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Day 2 of NACCM 2010 in Photos:
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On the last day of NACCM 2010, we caught up with Curtis Bingham, President and Founder, CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER COUNCIL, the Chair for the 2010 Conference.
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Presented by: Mike Hargis, CAREERBUILDER
-Millennials are 2-3x more accepting to new technologies
-Millennials prefer structure for their day
-Millennials would rather work as a group than as individuals
How do you retain Millennials? Trust, balance and structure
Career builder only keeps people in their call center for 24-36 months, otherwise they get burnt out. Create a fun environment with degrees in psychology, philosophy, then go on and invest in their training. They do at least 3 events a year to build leadership, such as “Extreme Events”. They reward by creating videos. Employees share these videos, and it makes it easy to attract the right type of people to your company.
They’ve created an App to refer candidates on Facebook. By sharing content, they were able to successfully communicate to more people
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Presented by Sue Brinker, AVP Property & Casualty Learning, Hartford Insurance
NACCM, 2010
Hartford’s Advance 50 team is comprised of 5,000 highly credentialed reps with advanced degrees in an aging-related field. The obvious gap is that the customers being served average an age of 65, while the reps are 24 years old. Therefore hiring for attitude is critical, with training, individual coaching, enabling systems, metrics, and rewards to do the rest.
Their training is very deliberate and lasts 11 weeks, 6 weeks of which is live work with customers. New hires are on the phone side-by-side with their mentor as soon as day 8, which enables the employee to learn, apply the knowledge, and be coached.
Empathy and patience are critical for these 24-year olds, since many of their AARP customers are recently widowed, have suffered a stroke, or have hearing loss. They task the rep with working on their own improvement plans where opportunities are discovered. And they maintain the “best call” library contest that serves as both a recognition vehicle and also provide examples as an excellent resource.
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Presented by Kalus Buellesbach, NACCM 2010
Helping you is the most important thing we have to do today.
As the world’s largest retail cooperative, Ace has 4600 independent stores served by 4,200 direct employees. Their challenge has always been to create a support environment that emphasizes quality while scaling the business.
To that end they implemented the Ace Care Center project, which focused on improving service by utilizing the resources from 85 people in 7 different helpdesks that served retailers, consumers, vendors, and employees. Starting with unifying contact processes and rationalizing service hours, they were then able to improve service levels and drive quality. Since they had little budget, they were able to implement a call recording system using $100 devices from Radio Shack and provide robust agent scorecards using Excel-based tools, using the budget for bonus compensation that rewards agent performance.
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Patricia Dilane, Director Member Service Delivery, Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts
Service Sabbatical is an innovative program from BCBS-Mass that improves quality, reduces attrition, and generates goodwill in the community, driving hard ROI.
The initial objective they had in mind was to provide the ability for associates to grow professionally, not just job training, and also be able to provide stronger ties to the communities they serve. The thinking was that this approach could improve quality and attrition metrics, paying for itself.
The week-long curriculum focuses on
• Big-picture call-center operations
• Business challenges that the center faces
• Team building through development of solutions to those problems, including interviewing executives to gain context and knowledge while gaining more exposure
• and a community event that “gives back”
They run the program regularly, accepting 10-12 associates into the program each quarter from a pool of approximately 50 applicants. Senior management believes in this and attends the sessions as well, both participating and encouraging. They even now have a wait-list from senior executives that all want to participate.
Feedback from the associates has been incredible – survey responses are tremendously positive. But beyond that, BCBS quality metrics have increased for all participants, many have been promoted and attrition has decreased. The program has even expanded into Claims and Provider Services areas, further facilitating cross-functional collaboration and teamwork.
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Jay Steinfeld, CEO, Blinds.Com
It’s hard to do one thing 100% better than everyone, but you can do 100 things 1% better. It all adds up.
Blinds.Com is the largest provider of window treatments on-line, and has revenue per employee equal to Amazon and Facebook. Their mission is to create an experience that makes buying complex and customizable products surprisingly easy and exciting.
To accomplish this Jay runs the business by the numbers, with a critical number KPI being Gross Margin per visit since this reflects conversion rates and sales growth, and provides a leads into where to dig deeper. But repeat business and referral rates, and Net Promoter Scores are also extremely important, and Jay uses those to make sure they can get customer needs addressed with the right priority.
