Many contact center managers say, “Our senior
management just doesn’t get it.” You won’t hear such a
complaint from any managers (or anyone else) at Blinds.com – not with someone like Chief Operations Officer Steve Riddell in the boardroom. Few people are as passionate about and committed to the customer experience and a positive contact center culture as Steve is. And few people are as proud of what the Blinds.com team has been able to accomplish in terms of performance, customer loyalty and agent engagement.
I had the honor of interviewing Steve recently to learn more about what drives Blinds.com’s tremendous customer care success. Following are the questions I posed to him – and the insightful responses he provided.
Q: You’ve said that what sets Blinds.com’s contact center apart from much of the competition is its focus on “competence over compliance”. Can you please elaborate?
Most contact centers operate with a heavy focus on QA. What then happens is that success is defined by a score. But if you ask the average contact center, “Is it possible to get a great score and have it be a bad call?” most centers will say yes. And if you ask the converse, “Is it possible to get a bad score but be a great call?” they’ll say yes again.
So I ask, “Am I the only one in the room that thinks that’s wrong?” You’re not measuring the right thing. Score rarely measures skill – most folks in a contact center will exhibit aberrant behavior to change the score to increase their pay.
Scores rarely manifest great skill. Teach your team the skills that are important to you, the business, and you get greater compliance through improved skill. When you chase the right things, you start seeing double-digit performance improvement.
When skills get better, the customer experience gets better. That’s the value of competence over compliance.
Q: How do your center’s quality monitoring and performance management practices support your “competence over compliance” mantra?
After about a year of discovery, we were able to identify 10 skill sets that need to be exhibited during a customer interaction. By identifying such specific skills, our coaches can come in and help make agents and interactions better. We take QA and remove the ambiguity and judgment. A person can listen to a customer service call and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether particular skills were demonstrated.
Actions speak louder than words. We practice daily coaching to build skill and compensate our team based on the presence of those skills – even customer service! Again, you need to chase the right things.
Q: I’ve heard you speak of the three components of the “Blinds.com Experience” for customers. Can you list them and elaborate a little on each?
Certainly, but let me start off by pointing out it’s the definition of the customer experience that defines the role of an employee, not a job title or script. If you ask the average contact center employee, “What’s your job?” they’ll say something like, “To answer calls”, or “To help our customers”, or “To assist customers in making a good purchasing decision.” Those are all great things, but that’s not it.
We at Blinds.com have spent a lot of time discerning what we want the customer experience to be, and have focused on that. When customers love the experience of doing business with you, they come back. People buy from people they like and trust.
Do customers really want their name said three times in a conversation? Wouldn’t they still buy from you if they truly liked you? Yes. Like me, trust me, buy from me. You must have the definition around that incredible customer experience that your employees can rally around.
Now, all that said, the three components of the Blinds.com customer experience are:
Customer solutions – A customer service rep’s job is to deliver solutions for everyone that talks to them. If they don’t, they haven’t done their job. Not only do you need to give a customer what they ask for, but also think ahead of what they might need next. Buying a blind? You’ll need a way to clean it. There’s a big difference between a commodity provider and a customer solution provider.
Make it easy – If it’s hard to work with you, customers won’t want to do business with you. Regardless of how challenging your job is or how hard your product is to sell, the customer simply doesn’t care what you have to go through. The easier you make it on them, the more they’ll want to return – and they’ll tell their friends.
Extraordinary service – When a person hangs up after a call with my team, their first reaction ought to be “WOW! That was great!” All businesses provide customer experiences, but I’d be hard pressed to say they are all good ones, or even average ones. We let employees know that providing extraordinary service is their job, and they know what really defines their job. All of our employee training revolves around how to deliver amazing experiences. Define your customer experience, make it easy to do business with you and you’ll see happier customers and happier contact center employees.
Q: What are some of the customer service and contact center related awards Blinds.com has received in recent years?
- Contact Center of the Year Award (10th Annual Call Center Week)
- Gold and Silver ‘Stevie Awards’ for Service, Innovation and Leadership
- ‘50 Most Engaged Workplaces in America’ ranking
- ‘Houston’s Best Place to Work’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Business Journal)
- ‘Houston Top Workplaces’ (multiple years, presented by the Houston Chronicle)
- Internet Retailer Top 500 Companies
- AMA Marketer of the Year
- Houston’s Best and Brightest Company to Work for
It’s an interesting exercise to review what kinds of awards your business is winning – they tell a story about your brand. The awards we are most excited about are typically the ‘best workplaces’ awards – they are a testimony to how we pay attention to the internal workings of the company. When culture is thriving inside, it goes a long way toward great customer service.
Q: Great customer service and experiences don’t happen without great agents in place. What does Blinds.com look for when selecting new agents for the contact center?
Getting hired at Blinds.com is admittedly a lengthy process. We actually have a 7-stage interview process:
- General skill tests – can you type and navigate through a website?
- Screening phone call
- Initial in-person interview
- Sales/service manager interview
- Group interview with three members of the agent team – employee approval is important to us!
- Then you meet me – I’m looking for areas of trainability and how well you perform under pressure. This interview isn’t one of the fun ones.
- And finally you meet our CEO, Jay Steinfeld – he’s looking primarily for cultural fit and values. His questions are higher level and really insightful.
Culture is everything to us, and we are very protective of it. Just because an applicant is competent doesn’t mean they’ll be a good cultural fit. We take great pains to try to smoke out candidates that are not a good fit. We hire only about one out of every 50 applicants we meet.
So yes, our hiring process is very long, but our retention rate is unheard of – less than a 4% turnover rate annually. Agents don’t get on floor if they don’t hit the metrics during training (we call it ‘Academy Bay’). We just don’t let the bad ones in, and we have a great and exciting structure in place to keep the good ones with us for years and years.
