Syed's Customer Experience Blog

What is the role of the Customer Experience Executive?

Companies started formalizing executive roles focused on customer experience about 2-3 years ago. As someone that has operated in the Customer Experience (CE) arena for over 10 years it was great to see the customer experience getting formalized and my hopes for companies using the "voice of the customer" as a serious management tool increased accordingly.  At the time we never really knew how the role was going to play out but it seemed surrounded by good intent.  Unfortunately the SVP/EVP/VP Customer Experience  has rarely lived up to it's promise and now as times get tough the number of Executive's with a "Customer Experience" title that are being let go is increasing almost daily.

The problem I think is that most, if not all customer experience executives operate in a Corporate Group role rather than in the Operating Groups of large companies. The effect this has is that they become responsible for guidance and best practice identification but the have very little power or influence where the rubber hits the road, at the operating groups.  As a result in my experience very few customer experience executives have been able to transfer their excitement and priorities for monitoring and managing the customer experience across to the executives in the operating groups. 

The other factor that has led to the lack of impact a typical customer experience executive has on changing the business is where the budgets are held. Most group level CE executives have a small budget which is focused on addition market research, consultants, etc. However, the budgets needed to truely transform customer experiences are much larger and typically owned by operations or the contact center. As a result most CE executives never get into the real issues around measurement, consistency, systems or behavioral change because they do not have the mandate or resources to affect change.

I am disappointed to see that so many CE exec roles are being cut these day's but I also recognize that the role as it has been used in most companies today is ineffective. The role and responsibilities of a CE exec needs to be revised if they are ever going to impact large organizations. Perhaps the role should sit in the office of the CEO, be an extension of the operations role or operate at the board level similar to an audit or compensation committee?

If you have come across a company where the CE exec does have the influence and resources to make change happen please let me know.

Syed

Customer insight strategy: Think Small.

Most small businesses still collect customer insights in real-time.  Every time a customer steps into a store, the owner can watch where the customer goes, offer help, and ensure they’re satisfied. Small businesses ask customers what they’re looking for and what they like, all as part of a casual conversation. 

Informal as it may be, most small business owners will tell you that these conversations are the heartbeat of the business. The information they collect from customers every day influence every aspect of their business, from staff training to purchasing to display.

Unfortunately, most large businesses have lost this connection with the customer. The conversations might still be happening at the front lines, but unlike small business, the customer conversations are not adding intelligence to the business. Valuable customer insights are lost. 

Companies typically think of the value of customer insights in a strategic sense for competitive positioning; hence, billions of dollars are collectively spent on market research to gain some insight from customers, even if those insights are skewed or manufactured due to the built-in constraints of surveys, focus groups and mystery shopping. 

There’s little value in “arms length” relationships that fail to recognize the sophistication, knowledge and technical competence of the customer. Big business needs to recognize that advances in technology now make it possible to capture these conversations once again and use them to make business – and the people who drive it – smarter about the way customers are engaged, every day.

Given the chance, customers will use phones, IVR, SMS, email, the web – and yes, even face-to-face interactions –  to tell you what they want, when and how.  At ResponseTek, we are helping our clients absorb, collate, analyze and distribute customer insights – both structured and unstructured – so they become part of your company’s customer intelligence  By opening up as many channels of communication as possible to collect customer insights, companies can stop viewing insights as problems, and start seeing them as opportunities for innovation.

We have seen that companies that recognize the need for continuous front line customer insights ( example: Lastminute.com) have a greater chance of getting back to the mentality of the continually improving and adjusting small business owner. The biggest challenge? Getting companies to recognize this as the preferred alternative to ‘traditional’ paradigm of periodic, centralized customer research, before it’s too late.

After all, in this economy, there’s always another company out there who’s willing – and able – to listen to your customers.

Best regards,
Syed

Just say "No!" to pop up web surveys

I know this is going to be a bit of a rant, but I just can't click in silence anymore..... 

Thing that has got me typing is the broad mis-use of of customer surveys on websites.  Now don't get me wrong - I don't have anything against asking your customers for feedback on their experiences to help you improve performance. That's the business ResponseTek is in.

My issue is that more and more these survey's pop up before I have even had an experience.  I don't now why but it seems that almost every site I go to these days has a pop up survey  as I enter the site asking me for feedback...."I have't done anything yet", how can I give you feedback?!?

Perhaps it's because the survey companies that specialize in selling these types of surveys are off-loading them for rock bottom prices, fueling the rapid spread across the web. Or maybe ecommerce and marketing depts are being pressured for more customer insights, and will buy anything for a "quick win". 

