A group of customer strategists recently considered various ways to keep an established customer experience program visible. All of their programs are fairly mature and they share a common challenge of keeping employees engaged and motivated to take action.
Here are some of best practices identified to avoid these obstacles and keep the VoC initiative front and center:
Build Customer feedback into incentive compensation. This is a great motivator to keep employees engaged. Tips: ensure all employees are impacted, incorporate customer feedback as a fairly small percentage of the incentive plan, and make sure the metric does in fact impact compensation.
Recognize employees. It’s important to recognize employees to let them know the work they do is valued. For example, some companies post positive customer comments on intranets or internal blogs when employees are mentioned by name for providing outstanding customer service. (Be aware of any internal restrictions, privacy issues, and the potential need to remove derogatory comments.)
Communicate progress. It is essential to communicate progress to keep employees engaged. One way is to ensure data collection frequency provides visibility into progress on key indicators. Another option is to define internal metrics that are customer oriented. Providing regular updates will help to maintain focus on the customer experience.
These are just a few suggestions on ways your Customer Experience Program can stand out at your organization. What other ideas do you have?
Every year, aquatics centers offer American Red Cross lifeguarding classes. They train lifeguards to act with speed and confidence in emergency situations both in and out of the water. Training covers critical areas, including water rescue skills, surveillance and recognition, first aid, breathing and cardiac emergencies, CPR, AED and more.
The value of that preparation was reinforced at the 2012 American Red Cross of Greater Indianapolis Hall of Fame. A group of lifeguards was honored for turning their training into action -- by running to the scene of a fire at an assisted living facility for seniors and people with functional needs, breaking out windows to rescue trapped residents and also providing first aid. Having the advance training prepared the lifeguards to take action and help.
When thinking about your customer strategy, have you ever considered the value that could be realized by your Voice of the Customer program simply by training and preparing your teams to respond to customer feedback?
For example, a membership organization that is getting ready to launch a member relationship assessment will first prepare their team on how to respond to feedback. They plan to contact selected members each month, asking them to provide feedback in advance of the membership renewal period. The goal is for Retention Specialists to be equipped to respond to feedback, making any adjustments needed to extend and expand the relationships.
In preparation for this activity, the Retention Specialists will be trained on how to respond to the VoC feedback prior to the launch of the program. Through the training, they will be made aware of the initiative, understand what the feedback means, and what they need to do about it. Having that advance preparation will set the stage for the team to respond to feedback and take action to improve the customer experience.
Is your team ready to break through glass to help your customers?
Usually when we think of relationships, we think of having a connection with another person. Relationships are so important that Facebook profiles indicate you are “in a relationship” when you have a special connection with someone.
A friend made the decision to home school her oldest child this year. The reason? Family interactions were turning into a series of transactions. They were losing the key ingredients of a real relationship. Every day they went through the same routine: Wake the kids up, get them to school, go to afterschool activities, do homework, have dinner, and then bed time. By simply going from event to event, they were missing the critical connections of being a family. Home schooling is changing their interactions – from going through the motions to having a lot more involvement in each other’s lives. It’s not for everyone, but it is making all of the difference in how this family connects with each other.
As a customer strategist you might think about how this applies to your company. (Yes, there is a connection…)
Is your company in a relationship with customers? Or, do you simply have a series of transactions?
Is it possible that you might have even fallen out of relationship with your customers? Are you simply going through the motions?
Do you think your customers have started connecting with someone else (e.g. your competition)?
To be in a relationship, you should take time to understand customers’ needs, expectations, and wants. Know how well you’re doing and where you need to make changes. Customer Listening Programs are a great way to obtain information and the insights needed to develop a Customer Strategy to create or enhance customer relationships.
My advice is to make sure you are not just focusing on the transaction at hand. In addition, be in a relationship with your valuable customers!
How does your company operate? Are you “winging it” or do you have a plan and a process to get things done?
According to urbandictionary.com “winging it” means to improvise with little preparation.
There may be successful companies that don’t plan much. But in my experience, without a plan and process to improve the customer experience - nothing happens.
Companies are much more likely to achieve their goals when their systems and processes work together. This was recently reinforced when a business colleague shared a successful example of using customer feedback in a very tangible way.