Jay spent many years driving to customers’ homes before going on-line , and believes in the power of customer feedback at the individual level. In that regard, Blinds.Com establishes Net Promoter Scores around the organization, even down to the individual agent level, calculating NPS for each agent. Driving some internal competition, Blinds.Com believes in the effectiveness of transparency and publishes all scores out to everyone. This rather unique practice drives other great behaviors, including better information sharing between departments, better collaboration between teams.
Those interactions with customers have shaped their core values: improve continually, and experiment without fear. Jay hires people that are aligned with these beliefs, asking prospective employees during the interview how they have strived to improve themselves within the last 6 months, and what they did to change for the better. As a result Blinds.Com has a team of people that works together and strives to do better, especially when it comes to improving the customer experience.
Jay attributes their incredible growth over the years to those core values. In fact, the business didn’t really take off until those values were formally established and became part of the business’ DNA.
Some examples of how this manifests itself in some simple practices:
• All employees have the opportunity to present at regular all-hands meetings
• Teams maintain open whiteboards showing the things they are working on with facilitated areas for new ideas.
Jay writes a regular column on BNet called the No-nonsense Boss. Sounds more than worth checking out.
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Presenter: William Greenwald, HUMANA
Leadership Details from Disney:
-Attention to detail – Humana has no meetings between 8:00-9:00 and 4:00-5:00 so they can meet with their employees and say good morning/good evening
-As leaders, you must listen to your employees. They can provide insights as little things you can do to improve your employees interactions with customers.
-When someone is asking a question, figure out what they’re really asking.
Expect resistance – Great leaders must listen. Managers must listen. Most people have problems with change. Have you ever been taught how to deal with change? People have resistance because they don’t know how.
Make people your brand. Is it common practice in your organization? People aren’t often in the most conventional places. Leaders can pick out talent in individuals even though they may not have had previous experience. Hire for your organization with emotional intelligence.
-How do you teach leaders to teach others?
-“Burn the free fuel” – do the free things – recognize your employees, show up to the employee birthday parties, recognize your employees and their spouses
-Train for leaders, not just skill
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Presented by: Georgia Eddleman Little, ADT SECURITY SERVICES
The Customer Monitoring Center – take calls for customers at times of emergency, answering calls for over 90,000 alarms a day. They also serve as the security for all WalMart products.
Employee engagement at ADT: IT’s critical to their success.
Four ways to link engagement to high performance with employees:
1) Build a line of sight
2) Increase involvement
3) Share of accurate decision making decisions
4) Reward and recognition
When evaluating individuals, the information goes to the direct manager’s boss. Every quarter, there is a meeting with the director a level above their manager. In addition, each quarter, one team from each center collects the information, collaborate across call centers, and then develop a report and share it on the company’s portal. It’s an easy way to get employee engagement and views from the front line.
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Presented by: Ica van Eeden, SUN INTERNATIONAL (PTY) LTD HOTEL GROUP
What does customer management mean? Identify and undsteradn what they really want and look at what your business really is. They need to have a good business strategy with balance.
Manage five things for their customers:
1) Perceptions
2) Interactions
3) Experiences
4) Relationships
They had to unite their brands under across many different cultures. They chose to use CHarleze Theron as a brand ambassador, as she represented many of the ideals of South Africa. They then created a strategy to communicate their new vision across their properties world wide. How did they implement this? They started in one hotel then moved to many others. Their projects just continued into the World Cup.
How do you deliver an experience? Map out all customer touch points. The Middle Manager became the coach. They coached the employees as to their new goals and initiatives. They created videos that showcased the bad experience then the good experience and discussed the attitudes between the two.
She challenged all Middle Managers, and explained that they were the customer service and they had to lead by action.
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Joey Fitts, Author, DRIVE BUSINESS PERFORMANCE: ENABLING A CULTURE OF INTELLIGENT EXECUTION
How do you differentiate from the competitor? Focus on great customer experience.
The core function of customer service is to deal with customers. Customer centricity is not a single department or function, but something that needs to persist across the organization. Everyone has to be able to understand customers: both their needs and their wants.