Whatever the reason, I just wish that companies would think about how to implement these programmes properly so they don't turn a positive customer insight strategy into an actual negative customer experience (irony of ironies) because of poor planning and bad implementation.

That is it.  I have had my say.  NO MORE MINDLESS SURVEYS! .

Syed  

Welcome to the year of Customer Experience

I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year for 2009. 

Perhaps I am going against the grain but I believe 2009 is going to be a very important and exciting year for those of us working in or around the Customer Experience Management (CEM) field of business. In 2008, we saw a step change in the way that organizations view customer experience information as well as a rapid maturing in their understanding and expectations of how they could better use the "voice of the customer" as a business tool.

I believe 2008 was the first year that companies seriously started to ask tough questions of their market research groups and vendors regarding the return on the billions of dollars spent on market research.  The effect of this maturing understanding of CEM, coupled with the economic imperative to keep the customer you have  during the current downturn, made the later half for 2008 one of the most interesting times so far in the evolution of the CEM sector.  With more and more companies looking for new approaches to understand how and where they should focus the efforts to improve the customer experience.

I see the trend continuing in 2009 with more and more dollars being re-assigned from "traditional" market research programs to actionable customer experience programs. This can only be a good thing, especially if you are one of those people spending your company budgets of backward looking market research data instead of forward looking customer experience improvement information.

We have lots of topics to discuss this year..... and I promise to be better disciplined regarding regular blog postings.

Happy New Year

Syed

Update: Beware of your "Analog Customers"

I recently wrote a blog on the power and influence of analog customers (http://syedhasan.typepad.com/syeds_customer_experience/2008/07/beware-of-you-1.html). One of the examples I used was a Ford driver that had put a "this is a lemon" sign in his window to share his experience with everyone he drove by. I recently came across this picture that takes it to a whole new level. This is the analog customer in action! Corporations beware.

 

source: http://www.autoblog.com/2008/10/14/fiat-owner-gets-revenge-for-unreliable-van/

When agents get smarter than your customer experience systems

I recently had to call a large hotel chain (the Delaware North Group) to make a reservation.  Before getting through to the agent I heard a recorded message telling me that if I would like to give my feedback about the call I should stay on the line after the call ended.  Of course, being in the customer experience monitoring business, I am always interested to see how different companies handle agent quality monitoring and what kind of information is being collected. 

So after a relatively mediocre interaction with the agent, during which she was not able to address my issue (she didn't seem like she cared either), I waited to go through to the feedback system. As I waited for the system to kick in, I thought about how poor the technology integration must be for the transfer to take so long. After about 20 seconds I realized that I was not dealing with a system problem - the agent was, in fact, still on the line!

At this point the silence became more and more uncomfortable, as I sat in this virtual game of telephone chicken. “It’s my time versus her average handling time,” I thought.  After about a minute of this, I gave up, as much out of embarrassment as frustration. She won!

This story demonstrates the problem when companies with call centers jump onto the customer feedback bandwagon, but don't think through the processes, and how these processes can be compromised by their own staff. If the cost of a truly automated call transfer system is too expensive (as they are for some companies) ensure your manual system has the smarts to quickly identify agents that play the system.

At ResponseTek, we recommend our clients monitor results and completion rates for each agent against a benchmark group to deter this kind of behavior. Alerts are triggered when agent sampling, average score, or handling times move outside expected ranges, which prompt supervisors to take a closer look at the agents call records.

You can never stop agents from playing your systems, but you can make it hard for them to win by building some intelligence into your business rules and monitoring.  My experience is just one of many where companies think they have enabled the "Voice of the Customer" according to industry best practices but fail to pay attention to the technology and behaviors they need for the system to work.  In the case of Delaware North their agents have definitely figured a way around their well intended customer feedback system. Is the same thing happening in your call centers? I recommend you find out.

Syed

Experience Story: I can’t believe they listened to my feedback! ...(eventually)

I got this story from Gord in Vancouver. It is really a customers perspective about what happens when your CRM systems and marketing campaigns are not working together but it also demonstrates the power of listening to the Voice of the Customer (VOC).

After spending millions of CRM over the past 10 years companies should by now have a pretty good view of who you are, what you buy, and how much you spend. If your marketing departments are not using this information to develop thoughtful campaigns then your marketing spend could actually be working against you! The saving grace in this story is that the company did recognize that they didn't know it all and customer feedback might help them improve their campaign.  It worked! they provided the customer with a feedback channel, the customer used it, they acted on the feedback and they converted one customer from a detractor to a advocate.  They probably used this learning to avoid making the same mistake with other customers as well (I hope?). This story is a great illustration of the power of listening to the voice of the customer and shows the potential value to the business when you think about the number of customers that might have been turned off by this kind of experience.