Q: What kinds of practices and programs are in place to keep agent performance, engagement and retention high?
We don’t spend a lot of time on contests, awards and tricks. (We do occasionally employ these, but very selectively and only if I want an added push or extra benefit.) The best motivators around are a fun and positive work environment, a focus on personal development, great paychecks and opportunities to grow your career. Our employees legitimately love coming to work every day. It’s a fantastic environment and our customers hear that in our voices.
Our team gets unusually high conversion rates (approaching 50%) and a great Average Order Value. People here aspire to do a good job – always better than the day before. We are creators of opportunity, and when you have a company that’s growing and has opportunity inside, it’s a huge motivating factor.
Q: Can you provide a quote from a couple of agents regarding what it’s like working at Blinds.com?
“I feel more like an owner/operator of my own business than a design consultant in a call center here at Blinds.com. As a team, we are an important part of deciding what goals the company should meet, and are expected to voice ways for us to reach those goals. It really is a privilege to call myself a member of the Blinds.com family!” –Christian Quinn
“Working at Blinds.com is like being next to your best friends all day. We learn, get frustrated, find solutions, grow and celebrate together. The support to be the best person I can be is the greatest thing about working here!” –Rachel Bills
Blinds.com – The Big Picture
Contact center location(s): Houston, Texas
Hours of operation: M-F 7am-9pm CST; Sat & Sun 9am-5pm CST
Number of agents employed: 140 agents (with 180+ employees total)
Channels handled: Phone, email, chat, web self-service, and social media
What’s so great about them: Their focus is on ‘competence over compliance’. Internal scores don’t drive the business – it’s all about agent development and the customer experience, NOT mindless metrics. A very positive culture!
There are companies that talk about being customer-focused, and then there are companies like Dealertrack Technologies that back such talk up with real action.
A few years ago, Dealertrack – a leading provider of web-based software solutions for the automotive industry – implemented a ‘Voice of the Customer’ (VoC) initiative featuring a comprehensive and dynamic customer satisfaction (C-Sat) survey process. The initiative has enabled the company to continuously drive performance improvement, elevate the customer experience and enhance the bottom line.
I recently caught up with Dealertrack’s Senior Manager of Technical Support, Dayna Giles, who was gracious enough to answer my barrage of questions about her center’s VoC and C-Sat success with much eloquence and insight.
When did you implement your current Customer Satisfaction survey process, and what was the main objective for doing so?
The Dealertrack Customer Satisfaction survey process has been in place since early 2009 and rolled out through the different solution groups and teams through October 2010. The main objective of this is to understand from our clients’ perspective what we are doing well, and what can improve on, as well as whether or not they would be willing to recommend our solution in the marketplace.
How soon after an interaction with an agent is the customer surveyed? How many questions does the survey feature, and what are the nature of those questions?
The survey is emailed to the client immediately after the case is resolved.
We have a total of six questions on our survey. The nature of most of those questions are specific to the agent and the interaction (empathy, follow-up, understanding and satisfaction with technical resolution), with the other question being whether or not the client would recommend our support team. There is additional space for clients to provide comments or feedback to help improve our product, our service, or future interactions.
Do you survey only callers, or also customers who interact with Dealertrack via email, IVR and web self-service?
Our surveys are tied to the client email address so we survey any form of client interaction based on our case-tracking system.
Who evaluates the survey data/feedback, and how often?
We have an internal team dedicated to the VoC process. We have monthly debrief meetings that involve key leadership team members where discussion occurs around all VoC metrics and initiatives to improve results.
Do you have a “customer recovery” process in place for customers who indicate notable dissatisfaction following an interaction? How soon after such customers complete a survey does your center contact them, and how do customers typically respond?
Our supervisors and managers call our clients back on all the dissatisfaction alerts or client requests we receive. Once such a client responds to a survey, they are contacted within one business day. Clients typically respond positively to being contacted by a supervisor or manager on a dissatisfaction survey.
Do you incorporate customers’ ratings and direct feedback into agents’ Quality scores and coaching?
Yes, we incorporate customer ratings and feedback into team member quality scores and coaching in a couple of ways. We have a team member scorecard – Team Member Performance Index (TMPI) – and a Service Experience Index (SEI) that includes both the Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) score and the Transactional Net Promoter Score (TNPS) to give the agent an overall grade or ranking for the month. During monthly agent review sessions team members receive feedback on the above.
How do agents feel about having the Voice of the Customer integrated with your Quality monitoring process?
When we initially rolled out this program, team members were not confident that they would be able to influence client satisfaction. Team members believed challenges with a product or other issues that were outside their control would overshadow the service they could provide. We very quickly learned this was not the case – how a team member delivers the message and manages the interaction is often the determining factor in whether a client is satisfied or not.
What other kinds of actions do you take on the customer data and feedback you receive?
We often use client feedback to improve our internal processes. For example, since supervisors or managers make the callback to our clients, they receive direct feedback they may not otherwise hear. They bring that feedback to daily meetings where we are able to discuss where we are as a team and look to make improvements. It could be a lack of training on the team member’s part, and in discussing this feedback we may find that similar training is needed across the team. We then work with our training team to provide this specific training to improve the team member’s knowledge and confidence.
I hear your center has seen vast improvements to its Net Promoter Score. Care to elaborate? To what do you attribute such an increase?
Over the course of 29 months we saw a great increase in our Transactional Net Promoter Score. From February 2011, with a score of 5%, to June 2013, with a score of 75% – that’s a 70% increase! The biggest increase occurred between February 2011 and March 2011, when we saw 15% improvement (from 5% to 20%). The second biggest increase occurred July 2012 to August 2012, when we saw a 14% improvement (from 46% to 60%).