We have to understand customers, and how their perceive the issues. We should not only understand our customers, but understand who they are talking to and what they know. What does evidence play in making decisions?
Customer loyalty. They’re loyal to you, but how loyal are you to them? Is it easy to engage with your customers? Within Hilton, 5% Loyalty increase resulted in a 1.1% revenue increase.
Innovation is a challenge. Know what customers need, even if they don’t know what they need. Previously, Lego has been innovating, but not in a way that makes sense to their customer. They must understand their consumers, because the majority of their sales each year are on products that didn’t exist the year before. They started to focus on their core customers, and they see results in their sales.
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Roundtable: Gina Debogovich, BEST BUY
Best Buy’s social strategy has really taken flight over the past three years. Here are a few of the key points from her roundtable:
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Photos of Day 1 at NACCM 2010 in Orlando, Florida:
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After an informative day at NACCM, a few attendees shared one thing they learned about today. Watch the video:
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Presented by: Mike Reardon, DISNEY INSTITUTE
What is the business model behind Disney? They made sure they could verify it. They have a chain of excellence: Leadership Excellence, Cast Excellence, Guest Satisfaction, Financial Results/Repeat Business. Key metrics: metrics to return and intent to tell others. If you don’t start out with great leaders, you’ll never achieve the great results your companies capable of.
Two keys to creativity at Disney:
-Everyone is creative
-Keep identities separate from idea
Keep creativity open. Why? You never know what’s going to come of them. What do cruise lines and Disney have to do with each other? Nothing. But give families a reason to travel. They are doubling the size of their fleet in the current economy. They expanded their “box” and made their realm bigger.
Pirates of the Caribbean started as a ride. They then turned it into a movie, premiered it in a park. Everyone went to the ride looking for Jack Sparrow. Since then, Disney has updated and added Jack to the ride and expanded it to include more from the Caribbean.
The leader and relationships at Disney: responsibility, commitment, and inspiration. Every leader is telling a story about what he/she values. We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.
Walt sold his vision from moving the movies to an interactive theme park. He told his story, and set up his organization for success. True leaders are collaborators. Leaders look for reasons to change.
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Presented by: Michael Lowenstein, MARKET PROBE
Customer retention is important, but the name of the game is how you use touchpoints and experiences to cross sell and upsell.
Touch points and methods that individuals have a standing contact. That will create the positive relationships and outcomes you’re looking for. We currently focus on what monetizes. Advocacy focuses on this. It is critical to this is on/offline word of mouth.
Advocates will do your marketing for you. Leverage the people who already love your brand. Word of mouth is a factor that can’t be looked beyond. Loyalty is a passive state. What do people trust? Word of mouth is a source for making business decisions. Individuals don’t trust organizations and what they have to say. People believe they can trust other people. It doesn’t matter where word of mouth comes from, but what companies have to pay attention to that information says.
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Presented by: Matthew Bowman, ALLEGIANCE
Real-time customer feedback: Contrasting real time feed back against laitency issues that are common with customer feedback reports. The internet and social media are providing customers with new expectations. Social Media has conditioned most US consumers to expect to be able to give feedback. SmartPhones allow customers to comment on the spot, or on the way to the car after they’ve had a bad customer experience.
The biggest growing demographic on social media is women ages 35-55. They’re also the largest purchasing demographic. The pure amount of data now available is providing customer feedback is causing companies to have to take notice. American Express finding – 61% of Americans will pay a premium of 9% for better customer experience.
Text analytics tools can help pull in feedback and analyze it when it comes to complaints on the internet. These can allow you to quantify all of the feedback, not just “positive” feedback and “negative” feedback.
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Boyd Beasley, ELECTRONIC ARTS
Beasley starts by asking: Do you know whether or not the service in your business is good? Will your agents break a policy when they need to to keep a customer? The gaming industry is shifting to a free-to-play online, which is costing quite a bit of time.
2 Wins in Customer Service at EA this year:
-COO agreed to reach target service level
-They received a budget that can support the staff for the standards level
If you are not talking to your call center employees on a regular basis, then you don’t know what your customers are asking for. Beasley wonders whether we’re looking at employees measurements for things that don’t matter such as call handle time. How should that be managed against first time resolutions? Talk to your employees about what’s going on in the company? They can share what is working and not working for your company.
