Customer Experience

Transcription

Customer Experience

Spring 2013
Executive Report on
Customer Experience
Define, Design, Deliver, Calibrate
Executive Report on Customer Experience
Spring 2013
Contents
1
Contributors
4
Executive Summary
5
Key Findings
5
Methodology and Demographics
8
Defining the Customer Experience
11 Designing the Customer Experience
13 Delivering the Customer Experience
22 Calibrating the Customer Experience
25 Conclusions
27 Knowledge Center
28 About Our Sponsors
28 About CMIQ
www.customermanagementiq.com
2
Spring 2013
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS
Anecdotal insights add valuable perspective to data gathered through the survey and interview
process. This report featured views and experience from practitioners representing well-known
and leading brands as well as from experts who represent field knowledge gathered by our sponsorship partners in this research.
Dann Allen*
Erik Eaker*
Head of Experience Design &
Improvement
AAA Northern California,
Nevada, Utah
Director, Group Segment
Experience Practice
Humana
Dann is a Customer Experience (CE) leader with a
passion for shaping how
organizations interact with
their customers. For over 10 years, he has led crossfunctional programs and managed internal functions to
deliver dramatic improvements in loyalty, satisfaction,
revenue, and cost reduction.
Dann is Head of Experience Design & Improvement
for the Automobile Association of America’s 2nd
largest club, based in Northern California. He uses
voice of the customer data and leads cross-functional
efforts to improve value propositions and multichannel experiences.
Prior to AAA, Dann was Head of Customer Experience
for Sprint’s Prepaid Division. During that time, Dann
won Sprint’s “Circle of Excellence” for his outstanding
contribution to CE. His division progressed in JD Powers’ survey rankings during that time and achieved
#1 in 2010.
Erik leads Humana’s Group
Segment Experience Practice
and is responsible for the endto-end experience of brokers,
employers and members across
the full suite of Humana’s health and productivity solutions. Prior to this role, he served as Chief of Consumer
Experience for Humana Vitality, a comprehensive wellness solution focused on physical activity, education,
screenings, tobacco cessation and nutrition.
Erik has served Humana overseas, living five years in
London consulting with England’s Department of Health,
directing international business development activities
throughout Europe, South America, the Middle East and
Asia, and serving as Operations Director for Humana
Europe where he oversaw the delivery of commissioning
knowledge, tools and program management capabilities
to it’s NHS customers in England.
Prior to Sprint, Dann held various senior leadership
roles in Sales, Marketing, and Operations at Beyond
Philosophy, a Customer Experience Consulting firm
with offices in London and Atlanta.
After beginning his career at Blue Cross and Blue
Shield of North Carolina in 1997, Erik was recruited by
Humana’s Chief Innovation Officer in 2000 to spearhead
the design and implementation of a new e-enabled,
consumer-centric care strategy. Erik received his MHA
and BSPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health and served as a U.S.
Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines.
http://calstate.aaa.com / www.aaa.com
www.humana.com
*This contributor is a presenter at CMIQ’s
2013 Customer Experience Summit.
www.customerexperiencesummit.com
1
Spring 2013
Mike Hennessy
John Purcell
Vice President of Marketing
IntelliResponse
Director of Customer Care Products
LogMeIn, Inc.
Mike is responsible for all
aspects of IntelliResponse
corporate marketing, including demand generation, brand
strategy, corporate messaging,
advertising, public relations,
and partner marketing.
Previously, Mike was the VP of Marketing and Alliances for Truition, an international retail and manufacturing software provider, where he headed corporate
re-branding, partner development, lead generation
and market entry strategies for North America and
Europe. During his years as a Marketing Communications consultant for a number of world-class agencies,
Mike managed a client base that included Amazon.
com, Dell, the Royal Bank of Canada, Hewlett-Packard
and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
Mike holds a master’s degree in business administration from Queen’s University, a post-graduate diploma
in marketing communications from Seneca College
and a bachelor’s degree from Mount Allison University.
www.intelliresponse.com
Ivar Kroghrud
Chief Executive Officer
QuestBack
Ivar has been with QuestBack since the Company
was founded in 2000, and
is responsible for the overall running of the company.
Before joining QuestBack,
Ivar worked as a management consultant, focusing
on strategy and eBusiness. Ivar holds a bachelor’s
degree from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy
and a master’s degree from the Norwegian School
of Management (BI).
John Purcell is Director of
Customer Care Products at
LogMeIn, Inc. In this role, he
is responsible for growing the
Customer Care business by
shaping vision, solution strategy
and product direction. John’s team creates application
user experiences that delight customer care agents
and empower them to fully satisfy customers.
John has developed deep, hands-on experience solving customer support problems and frequently shares
his insights via speaking engagements at industry
events held by organizations such as the Help Desk
Institute (HDI) and Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA). In doing so, he helps companies evolve
their support organizations in order to overcome new
challenges and capitalize on fresh opportunities.
More specifically, John was one of the first in the
industry to discuss how social media and the proliferation of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices
are critical new factors in the customer experience.
He often advises on how to integrate social, chat and
support technologies to create a proactive customer
management approach, which results in happier and
more loyal customers.
Prior to joining LogMeIn, John spent 12 years in the
mobile telecommunications industry, and held senior
technology, sales, and business development roles at
LogicaCMG (now Acision) and Red Bend Software.
www.logmein.com
www.questback.com
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Spring 2013
Amas Tenumah
Ian Zafra
Vice President, Operations
Teleflora
Vice President, Account Management
Amas is a customer experience fanatic, and a selfdescribed “contact center
geek,” specializing in contact
center operations and customer experience strategy for
a “Twitter-first” century. He has spent the last decade
managing contact center operations for companies
like Coca-Cola and Convergys Corporation, and
currently serves as Vice President of Operations for
Teleflora. Amas brings a unique perspective to the
world of customer experience that he shares regularly
at industry events and publications. He is also a proud
dad and an avid Yankee fan who enjoys playing competitive soccer when home in Oklahoma City.
www.teleflora.com
SPi Global
A seasoned customer care
executive with more than 12
years experience in call center
operations and client services,
Ian Zafra heads the SPi Global
CRM Account Management
Division. As an executive committee member in the
SPi Global Engagement Model, his leadership role
includes the cultivation of existing client relationships
and fostering internal & external partnerships that
optimize value, performance, and profitability for our
company. His primary objective is to better client and
customer engagements, optimizing account satisfaction and targeting opportunities that exemplify the
total 360º servicing model upheld by the SPi Global
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) business
unit. Over the past two years at SPi Global, Ian has
occupied key positions in operations that centered on
business intelligence, site development, client engagement and process improvement. Prior to his joining SPi
Global, he held similar BPO roles in global operations
and client services, commonly prioritizing performance
and achieving high satisfaction levels for all accounts
managed.
www.spi-global.com
3
30%
Spring 2013
25%
20%
Executive Summary and Key Findings
gramming and initiatives,
they must be careful to
guard those investments.
This research shows a
concerning amount of
unevenness in the definition, design, delivery
and calibration of the
customer experience
across participating
organizations. However,
the data also shows that
there are entities that
are emerging as strong
performers in the area
of customer experience
as a differentiator among
competitive fields and,
as we will see, as a
potential cost saver.