We attribute such an improvement to team member focus on VoC. We ran a number of competitions to improve team member awareness that each client interaction could result in a customer survey. It became part of our daily language and part of our culture.
High customer satisfaction doesn’t happen without high agent satisfaction. What kinds of things does your center do to keep agents happy and engaged?
Rewards & recognition
We have a couple of major awards that we give out on a monthly and quarterly basis, including Service Star of the Month, which is based on Transactional NPS scores and the number of positive customer comments the agent receives via surveys. We also have our quarterly Star Quarterback award, which is based on peer nominations regarding a team member’s demonstration of Dealertrack’s Vision, Mission and Values, as well as, internal and external client feedback and overall performance.
In addition, Customer Service Week is one of our favorite weeks here. We do a number of fun free activities – bingo, funky sock day, favorite sports team day – and some pretty cost-effective activities. Cotton candy machines are around $30 to rent and the sugar is roughly $8. Minimal cost and effort but maximum results! The thing our team looks forward to the most each year is the breakfast we make – bacon, eggs, pancakes, hash browns, fruit, OJ… the works! The leadership team cooks the breakfast and serves our team members. For a couple hundred dollars we can feed over 200 people and physically serve and thank them for all they do.
Empowerment
We run multiple focus groups concurrently where our team members are assigned a topic and given an opportunity to provide their feedback and any potential improvements they see we could make. In order to be successful, our team members have to feel we are giving them the opportunity to do so and as leaders we don’t always have the answers. It’s great to get ideas flowing from the team and create a ground swell. The company/leadership recognizes that support team members ARE the advocates for our clients and the client experience with products and service.
Also, our Level 2 agents are encouraged and empowered to train our Level 1 agents. Each L1 agent has an aggressive goal to complete 120 hours of training per year. L2s are encouraged to provide a vast number of those hours of training.
Advancement opportunities
Team members are often selected from the Technical Support department to move up to various roles in the company – from Quality Assurance to Installation to Product Management. We develop and encourage future growth for our team members. Many of our support teams have higher internal turnover (promotion/transfer) than external, which is rare in the contact center industry.
Work-at-home opportunities
We currently have a number of remote employees on our team. We like to give team members, based on their role, the opportunity to work from home.
Stress reduction tactics
When we have a system incident or outage, we often get the team lunch. Or if it’s a Friday, or if it’s hot, or if we simply feel like it, we’ll get ice cream or treats. It doesn’t have to be a great expense to the company to make someone smile.
Dealertrack Technologies – The Big Picture
Contact center locations: Dallas, Texas; South Jordan, Utah; Groton, Conn.
Hours of operation: Main Support Hours of operation are Mon-Fri 6am-6pm MT; Sat 7am-4pm MT; Sun on-call support.
Number of agents employed: 150+
Products/services supported/provided: Software for the automotive industry.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, web self-service.
What so great about them: The ‘Voice of the Customer’ initiative they implemented in 2009 has led to huge increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty, not to mention a highly engaged frontline.
After embarking on a robust voice-of-the-customer project, Philadelphia Insurance Companies is more agile in identifying and addressing problems, leading to higher customer satisfaction.
(NOTE: This article was originally published in 1to1Magazine in August by 1to1Media, who has granted Off Center permission to use it here. The article, originally titled “Philadelphia Insurance Companies Listens to Its Customers”, was written by 1to1Media’s Senior Writer Cynthia Clark.)
It's not always simple for businesses to sift through the mountains of information that customers are providing, understand what clients are saying, and then build strategies that address problems. Philadelphia Insurance Companies wanted to find an efficient solution to get actionable data based on what its customers were saying. Although the insurance carrier was collecting feedback through several channels – including annual, transaction, and web surveys, as well as mystery shopping – the organization wanted to find a one-stop-shop solution to analyze its customers' feedback.
According to Seth Hall, the company's vice president of operations, customers were filling out surveys, and the data which was being collected failed to effectively measure performance and identify areas of improvement. "The results were objectively captured,” says Hall, “but there wasn't a lot of information as to how customers perceived the company, whether they were pleased with the level of service, and whether they would recommend us to someone."
Additionally, while the company was receiving thousands of calls every month and hundreds of emails daily, these multiple sources of customer feedback made it difficult to develop a holistic and enterprise-wide analysis of what customers were saying. On the other hand, Philadelphia Insurance Companies was putting a lot of emphasis on internal scorecards to determine whether processes were going according to established standards – e.g., the length of time it took the company to respond to a claim. Since the company was doing well and scorecard results were good, it was challenging to decide what changes needed to be made.
Making the Most of Client Feedback
Soon after joining the company in 2009, Hall noticed that the results outlined by the scorecards were not always reflected in the organization's results. He quickly realized that Philadelphia Insurance Companies was missing out on important feedback because of the lack of a reliable VOC program that could provide data on which to base decisions and to determine the success of new projects. At the end of 2010, the organization implemented MarketTools' customer satisfaction program, allowing the insurance firm to capture key data from customer feedback, which is aggregated and visible in real time. This allows the company to notice trends quickly and to be agile in taking the necessary action. Hall says low scores trigger automatic emails to the responsible person, who can then contact the customer, get more information, and resolve the issue.
The new information allows Philadelphia Insurance Companies to know exactly how it's doing in the eyes of its customers rather than depend solely on the internal scorecards. "We match our internal scorecards with external feedback," says Hall. This new strategy has led to some discoveries of problems that might have cost the organization money. Scorecards, for example, indicated the need to add more customer reps since the average speed of answer had slipped. But upon reviewing its VOC data, the company realized that first-call resolution was a much more important indicator of customer satisfaction. "This data was instrumental in us changing the metrics/goals and thus not hiring the additional staff we thought we needed," Hall explains.