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Presenter: Joe Richards, AUTOTRADER.COM
Autotrader created a customer satisfaction program for their customers in 2005. Through this, over 40,000 customers are surveyed a year. The 16% completion rate. The goal is for the findings from this program to be intergraded into the business.
They’ve created an actionable customer service program that surveys:
1) Newly acquired customers – with the company for 2 months
2) Ongoing customers – twice a year to understand retention
3) Canceled customers – Understand retention and formulate win back strategies
Conclusions: Measure satisfaction throughout the customer lifecycle, as it often changes. Move beyond measuring satisfaction. Integrate customer satisfaction results into the organization, it must be a part of the business. Link satisfaction data to others, like profitability, to really understand how it affects the bottom line.
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Presented by: Jared K. Hardie, XEROX CORPORATION
It’s all about teamwork. Nothing can be done alone. Customer contact and care is circular at Xerox. Interaction with the customer is discussed frequently at Xerox. Contact frequency is important, they share with their sales team how often they should be connecting with their customers. This includes social media, Xerox is still working, but they’ve come a long way in incorporating blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other tools.
There should be standards for customer service set, expected behaviors for your employees as to how they treat their client. The employees also need to be held to those standards. Hardie can be pulled out of a meeting at any time to deal with a client issue, as they are the most import ones for a company. Employees must see and understand how they are to treat customers at all times.
Hardie states a customer who I likely to recommend a company represents 2 ½ times revenue than one who does not. This goes up as the customer has successfully resolved issues.
Have a clear resolution service, has a closed loop to resolve the customer’s issues. There must be a consistent theme of the top priority is the customer across the organization. Team work is very important.
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Presented by: Candy Clay & Tracy Fields, CVS CAREMARK
CVS Call Centers focus more on PBM Members. This is unique because their employer has provided the benefit. The users of PBM are captive audiences, as their contracts connect them to CVS. They look at the client and the users of the products and services (the client’s employees).
Why is CVS different? They focus on their hiring profile. Seasonality is a major focus in their call center customer care, as health insurance is a usually renewed at these times. They’ve put in place a reserves system. They need their workers to make an emotional connection with their customers. In training, they begin with the call centers. They like to hire people who can connect with their parents, I.E. those who have cared for individuals before: healthcare workers, parents, work in the class room, etc.
Training is a key to educating their employees at CVS. They are educated in a classroom for two weeks, then to the call center, and back to the classroom. This is an evolving model to stay in-tuned with the customer.
The Voice of Your Customer must come through the Voice of your Employees. Continuing from this morning's Stew Leonard's session: For a customer, it can’t be a great place to shop/work with unless the employees are happy.
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Presented by: Stew Leonard, Jr., President, STEW LEONARD's
Rule 1: The customer is always right. Stew Leonard’s strives to have their customer leaving happy. The customer is not always right, but they should leave happy. Figure out what they want and let them leave the story happy.
At the entrance of the story, there is a rock that says “The Customer is always right.” A customer wanted to purchase one, so Leonard had them produced. They didn’t do their research, and found out that not many of their customers wanted them either.
Opportunity with customer service: No way to monetize it, but if they are happy, customers will keep giving back to your store.
Goal: Get the person who is paying to walk out with a smile.
Start something in a small part of your business and let it grow. This goes for the new ideas and customer service. A customer suggested that their fish weren’t prepackaged, so they did so and their fish sales tripled. The same happened when they allowed loose strawberry sales.
Teamwork is a very important part of great customer service. It can’t be a great place to shop unless it’s a great place to work. This involves listening to your employees. It’s important to build a respect for the management within your organization to improve upon your customer service. Growth from within is also key. By promoting from within, the employees understand the values that Stew Leonard’s is based on.