• The VOC program identified issue resolution as a priority area for the support organization. Open case age was over 50 days. A customer could easily get lost in the shuffle. Eventually many had to call in again and start all over. (How frustrating would that be?)
• The team put a big focus on managing and reducing open case age in their action plan. They created global visibility around the issue and built accountability into the process. (No winging it here!)
• As a result, open case age has dramatically declined. The customer experience is better and customers are more satisfied with the time it takes to resolve issues.
Case age has been reduced by 67%, but they’re not done yet. The team is working to reduce it even more - and they will. They have the discipline to stick with the process and make a difference.
“Winging it” usually isn’t enough to execute a customer focused strategy. Aligning the customer results effort with process improvement is critical to your success.
As a customer strategist, your role is to help your organization listen to customers and develop customer strategies that will help to earn more from customer relationships. (e.g. Strengthen customer loyalty. Retain customers. Attract new customers. Grow market share. Develop new markets. Be innovative.) It’s a big responsibility. As a result, it is important to have the required knowledge, experience, and expertise.
But, what if you don’t have all of the answers? Our culture often sets the stage for people to feel compelled to give the impression they have all the answers - even when they don't. Despite that cultural phenomenon, I am starting to see signs where vulnerability is valued.
·In the book Getting Naked, Patrick Lencioni challenges service providers to be, “completely transparent and vulnerable with clients in order to overcome the three fears that ultimately sabotage client allegiance.”
·A recent Harvard Business Review - Management Tip of the Day encouraged readers to, “Admit you don’t know all of the answers.”
·Steven D. Levitt made the case that it can pay to say, “I don’t know,” on the new Freakonomics Radio Podcast. Pretending to know the answer to something can be destructive and makes it impossible to learn.
Of course one can’t use this approach all the time. But surely, no one is fooled into thinking we always have all of the answers…
Have you ever had a two-by-four moment? By that, I mean an “a-ha” experience. It’s like someone hit you with a two-by-four and all of a sudden you have clarity about the situation. You see things in a brand new way.
Recently an executive of a leading U.S.-based distribution organization had a “two-by-four” moment when he reviewed their Customer Loyalty results. His company is pursuing a growth strategy, with the goal of increasing profitability and sales. In an effort to better understand the market position, the VOC initiative included a measure to gauge share of wallet. On first glance their results are extremely positive. They have the vast majority of their customers’ business.
But, wait a second. There is a small portion of business that is going to the competition. That share of business going to the competition is increasing. Furthermore, when you translate the amount of business that is going to other organizations into lost sales – here it comes – they are missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenue.
The two-by-four moment: They left money on the table by not pursuing all potential business with new customers.
·When acquiring new customers they targeted the core business, obtaining about 90% share on average.
·Over time, their share of wallet eroded as the customer grew relationships with other providers (e.g. down to 80% SOW within five years).
Are you maximizing relationships with your customers?
Customer Loyalty programs uncover insights about the health of customer relationships, and they can even provide sales leads to generate additional business. Recently a Customer Experience Manager discovered 90% of the leads generated from their VOC program have not been acted on.
Sales has obviously not done anything to convert the opportunities. That’s not logical - ignoring opportunities doesn’t make sense. Or does it?
Pat Gibbons recently blogged here about why customer insights go to waste. This might be a perfect example. Was this simply a process breakdown? Or was it a failure to communicate? The hierarchy of engagement points to the three elements required for Sales to take action. They need to:
1. Be aware the lead exists.
2. Understand how to act on the opportunity.
3. Believe the opportunity is “good” and worth investing their time in pursuing.
In this case, they identified process issues such as team member transitions, missing information, and inaccurate coding. Those process issues lead to a failure to communicate. Sales was not aware of the leads. That failure to communicate meant nothing happened.
Ultimately the process was completely restructured to improve the process and the communication. Sales is now aware of the leads coming from the VOC program. In turn, the leads are acted on instead of going to waste. What about your customer experience effort - do you have customer insights going to waste?
Recently an executive of a leading U.S.-based distribution organization had a “two-by-four” moment when he reviewed their Customer Loyalty results. His company is pursuing a growth strategy, with the goal of increasing profitability and sales. In an effort to better understand the market position, the VOC initiative included a measure to gauge share of wallet. On first glance their results are extremely positive. They have the vast majority of their customers’ business.
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