Another incident that reiterated the importance of having a VOC program took place October 2011 when the company started administering a collector car insurance product. In order to cut costs, the company revised its policy of sending auto ID cards with the renewal notice. According to Hall, VOC feedback was astounding, with about 10 percent of the 130,000 policy holders criticizing the decision. This real-time feedback allowed the organization to quickly reverse its decision and just seven weeks after launching the new policy start sending out auto ID cards. "Without a VOC program, it would have taken us much longer to react, losing customers and upsetting people," says Hall.
VOC feedback has also indicated that some customers feel it can be difficult to get information from the company and contact the right person. "To remedy this we are now putting together targeted and transactional surveys to find out what exactly we can be doing differently, and obviously better," Hall says.
Although Philadelphia Insurance Companies is retaining its internal scorecards, it no longer needs to base all its decisions on these results. In fact, the scorecards indicated no major billing issues while the VOC program found there to be more negative comments surrounding billing than anything else. This is the information the company needed to start working on a new billing system that is expected to launch next year.
The impact of listening to customers has been noticeable, and Philadelphia Insurance Companies has seen an increase in NPS scores – from the mid to upper 40s before implementing the VOC program to 51 at the end of last year.
A Client-Focused C-Suite
In a bid to solidify the trust that customers have in the company and improve the one-on-one relationship, C-suite executives have been at the forefront of reaching out to clients who leave less-than-stellar feedback. According to Hall, customers are surprised to be receiving a call from the company's hierarchy.
Such a policy makes it clear that the company is not afraid to apologize for its mistakes, says Hall. "Although we do a lot of things well, we aren't perfect, but we're going to call you, apologize, and fix the problem. And we'll do it very quickly."
(Reprinted with permission by 1to1Media.)
If somebody were to hand you a copy of informedRx’s organizational chart, you might think that you were holding it upside-down. After all, who ever heard of a contact center organization positioning its agents at the top?
Well, informedRx, for one.
“Without them, there is no us,” says Kelli Barabasz, Senior Manager of Customer Care for informedRx, a leading provider of pharmacy benefit management (PBM) solutions. “[Agents] are the frontline for our members, pharmacies, doctors, and clients. Imagine having two call centers, a director, senior managers, managers, supervisors, team leads, an escalation team… and no agents. How successful would the call center be? The easy answer is there would not be a call center any longer.”
Placing agents at the top of the org chart is much more than just a symbolic move or a publicity play. InformedRx backs its org chart model up with employee-centric action – implementing programs and practices that foster a true culture of agent empowerment and engagement.
The payoff for such employee-centricity? How about an agent turnover rate that’s been slashed in half – dropping from 54% in 2008 to 27% today.
A Finned Philosophy Has Agents Hooked
You might say there’s something fishy about how informedRx keeps its agents inspired and in place.
The agents wouldn’t have it any other way.
The contact center firmly embraces the famed Fish! philosophy, which comprises four simple, interconnected concepts and practices:
· Be There – being emotionally present to improve communication and strengthen relationships.
· Play – bringing a spirit of creativity, enthusiasm and fun to everything you do.
· Make Their Day – serving or delighting people in meaningful and memorable ways.
· Choose Your Attitude – taking responsibility for how you respond to challenges and how that
impacts everyone around you.
Of course, a company can’t just command employees to embody the Fish! philosophy; managers have to live it and let employees see its powerful effects. At informedRx, it’s incorporated into everything from agent selection and development to incentives and facility design.
“To our company, the Fish! Philosophy is not just an engagement tool – it’s a way of life,” says Barabasz. “The philosophy can be embraced in many aspects in and out of work.”
So how exactly does Fish! fit into the contact center? According to Barabasz, it starts with hiring candidates who not only have the skills and knowledge for the job, but who also have the right attitude and personality to thrive in a highly team-oriented and customer-centric environment. “We make sure they are a great fit for the work they will be doing and the people they will be working with.”
There’s plenty of Fish! in agent training, too, says Barabasz. “We create a playful business atmosphere right off the bat with our training classes.” In both initial and continuous training, agents acquire key skills and knowledge via a variety of compelling learning tactics such as role-plays, games and shadowing. Agents also see early on that leadership is “there” for them. “Within the first two days of each training class, it is required for all leadership to introduce themselves to the new team,” Barabasz explains. Throughout training, they are encouraged to stop in when they walk by even if they only have time to say hi. This shows the new team members that we are here, and here for them. It relaxes them and gives them the family feel that we promote within the call center.”
The “Make Their Day” aspect of the Fish! philosophy is highly evident in informedRx’s rewards and recognition programs. Agents who exceed objectives or show notable improvement in key areas (like Quality, Hold Time and Attendance), or who go “above and beyond” with a customer or colleague, receive plenty of public praise as well as prizes likes Fish! trophies, award certificates, gift cards and tokens that can be redeemed for merchandise in the SXC store. Some top-performers have even been rewarded with a TV or an iPod.
Fish! may seem simple on paper, but as Barabasz points out, it requires a lot of effort from management for notable increases in agent engagement and commitment to occur.
“Anyone can read Fish!, show the videos and wait for results, but the philosophy has to be embraced and change has to take place in order to have success. Our leadership team spent months behind closed doors reading and talking about Fish! in order to have a clear understanding of it. If you do not truly believe in something, then how can you expect others to?”
Agent Engagement Begets Customer Sat
With leadership working so hard to “be there” for agents and “make their day”, it’s no surprise that informedRx’s agents aim to do the same for customers. And judging by the contact center’s average C-Sat rate of 88%, the agents have succeeded.