Business recognizes the
importance of customer experience. According to 75.9%
of customer management
executives and leaders who
participated in this research
initiative, their organizations
have rated customer experience a 5 on a scale of 1-5
(with 5 being of highest importance). (See figure 1)
Of their total annual budgets, 17.3% of organizations
represented will spend more
than 11% of their dollars on
their customer experience program. (See figures 2 and 3)
As these businesses put
money and resources behind
customer experience pro-
Figure 2: Total Annual Budget for 2013
<$100,000
>$1 billion
2.9%
1 = Low Priority
2
3
75.9%
4
5 = High Priority
44.1%
Customer Experience
Program
8.3%
Customer Service
5.3%
$10,000,001-$25 million
$500,000,001-$1 billion
1.5%
3.1%
0.8%
1.6%
11.8%
38.6%
5.3%
$5,000,001-$10 million
$100,000,001-$500 million
4.4%
3.8%
$1,000,001-$5 million
0%
15.3%
Figure 3: Percentage of the Organization’s 2013
Budget Dedicated to Customer Programs
4.5%
$500,001-$1 million
$50,000,001-$100 million
10%
Figure 1: Importance of the Customer
Experience to the Organization 5%
3.8%
$100,001-$500,000
$25,000-$50 million
15%
0.0%
0.8%
8.8%
18.4%
33.6%
<10%
11 - 25%
38.4%
26 - 50%
0.0%
6.0%
Contact Center
3.8%
1.6%
0.8%
12.8%
8.0%
Customer Service/
24.8%
Contact Center
Technologies
24.1%
I don’t know
I prefer not to answer
0%0% 5%5%10%
10%15%
15%20%
20%25%
25%
2.52.5 7.57.512.5
17.522.5
12.517.5
22.5
0.8%
0.8%
7.2%
18.4%
51 - 75%
76 - 100%
38.4%
3.0%
7.5%
38.4%
I don’t know
34.4%
38.4%
0%0% 10%
10% 20%
20% 30%
30% 40%
40% 50%
50%
5%5% 15%
15% 25%
25%35%
35% 45%
45%
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Spring 2013
Key Findings
• Most survey participants
agreed that the definition
of the customer experience
should include all interactions
with the organization, from
both the lifetime and transactional perspectives.
• A clear majority of
respondents believe the
customer experience cycle
begins when the organization communicates with
customers and prospects via
marketing and promotional
materials. A promising handful understand the cycle to
begin when the customer first
becomes aware of its products and services, no matter
the method of awareness.
• Despite the fact that in a
majority of organizations, the
executive suite is involved in
defining the organization’s
customer experience, fewer
than half have a member of
the executive suite dedicated
to focusing on customer
experience and/or related
programs.
• In those organizations that
have identified customer experience priorities within their
industries, customer service
and ease of doing business
were the leading two priorities.
• Functional roles in a
concerning number of organizations do not have at least
a passing familiarity with how
customer feedback around
preferences and priorities is
collected, possibly revealing
a lack of organizationwide
communication on customer
experience programs and
strategies.
• Many businesses do not
have a consistent customer
experience across all channels
(including telephone, email,
chat, social media and Web
self-service, among others)
and touchpoints (from awareness to loyalty), and they do
not have a plan in place to
remedy the inconsistency or
do not have confidence in
their current remedial plans.
• Although the research
identified that customers are
not having a consistent experience across all customer
touchpoints, at least a few
organizations are beginning
to take steps to understand
where and why the inconsistency exists.
• New channels, such as
self-service and social media,
and nuanced approaches
to customer touchpoints will
increase complexity for organizations, particularly in the
contact center and customer
service operations. This
growing complexity should
be evaluated when planning growth and expansion
to ensure that fundamental
delivery and improvement of
the customer experience is
not hindered.
Methodology and Demographics
To determine the value
that business places on the
customer experience and
how organizations define,
design, deliver and calibrate
it, Customer Management
IQ surveyed 146 customer
management leaders using
an online questionnaire over
a six-week period starting in
December 2012 and ending in
January 2013.
Companies of all sizes from
29 countries are represented
in the results.
The majority of organizations represented here are
in North American, and most
of those are from the United
States (62.4%) and Canada
(8%). The next largest representations are from Australia
and the United Kingdom, each
making up 4.2% of countries
respondents reported from.
Countries counted in the 21.2%
“other” are: Armenia, Austria,
Belgium, China, Columbia,
Croatia, France, Greece,
Guatemala, India, Ireland,
Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Mauritius,
New Zealand, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Saudi
Arabia, Singapore, Slovenia,
South Africa, Spain, and Switzerland. (See figure 6)
Nearly half (48%) of those
organizations operate smallto-medium contact centers
(75 agents/representatives
or less), with another 21.2%
operating jumbo contact
5
Figure 5: Number of On-Site Customer
Service/Sales Representatives
Figure 4: Contact Center Size
7.0%
0
Spring 2013
21.4%
0
16.9%
1-10
1-10
17.1%
11-20
10.6%
11-20
21-49
10.6%
21-49
9.3%
50-75
9.3%
9.9%
50-75
76-150
11.3%
76-150
151-250
6.3%
251-500
6.3%
151-250
251-500
501-1000
6.4%
7.1%
4.3%
5.7%
8.5%
501-1000
1001-5000
1001-5000
5001+
8.6%
9.9%
5001+
4.3%
6.4%
2.8%
0% 0%
5% 10%
15% 15%
20% 20%
25% 25%
30% 30%
35% 35%
5% 10%
0% 0% 5% 5% 10% 10%15% 15%20% 20%
35% 35%
centers (more than 500
agents/representatives). (See
figure 4) Less than one fifth
(16.4%) reported jumbo onsite customer service/sales
operations of more than 500
representatives, and 44.3%
reported operating small-tomedium in-person service/
sales. (See figure 5)
Participants’ roles and
responsibilities in their organizations range broadly. Nearly
half (46.2%) of respondents
serve at the director/manager
level. C- and V-level executives represent nearly one fifth
(18.2%) of respondents. (See
figure 7) Respondents’ scope
of management, as defined
by the number
of direct
Figure 6: Participants by Country
30% 30%
reports, varied, but most
25% 25%between
(32.8%) manage
Australia
4.2%
1 and 10 employees while
20% 20%
another 19% manage 11 to
Canada
8.0%
20. (See figure
8)
15% 15%
A wide variety of indus10%(for the
United Kingdom
tries were10%
evenly
4.2%
most part) represented in
5% 5%
the survey results; however,
United States
62.4%
0%insurance
finance and
were
0%
most robustly represented.
Other
21.2%
(See figure 9)
Slightly more than one
quarter (26.1%) of orga0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
nizations represented are
outsourcers that provide
contact center, customer
management, business process and other services.