Experience Story:

"First of all, I have been a Telus customer for a long time, since about 2000 – and I think that means that I deserve some respect from them. So imagine my disbelief when I got a package in the mail from for “our” 5-year anniversary. They sent me a small stuffed animal. I’m not joking – it basically said to me “hey, thanks for being such a loyal customer – here is a stuffed animal to show you what we think of your business”. All I could think was “who thought THIS was a good idea??”. Talk about being disconnected from your customer.

Now for the good part. At the bottom of the letter that accompanied the stuffed toy was an invitation to provide feedback using an on-line survey. I immediately filled it out and very clearly let it be known that after 5 years (and about $4000 of money from my pocket) a cheap stuffed animal was a quick way to lose a customer and that doing nothing would have actually been better. For several months I heard nothing. And then another package showed up, with a simple “thanks for your loyalty” letter, and a headset to use with my phone. It was something useful! And even better, they LISTENED to me. Now I felt like I mattered. You know what happened after that? I started telling people about it. In the end, it created a positive experience for me, and I wanted to tell my friends. Free marketing! And that’s the thing here that so many companies don’t get – all you have to do is ask and listen to what I have to say. It’s really not hard, and it works wonders. Respect your customers and they will repay you with their loyalty. I know I will.  Gord (Vancouver, BC)"

My only other comments would be that it would have been great to have given Gord a number of channels to pick from to give his feedback i.e. sms, voice, ivr, email, etc and the cycle should have been quicker. In the months between the customer feedback and the response, how many stuffed animals did these people send out? Who knows how many customers didn't bother to provide feedback and instead just became active detractors of the brand or even worse switched service.  The fact that it took months indicated that Telusdoes not have a systematic approach to VOC feedback and if they think they do they should call back the vendors who sold it to them.

Syed  

Top down vs bottom up improvement strategies

Are you trying to change your customer experience from the top-down or bottom-up? ..........

I am amazed at the number of executives I meet as part of my work at ResponseTek who greet this question with a blank look or a “what do you mean…”?

Assuming that your business has joined the conventional thinking that a good customer experience leads to a higher probability of happy customers (and that happy customers are good), then you have to come up with a strategy that leads to happier customers.

Here is the top down scenario: First you decide hire McKinsey, Bain or BCG…(nobody ever got fired for that). Six months, a million dollars in consulting, and workshops (ad infinitum) later, your consultants of choice will typically deliver you a comprehensive top-down customer experience improvement strategy. It will include marketing messages, slogans for the employees, new compensation plans, a few tracking surveys and some benchmarking with competitors.  If you’re lucky, it might even have an operational framework for continuous improvement, such as customer workshops, panels and focus groups.

So if you spent the money and got all of this, you’ve got your top-down strategy for customer experience improvement.

The good news? You won’t get fired. Hiring big name consultants is always a great strategy to hide behind when you don’t have a clue.

The bad news? Top-down strategies alone rarely work.

To improve customer experience and sustain improvements, employee behaviors must change. Partner behaviors must change. The behaviors of your outsourced suppliers representing your brand must change. Anyone interacting with your customers has to focus on improving the customer experience.

With top-down strategies such as aggregate customer-sat scores or compensation incentives, the behavioral change needed for business improvement is at best temporary. To sustain improvement, you need to ensure your top down strategies are complemented by bottom-up strategies.

Bottom up strategy scenario: Bottom-up strategies focus on making employees accountable for the customer experience every day, during every interaction. Bottom-up strategies take the basic principles of short interval control, used effectively in the manufacturing sector, and apply them to today's service focused environments, such as call centers, retail stores, and field service and support teams.  Bottom-up strategies focus on timely measurement and reporting of customer experiences at the individual or transactional level. By deploying timely measures within a framework of timely, individual reporting, employees can quickly and continuously identify for themselves behaviors that do not enhance the customer experience.  This level of personal awareness and individual reporting can then be very effectively used by supervisors for training or coaching.

The combination of top-down and bottom-up customer experience strategies is powerful…but rarely practiced.  I don't know if this is because corporations lack an understanding of this as a best practice, or because it’s much harder to do than top-down alone. What do you think?