“The impact [on customer satisfaction] is huge!” says Barabasz. “In order to have happy customers, you have to have engaged and happy employees on the other end of the phone.”
Despite it’s consistently high C-Sat results, the center hasn’t become complacent. Managers continue to carefully analyze scores and comments from customer surveys to help identify training gaps and ensure that a high level of service is provided.
“It’s easy to lose focus on the positive things you are doing and let them slip away, and then you see your C-Sat scores fall. We look at the results to formulate a game plan to improve on the lower scores while continuing to focus [on the things that drive] the higher ones.”
informedRx – the Big Picture:
Location: Lisle, Ill, & Scottsdale, Ariz
Hours of operation: 24/7/365
Number of agents: 200-300 (depending on time of year)
Products/services provided/supported: Pharmacy benefit management (PBM) support for members, pharmacies, and doctors.
Channels handled: Live phone, IVR, email, web self-service
What’s so great about them? The contact center strongly embraces the famed Fish! Philosophy to drive agent engagement sky high and deliver stellar customer experiences.
_ A few years ago, the North Texas Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) made a strategic decision to put its money where its mission statement was – implementing a dynamic “Voice of the Customer” (VoC) initiative that has since had a Texas-sized impact on agent performance, customer satisfaction and the company’s bottom line.
“[We wanted to] synchronize with customers and measure performance through their eyes,” says John Bannerman, Assistant Director of the NTTA’s Contact Center. “Our goal was to transform our culture to fully embrace our mission statement in becoming a truly customer-centric organization. It has become more than a mission statement to us – it is the way we treat our customers and each other.”
Turning Customers into Coaches
The key component driving the NTTA’s VoC initiative is a unique and potent customer experience/performance management solution called Customer Driven Management (CDM), developed by Tamer Partners Corporation (www.tamerpartners.com). Using this new tool, the contact center is able to cleanly capture and analyze detailed customer feedback across all contact channels right after an interaction, thus arming the NTTA with timely employee-specific scores and commentary that can be used to continuously improve performance.
Here’s how it works: Following an interaction with one of the NTTA’s agents, the customer receives an email asking them to provide “advice” to the agent about service they provided. The customer clicks on a link to access the survey, which features questions about things like the agent’s skills/knowledge, courtesy/professionalism and ability to efficiently resolve the issue at hand. But this is not your everyday generic customer satisfaction survey application. What sets CDM apart is its customization; the NTTA is able to create “Individual Action Surveys” that ask for customer feedback on particular areas that each agent is working on.
In essence, CDM has turned the NTTA’s customers into coaches, says Bannerman.
“CDM not only provides feedback directly to the service representative from the customer; it also adapts to the unique skills of each representative and seeks feedback from each customer to directly guide the employee on their specific opportunities for improvement. Our customers are now directly coaching employees on all areas of improvement including listening skills, empathy, call control and energy, to name a few.”
The NTTA has programmed the CDM system to provide alerts whenever a customer scores an agent either very high or very low, thus enabling supervisors to identify issues as they arise as well as to praise/recognize agents whenever they receive accolades.
CDM stores all customer responses including scores/ratings, yes/no responses, and text comments. The NTTA’s supervisors and managers can view and report on all surveys and responses for their team. Each of the center’s agents has access to their personal feedback in the CDM system, as well.
Lower Headcount, Higher Performance on the Frontline
The NTTA hasn’t handed its entire QA function over to its customers. The contact center’s internal quality monitoring staff still evaluate recorded calls to ensure that agents are providing accurate information and complying with established policies and procedures.
Still and all, Bannerman says that efficacy of the CDM solution has eliminated the need to hire four additional frontline managers. He adds that the supervisor-to-agent ratio has increased from 1:12 to 1:17 without sacrificing the level of coaching/support.
Of course, the VoC initiative isn’t all about managerial headcount reduction; it’s about providing a forever better level of service. Since implementing the initiative, the NTTA has seen agents’ quality and productivity results improve significantly. “We’ve found that the best opportunity for frontline change was putting our customers in charge,” says Bannerman. He points out that CDM scores and feedback are used not only during quality monitoring coaching sessions but also in annual agent evaluations and action plans. As much as 50% of the feedback during an agent’s annual review comes directly from customers. “Customers are effectively managing the quality of their future service experience by coaching and developing employees to meet their needs and expectations.”
And that’s just fine by the employees, Bannerman says.
“Agents love the VoC initiative, particularly CDM. They get far more [positive] feedback from customers than a supervisor would have time to provide for their entire team on a daily basis. This provides encouragement and motivation [for agents] to continue doing things well, and makes them more willing to accept suggestions for improvement.”
It also apparently makes them want to stick around longer.
“As a result of consistent positive feedback from customers, our attrition rate is 12% annually, which by contact center standards is very low.”
NTTA – the Big Picture:
Location: Plano, TX
Hours of operation: Mon-Fri 7am-7pm; Sat 9am-5:30pm
Number of agents: 152
Products/services provided/supported: Account maintenance, toll tag acquisition and general customer service
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, email, web self-service, and store front
What’s so great about them? They’ve vastly improved agent performance, the customer experience and the bottom line via a highly dynamic “Voice of the Customer” initiative.
iiNet may be headquartered “down unda”, but they are high above many organizations when it comes to incorporating social media into their customer care model.
Rather than drowning in or panicking over all the hype and speculation surrounding “social customer care”, the Australian ISP giant’s contact center operation has coolly and calmly developed a social media strategy that helps foster customer loyalty and brand advocacy.
