I was recently in Melbourne and Sydney this month, and was baffled at the inconsistent levels of customer service being offered by both city and urban establishments. It became painfully clear that there were two types of customer service transactions happening, both with very different outcomes. Delivering great service is easy when things are smooth, but once things become difficult, that's when standards drop.
While finding amazing customer experiences was difficult on my trip, there were unfortunately plenty of examples for sub-standard service delivery; everywhere from train stations to cafe's and restaurants; even a luxury hotel in the heart of Sydney!
What was most evident to me was how predictable the service level would be if my transaction was "off the menu", so as to speak. Ask for something slightly different from the norm, and suddenly demeanor and politeness were swept aside and replaced by rudeness and arrogance. What concerned me was whether these companies were measuring the effectiveness of their customer service based on how well they handled straightforward robotic transactions (which I know the majority of front line staff prefer because it's easier), or the more difficult non-standard ones?
The sign of a robust customer service process is it's ability to effectively deal with any request the customer makes. This isn't easy, because humans are inherently unpredictable beasts; a major reason why strategies like Six Sigma don't do any justice for CS processes. You can map as many processes as you like, but eventually a customer will come along and throw a curve-ball, and your frontline people need to deal with these professionally.
The major hurdle here isn't the business, it's the human. Dealing with non-standard transactions has to mean engaging your brain with the customer, turning off robot mode, and activating the intelligent parts of your experience; something any human finds hard to do at the best of times. You can only achieve consistency if the customer's experience is the same regardless of whether the request is simple or not, and the responsibility for this begins with the person serving the customer.
If you work in the frontline, remember this: it's all too easy to label a customer as "fussy", and to drop the level of service you provide. Not only is this lazy, it's a missed opportunity to deliver outstanding customer service. Yes, it'll require more time and more of your energy, but it's what your paid for, and the repercussions for your company could be long term and ultimately come back to bite you.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Customer service challenges for 2012
It's that time of the year when many professionals can see the approaching new year on the horizon and wonder to themselves "what's going to happen in my industry next?". A new year means new strategic plans, changing financial environments, probably higher targets, and plenty of new initiatives -- but that's just the usual suspects! Our industry is now so strongly linked to technology, that the pace of change is faster than it has ever been before; so best to be mentally prepared, at the very least.
External trends and drivers generate internal challenges for every company, and those challenges (if not ignored) are headed off by implementing new initiatives, launching company projects, and developing new procedures and policy. Whenever these things happen, there's a high chance customer service will somehow be involved.
Sometimes customer service will be challenged to take the lead because of it's proximity to the customer, at other times it may be tapped for support to assist in company wide changes. Whatever the role, it's being part of these game plans that makes our industry the most interesting for me personally. This involvement exposes customer service professionals to all aspects of a company's internal operations, but also places increasingly higher demands on it's people to step up and help the company achieve it's goals.
The core challenge our industry has always faced is meeting and exceeding the expectations of our customers -- it's what we're paid for. The difficulty is, those expectations are usually generated outside our industry, and we very quickly feel the knock-on effect as customers become accustomed to whatever experience they're having elsewhere, and soon expect it everywhere.
The area of "communications technology" has made contact centers scramble in recent decades, as multiple channels of communication became heavily adopted by the general public and ingrained in almost every aspect of day to day corporate and social life. Fax machines, mobile phones, SMS, email, internet chat, and now the new boy on the block -- social media; and all of them have presented various challenges to us : integrating the technology into our existing infrastructure, teaching our people how to use it effectively, and in terms of maintaining service levels consistently across the whole range.
Challenge #1
The first challenge in 2012 has been triggered by this evolving communications technology -- mobile technology; the ability for customers to interact with your company regardless of where they are. This trend is going to drive an increase in demand for mobile-enabled applications that allow your customers to easily locate and retrieve information and manipulate services, just as they can on any other channel. Remember too that when we say "mobile technology", we don't just mean mobile phones -- it includes all forms of handheld devices, including PDA's and the infamouse I-range (IPads, IPods and of course IPhones).
