A tailor-made approach to customer relations (FT.com)
A tailor-made approach to customer relations
By Andrea Ayers, president of customer management for Convergys Corporation
Published: November 4 2008 16:24 | Last updated: November 4 2008 16:24
Customer service isn’t working; newspapers are filled with horror stories of agents without the training or inclination to do more than read scripted responses, while a recent Ofcom survey found that almost half of broadband customers felt dissatisfied with the customer services provided by their internet service provider.
Message boards, news site comments, letters pages – all regularly feature rants and complaints about the state of customer service. Sixty per cent of respondents to a recent bank survey found that staff working from a script failed to answer their questions, while 55 per cent felt they didn’t listen. What makes this sort of story baffling is the simple fact that it is much more expensive for companies to acquire new customers than keep existing ones. What is going wrong?
The problems are numerous and well-catalogued. Answers learnt by rote/script, poor technology that handicaps de-motivated agents, high staff turnover; and that’s before one considers the issues surrounding outsourced or offshore call centres, including prejudiced customers and language barriers. In customer service, as long as the customers are asking for something that fits in with standard processes, they will get what they want. Should their request be at all different to the norm, the system starts to break down and a seemingly positive customer experience can unravel.
We believe organisations need to move away from servicing the customer, and into the mindset of having relationships with them.
But what’s the difference? On the face of it, the two approaches appear to only contrast semantically. Yet the thought process behind the titles is completely different. At the heart of relationship management is the idea of providing a personal experience for every customer. This means much more than a cheery greeting, a conversation about the weather, and addressing them by their first name. Relationships, whether personal or professional, are fluid and ever-changing.
When it comes to serving one’s customers, it means adapting to the customer’s needs, often proactively, rather than having the customer adapt to the system. A relationship management-oriented approach entails abandoning the one-size-fits all model and replacing it with a tailored experience, making every customer feel as if his or her issues are the number one priority for the company at that time.
A nice idea, some will say, a good theory, but how does one put it in to practice? Having the thinking in place, the mindset, is half the battle. The other half is about technology and people, and getting the best out of both.
On the technology front, analytics offer the most important insights. A customer’s billing history, recent calls, complaints, even their age and profession, provide organisations with the means to build a vivid picture of their individual needs. In many organisations, this information largely sits untapped, in separate siloes of information. This is a missed opportunity. The trends contained in these data could tell you where your next complaint will come from, who likes to be contacted in which manner (and when), and, crucially, who you could target with which products (and what the pitch should be). In short, intelligent use of customer analytics can make sure customers’ expectations are met or even exceeded – and add to the bottom line in the process.
The second part of the process, people, relates to the customer service staff, the agents at the coalface. There can be few other areas of business that can have such an impact on performance, loyalty, and revenue and yet be so widely characterised by poor training and high staff turnover. In order to engage with customers and facilitate relationship management, organisations need agents who are well-motivated. Giving them the right training and technology are clearly important, but those organisations that really win at customer service do so by encouraging the agents themselves not only to go beyond the script but also to provide feedback on how the system can be improved.
With the right technology and the correct training, agents will have more confidence in their work and be more inclined to move beyond the formulaic to provide a better experience for customers. Agents with little understanding of the systems they use will be unable to offer anything beyond a word-for-word script, which, as previously stated, can infuriate customers and create a poor yet hard-to-forget impression of their employer.
By combining technological and human resources, organisations can move beyond offering a by-the-numbers-customer service and move into a bespoke, positive relationship management experience. By doing so, they maximise the potential for securing both continued revenue from loyal, returning customers, and also additional income through targeted up-selling.
This is just the approach taken by a global financial services institution which we helped bring a relationship management approach to bear on its business. We found that the agent’s ability to empathise with the customer’s needs played a key role in customer loyalty, so we concentrated our efforts on this aspect. The company made a number changes to its technology, and the role of its customer service agents. It implemented analytics tools which enabled it to build real intelligence into its service processes.
Meanwhile, on a people level, it altered its agent training processes and set new best practice benchmarks. The result was an immediate improvement in customer satisfaction scores, with customers reporting low levels of satisfaction decreasing by a third, and almost 90 per cent of customers reporting the highest level of satisfaction. High customer satisfaction scores are now the norm for this company, and it continues to monitor the customer experience in order continually to improve and develop its relationship management.