6
%
Spring 2013
Figure 9: Industries/Markets Represented
Figure 7: Survey Participants by Title/Role
0%
VP/SVP
5%
10%7.0%
15% 20% 25%
21.8%
Director/Manager
16.2%
Call Center Manager
Quality Assurance/
Quality Monitoring
1.4%
0.7%
Telecommunication services
6.3%
Manufacturing
(Non-computer related)
6.3%
14.1%
Finance/banking
3.5%
Supervisor
7.7%
Systems or network integrator
5.6%
General Manager/Director
4.2%
Computer or telecomm
7.0%
Chief Customer Officer
8.5%
Insurance
2.8%
0.7%
Real estate
0.7%
Legal
Workforce Manager
0.7%
Government and military
4.9%
Workforce Management
Team Member
0.7%
Utilities
4.9%
Chief Technology Officer
0.7%
Healthcare/medical
Trainer
Customer Support
Representative Team Lead
2.1%
Vendor
2.1%
Consultant
Association
Retail (online)
2.8%
Retail (all other)
2.8%
2.1%
2.1%
Consulting/Training
Other business or professional
services
Travel/Hospitality
9.9%
5%
4.2%
Outsourcer/Teleservices provider
0.0%
Other
10% 15% 20% 25%
0%
15%
0.7%
Transportation/Aviation/Aerospace
6.3%
0%
3.5%
Retail (catalog)
0.7%
Customer Support Representative
5.6%
0.7%
Wholesaling or distribution
5.6%
Marketing
0.0%
College/university
2.1%
IT Team Member
10%
Advertising/marketing/publishing/
media/entertainment
Computer or telecommunications
manufacturing or software publishing
4.2%
CEO/Owner
4.2%
0.7%
10.6%
Other
0%
5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
3%
6%
9%
12% 15%
20% Figure
8: Number of Employees Respondents Directly
Manage or Are Responsible For
35%
32.8%
30%
25%
25.5%
20%
19.0%
15%
10.9%
10%
4.4%
5%
0%
1.5%
0
1-10 11-20 50-75 76-150 151-
250
2.9%
251-
500
1.5%
0.7%
501-
1000
1001- 5001+
5000
0.7%
7
Defining the
Customer Experience
Much discussion has been
devoted to defining the customer experience — yet there
appears to be no major agreement. Survey respondents,
when presented with four
popular definitions of the term,
reached no real majority consensus. (See figure 10) What
does stand out is that most
survey participants agreed
that the definition of the
customer experience should
include all interactions with
the organization, from both the
lifetime and transactional perspectives. And while there is
not one runaway leader, 39.6%
selected the following definition as the most appropriate:
The sum of all experiences a
customer has with a supplier
of goods or services, over the
duration of their relationship
with that supplier. From awareness, discovery, attraction,
interaction, purchase, use,
cultivation and advocacy. It
can also be used to mean an
individual experience over one
transaction; the distinction is
usually clear in context.
The customer experience
includes products and services (as well as quality and
support), customer service,
usability, marketing and sales.
Nearly all (92%) of the survey
respondents identified the
contact center as a common
element in their organizations’
customer experience. (See
figure 11)
More than three quarters
(79.7%) of respondents said
that the contact center is
Spring 2013
Figure 10: Most Popular Definition of Customer Experience
The sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of
goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with
that supplier. From awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction,
purchase, use, cultivation and advocacy. It can also be used
to mean an individual experience over one transaction; the
distinction is usually clear in context.
39.6%
A customer experience is an interaction between an
organization and a customer as perceived through a customer’s
conscious and subconscious mind. It is a blend of an
organization’s rational performance, the senses stimulated
and the emotions evoked and intuitively measured against
customer expectations across all moments of contact.
35.3%
The sum-totality of how customers engage with your company
and brand, not just in a snapshot in time, but throughout
the entire arc of being a customer.
16.5%
How customers perceive their interactions with your company.
6.5%
Other
2.2%
NOTE: The customer experience definitions provided to survey respondents were taken from
organizations and sources that are some of the most vocal regarding valuing and defining
the customer experience, as well as those that simply populate the top tier of search results:
(in order of survey rank) 1 Wikipedia; 2 Beyond Philosophy; 3 Harvard Business Review;
4 Forrester.
Figure 11: Customer Experience Elements
68.8%
Product service
84.8%
Service support
92.0%
Customer Service
Product quality/reliability
70.3%
Ease of doing business
81.2%
Pricing
57.2%
47.8%
Relevance of sales offers
44.9%
Relevance of marketing offers
I don’t know 0.0%
Other
6.5%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
8
involved in defining the customer experience, along with
the marketing department
(63.8%) and the executive
suite (60.9%). Nearly half
(47.8%) said that the customer is not involved in this
process (however, we can
hope that customer involvement is slightly higher, at least
indirectly, through the contact
center as a proxy). (See
figure 12)
Somewhat troubling is
that, although 60.9% said the
executive suite is involved in
defining the organization’s
customer experience, less
than half (48.1%) have a member of the executive suite dedicated to focusing on customer
experience and/or related
programs. (See figure 13)
Integral to defining the customer experience is identifying
when it begins and when it
ends. Customer Management
Spring 2013
Figure 12: Personnel/Departments Involved in Defining the
Organization’s Customer Experience
Disconnect on Customer
Experience Signals Evolution
While the majority of both individuals
surveyed and the organizations they represent believe the customer experience
never ends, there’s a noticeable gap
between the two (70.6% of individual
respondents and 50.7% of the organizations they represent said there’s no end
to the customer experience).
“This shows an apparent divide between
when a company thinks the customer
experience ends, and when the respondents individually think it ends,” says
LogMeIn’s John Purcell. “This suggests a
potential misalignment. It’s not altogether
surprising, though, since attitudes on the
subject are evolving in the industry and
there are often differences in opinion.
Furthermore, there is often a time-lag
between thought leadership, and operational and organizational action.”
60.9%
Executive suite
Marketing
63.8%
54.3%
Sales
18.8%
R&D
Manufacturing
12.3%
52.2%
Service
Customer service/contact center
79.7%
Information technology
34.1%
Customers
52.2%
Other
16.7%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Figure 13: Teams with a Dedicated Member Focused on the
Customer Experience and Customer Experience Programs
48.1%
38.3%
Executive suite
13.5%
53.1%
No
35.4%
Marketing
11.5%
I don’t know
48.1%
40.5%
Sales
11.5%
68.0%
25.0%
Service
7.0%
Customer service/
contact center
75.6%
18.5%
5.9%
26.6%
57.0%
16.4%
0% 10%
Yes
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
9
IQ asked participants to share
the starting and ending points
by both corporate and individual standards: Their answers
yielded interesting differences
between the two.
Respondents said that,
from their organizations’
perspectives, the customer
experience begins early on,
either when the organization
communicates with customers
and prospects via marketing
and promotional materials
(45.7%) or when the customer
first inquires about buying a
product or service (29.7%).
However, from the individual
respondents’ perspectives, a
clear majority (54%) believe
the cycle begins when the
organization communicates
with customers and prospects
via marketing and promotional
materials. (See figure 14) A
rare few respondents (less
than 3%) reported that they
and/or their companies believe
the customer experience
begins the moment a prospective customer hears about
the company, regardless of
the means (e.g., they hear a
friend or relative talking about
the organization or its products and services). The good
news is that very few or none
of our participants said their
organizations make the mistake of taking a “firefighting”
approach, where they might
wait to jump in until there’s an
Spring 2013
Figure 14: When Does the Customer Experience Start?
Company
When our organization communicates with customers and prospects via marketing and
promotional materials
Customer
Management
Leader
45.7%
54%
When the customer buys a product or service from us
7.2%
2.2%
When the customer first inquires about buying a product or service from us
29.7%
19.4%
0.7%
0.7%
10.1%
7.9%
0.0%
0.7%
When the customer walks into our store or brick-and-mortar location
When a customer interacts with our contact center or on-site agents or our website for general
questions or support
When a customer complains to us about our products or services
issue with billing, payment,
products or services, or a
customer service complaint
(either to the company or in a
public forum, such as social
media or news outlets). This
means that they understand
the holistic and ongoing
nature of customer experience, at least to some extent.
The gap between corporate
and individual perspectives
is even greater when we try
to identify when the customer
experience ends. While the
majorities of both entities and
individuals believe that the
customer experience never
ends, that majority is greater
for individual respondents
(70.6%) than for the corporations they represent (50.7%).