In terms of challenges, here's a simple one for you test your readiness against -- do you know for sure that your company website has 100% functionality on all handheld devices? If you don't know the answer, then chances are it doesn't. For example, if your website uses Flash for it's animations, then guess what....IPad and IPhone users won't be able to see any of it, because Apple's products don't support Flash (and most likely never will, although in September this year Adobe, the creators of Flash, have released a new version of it's Flash Media Server that does support delivery to Apple devices. This means that moving forward, any Flash animations created under Flash Media Server 4.5 will work on the Apple devices). IPads and IPhones do support Java, but in a limited way; meaning some functions that work on a regular PC may not work on the IPhone/IPad platform. You also need to consider that the screen dimensions differ on these devices when compared to a laptop or desktop computer, so your website should be flexible enough to modify it's content and layout to react accordingly.
Many companies have already faced this demon, and do a very good job of making sure their web content works equally well across all forms of mobile technology, and some have even developed their own nifty applications to integrate their customer service directly (and securely) into the back-end of their operations -- the real challenge, however, is that customers now expect all of us to have equally effective content delivery, regardless of how big or small the company.
Challenge #2
The second challenge in 2012 is also a consequence of the expanding number of communication channels, and it's global adoption by the mass markets -- continuity; the ability for a company to recognize a customer and know everything about them as they move from channel to channel, seamlessly, and while providing the same service levels.
Your customers are now expecting that when they talk to you through email, telephone, SMS, or Facebook and Twitter, you not only know exactly who they are, but you also have at your fingertips the same historical and profiling information you'd have if they called through the telephone.
This is no challenge to wink at, and anyone who's attempted this with earlier technology like IVR and web-chat will know full well the obstacles and hurdles that lay ahead. The first barrier one encounters when dealing with this issue is the integration of multiple databases and various internal IT structures. Most companies still haven't centralized their customer relationship data, and without a unified framework to build upon you'll immediately find problems when adding new layers like social media.
Contact center hardware/software companies have been slow to get off the mark in providing solutions that can seamlessly integrate mediums like Facebook and Twitter, although I think we've all been a little caught by surprise at how quickly social media has been adopted by the masses. Just this year Avaya launched a new version of it's Aura Contact Center which now has the social media manager add-on fully integrated, making tracking and actioning of social media posts much easier, and offers the advantage of supplementing customer profiling information from the entire back-end system.
Having integrated technology is one thing, having a smart human who can quickly digest all of that information and take the right action is another. So is having the right internal structure to support social media, because you have to remember that Facebook has no IVR -- it's a one stop shop, and agents can receive, and are expected to respond to, a plethora of situations that will span your whole company's infrastructure and operations. To react quickly means frontliners must have straightforward and timely access to accurate information (a topic we'll be covering in the next post), as well as the right empowerment to make decisions.
One large obstacle that you'll have to be mindful of when integrating social media into your business is the sad fact that many senior managers, CEO's and CFO's simply don't have any experience in social media themselves. They don't use it, and some even abhor it. Yet the expectation of your customers will persist regardless, and your first hurdle may indeed be a buy-in one. Finding a management team with the courage and patience to delve into this dark ocean won't be easy, but it's mandatory for any company wanting to stay alive!
In my next post i'll be covering some even broader topics like knowledge management and the double edged sword of customization and personalization - we might even talk a little about unified desktops. There's certainly enough in this post to keep you thinking though, and hopefully it won't keep you up at night....too much.
External trends and drivers generate internal challenges for every company, and those challenges (if not ignored) are headed off by implementing new initiatives, launching company projects, and developing new procedures and policy. Whenever these things happen, there's a high chance customer service will somehow be involved.
Sometimes customer service will be challenged to take the lead because of it's proximity to the customer, at other times it may be tapped for support to assist in company wide changes. Whatever the role, it's being part of these game plans that makes our industry the most interesting for me personally. This involvement exposes customer service professionals to all aspects of a company's internal operations, but also places increasingly higher demands on it's people to step up and help the company achieve it's goals.
The core challenge our industry has always faced is meeting and exceeding the expectations of our customers -- it's what we're paid for. The difficulty is, those expectations are usually generated outside our industry, and we very quickly feel the knock-on effect as customers become accustomed to whatever experience they're having elsewhere, and soon expect it everywhere.