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Presentation from Trish Cotter – SVP Worldwide Service Operations (Owns Manufacturing & Support) — NACCM, 2010 “You can’t do everything, so make sure the things you do are done right. Small things add up.” Netezza is a provider of an Analytics Appliance, a highly technical product combining hardware and software. With 300 customers, 400 employees, and $250MM in sales, Netezza focuses on being very easy to do business with. Trish’s advice is to start with a great product, be innovative, and then make everything easy starting with simple pricing and contracts, and then regular and consistent personalized outreach to their customers. The first opportunity to create loyalty is through the product delivery and installation experience. But then it is critical to invest in getting customers up to speed so they will be more productive, less costly to serve, and more loyal. Some practices that Netezza employs include: While these areas are customer-facing, there are also several areas of Netezza’s operations that are critical to making it all work: Netezza calls their strategy, “Look Left, Move Right.” Keep moving forward. They know they can’t do everything, so they have decided that it is better to choose the things that they will do, do them very well, and communicate the right expectations to the customer. Bottom line: Focus on items that increase your footprint and raise renewals. Don’t try to actively sell 2 weeks before renewal: this is an ongoing experience, and customers do come back for more of what they enjoy. This blog was written by Steve Bernstein and is co-posted with the Customer Insight = Revenue blog.
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Presented by Lewis Goldman, New Media Consulting, NACCM 2010 There is a lot of hype around social media. The key is that this is 2-way communication. Fewer and fewer people are contributing, and so the rate of new content development is declining. For example, 90% of Twitter content is produced by 10% of users. Therefore, influencers are so critical because there are many more voyeurs than contributors. Lewis shared some important statistics that illustrate the impact of engaged customers: There are 3 unique elements of social media: The process highlights the need for authenticity: Be honest and transparent. Monitoring the conversation (“buzz”) is becoming easier through resources such as Tagcrowd.Com, which helps this process by visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text. Remember that the conversation changes, so it is important to do this on a regular basis. Don’t just provide snapshots: Trend the information, so you can see over time how you are being perceived on-line, especially against competitors. Loyalty programs need to reward advocates in the same way they reward repeat purchases. For example, your best customers get a survey panel that rewards them with points, asking about user interface changes, positioning, product development, promotional offers, and competitive feedback. Example: 1-800Flowers monitored the blogosphere to find influential bloggers that they wanted to engage. They found about 100 “Mommy Bloggers” that had a large following, and exposed them to the message and offers in advance of Mother’s Day, specifically creating a campaign called “Spot a Mom”, which was highly promoted and easy to share. As a result, sales expectations were exceeded by 9%. Another example is from Starbucks: www.mystarbucksidea.com has significantly supplemented their own product R&D. A growing area called pCommerce (participatory commerce) is the next wave beyond eCommerce. Community members can comment on each other’s ideas, which facilitate the process for Starbucks R&D to filter through the most valuable contributions. This blog was written by Steve Bernstein and is co-posted with the Customer Insight = Revenue blog.
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Presented by Jill Noblett, former SVP Wyndham Hotel Group and now Principal Noblett Consulting — NACCM 2010
Focus first on what customer’s value; not on customer value.
Wyndham has 12 diverse brands under its umbrella, and Jill was the architect of Wyndham Rewards, potentially the most successful Loyalty Rewards program in their industry.
Consumers are reluctant to spend, and they are getting bombarded with messages. Customers seek meaningful engagement, and there are 3 basic principles:
1. Focus on what the customer values: “customer value” is more about the corporation, and companies should focus on what the customer cares about to drive profitable growth. After all, the more value the customer finds, the more they are willing to pay. So listen and iterate, establishing a service and “listening” culture at the start in order to make this work.
2. Set clear goals: Be clear on what you want to achieve in business (money) terms. Traditional call center metrics like ASA (Average Speed of Answer) and AHT (Average Handle Time) probably won’t apply. Instead, set goals around customer treatment. Specifically,
- How will this program be deemed a success or failure? Get consensus from stakeholders so they share the goal.
- How do we know how we’re tracking? For example, look at retention and customer survey results.
- Can we make ongoing strategic adjustments? Be able to iterate.
3. Personalize communication: More than just addressing the customer by name, you need to know what they care about: have great customer data, and put it to good use. Collect the information in drips, being careful about what you ask (because you’ll just annoy customers if you ask about things that you don’t put to use!). “Personalization” doesn’t have to be hard, just put the information in the context of what the customer cares about. For example, when sending customer statements Wyndham doesn’t just show points balance, they show customers how far they are in realizing their next reward.