The next-leading point of
customer experience termination is identified by both
individuals and entities as
when the customer notifies
the organization that he/she
would no longer like to deal
with or be contacted by the
company (15.4% and 27.2%,
respectively). (See figure 15)
10
Spring 2013
Designing the
Customer Experience
Figure 15: When Does the Customer Experience End?
Customer
Management
Company
Leader
When the customer rejects our products or service
8.1%
2.9%
When the customer purchases our product or service 2.2%
1.5%
When the customer has not purchased a product or service from us over a given period of time
6.6%
3.7%
When the customer passively does not renew a contract
6.6%
5.1%
When the customer actively rejects a new contract
7.4%
4.4%
When our organization “fires” the customer
6.6%
2.9%
When the customer notifies us that he/she would no longer like to deal with or be contacted by
our customer
27.2%
15.4%
Never
50.7%
70.6%
2.9%
0.0%
I don’t know
Figure 16: Personnel/Departments Involved in Designing the
Customer Experience
Executive suite
56.5%
Marketing
57.2%
Sales
42.0%
R&D
64.5%
Manufacturing
21.7%
34.1%
Service
19.6%
Customers
14.5%
3.6%
16.7%
Other
0% 5 10%1520%2530%3540%4550%5560%6570%
Designing an effective
customer experience — one
that is meaningfully positive
for both the customer and
the organization — requires
matching the customer’s needs
and desires with what the
organization can deliver.
Respondents reported the
involvement of a variety of
departments in the customer
experience design. The contact center (64.5%), marketing
(57.2%) and the executive
suite (56.5%) are involved in
customer experience design
for the majority of organizations represented, followed by
the sales department (42%).
Though not as heavily represented, it is refreshing to see
levels of involvement from
quality assurance (34.1%),
10% 15 20% 25
0%
5
information technology
(21.7%), workforce management (19.6%) and human
resources (14.5%). (See
figure 16)
But while corporate self-evaluation can be accomplished,
to some degree, in a vacuum,
understanding what is important to the customer cannot.
More than one quarter (25.9%)
of survey respondents said
their organizations either don’t
know (12.6%) or are not sure of
(13.3%) their customers’ customer experience priorities.
The most common methods
for collecting information on
customer priorities are customer satisfaction surveys
(79.1%), feedback forms
(53%), unsolicited complaints
(51.5%) and unsolicited
30%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
5
15
25
35
45
11
55
6
customer praise (43.3%).
Primary research, such as
customer focus groups, is the
least-used (35.8%) method
reported by respondents.
(See sidebar Understanding
and Aligning with Customer
Priorities) Nearly one tenth
(9.7%) reported that they do
not know how information on
customer priorities is collected. (See figure 17) Lack
of such knowledge may be
accounted for by the fact that
not all respondents serve in
functional roles in the organizations represented; however, it
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
is troubling that functional roles
do not20%
have30%
at least
0% 10%
40%a passing
50% 60%
familiarity with how customer
feedback around preferences
and priorities is collected in
that it possibly reveals a lack of
organizationwide communication on customer experience
programs and strategies.
In those organizations that
have identified customer experience priorities within their
industries, customer service
(84.1%) and ease of doing
business (74.6%) were the
leading priorities, followed by
service support (e.g., repairs
and service calls) and product
reliability/quality (with 62.3%
and 52.9%, respectively). (See
figure 18)
As a point of interest, considering customers’ high
priority for ease of doing business, although just 14.6% currently employ customer effort
scoring, 3.1% plan to employ
it in 2013 and another 24.6%
said their organizations are
investigating it. (See figure 19)
Spring 2013
Figure 17: How Customer Experience Priorities Information is
Collected (for Organizations that Know Customer Priorities)
Customer satisfaction surveys
79.1%
Customer feedback forms
53.0%
Measurement against unsolicited
customer complaints
51.5%
Unsolicited customer praise
43.3%
Customer focus groups
35.8%
I don’t know
70%
9.7%
80%
70%
80%
Other
14.2%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Figure 18: Customer Experience Priorities
Product service
46.4%
Service support
62.3%
Customer Service
84.1%
Product reliability/quality
52.9%
Ease of doing business
74.6%
Pricing
42.0%
Relevance of sales offers
27.5%
Relevance of marketing offers
27.5%
I don’t know
Other
0.7%
5.1%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
12
On a positive note, 65.4%
of respondents reported that
their customer experience
priorities always (17.6%) or
frequently (47.8%) align with
customer priorities. Still, a full
25% said that such alignment
only sometimes (24.3%) or
49
never (0.7%) exists.
As fundamental as knowing
customer priorities is knowing
whether customers are satisfied. Although a strong 77.5%
of respondents said their
organizations do measure customer satisfaction, 22.5% said
that their organizations don’t
measure (19.6%) or that they
don’t know if they measure it
(2.9%).
Delivering the
Customer Experience
Spring 2013
Figure 19: Employment or Plans to Employ
Customer Effort Scoring
Employing — 14.6%
I don’t know — 26.9
Not Employing — 30.8%
Plan to employ
in 2013 — 3.1
Investigating
— 24.6%
Figure 20: “Ownership” of the Customer Experience
C-level dedicated customer
service executive
18.2%
V-level dedicated customer
Once an organization has
service executive
defined and designed its cusC-level marketing executive
tomer experience (or at least
its current stage, as it should
be an ongoing process, as
V-level marketing executive
we’ll see in the next section),
effectively delivering on the
Marketing
brand promise is critical. At the
end of the day, even an orgaContact center
nization with the most diversity
in regard to teams involved in
the process will likely have one
Don’t know
division that “owns” the cus% 20% 30%
40%
50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
tomer
experience.
Other
Who Owns Customer
Experience?
In the best-case scenario,
customer experience belongs
to and is driven from the
top (executive suite) down.
(See sidebar The Customer
Experience Buck Stops in
the Contact Center?) Survey
respondents reported ownership at high levels, such as a
10.2%
4.4%
2.2%
4.4%
16.1%
8.0%
36.5%
0%
5%
C-level dedicated customer
service executive (18.2%),
V-level dedicated customer
service executive (10.2%),
C-level marketing executive (4.4%), V-level marketing executive (2.2%). But in
16.1% of survey participants’
10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
organizations, the customer
experience belongs to the
call center. (See figure 20) In
theory, the contact center is
an optimal owner because of
the volume of contact that it
has with customers and the
customer feedback that it can
13
gather and process; however,
in practice, the contact center often has very little control
many elements in the broad
spectrum of customer
experience.
As an example of the
breadth of the customer experience spectrum, refer back
to what the majority of respondents included as elements of
their customer experience programs in figure 11: customer
service (92%), service support
(84.8%), ease of doing business (81.2%), product quality/
reliability (70.3%), product
service (68.8%) and pricing
(57.2%). Does the contact
center have control over product quality/reliability? Pricing?
Not likely; therefore, it cannot
deliver the entirety of a brand
promise that might involve
those and other elements outside its scope of control.
Furthermore, consider what
phases are included in respondents’ customer experience
processes:
Attraction — includes all of
the customer touchpoints and
interactions during initial sales
and marketing activities
Interaction — includes all
customer touchpoints and
interactions during payment,
service, and delivery
Customer Retention —
includes all touchpoints and
interactions after a purchase
or transaction as part of loyalty,
reward, and managing inbound
and outbound communications
that will occur in the future
Nurturing — includes retention touchpoints and interactions and is based on customer
Spring 2013
The Customer Experience Buck Stops in the Contact Center?
