Voice of the Customer

Call Center Agent Motivation, Performance: $100K a Year to Answer Phones?

Moderated by: Jason Alley

My father fired over a recent Businessweek.com article he ran across titled, “Call-Center Jobs That Pay $100K a Year.”  This definitely caught my attention…  The article highlights a case study of a U.S. based outsourcing company, iQor, that has “added nearly 3,000 jobs in the U.S. over the past four years, making it the company's fastest growing region.”  The author, Vivek Wadhwa, uses the case study to support a theory of his.  He explains, “Yes, outsourcing will continue and globalization will change the world's economic landscape. But the U.S. is hardly helpless. With smart processes and the proper incentives, U.S. companies can keep jobs here in America, and do so in a way that is actually better for the company and its employees.”  As a proud American and someone who believes many U.S. companies have been short sighted and missed the mark by sending customer-facing (and other critical) roles overseas, this got me pretty fired up.  However, I believe strongly that “customers” need to be added to the list of those who can benefit from such a movement.

TOMS Shoes Gives a Whole New Meaning to Customer Care

Moderated by: Jason Alley

In 2006, a guy named Blake Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina and was struck by the fact that an overwhelming number of children did not have shoes to protect their feet.  In an effort to make a difference, Mycoskie created TOMS Shoes that matches each shoe purchase with a new pair of shoes for a needy child.  Click here to learn more about the company.

I thought this was an awesome concept.  We are all looking for ways to make a difference, and what a great way to tap into this deep calling to benefit both consumers and the needy.  TOMS Shoes has changed the game by embracing what they call “conscious capitalism.”  Kudos to Mr. Mycoskie for thinking outside the box to serve the needs of a very diverse customer base - the monetarily rich and those who have nothing - in an inspiring fashion.  I have a feeling those working at TOMS Shoes find it pretty easy to wake up and go to work in the morning knowing they are part of something pretty unique and special.

Customer Service Cheers and Jeers

Moderated by: Elaine Cascio, Vanguard Communications

Jeers to FedEx who left my urgent overnight package at the bottom of the drop box and then asked “What do you want us to do with it?”

Cheers to Southwest Airlines who held the last connecting flight out of Midway for me – and the passengers who cheered when we boarded.

Right Channel Your Apps to Improve Customer Satisfaction

Moderated by: Elaine Cascio, Vanguard Communications

Despite all the talk about customer experience, it surprises me that so many companies are still not looking across channels to understand where they can be delivering the best experience to their customers.  Most of the time, this is a result of internal silos where the IVR team doesn’t talk with the web team, or the contact center isn’t included in conversations that directly affect customers.  Communication is a whole other issue that I’ll think about for a future post.

In the meantime, here’s a simple exercise that can help everyone better understand how we’re dealing with our customers across channels and what are the most effective channels for customer interaction.  Come to think of it, it may create an opportunity to break down silos and get everyone talking, too.

Improve Customer Experience by Putting Your Customers Second

Moderated by: Linda Van Doren, Vanguard Communications

In these challenging economic times, everyone’s making sacrifices.  Headlines inform us that employees are taking voluntary time off, furloughs and pay cuts.  Overtime is a thing of the past.  Call centers especially have been impacted by these tough times.  Turnover is at its lowest in years, giving us a great opportunity to engage our employees.  There have been many studies linking job satisfaction to increased productivity – so the question is, how can we make our contact center employees happy and motivated, especially in these dour times?

Building Customer Loyalty – Be a Hero

Moderated by: Linda Van Doren, Vanguard Communications

We’ve written here many times about customer experience and customer loyalty and there have been some great discussions in the comments about what initiatives are underway to improve it.  Companies are doing a better job at knocking down silos and structuring organizations to be more customer-centric.  Metrics that look across channels and processes help build a comprehensive customer experience story.  With all of these efforts underway to improve customer service and to enhance the customer experience, how do you get to the next level and make your satisfied customers loyal ones?

This is where things get a bit tricky...

Using the Customer's Voice in IVR Usability Testing

Moderated by: Dale Graff, Vanguard Communications

Nothing says “voice of the customer” quite like having the customer voice be the reason they are making a call for customer service within 12 seconds of reaching the IVR.  Let me explain.  Back on July 7th I described how I am working on a project that uses Natural Language Understanding (NLU) as a front door to an IVR system.  The system was brought in for Wizard of Oz usability testing recently and the project received very valuable feedback that will help a health insurer reach much higher self-service rates for members calling with questions.  Here are some quick observations from the testing.

Are Your Quality Scores in Sync with Your Customer Experience Initiatives?

Moderated by: Linda Van Doren, Vanguard Communications

In earlier posts, we’ve discussed measuring the customer experience, and how many of you are working on what that means to your organization.

So, if you’re like many of our clients who are in the midst of initiatives focusing on understanding what the customer experience is (e.g., Customer Experience Management, Balanced Scorecards, Net Promoter Scores), what are you doing in the contact center to support those efforts? Specifically, what is the state of your quality department?

Self Service and Text Messaging (SMS)

Moderated by:  Jason Alley, Vanguard Communications

Most people have either used or heard of text messaging, something enabled by a communication protocol called Short Message Service (SMS), and many are finding text messaging is fundamentally changing the way they communicate.

Although not a big fan of the concept (thinking it was just a fad, kids stuff), I finally gave in and bought a text-friendly phone and signed up for an unlimited text family plan in an attempt to stay in better touch with my teenage son.  He and his friends all have cell phones, but they very rarely use them to make calls.  Rather, they text each other non-stop, day and night…

While populating contacts in my new phone, I discovered a “sick” feature (sick is a word youngsters use in place of cool, rad, tight, killer, awesome, groovy, etc.).   In my contact list was an entry for “View My Minutes” that, when selected, dials *646#.  I decided to select it to see how many minutes I had left.  Approximately 10 seconds later, I received a text message from my carrier telling me how many minutes I had left in each category: anytime, night and weekend, mobile-to-mobile, and rollover.

So, what’s the big deal?

How Will Contact Centers Respond to the Economic Crisis?

Moderated by:  Jason Alley and David Powis, Vanguard Communications

How will we respond to the current economic crisis?  This question is permeating every board room across America.  In turn, every contact center should be asking, “What can we do to proactively help our company survive and be poised to emerge as a market leader?” 

Will we…

Eliminate “Unnecessary Excellence?”

This one requires a bit of an explanation…