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Valerie Foxman, GE Capital Retail Consumer Finance (RCF) “We’re all in this together.” Valerie manages First Call Resolution (FCR) and Voice of the Customer (VoC) for GE Capital RCF. With over 45MM accounts and $30B in assets, they handle payment processing, billing statements, and card embossing for many notable retailers. And between the 11 call centers and the customer account handling, they have over 1 billion touchpoints to manage. They employ a straightforward cycle: Their Customer Experience Council (CEC) is a critical part of their governance process. Meeting every month, the team reviews specific issues that arise and creates an action plan for how it will be dealt with. To make it work, senior management consistently reinforces the critical theme, “We’re all in this together.” To build loyalty it’s critical to understand what’s behind customer questions, and not just answer the specific question. If a customer asks about account balance, it’s usually not enough to just answer that question. Why did they want to know their balance? GE Capital anticipates customer needs and proactively provides solutions for the associates on the front-line to appropriately handle such situations. This blog was written by Steve Bernstein and is co-posted with the Customer Insight = Revenue blog.
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Presented by Josée Bourdages — NACCM 2010
Listen to be proactive.
Josée oversees service strategy and customer loyalty for Rogers’ Fido brand, which is perceived as the most caring brand in Canada’s telecom industry.
Customers consistently tell them that they want to be respected and treated nicely – as nice as a new prospective customer. To that end, every offer is considered to be provided to both new and existing customers, and the profitability analysis is important.
As a service strategy, being proactive is the key element, avoiding problems in the first place or at least informing customer proactively when issues do occur. And when customers do contact Fido they treat each customer as an individual and personalize communications, starting with thanking them for how long that individual has been a customer.
It’s no surprise then that Fido listens to their customers in pursuit of anticipating future needs. In one example, they found that customers over age 45 want to talk on the phone, while under age 45 wanted technical interfaces. So Fido is implementing interfaces that can best serve both groups, which has the benefit of reducing cost to serve while also improving customer loyalty.
There are 5 areas in which Fido listens:
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Note: This presentation by Kunal Gupta of Burke at NACCM 2010 echoes the sentiment you’ll often read here on the Waypoint blog. Followers of this blog know that everything we do is linked to profitable growth (money!), so I especially enjoyed Kunal’s presenation. Read on for a summary of what everyone should be doing in their VoC program:
Show me the money.
If you think of yourself as a CFO, where should you invest? It is critical to measure success in business terms: metrics aren’t sufficient as executives speak the language of business.
The Good: Marketers have had it good for a long time! Customer-centric initiatives haven’t really been questioned. But – the Bad – because the metrics weren’t linked to the bottom line, marketers rarely got a seat at the table. This results in the Ugly: credibility is likely to erode. Executives want you show them the money. So any metric you present needs to articulate a “return on marketing” as a financial metric.
Example: In 2009 the Manufactures Alliance – companies > $1B – found that less than half their members have linked customer satisfaction to business results. Those that did measure this found higher profits (22%) higher sales (22%), and increased assortment of products purchased (9%).
Traditional customer satisfaction starts with the customer and measures satisfaction. But Kunal contends that it is more important to improve the satisfaction of your profitable customers. He recommends reversing the causality: segment customers into profitable vs. unprofitable, and then focusing satisfaction improvements accordingly.
Since this makes sense to most, why do companies not establish this financial linkage? Excuses include:
So where to begin?
Some example data to present
The bottom-line: If you believe that happy customers are worth more, go out and prove it.
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Presenter: Nina Card, SCOTTRADE INC.
Summary of Scottrade community:
-Scottrade needed to educate people on how to better use their tools in order to make their experiences better than they currently were
-Reached out to achieve a voice of the customer for this
-Community Members engaging in the group logged in more than the control group, as well as increased the number of trades they were performing compared to the control group, Community members were 4x more profitable than non community members on Scottrade.
-Lurkers are just as important, because they’re the ones observing and getting their questions answered because they are finding their questions online
Not every lurker will be a contributor, not every lurker will contribute. How do we engage them?
- Scottrade works on individually reaching out to customers based on their profiles, build culture of caring. This builds the loyalty for your brand
To increase participation, they engage more VIPs, who will in contribute to the Scotrade groups
-How? They celebrate with your top contributors. Share new innovations, and collect their feedback.