“We believe social media will continue to grow as an avenue to address customer concerns, says Ilaisa Nacewa, contact center manager at iiNet’s Auckland, New Zealand site. “It is important to have this presence online; however, as more and more companies extend their customer care offering to include social media channels, you have to ensure you get it right.”
So far, it seems iiNet has done just that.
An Active “Social” Life
iiNet’s social media team is made up of a small group of agents who collectively monitor activity on such sites as Twitter, Facebook and the Internet discussion board Whirlpool 18 hours a day, seven days a week. The team uses the software solution CoTweet (by ExactTarget) to easily track customer feedback and manage conversations about the brand on the real-time web. The tool enables members of the social media team to publish updates, collaborate on responses and track interactions across today’s most influential social communities.
While iiNet’s initial foray into social customer care nearly two years ago involved mostly just listening to and, when appropriate, reactively responding to customers, the team has since become much more dynamic and proactive, says Nacewa.
“We have our own Facebook page and a Twitter account where we keep customers up-to-date with the latest information. This worked particularly well during the recent flood crisis in Queensland when customers were anxious about their connectivity. [These pages also serve] as an avenue for feedback when we release new products, plans, etc.”
He points out that, due to the fast paced social environment, it’s important to post information at least daily to keep followers/fans engaged. “Hitting them regularly with interesting and relevant information is the key to keeping the conversation alive online.”
Helping in that regard is the recently launched iiNet blog (http://blog.iinet.net.au), where members from all areas of the business are invited to share something about their work, a relevant experience, or a particular timely topic.
“We upload a blog entry almost daily and invite staff and customers to comment and discuss the posts,” says Nacewa.
Selecting the Right Social Media Reps and Metrics
Although all iiNet employees are welcome to join in on the blog conversation, it takes a special skill set to qualify for a coveted spot on the actual social media team.
“There’s a number of core skills we look for in social media team agents,” Nacewa explains. “Written communication skills are a non-negotiable, both in terms of being able to phrase a reply properly and being able to communicate succinctly – on Twitter you’re restricted to 140 characters a post. Also important is being able to read and interpret the tone of a purely text-based message.”
He adds that networking skills are vital too, pointing out that social media agents often receive queries that require input from other areas of the business in order to provide an accurate and efficient response.
Along with careful agent selection is careful measurement and management of the right metrics to ensure success in the social media channel. For instance, response time is a key measure, with the team expected to respond to any customer inquiry over Twitter, Facebook and Whirlpool within a maximum two-hour window. (That window gets much smaller for urgent customer requests or problems.)
“This rapid response over multiple channels, and the encouragement of direct customer feedback, has helped our fan base grow,” Nacewa says. “We have seen a positive flow-on effect concerning our brand, as it shows we are listening and engaging with our customers.”
Quality is another critical objective. iiNet relies on frequent training and clear guidelines to ensure that the correct information is delivered in a courteous and professional manner. As Nacewa explains, “When you are talking to a customer via a social media channel, you are not just talking to them, you are talking to everyone. It’s important that information be delivered in a way that reflects the brand and is accurate.”
iiNet also gauges growth in “follower” numbers and other measures of online influence (e.g., “Klout” scores for Twitter), as well as how well the team raises awareness of social media internally. Says Nacewa, “The team is expected to deliver regular training sessions to staff elsewhere in the business.”
Staying Centered
As effective as iiNet’s social media strategy and tactics have been thus far, the company’s overall service approach is still strongly grounded in the traditional contact channels and metrics that drive positive customer experiences. The contact center’s main focus continues to be on providing quality customer care via the phone, email, chat and self-service, as those remain the most common channels through which customers seek service and support – despite all the “social” hype that currently surrounds the contact center industry.
iiNet hasn’t let the social buzz blur the importance of good people management practices in the contact center, either. Nacewa and his crew are quite proud of their commitment to agent development and rewards & recognition, as well as the fact that the center doesn’t hold agents accountable for metrics that are often out their direct control, such as Average Handle Time. “AHT is a measure for managers,” says Nacewa.
Such dedication to service fundamentals is actually a key reason why iiNet doesn’t need a bigger social focus at this time. After all, when you delight customers and solve their problems quickly via conventional channels, there tend to be fewer fires to put out online.
Still and all, iiNet doesn’t downplay the important role that social media is starting to play in the company’s overall service strategy. Nobody really knows how big social customer care will get or how exactly it will evolve, but Nacewa likes the position iiNet has put itself in.
“Social media is becoming such an important part of a customer care and communications strategy. Customers are becoming more and more comfortable with talking to us online. They trust they will be heard.”
iiNet – the Big Picture:
Location: Australia – Sydney, Perth and Melbourne; New Zealand – Auckland; South Africa – Cape Town
Hours of operation: 8am - 8pm local time at each site
Number of agents: Approx 1,600 in customer service across all sites
Products/services provided/supported: Internet access (ADSL Broadband, NDSL, mobile
broadband, fiber, dial-up); telephony (fixed line phone, VoIP, mobile); IPTV services; domains
and hosting; business products and solutions.
Channels handled: Phone, email, chat (business), self-service, social media
What’s so great about them? They have effectively incorporated social media into their customer care model while maintaining a solid focus on more traditional channels and performance metrics.
You might find call centers that report a higher FCR rate than Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s; however, few have embraced the drivers of true FCR success as intently or as effectively as BCBSM has.
“BCBSM stepped up its FCR efforts considerably in 2009,” says Amy Frenzel, VP of Service Operations. “Our decision to do so was driven by the need to improve our customer satisfaction and experience results, and the need to drive unnecessary cost out of our business. We also recognized that our metrics for measuring performance did not include enough of the ‘voice of the customer.’”