The area of "communications technology" has made contact centers scramble in recent decades, as multiple channels of communication became heavily adopted by the general public and ingrained in almost every aspect of day to day corporate and social life. Fax machines, mobile phones, SMS, email, internet chat, and now the new boy on the block -- social media; and all of them have presented various challenges to us : integrating the technology into our existing infrastructure, teaching our people how to use it effectively, and in terms of maintaining service levels consistently across the whole range.
Challenge #1
The first challenge in 2012 has been triggered by this evolving communications technology -- mobile technology; the ability for customers to interact with your company regardless of where they are. This trend is going to drive an increase in demand for mobile-enabled applications that allow your customers to easily locate and retrieve information and manipulate services, just as they can on any other channel. Remember too that when we say "mobile technology", we don't just mean mobile phones -- it includes all forms of handheld devices, including PDA's and the infamouse I-range (IPads, IPods and of course IPhones).
In terms of challenges, here's a simple one for you test your readiness against -- do you know for sure that your company website has 100% functionality on all handheld devices? If you don't know the answer, then chances are it doesn't. For example, if your website uses Flash for it's animations, then guess what....IPad and IPhone users won't be able to see any of it, because Apple's products don't support Flash (and most likely never will, although in September this year Adobe, the creators of Flash, have released a new version of it's Flash Media Server that does support delivery to Apple devices. This means that moving forward, any Flash animations created under Flash Media Server 4.5 will work on the Apple devices). IPads and IPhones do support Java, but in a limited way; meaning some functions that work on a regular PC may not work on the IPhone/IPad platform. You also need to consider that the screen dimensions differ on these devices when compared to a laptop or desktop computer, so your website should be flexible enough to modify it's content and layout to react accordingly.
Many companies have already faced this demon, and do a very good job of making sure their web content works equally well across all forms of mobile technology, and some have even developed their own nifty applications to integrate their customer service directly (and securely) into the back-end of their operations -- the real challenge, however, is that customers now expect all of us to have equally effective content delivery, regardless of how big or small the company.
Challenge #2
The second challenge in 2012 is also a consequence of the expanding number of communication channels, and it's global adoption by the mass markets -- continuity; the ability for a company to recognize a customer and know everything about them as they move from channel to channel, seamlessly, and while providing the same service levels.
Your customers are now expecting that when they talk to you through email, telephone, SMS, or Facebook and Twitter, you not only know exactly who they are, but you also have at your fingertips the same historical and profiling information you'd have if they called through the telephone.
This is no challenge to wink at, and anyone who's attempted this with earlier technology like IVR and web-chat will know full well the obstacles and hurdles that lay ahead. The first barrier one encounters when dealing with this issue is the integration of multiple databases and various internal IT structures. Most companies still haven't centralized their customer relationship data, and without a unified framework to build upon you'll immediately find problems when adding new layers like social media.
Contact center hardware/software companies have been slow to get off the mark in providing solutions that can seamlessly integrate mediums like Facebook and Twitter, although I think we've all been a little caught by surprise at how quickly social media has been adopted by the masses. Just this year Avaya launched a new version of it's Aura Contact Center which now has the social media manager add-on fully integrated, making tracking and actioning of social media posts much easier, and offers the advantage of supplementing customer profiling information from the entire back-end system.
Having integrated technology is one thing, having a smart human who can quickly digest all of that information and take the right action is another. So is having the right internal structure to support social media, because you have to remember that Facebook has no IVR -- it's a one stop shop, and agents can receive, and are expected to respond to, a plethora of situations that will span your whole company's infrastructure and operations. To react quickly means frontliners must have straightforward and timely access to accurate information (a topic we'll be covering in the next post), as well as the right empowerment to make decisions.
One large obstacle that you'll have to be mindful of when integrating social media into your business is the sad fact that many senior managers, CEO's and CFO's simply don't have any experience in social media themselves. They don't use it, and some even abhor it. Yet the expectation of your customers will persist regardless, and your first hurdle may indeed be a buy-in one. Finding a management team with the courage and patience to delve into this dark ocean won't be easy, but it's mandatory for any company wanting to stay alive!
In my next post i'll be covering some even broader topics like knowledge management and the double edged sword of customization and personalization - we might even talk a little about unified desktops. There's certainly enough in this post to keep you thinking though, and hopefully it won't keep you up at night....too much.
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