Final thoughts: Perhaps the best way to think about a top-down strategy on its own – that is, without the bottom-up strategy - is in the context of a manufacturing quality improvement strategy. With a top-down strategy, you just have a quality plan, quality targets, quality linked compensation, and monthly surveys of the quality actually coming off the front line. A bottom-up strategy adds a production line quality team that measures quality at every production stage on an hourly basis, and quality addresses issues daily. In today’s environment, no one would try to improve manufacturing quality with just a top-down strategy, without front-line measurement and improvement processes that shadow the production line. And yet, that is exactly how companies are trying to improve the quality of their customer experience using consultants and market research.

I hope this prompts you to ask your executive team about your company’s top-down and bottom-up strategies for improving the customer experience.  Let me know what you find out!

Syed

Beware of your "Analog Customers"

In today's world of online reviews, customer blogs and social networks, you could be mistaken for thinking that all your customers are online and that is the only place that experience sharing is occurring.  The reality is that we are analog and not digital beings and most of our recommendations or warnings still happen outside the internet, during conversations with people we know (more here).  The vast number of customer experiences and recommendations that I absorb are from people who I know or meet and relay it to me face to face.

We typically think of analog customer advocacy as being less valuable or dangerous than digital advocacy because of the limited audience that is exposed to it. For example, I might not be happy with my cell phone provider but at the most, I am only going to tell 10-20 people about it. On the other hand, millions of people can see the same information online, so companies tend to accept analog advocacy as a high impact but low risk influence on their customer base.

I was recently reminded that the "analog consumer" is getting smarter and learning the power of "eye balls".  As I drove down the highway recently I passed a car with a big sign in the back window. The sign said, "THIS CAR IS A LEMON. DO NOT BUY ONE".  The surprising thing to me is even after several weeks I remember that this sign was in the window of a Ford Escape but I can't remember many of the other cars I passed that day (or any other day). In the online world reviews are not usually linked to the actual product (an image all you can expect) but here the review was stuck onto the product. In the online world you can't see the reviewer or you don't even know if they own the product they reviewed, but here the reviewer/customer was IN the product! This connection between the customer, the product and the review in the real world was incredibly powerful and had more impact than any review I could ever read on a Ford Escape (I am never going to go near one).  Then I thought about audience and the fact that this guy must be driving past thousands of cars per week and influencing everyone's perception of the Ford brand. Now that is power which has a lot more influence on consumers than some online review site that uses reviewers for hire.

Unfortunately for Ford, this example is about them but it could have so easily been about any automotive manufacturer.  The next step might Lemon stickers for cell phones, camera's, etc ...who knows.

We are living in a world where more and more customers are becoming comfortable with sharing and broadcasting their experiences. At the moment the bulk of sharing occurs offline but most of the broadcasting occurs online (interesting blog on online vs. offline sharing here). This story shows the potential for that to shift.

My advice to companies is to beware of your "analog customers" and deliver great experiences every time. It only takes one customer to put a "Lemon" sign in their back window and it could cost you and your brand more than you think.

Syed

NPS™:New measure, same problems.

I know that it is almost considered blasphemy to say anything contrary to the simple teachings of Fredrick Reichheld when it comes to NPS™. The pace at which this latest offering from Fred Reichheld has been adopted by corporate america and beyond is staggering. Corporations are getting on board across the globe and customer satisfaction measures are becoming very "yesterday" when it comes to the army of customer experience managers, directors and VP's that have been hired over the past couple of years. For those of you living under a corporate rock for the past couple of years I should explain that NPS™ is a percentage derived by asking customers to answer, " would you refer the company to a friend/family?" on an 0-10 scale, the NPS™ score is derived by subtracting the % promotors(9 &10's) from the % detractors (0-6's).

Now don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against NPS™, as long as you remember it is only a measure and that's all. My problem is when companies get so focused on the measure or the percentage and forget about the customers and the experiences that make up the this new measure that has got the exec's all excited. The problem I see is that just because NPS™ is a simple measure doesn't make it any easier to improve your customer experience. It is just as hard to improve Customer experience in today's world of NPS™ measures as it was when you were measuring customer sat. last year. Companies need to get focused on improvement rather than just measurement. Improvement can only be achieved when your chosen measure, NPS™, C Sat or advocacy mean something to every employee, every day. that is when things don't seem as simple as some of the NPS™ practitioners would have you believe.

The following is a piece I wrote last year talking to this issue. Hope it gets you thinking.
Beyond NPS™ to Advocacy Improvement

ps. To keep the lawyers from sending me more nasty letters I must inform you that NPS™ is a registered trademark of Bain & Company, Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.