A positive customer experience is the goal of any approach to managing customer relationships. By focusing on the longer-term relationship with the customer, rather than more short-term measures, companies will not just enjoy better retention and higher satisfaction, they will also see many of these interactions turn into profitable repeat business. In today’s tightened times, there is no more important objective than this.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Andrea Ayers, president of customer management for Convergys Corporation
Published: November 4 2008 16:24 | Last updated: November 4 2008 16:24
Customer service isn’t working; newspapers are filled with horror stories of agents without the training or inclination to do more than read scripted responses, while a recent Ofcom survey found that almost half of broadband customers felt dissatisfied with the customer services provided by their internet service provider.
Message boards, news site comments, letters pages – all regularly feature rants and complaints about the state of customer service. Sixty per cent of respondents to a recent bank survey found that staff working from a script failed to answer their questions, while 55 per cent felt they didn’t listen. What makes this sort of story baffling is the simple fact that it is much more expensive for companies to acquire new customers than keep existing ones. What is going wrong?
The problems are numerous and well-catalogued. Answers learnt by rote/script, poor technology that handicaps de-motivated agents, high staff turnover; and that’s before one considers the issues surrounding outsourced or offshore call centres, including prejudiced customers and language barriers. In customer service, as long as the customers are asking for something that fits in with standard processes, they will get what they want. Should their request be at all different to the norm, the system starts to break down and a seemingly positive customer experience can unravel.
We believe organisations need to move away from servicing the customer, and into the mindset of having relationships with them.
But what’s the difference? On the face of it, the two approaches appear to only contrast semantically. Yet the thought process behind the titles is completely different. At the heart of relationship management is the idea of providing a personal experience for every customer. This means much more than a cheery greeting, a conversation about the weather, and addressing them by their first name. Relationships, whether personal or professional, are fluid and ever-changing.
When it comes to serving one’s customers, it means adapting to the customer’s needs, often proactively, rather than having the customer adapt to the system. A relationship management-oriented approach entails abandoning the one-size-fits all model and replacing it with a tailored experience, making every customer feel as if his or her issues are the number one priority for the company at that time.
A nice idea, some will say, a good theory, but how does one put it in to practice? Having the thinking in place, the mindset, is half the battle. The other half is about technology and people, and getting the best out of both.
On the technology front, analytics offer the most important insights. A customer’s billing history, recent calls, complaints, even their age and profession, provide organisations with the means to build a vivid picture of their individual needs. In many organisations, this information largely sits untapped, in separate siloes of information. This is a missed opportunity. The trends contained in these data could tell you where your next complaint will come from, who likes to be contacted in which manner (and when), and, crucially, who you could target with which products (and what the pitch should be). In short, intelligent use of customer analytics can make sure customers’ expectations are met or even exceeded – and add to the bottom line in the process.
The second part of the process, people, relates to the customer service staff, the agents at the coalface. There can be few other areas of business that can have such an impact on performance, loyalty, and revenue and yet be so widely characterised by poor training and high staff turnover. In order to engage with customers and facilitate relationship management, organisations need agents who are well-motivated. Giving them the right training and technology are clearly important, but those organisations that really win at customer service do so by encouraging the agents themselves not only to go beyond the script but also to provide feedback on how the system can be improved.
With the right technology and the correct training, agents will have more confidence in their work and be more inclined to move beyond the formulaic to provide a better experience for customers. Agents with little understanding of the systems they use will be unable to offer anything beyond a word-for-word script, which, as previously stated, can infuriate customers and create a poor yet hard-to-forget impression of their employer.
By combining technological and human resources, organisations can move beyond offering a by-the-numbers-customer service and move into a bespoke, positive relationship management experience. By doing so, they maximise the potential for securing both continued revenue from loyal, returning customers, and also additional income through targeted up-selling.
This is just the approach taken by a global financial services institution which we helped bring a relationship management approach to bear on its business. We found that the agent’s ability to empathise with the customer’s needs played a key role in customer loyalty, so we concentrated our efforts on this aspect. The company made a number changes to its technology, and the role of its customer service agents. It implemented analytics tools which enabled it to build real intelligence into its service processes.
Meanwhile, on a people level, it altered its agent training processes and set new best practice benchmarks. The result was an immediate improvement in customer satisfaction scores, with customers reporting low levels of satisfaction decreasing by a third, and almost 90 per cent of customers reporting the highest level of satisfaction. High customer satisfaction scores are now the norm for this company, and it continues to monitor the customer experience in order continually to improve and develop its relationship management.
A positive customer experience is the goal of any approach to managing customer relationships. By focusing on the longer-term relationship with the customer, rather than more short-term measures, companies will not just enjoy better retention and higher satisfaction, they will also see many of these interactions turn into profitable repeat business. In today’s tightened times, there is no more important objective than this.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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