-Example: launched new Mobile site, but consumers wanted an App. VIPs also turned into ambassadors when regulation sets into the way the online webpage works.
When interacting, make sure that you always end in a question to encourage more participation.
Companies shouldn’t avoid conflicts online. Hit them head on, control those conversations. VIPs know they are VIPs, but the community around them does not know. It’s a private community group. This helps increase their participation
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Presenter: D. Randall Brandt, MARITZ RESEARCH
Maritz found that the voice of the customer is getting lost, because:
-All listen and no action
-Siloed and uninsightful
-Ad-hoc and unresponsive
-Costly and time consuming
Maritz has found:
-Customers want more flexibility, control, simplicity, reciprocity, and transparency
-Martiz customer service survey found that 68% of companies feel that their organizations are not doing very well at integrating customer feedback to how they are treating their customers
-VoC action – many companies feel that it is not a priority
-Front line managers want more information on their location and customers, not just an overall summary of the brand, they would like to be more involved
How can we fix all of these issues going forward?
-Look at report from Bruce Temkin, Voice of the Customer: The Next Generation
-Text and speech data are going to be filling in the blanks to the regular customer experience
-Integration between social media and traditional methods will become key
Changes for Voice of the Customer:
-Make it more friendly for customers to use
-VOC integration
-Connect VOC data to other data – linkage analysis
-Translate VOC into action
What does customer centricity look like?
-They tell their story, less “painful” than they typically have been in the past
-We’re going to have to go to where they provide their feedback freely: The Social Web (Twitter, YouTube, Yelp), as well as frontline employee feedback, inbound customer calls. Then integrate the data into one source and analyze it in one place.
VOC capturing that worked in the past will not work in the future. They need to be more agile, flexible and timely.
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We're thrilled to welcome Rob Sader Service Provider Lead, JACADA to NACCM 2010! Rob is among our many attendees joining us NEXT WEEK at The Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, FL. Rob took time to speak with us via phone and we invite you to hear about him and why he chose to attend NACCM this year.
Rob discussed his interest in the NACCM event, "There are a number of companies that I'm working with today that are really focused on this space of understanding the most effective way to retain customers and provide exceptional satisfaction at the same time." This focus brought him to NACCM this year and we know that he'll takeaway great resources and ideas from our amazing speaking faculty.
Transcript
Podcast
It's not too late to join us in Orlando! Download the brochure for details.
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Join Jill Noblett, Senior Vice President, Loyalty & Direct Marketing at Wyndham Hotel Group at 11am, Monday, October 25th for her presentation, "Wyndham Hotel Groups Leads Loyalty Amidst a Disruptive Business Environment."
About the session:
What can differentiate your business in the minds of customers? How can you truly be unique? Learn how you can adjust your strategies to balance long-term profitability while aligning it with the best interests of your greatest asset – your customers.
It's not too late to register for next week's event! Check out the NACCM 2010 website to download the brochure and register today!
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Customers are willing to pay extra for outstanding customer service. That's what a recent survey by fifth annual Customer Experience Report reported this week. BusinessNewsDaily reports, that the survey revealed three main reasons consumers stop doing business with companies were rude staff, issues weren't resolved quickly, and unknowledgeable staff.
More than four-fifths of consumers have quit doing business with a company as a result of a negative experience, and three-quarters of them never return, according to the report.
Check out the original article here: Top 3 Ways to Annoy Your Customers
What industries do you think think customers see the most benefit of paying extra for outstanding service?
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We're thrilled to welcome Julie Lodha, Manager of Member Experience at AAA Arizona to NACCM 2010! Julie is among our many attendees joining us October 25-27 at The Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando, FL. Julie took time to speak with us via podcast and we invite you to hear about Julie and why she chose to return to NACCM this year.
From Julie, "I’m actually really excited that there are three conferences in one. I got a lot out of the NACCM the last couple of times that I’ve gone and I’ve really enjoyed it. I always come back with really good take-aways; things that I can implement or modify and implement. Great ideas from other people and networking with other companies. Definitely having everything under one roof this time (because I’ve also done Linkage before) is really, really exciting and enticing."