Of note in our survey data was the response to the question “Who owns the
customer experience in your organization?” In 16.1%, the contact center is
the title holder. Dann Allen of AAA NCNU isn’t surprised.
“Customer experience ownership is typically a mixed bag. But in larger, more
diverse companies, you’re more likely to see the call center as the owner
because there are a lot of quick wins there,” Allen says. For example, when
there is a combination of brick-and-mortar operations, call center and diverse
and complex products, businesses can more quickly tackle improvements in
quality within the contact center than they can in brick-and-mortar stores.
And contact centers are a frequent customer experience starting point for
quick wins on cost savings. “The call center is the next biggest spend after
infrastructure, so companies want to focus on driving cost down. And when
you can provide a better customer experience, customers don’t have to call,
and they naturally expect call center costs to go down. You can also see an
uptick in net promoter scores and better quality scores.”
Some organizations roll out customer experience in the contact center then
branch out from there. Allen gives an example from his former role at a
telecom provider. “We set up the customer experience in the contact center
because we knew it could make a difference quickly there. When we started
offering pre-paid wireless services and products, we began our customer
experience initiative in the contact center and then pushed it out to product
design and usability.”
It’s important to remember that while the contact center is likely a good locus
for the customer experience, the contact center can’t control the business, as
Teleflora’s Amas Tenumah points out. “In the end, the contact center can’t be
more responsible than the executive suite, and everybody has to take ownership. For us, most customer frustrations happen in the sales process early
on and then progress to frustrations in the contact center. You have to apply
customer experience throughout the organization.”
segmentation and analysis by
past behavior and likelihood of
future behavior
Note that while the great
majority (84.7%) of respondents said their businesses
include the interaction phase
in their customer experience
process, fewer (75.2%) include
customer retention, and just
54% include nurturing. (See
figure 21)
Does the contact center have
control over product quality/
reliability? Pricing? Not likely;
therefore, it cannot deliver on
a brand promise that might
involve those and other elements
outside its scope of control.
14
0%
5
10%
15
20%
25
30%
35
40%
Spring 2013
Then look at how well
Figure 21: Phases Counted in the Customer Experience
sales and marketing are (or
Process
are not) communicating with
the contact center. Nearly
half (45.6%) rated commuCustomer attraction
64.2%
nications from the marketing
department to the contact
center as a 3 or below (on a
Customer interaction
84.7%
five-point scale where 5 is the
best rating for communication). More than half (50.7%)
75.2%
Customer retention
rated communications from
the sales division to the contact center as a 3 or below.
54.0%
Customer nurturing
(See figure 22)
Although the call center
(and customer service) is the
5.1%
Other
division most involved with
executing on the customer
0% 5 10%1520%2530%3540%4550%5560%6570%
experience, according to
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
95
respondents (77.6%), market65 75
15 25
85
5
55
35 45
ing (66.4%), sales (46.4%)
and the executive suite
(53.6%) are also high on the
Figure 23: Personnel/Departments Involved in
list. But manufacturing and
Executing the Customer Experience Design
R&D lag in responsibility here.
(See figure 23)
Executive suite
53.6%
Marketing
Figure 22: Ratings for How Well the
Organization Communicates Information
about Campaigns to the Contact Center
and On-Site Representatives
Marketing
Division
Sales
Division
5.3%
4.5%
2
14.3%
15.9
3
26.3%
30.3%
4
8.3%
29.5%
12.0%
7.6%
1 = Very Poorly
5 = Exceptionally Well
66.4%
Sales
R&D
Manufacturing
46.4%
14.4%
6.4%
Service
48.0%
Customer service/
contact center
I don’t know
1.4%
0.0%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
25
35
5
15
55
45
65
77.6%
32.8%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
15
Executive Report on Customer Experience 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%Spring 2013
5
How Is Customer
Experience Supported?
It’s safe to say that every
member of the team has
something to contribute to
improving the delivery of the
promised customer experience — getting the right people involved at the right time,
of course, is important. Supporting the personnel behind
delivering on the brand promise is an array of processes
and products, technologies
and services. (See figures 24
and 26)
Analytics tools, from the
simple to the more complex,
are being deployed to segment customers, as well as
contacts, by type, for the most
appropriate routing and rightchanneling. In fact, 44.4% of
respondents said their organizations are using segmentation to push special offers/
services for top-tier and other
customer segments. Nearly
half (40.6%) are using customer segmentation to route
top-tier and other customer
segments to specific agent
groups or service channels.
And 61.4% use segmentation
to route customer contacts by
type to specific agent groups
or specific channels.
Only 40% of organizations
can say that their customerfacing technologies and processes are integrated across
all channels and touchpoints.
(See figure 25)
The good news is that
where there are disconnects
between those processes
and technologies, 40.9% of
respondents say they know
15
25
35
55
45
0% 10%
65
Figure 24: Processes used to Support Customer
Experience Design
Agent coaching
77.3%
Supervisor coaching
62.1%
Customer satisfaction
surveys
79.5%
Customer feedback
84.1%
Agent feedback
63.6%
Quality assurance
70.5%
Customer data integration
for comparable experience
across all channels
34.1%
Call routing
Other
44.7%
4.5%
0% 1
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Figure 25: Integration of Technologies and Processes
across Channels and Touchpoints
Mostly Integrated — 25.2%
Integrated — 14.8%
I don’t know
— 5.2%
Somewhat Integrated
— 37.0%
Not at all Integrated
— 17.8%
16
Spring 2013
Figure 26: Product, Technologies and/or Services Used or Planned to
Support the Customer Experience
Workforce management software
Workforce optimization
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship
Management integration
Computer-telephony integration
Agent performance
management tools
Agent desktop integration tools
Enhanced IVR
Currently using
Voice recognition/identification/
authentication
2103 deployment
2013 upgrade
Unified systems
2014 deployment
Cloud services
2014 upgrade
Hosted services
Investigating only
No plans to use
Outsourcing
In-sourcing
Call recording
Call monitoring
Customer self-service channels
Agent self-service channels
Knowledge management
Text/email monitoring
Screen capture
Call analytics
Text analytics
Social media analytics
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
5
15
25
35
45
55
65
75
85
95
17
Spring 2013
Figure 26: Product, Technologies and/or Services Used or Planned to
Support the Customer Experience (continued from previous page)
Customer feedback
solutions/technologies
Customer satisfaction
survey software/services
ACDs, PBXs, Customer
Routing Platforms
Call Routing Systems
Agent coaching and training tools
Compliance Solutions
Computer Hardware
Currently using
Customer Analytics Software
2103 deployment
Dialing Equipment
2013 upgrade
Disaster Recovery, BCP solutions
2014 deployment
2014 upgrade
Electronic Displays
Investigating only
Enterprise Resource Planning
No plans to use
Field Sales software
Field service software
Agent performance analytics
Pre-Employment Agent Testing
Recruiting and Hiring Services
Remote Agent Platforms
Social Networking Technology
Telemarketing Software
Agent training, e-Learning
Translation Services
VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
5
15
25
35
45
55
65
75
85 95
18
where that disconnect is. But
our findings show that just
20.5% of the organizations
represented have developed
a plan or plans to remedy the
disconnect. Unfortunately, only
slightly more than one third of
those organizations with remedial plans rate their confidence
level in those plans as high
as a 4 or 5 (on a 5-point scale
where 5 equals the highest
confidence).
The research indicates a
growing adoption of new channels for different customer service interactions with business.