In just a little over a year since implementing its FCR program – which centers around enhanced agent training, improved systems/workflows, better call analysis and direct customer feedback – the call center’s FCR rate has jumped 10 percentage points. Even more importantly, customer satisfaction has increased by 5% over the same period, thus confirming that the FCR initiative truly has teeth.
The call center has raised more than just its FCR rate and C-Sat scores; it recently raised a trophy – the one presented to BCBSM for “Most Improved FCR” at the 2010 annual SQM North American Call Center Awards conference, hosted by FCR/C-Sat benchmarking firm SQM Group. Frenzel says she and her team are honored to have received the award, though she hasn’t let the accolades go to her head.
“We are proud of our accomplishments, but realize we have more work to do to continue to improve our results.”
Educating, Empowering and Rewarding Agents around FCR
One of the biggest drivers of BCBSM’s FCR improvement since the beginning of the initiative has been agent education. Without agents’ full understanding of and enthusiasm behind what FCR is and does, progress is impossible, says Frenzel.
“We visited each servicing team multiple times to explain why we were placing such an emphasis on FCR, and we spoke to the agents specifically about what was in it for them.” She points out that this approach continues today during initial training, with all new agents learning about the impact of FCR on the organization and on the customer and agent experience. “Our staff now clearly understands the importance of the FCR measurement. CSRs now look forward to their coaching sessions to review the customer’s survey feedback results.”
Of course, agent understanding alone isn’t enough; staff still need the skills, knowledge and access to key resources in order to actually carry out their FCR mission. Frenzel and her team have done plenty to ensure this occurs, including continually revising call scripts and workflows, updating training materials, and providing ongoing coaching on FCR – not only to agents but to supervisors, as well.
Often, it’s the agents themselves who come up with ways to enhance FCR-related processes and resources. Managers and supervisors encourage and actively solicit staff feedback and suggestions during each team’s daily huddle meetings. In addition, agents can participate in determining root causes and coming up with viable solutions to reduce repeat calls. “We are in the process of implementing a Share Point site in which team members can submit their issues and ideas for resolution,” says Frenzel.
To help keep agents continuously focused on issue resolution and quality, management has built some alluring incentive programs around such customer-centric metrics. In one such recent program, agents received $25 for every post-call customer survey indicating a “World Class Call (WCC)” experience. As Frenzel explains, “WCC is determined by the customer’s top box score for satisfaction with the CSR, satisfaction with the overall service experience, and [first-call] resolution.”
Effectively Measuring – and Moving – the Metric
No FCR improvement initiative is complete without an authentic and accurate process for tracking actual FCR rates. Unfortunately, too many centers rely on internal quality monitoring or repeat-call tracking technology alone to gauge FCR, thus failing to take a very critical element into consideration – the customer’s direct perspective.
No such problem exists in BCBSM’s operation. While quality monitoring and call-tracking tools do play a part in the center’s FCR measurement approach (as they should), VOC-based caller surveys are what really drive the process, helping to provide a truer reading of FCR achievement as well as valuable insight into the customer experience. Following an interaction with an agent, callers have the option of completing the brief automated IVR survey, which asks callers to rate their service experience and to confirm if FCR was achieved.
Up until recently, the post-call surveys were conducted live by a third-party survey specialist, but the center decided to switch to the automated approach to quicken the feedback process, says Frenzel.
“We have increased our opportunities to hear the ‘voice of the customer’. The automated survey tool allows us to see real-time customer issues that need an immediate response. Whenever we receive an ‘action alert’ indicating a highly dissatisfied customer [based on their survey responses], the leadership team analyzes the customer’s file, and contacts them for service recovery.”
Recovery is nice, but prevention is even better. That’s why the center calls on its aforementioned “2+ Call” research team to identify and, where possible, fix the underlying causes of poor service experiences and issue resolution woes. Thanks to such ongoing efforts, BCBSM has seen its “average number of calls to resolve an inquiry” improve from 1.65 to 1.55 (which has reduced overall call volume). “Our goal is to reduce it to 1.40 by the end of 2011,” says Frenzel.
Not Just a Call Center Thing
FCR is typically considered “property of the call center” in most companies, but continuous FCR improvement always requires collaboration with other key departments. After all, some callbacks are often the result of an employee outside the center not completing a follow-up task (e.g., form processing, etc.) after an agent “resolved” a customer issue during an initial call. And some initial calls could be avoided in the first-place with better interdepartmental communication and accountability.
Recognizing all this, the BCBSM team have worked hard to make FCR improvement an enterprise-wide initiative at BCBSM.
“When we [used to talk] about first-call resolution, employees around the organization would immediately think, ‘That’s a call center thing’. We had to do a lot of education to make sure our partners in other areas of the company understood how what they did each day could positively or negatively impact first-call resolution.”
The campaigning has paid off.
“FCR is now a component of one of the company’s long-term goals. This has taken FCR from the call center to the organization, and heightens the sense of accountability and ownership beyond just the servicing team.”
BCBS of Michigan – the Big Picture:
Location: Primarily Michigan-based, spread geographically throughout the state.
Hours of operation: Monday-Friday 8:00am-9:00pm EST
Number of agents: Approximately 950, supplemented by external partners when needed
Products/services provided/supported: Individual and group health insurance coverage.
Channels handled: Phone, IVR, web self-service, limited email, social media
What’s so great about them? Their VOC-based first-call resolution initiative has resulted in a legitimate10% increase in FCR in just over a year – with future improvements expected.
Every time I talk to long-time colleague Gerry Barber – a man whose sparkling contact center management and consulting career spans three decades – I learn something new about customer care and see things from a fresh perspective.
Gerry currently directs Deloitte’s CallCenter in Nashville, Tenn., where he has used his years of expertise and insight to drive continuous improvement and help set Deloitte apart from its competitors – and most other contact center organizations, for that matter.
