, blogs and so on) is simply keeping a “virtual ear” open for mentions of your company.  In some cases this could also include high profile employees, like Apple’s Steve Jobs.  Tracking what people are saying online about your company is crucial.  For one, customers are no longer telling one or two people about an experience with your company, they’re telling hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of people over the Internet.

There are countless examples of frustrated customer online rants going viral.  One of the more entertaining is United Breaks Guitars (caution- the chorus will probably replay over and over again in your head) which is now a trilogy of music videos by a musician who checked his guitar, only to have it broken, while flying United Airlines.  The original video went viral on YouTube and has been viewed more than 8 million times.  Only after the video received national attention did United offer compensation for the broken guitar.

Having a social media monitoring system in place allows companies to proactively reach out to customers ranting and raving about a negative experience.  Take Best Buy’s twelpforce; employees scour the Twitter universe for people in need of tech advice.  Best Buy proactively reaches out to them and answers their questions via Twitter.  I can’t think of a better way to position the Best Buy brand as a customer service leader and tech expert.

Social media monitoring provides a great way for you, the contact center manager, to contribute to the bottom line by proactively reaching out to disgruntled customers and improving potential customers’ perceptions of your company.  All of this can be easily, and inexpensively, accomplished.  See my first social media monitoring post for advice on getting started and post your questions and comments below.

Posted in Social media. 2 Comments »
« Older posts «
»