Take Facebook, for example:
81.7% of survey respondents
said that they offer Facebook
as a channel for customer
inquiries and providing information. (See sidebar The
Social Experience) Mobile
self-service applications are
offered for the same type of
transactions at 87.8% of businesses represented.
There’s a sharp difference,
however, between the number of organizations offering
mobile self-service for inquiries
and those that offer it for purchases (29.3%) and renewals
(19.5%). (See figure 27)
The multi-channel environment requires allowing the customer to access the company
through the channel of their
choice — right-channeling —
as well as ensuring that the
channel can meet the requirements of the transaction
type. (See sidebar Adopting
New Channels)
Let’s say that an organization has conquered rightchanneling and ensuring a
consistent and reliable experience across multiple channels.
Channels like email, chat,
Web self-service and even
social media have opened
up a world of opportunity in
Spring 2013
deflecting the number of
costly telephone transactions and the time it took to
serve them. Email evens out
the random arrival of work by
stretching out the amount of
The Social Experience
Our research showed that social media has a role that is certain, though varied, in the customer experience.
“The use of social media is becoming a hot topic,” says SPI Global’s Ian
Zafra, “and businesses finding ways for a positive experience to go viral and
to respond to negative sentiments as quickly as possible.”
At AAA, for example, social media is on the radar but the organization hasn’t
taken an aggressive approach to piling onto the bandwagon, says Dann
Allen. “We’ve experimented a little with social media — monitoring and some
response, but our national organization is holding for the development of a
broader strategy.”
For Teleflora, social media is a channel that certainly plays a role in the customer experience, says Amas Tenumah. “If somebody doesn’t get their flowers right on time, it’s likely to wind up on Twitter or Facebook,” he says. While
it’s not a service channel, per se, like the phone or email — through which
Teleflora takes orders and manages other customer transactions — social
media is a voice of the customer channel. And it’s certainly a customer experience opportunity when a customer expresses a complaint and Teleflora
can identify a bad experience and begin to address it. But, adds Tenumah,
“Social media patrons and evangelists tend to overstate the potential for
change. It’s really going to be just another channel that needs to be incorporated into the call center.”
A Closer Circle of Friends than Facebook and Twitter
It’s important to keep in mind that Facebook and Twitter, while they are the
most popular and well-known social media channels, are not the be-all for
customer management. For heavily regulated and restricted industries, for
example, such as healthcare and finance, it is difficult to balance protecting
customer information with the public forum of popular social media channels.
Several businesses have pioneered closed communities, or user groups,
whose members share common goals and challenges. Humana is building
such communities and has seen success in connecting its members with
each other — and with the organization, which deepens the opportunities
for hearing the voice of the customer. But designing such communities that
might feel more like the familiar and popular networks will likely have to focus
on the value of the connection rather than the look and feel of the forum. “Just
because Facebook can do it, that doesn’t mean that we can,” says Humana’s
Erik Eaker. “And that’s important for everyone to remember when it comes to
the customer experience in general.
19
Spring 2013
Figure 27: Channels Offered by Touchpoint
Twitter
Facebook
Telephone (live agent)
Telephone (IVR self-service)
LinkedIn
Email
Live Chat
Inquiry/info...
Purchase...
Web self-service
Renewals...
Returns...
Mobile app self-service
Payment…
Complaints...
Text
Billing inquiries...
Order cancellations...
Click to call back
Order confirmations...
Order status...
On-site representatives
Payment/billing status...
Account cancellations...
Remote access
Kudos
Video chat
Video demo
FAQ pages
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
5
25
15
35
45
55
65
75
85
95
20
time the contact center has
to respond to it. Chat allows
an agent to serve multiple
customers simultaneously —
an agent can locate account
information for one customer
while another customer
they’re serving looks through
their wallet for their account
Spring 2013
number. Web self-service
(and to some extent, social
media) takes costly simple
and repetitive calls out of the
contact center.
Such strides have led
many to predict the death of
the contact center, but that’s
far from being the case. What
actually happens is a shift in
the type of work the contact
center is now responsible for
and freed up to perform.
Another type of disconnect
that is evident is between how
the organization believes it is
performing against customer
experience standards and
Adopting New Channels
The research indicates a growing adoption of new
channels for different customer service interactions
with business.
IntelliResponse’s Mike Hennessey says channels are
not being exploited to their fullest capabilities or to
realistic customer demand. “Businesses are underestimating their customers’ comfort with and desire
to use the consumer technology they use every
day — smartphones, websites, Facebook, etc. — to
get customer service information. Because of the
Siri effect, customers are becoming accustomed to
using technology to get information; they expect this
from their customer service interactions. The iPhone
has nine communication channels. Only one is the
phone.”
But right-channeling isn’t just about allowing the customer to access the company through the channel of
their choice. It’s also about ensuring that the channel
can meet the requirements of the transaction type. “I
think of ATMs [automated teller machines] as a sort
of litmus test,” says Teleflora’s Amas Tenumah. When
a customer uses an ATM, it’s very clear to the customer what types of transactions can be completed
through the channel, and the channel performs
those transactions consistently and reliably.
New Channels and the Contact Center
The multi-channel environment and right-channeling
forces a shift in the type of work the contact center is
now responsible for and freed up to perform.
“With more and more interactions beginning online,
the modern contact center must be able to track and
integrate these interactions to truly right-channel the
customer experience,” say Mike Hennessy of IntelliResponse. “With self-service taking care of more
and more interactions, agent support must move
from a “bums in seats” mentality to a “quality over
quantity” mentality. Agents now must spend more
time per interaction as the majority become more
value-added in nature. So the agent profile must
change: AHT actually goes up, but new metrics like
customer effort score go up as well. Companies who
get self-service right invariably make it easier for
consumers to do business with them.”
Teleflora’s Amas Tenumah agrees: “Automation
opens the need for emotional intelligence, which creates complexity and requires empowered agents.”
And while businesses often see automation and
non-agent-assisted channels as a direct boon to the
bottom line, it would be a mistake to think that every
dollar saved goes straight back to the coffers in one
piece. “Self-service yields savings, but some of that
should be invested into the customer experience and
back into the agent pool,” says Tenumah, echoing
Hennessy’s assertion that although self-service can
help cut the number of agents required, cost savings
will be diminished in the form of wages for a smaller
number of agents that are commensurate with the
new type of work that will be demanded of them.
But there’s another reason not to start counting the
money from self-serve savings yet, Tenumah says:
“You should only expect to book about 10% of those
savings and, after reinvesting in the customer experience and agent pool, you need to put aside another
5% for driving customer adoption and accounting for
customer rejection of these channels.”
21
Spring 2013
The Multi-Channel Experience
“Firms are really embracing the multi-channel customer engagement philosophy,” says LogMeIn’s
John Purcell. “As we deal with a greater number
of demographics than ever before, it will be critical to engage with customers on the subjects they
choose, over the channels they choose, and when
they choose. Customer experience and customer
engagement are, therefore, inextricably linked.”
Mike Hennessy at IntelliResponse takes multi-channel a bit farther, calling them “omni-channel” interactions. And, he says, because customers have never
been as powerful as they are now — or as connected to technology — business is going to have to
meet their needs. “The customer desires the ability
to self-serve at the first point of interaction (Web/
mobile/social) and to escalate to live help when and
how they want to.”
But with some 40% of our survey respondents saying
that they don’t have true integration across channels and touchpoints, driving a positive customer
experience in the multi-channel environment will be
a challenge for many. “This is probably the biggest
headache we need to deal with in the industry,” says
Purcell. “There are several systems on the market
today that perform interesting tasks, but we need
them to work together better. There is no ‘ubersystem’ to manage customer experience, so we
need all relevant systems to interoperate and share
data far more effectively.”