I ran into Gerry at a conference in New Orleans last summer, where he told me his center was – not surprisingly – doing some cool and innovative things. I told him I wanted details, and that I would likely blab about them in writing at some point. Always eager to help the collective contact center industry raise the bar and rethink norms, Gerry happily agreed to speak to me on the record.
Here’s everything I asked, and – more importantly – how he responded.
GL: Deloitte states that it aims to sustain a culture of “distinctive service”. Is this just a buzz phrase, or does it truly have teeth? What’s Deloitte CallCenter’s definition of “distinctive service”, and how is it measured and promoted within the contact center and to your internal customer base?
GB: Deloitte’s focus on distinctive service is evident and ingrained in our CallCenter vision statement, training materials and in the metrics we use to run our centers. In our CallCenter, the definition of distinctive service actually starts with the internal customers we serve. Our customers help us define distinctive service through the positive comments they provide in our customer satisfaction survey responses. With this said, to us distinctive service is the art of delivering knowledge the customer can use, providing solutions that give peace of mind, and delivering service that is beyond expectations.
GL: I am intrigued by your center’s “Wall of Distinction” that you mentioned. Please explain what the Wall is exactly, why you created it, and how your analysts get on it.
GB: The Wall of Distinction was created to recognize consistency in delivering distinctive service. The criteria for securing a place on the wall is to achieve high customer satisfaction survey scores in addition to receiving a high number of specific customer compliments. An analyst will remain on the wall for a period of six months based on their performance during the past six months. We update the wall twice yearly: in October (during Customer Service Week), and again in April.
GL: Do your analysts receive other related awards/recognition when they attain “Wall” status?
GB: We celebrate our analysts’ success in delivering distinctive service in several ways. Daily, we circulate an email to all CallCenter personnel listing all of the positive customer compliments we’ve received the previous day. In the email, we include the name of the analyst along with the customer’s comment that identifies how the analyst delivered distinctive service. On a monthly basis, we again review all of our customer compliments and I send a congratulatory note to those analysts receiving the highest number of customer compliments during the month; some analysts will receive monetary awards.
Our quality recognition program has evolved organically over time. Along the way, analysts’ comments have enhanced these programs shaping what we do today.
GL: Your center has a somewhat unique quality scoring model in place. Please briefly describe the model and explain the reasons behind it.
GB: We wanted a monitoring program that encourages continuous improvement. For our needs, none of the standard approaches seem to drive performance – not the 100-point scale, nor the “check the boxes” approach, nor averaging scores. In our model, we’ve removed the idea of numeric scores. We’ve also resisted averaging scores for the collective call. Rather we look for a set of “quality targets” across each of the four distinct and separate contact quality attributes. These four attributes include: 1) Call Ownership; 2) Communications and Courtesy; 3) Documentation; and 4) Resolution Effectiveness. Then, based on what we find within the context of the call, we determine if (in each of the four quality attribute areas) the analyst “missed the targets”, was “approaching the targets”, “met the targets”, or delivered distinctive service (exceeded targets).
Our quality team then looks at the percentage of instances, over time, that the analyst was either on target or surpassed the target. It is also important to understand and document where the analyst missed targets and where they can make improvements. Our goal for our analysts is to have 80% or more of their monitored calls “on target or above”, with no more than 5% of calls at “missed targets”. This is how we gauge individual analyst improvement.
Our analysts are coached daily but work with their team leader/coach twice monthly to review quality monitoring results. Most importantly, our analysts are given time off the phones to review their monitored calls prior to their coaching sessions.
Our analysts have bought into the process in a big way. They seem to have better insight as to what it takes to deliver distinctive service. We’ve also seen a movement on the part of analysts to do significant self-coaching.
GL: You’ve mentioned that your center has been exploring “unique ways to mix up random monitoring”. Could you please elaborate?
GB: Our quality team monitors a minimum of five random calls per month. One example I can share is that we asked each analyst to select one recent call that they felt surpassed our stated service targets. Our quality team then included this call as one of the five monthly quality monitoring calls. It was interesting to review these calls to see if the analyst had a solid understanding of what it takes to “exceed targets”. The calls indicated which analysts required more coaching and helped us better define what distinctive service looks like.
GL: What impact has your “distinctive service” had on such things as customer satisfaction, first-call resolution, analyst engagement/retention, and operations costs?
GB: On a seven point customer survey scale, we have moved the bar on customer satisfaction consistently over the past three years. First-call resolution has also significantly improved year over year.
Regarding agent engagement and retention, our analyst engagement scores are among the highest within the Deloitte US Firms.
And best of all, over the past three years while service delivery has greatly improved, our cost of delivering support service has significantly decreased. Better service at a lower cost has been the result.
GL: Is there anything else you would like to add, Gerry?
GB: Yes. One secret ingredient to our success is the collaboration and inclusion produced by our continuous quality program. In addition to the analysts’ role I mentioned earlier, our team leaders are measured on their team’s success. They are also measured on the amount of time they spend coaching for continuous improvement, which should be about 60% of their work day. And as mentioned, our analysts participate in the process by reviewing the same quality sampling as our service quality team and team leaders do.
Deloitte CallCenter – the Big Picture:
Location: Three centers: Tennessee, India, and California
Hours of operation: 24 x 7
Number of agents: Approximately 170
Products/services provided: Deliver a number of support-type services, including IT support,
business application support and HR benefits support, to name a few.
Channels handled: Phone, email, self-service
What’s so great about them? They sustain a culture of “distinctive service” – highlighted by a unique and comprehensive quality monitoring initiative as well as an employee rewards/recognition program that centers almost entirely around customer satisfaction ratings and feedback.
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