Transcript: http://bit.ly/JulieLodha_Transcript
Podcast: http://bit.ly/JulieLodha_Podcast
It's not too late to join us in Orlando! Download the brochure for details.
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Join Morley Ivers, Chief Rewards Officer, RecycleBank for the presentation,"Loyalty for a Cause: RecycleBank Champions the New Paradigm in Loyalty Marketing," at 9am on Monday, October 25th at the NACCM 2010 Loyalty & Social CRM Summit.
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Earn a complimentary All-Access pass to NACCM 2010, the premiere event for peer-to-peer sharing, leadership building sessions, and legendary storytellers providing you with the inspiration and empowerment to make a difference. NACCM balances practical content you can take action on, unique experiences that reinvigorate, and big-name keynotes that inspire- all while stressing the importance of keeping the customer at the center of every business decision. As a guest blogger at NACCM 2010, you’ll have access to the amazing speaking faculty, authors, academics PLUS network with a diverse group of fellow attendees. With three track sessions, networking hours and The Walt Disney World Location – you’ll learn and have a great time and this premier event.
NACCM
October 25-27, 2010
Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort
Orlando, FL
Event: http://bit.ly/NACCM2010_Bloggers
Brochure: http://bit.ly/NACCM2010_Brochure
Responsibilities will include attending specifically assigned sessions and blogging live or same day. You must have industry experience within the customer service field. In exchange for guest blogging, you will receive an all-access pass to the event $3,000+ value. Guest bloggers are responsible for their travel and lodging.
Apply today by sending your name, company, biography and links to your blog directly to NACCM 2010 Online Producer, Melissa Sundaram. Deadline for submissions is Friday, October 15, 2010 at 12pm EST. Early submissions encouraged.
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As we work to provide customers with the best possible experience with our product or store, it can be frustrating when a customer approaches us angrily with a complaint. The customer is frustrated, too and it's partly as a result for their interaction with your good or service. But angry customers can be a welcome change as they may bring up issues that you thought were fine. TheSocialCustomer.com has a great article today on this subject and we encourage you to check it out. Chuck Dennis writes, "you should want to be hassled by your dissatisfied customers! You need to know what irked them, so you can resolve it and not do it again. You need to know how upset they are, so you can make it up to them in a way that will help rebuild their trust. You think I am being dramatic here? I am not. Every customer is precious. Stay in front of them!"
How have customer complaint helped you improve your product or service?
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TheStreet.com took a look at customer-loyalty programs and rated the 5 best and the 5 worst out there for customers. From high-end retailers like Neiman Marcus to the corner Starbucks, find out what loyalty programs customers should sign-up for and which they should avoid. Reporter Jason Notte writes, according to marketing firm Colloquy's Loyalty Census released last year, membership in U.S. customer-loyalty programs has reached 1.8 billion, up from 1.3 billion in 2007. The census showed that the average U.S. household has signed up for 14.1 loyalty programs, but only participates in 6.2 of them.
We've highlighted two of the best and two of the worst - you'll have to visit TheStreet.com for the rest!
Best:
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus' rewards program isn't for everyone, but neither are its offerings. First, InCircle's best benefits don't kick in until a shopper spends $3,000, which is roughly the amount of a middling offering in the wish book. At that level, the valued customer receives invitations to members-only shopping events, advance notices for sales, double points on a day of your choosing (not much of a sacrifice, as it takes roughly $5,000 in spending to earn back $100), free gift packaging and various literature.
National's Emerald Club
National's fast lane for frequent renters that not only gets them from plane to car faster than most folks can call up their rental agreement, but also gives renters their pick of any car on the lot once they arrive.
Worst:
Celebrity Cruise Lines' Captain's Club
While behind-the-scenes tours and increased access is nice and all, it looks flimsy when compared to the $75 to $400 credits that customers receive on competing lines like Oceania.
Amtrak Guest Rewards
Even when a traveler reaches Amtrak's upper echelon -- Select Plus -- he or she only get a 50% bump in point accrual, club access and blackout availability. When a points program gives a customer more incentives to deal with partners -- Select Plus members get double points at Hertz and Hyatt -- its value goes off the rails.
What loyalty programs do you know work the best, what work the worst? Let us know! DM @customerworld
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