Part of the integration puzzle, and a growing trend in
customer management, is being able to truly marry
the existing customer relationship management
(CRM) data with a real, live flow of voice of the customer data, according to QuestBack’s Ivar Kroghrud.
“There is a definitive need for new technology that
can help enterprises manage people data — think
master data management for people data. That’s
going to be absolutely essential and the only way to
become a ‘real-time enterprise’,” he adds.
Purcell says that multi-channel engagement is
simple today, with several very viable systems on
the market that are simple to deploy and manage.
“Many of these are truly SaaS-based, and come with
all the benefits the cloud provides. The best systems
allow flexibility with respect to defining channels and
customer engagement groups, and allow the agents
to focus on helping customers.”
Businesses still have to get the right customers
connected with and through the best channels,
matching customer preferences with needs for a
given contact or transaction type and related circumstances. “While we’re seeing an increasing commitment to online service,” says Hennessy, “we’ve got
to right-channel the omni-channel customer. I think
we’re seeing an increasing understanding of that
need, which is positive.”
In addition to integrating channels and rightchanneling customers for an improved customer
experience — and resulting cost and/or revenue
benefits — the best designs and deployments
require business to have an accurate understanding of who their customers are and how they act,
regardless of channel. “We always have to adapt
our tools to our senior (55+) customers,” says
Humana’s Erik Eaker. While seniors are a growing
demographic in technology use, they may use these
tools differently and have different expectations
compared with younger users.
Calibrating the Customer Experience
how well that belief is informed
by actual customer feedback.
Identifying customer experience disconnects — whether
they occur in the areas of people, process or technology —
is the first step to design and
execution improvement. This
inventory of defects must also
be undertaken on an ongoing basis — calibrated and
recalibrated, as it were, to
make continuous adjustments
and improvements. Revisit-
ing customer satisfaction
surveys and feedback forms
to ensure that new programs,
processes and technologies
are working as they should is
a fundamental part of success. (Note that 43.6% of
22
15
25
35
45
55
65
respondents said they have a
formal process for tracking the
impact of customer experience
improvement initiatives on
other processes and metrics,
whether negative or positive.)
Think of it in terms of the
relatively straightforward
operation of workload and
traffic forecasting. The workforce-heavy (and therefore
cost-heavy) telephone channel
is subject to interval workload
forecasting in 68.4% of contact centers reported on in the
survey. But while other channels may not have the same
high traffic loads, customers
who use them expect a similar
service level or service level
Spring 2013
Figure 28: Use of Interval Workload Forecasting
by Channel
Telephone
Email
Fax
68.4%
21.8%
9.8%
35.9%
50.8%
13.3%
Yes
12.6%
70.9%
16.5%
No
I don’t know
20.0%
61.6%
Chat
18.4%
Social media
13.6%
68.8%
17.6%
21.6%
Web traffic
16.8%
Mobile traffic
61.6%
11.3%
16.1%
72.6%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Processes for Sharing — and Fixing — Customer Experience Failures
Fewer than half of the respondents in our survey said
their organizations have a formal process for tracking and sharing customer experience failures and for
planning remediation and improvement. Businesses
that want to see customer experience success are
going to have to do better on this front, and they can.
In fact, based on these examples, it’s quite an intuitive process.
AAA NCNU has developed a closed-loop complaint
system that charts customer relationships, transactions and roadside service delivery by brand,
channel and the contact center. Then they watch
trends for complaints and detractors. “Structural and
process issues are reviewed by a cross-functional
team, and we brainstorm with the customer to solve
the issue,” says Dann Allen. “There’s lots of internal
communication, too. And, just as important, we make
time to celebrate wins and to praise those involved,
like our Member Experience Hero award, which has
a $5,000 cash prize.”
Humana’s Customer Experience Center of Excellence focuses not only on designing the customer
experience, but on making sure it’s working and
improving. The firm monitors customer satisfaction
measurements on a monthly basis to capture the
end-to-end experience and to look for improvement
opportunities. For example, state law requires a
monthly statement from the insurer to its members
with information about member benefits — what’s
been billed and what’s been paid. The monthly statement, required of all insurers, is often confusing to
members. “It’s not a bill, but it looks like a bill, so they
call us to ask questions — or complain,” says Erik
Eaker. In tracking the frequency of those calls, the
Humana team was able to see that the statements
were creating a problem for both the customers and
the contact center and begin to do something to correct it. “We created a ‘smart statement’ that makes it
clear why the member is receiving it and what — if
anything — they should do with the information.” The
formal process of reviewing and analyzing a common customer experience failure yielded additional
benefits, Eaker adds: “In sitting down to look at this,
we also realized that we could make an even more
personalized connection by including reminders for
flu shots, mammograms and other important healthcare events.”
23
equivalent for their channel of
choice. (See figure 28)
Even where interval forecasting occurs, only 33.3% of
respondents said their contact
centers break forecasting
out by contact type, and just
29.1% said they do the same
for customer segments.
Where it looks like customer
management can be optimistic about improvements to
the customer experience is in
the fact that 51.9% of respondents said their organizations
compare customer ratings/
feedback across customer
touchpoints. So, although
the research identified that
customers are not having a
consistent experience across
all customer touchpoints, at
least a few organizations are
beginning to take steps to
understand where and why the
inconsistency exists.
One of the chief principles
of both improvement and
continuous improvement —
delivering on the customer
experience brand promise and
calibrating it — is ensuring that
the organization establishes
a formal process for sharing
customer experience failures
and for planning remediation
and improvement: 38.8% have
done so; 4.9% have not. (See
sidebar Processes for Sharing — and Fixing — Customer
Experience Failures)
Yet another point of optimism in the research data
is that there is high involvement from a variety of inter-
Spring 2013
Figure 29: Departments/Personnel Involved in Determining
If Customer Experience Initiatives Are Successful
Executive suite
61.5%
Marketing
50.8%
Sales
R&D
Manufacturing
41.8%
10.7%
8.2%
Service
41.0%
directors/managers
72.1%
Quality assurance
Workforce management
39.3%
17.2%
Call center agents information
specialists/onsite representatives
42.6%
Customers
0%
nal departments (from the
executive suite to the call
center) as well as customers in determining whether
customer experience initiatives have been successful.
The contact center still bears
a great load of responsibility,
with 72.1% of respondents
reporting its involvement, but
it is joined here most closely
by the executive suite (61.5%)
and customers (51.6%). (See
figure 29)
51.6%
12.3%
10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
51.9%
Organizations that compare
customer ratings/feedback
across customer touchpoints
24
Spring 2013
Conclusions
In summary, this research
initiative reveals that awareness of the value of a strong
and distinctive customer experience is growing. However,
it also reveals a concerning
amount of unevenness in the
definition, design, delivery
and calibration of the customer experience across
participating organizations.
The research also shows
that there are entities that are
emerging as strong perform-
ers in the area of customer
experience.
Based upon these findings, it is apparent that for an
organization to successfully
define, design, deliver and
calibrate customer experience,
Customer Experience Success
This research initiative reveals distinct awareness of
the value placed on a strong and distinctive customer experience is growing. To overcome the evident unevenness in the definition, design, delivery
and calibration of the customer experience across
participating organizations, our contributors offer
their and their organizations’ perspectives on what it
will take to succeed — and what pitfalls to avoid.
“Success in implementing customer experience
programs and solutions should not just be rooted
on the gathering and analysis of customer feedback
or having a feedback mechanism, but on what/
how/how quickly a business’s response is to each
piece of feedback they gather,” says SPi Global’s
Ian Zafra. “Customer experience isn’t just about
listening and measuring; it’s also about — and more
importantly connected to — engaging, which is the
‘full circle’ or closed loop on customer experience.”
AAA’s Dann Allen calls that emotional intelligence.
“You have to have a vision. Ours is to create fanatically loyal lifetime members by delivering outstanding customer experience.”
Such feedback — along with solid research — will
help you. Know your customer base and build your
customer experience around it, which is a must
for customer experience success, says Teleflora’s
Amas Tenumah. He adds to Zafra’s position that
every piece of data must have context. “One of our
goals is to move from data to context, from output to
outcome. To do that, you’ve got to ask yourself ‘What
are you trying to solve for?’ and then get everyone
in a room to solve the customer’s problem.” And to
accomplish those tasks, you’ve got to know who
your organization is. Don’t just follow a competitor or
another organization blindly: Know what you’re built
to do and do it.
But once you’ve decided to undertake understanding their true customer preferences — and delivering against them, you’ve got to commit, says
IntelliResponse’s Mike Hennessy. For example,
moving into an omni-channel world, the organization must absolutely commit to providing the ability
for the customer to choose the time/place/channel
for interaction. “Above all else, make it easy for the
customer to do business with you.”
“If you get your internal focus right first,” says
Erik Eaker of Humana, “that bleeds into your customer experience. Focus on what you want to be
known for.”
LogMeIn’s John Purcell agrees. “Although we
look for owners of the customer experience in the
respondents’ companies, [the data shows] that there
are several departments responsible. It’s extremely
important that we recognize that there are several
functional areas that contribute to customer experience. If we start with raising awareness of that basic
tenet, we put our organizations in a significantly
stronger position to improve customer experience
holistically.”
Indeed, says QuestBack’s Ivar Kroghrud, but
those functional areas and the people who manage them need a strong guiding presence. “A
very important success factor is to have clear and
strong top-level commitment and backing to give
necessary ability to cut through internal issues and
hurdles,” he says.
25
it will need strong executive
leadership that can coordinate
cross-departmental collaboration and co-creation with its
customers. Such leadership
must be supported by strong
divisional leadership that can
understand the needs and
goals of partner divisions and
work seamlessly with them.
Executives and divisional
teams will require close partnerships with both internal and
external technology partners
to understand customer experience best practices and to
ensure that technology is truly
enabling and enhancing the
brand promise.
The customer experience
age is still relatively nascent.
Business cannot rely on following its competitors; rather,
each organization must
determine what is important to
its customers and to itself and
where common priorities can
be exploited for success.
Spring 2013
Customer Experience Success
Pitfalls to Avoid
Pitfalls to rolling out and maintaining your customer experience?
Humana’s Erik Eaker can rattle off a few easily.
• Not focusing on the underlying infrastructure and focusing only on
the first impression. IT, for example, is a critical area that demands
consistency in availability and usability (think page load times, etc.);
• Failing to communicate within and without;
• Lacking proactive focus;
• Failing to maintain listening processes;
• Being unprepared.
Tagging onto Eaker’s last note, most companies often place action
plans and strategies on customer experience without having a campaign or direction to start with. Companies need to “define” what experience they want their customers to have before they start surveying or
get feedback, says Ian Zafra of SPi Global.
As businesses shift their focus, it may be easy to get overwhelmed by
the customer experience or to be bogged down in the big picture of
customer experience performance. Tenumah says business must be
careful there: “Forget about the overall customer experience score and
focus on individual metrics and tactics. Let’s choose something to be
great at, such as on-time delivery.”
26
Spring 2013
KNOWLEDGE CENTER
The following resources are provided by our
sponsors to assist in your planning, evaluation and
decision making.
QuestBack
LogMeIn
Five Steps to Improving the Customer
Service Experience (whitepaper)
The Future of Employee Research
(whitepaper)
Five Tips for Improving Customer Experience … Starting with the Support Desk
(whitepaper)
The Path to Purchase (whitepaper)
InfoWorld custom research report —
Service and Support as a Strategic
Imperative (whitepaper)
Customer Experience in the
Banking Sector (whitepaper)
intelliresponse
Achieving Excellence in Online Customer
Service (whitepaper)
Online Self-Service
(online quiz)
Death of the Contact Center
(whitepaper)
Virtual Assistants Best Practices
(interactive webpage)
Choosing the Right Cloud Contact
Center Solution
(whitepaper)
Creating Winners (video)
SPi Global
Journey to Process Excellence:
The Need for a Quality Model —
and How to Get Started (whitepaper)
Listen, Measure, and Engage
Is Social Media part of your
CRM strategy? (whitepaper)
How Social Media Can Negatively
Impact Retention and What to Do
About It (whitepaper)
27
ABOUT OUR SPONSORS
IntelliResponse is the world’s leading provider of virtual agent technology solutions for the enterprise. We create
profitable online conversations for our private and public sector customers around the world. IntelliResponse is a true
multi-channel virtual agent solution, with customers deploying our EVA solution simultaneously across multiple customer
engagement touchpoints including: the Web, social, mobile and agent channels. Our more than 360 live customerfacing implementations answer 100 million+ questions annually. www.intelliresponse.com
LogMeIn (Nasdaq:LOGM) provides essential cloud services to individuals, businesses, and IT organizations for remote
access, collaboration, customer care, and remote IT management. These services are used by more than 15 million
people to quickly, simply and securely connect over 150 million Internet-enabled devices across the globe — computers, smartphones, iPad™ and Android™ tablets, and digital displays. LogMeIn is based in Woburn, Massachusetts,
USA, with offices in Australia, Hungary, India, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK. www.logmein.com
QuestBack is a global leader in enterprise feedback management, customer experience management, Social CRM,
and market research solutions. The company’s SaaS-based feedback and dialogue solutions enable organizations to
gain actionable insights and build stronger relationships with customers and employees. More than 5,000 global customers — including Volvo, Ernst & Young, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Bosch - rely on QuestBack to increase customer
and employee satisfaction through real-time feedback. Founded in 2000, QuestBack is headquartered in Oslo, Norway,
and privately held with 19 offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.questback.com and Twitter | Facebook |
Friends of Feedback Blog.
SPi Global is one of the world’s largest and most diversified Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service providers in
terms of clients, geographic presence, and capabilities. We have defined the highest standards of excellence together
with our clients for Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Our global
team of over 18,000 dedicated BPO professionals makes this possible. www.spi-global.com
ABOUT CMIQ
Customer Management IQ, a division of IQPC, is a forum for sharing ideas, best practices and solutions
within the business community. Simply put, you can interact and share solutions to your business problems
with an incredible network of authoritative sources and practicing professionals.
Customer Management IQ enables you to find from your peers a method, a solution, a proven best practice
that solves your specific problems when you need it solved. We offer a steady stream of front-line content
that is timely, relevant, practical and has been validated by practitioners.
Customer Management IQ resources keep you at the forefront of industry change through educational conferences, training courses and expositions for Customer Management executives to network and learn the
latest Customer Management developments and trends occurring in organizations today. Customer Management IQ concentrates on creating an interactive experience featuring practical, objective and up-to-date
insight from leading practitioners.
Annual events include: Call Center Week, Call Center Summit, Customer Experience Summit and the
Big Data Business Forum.

Customer Experience

Transcription

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