There are many examples of how doing less can improve your well-being such as downsizing and giving away items that you no longer use. Or, producing home-cooked meals with what you already have in the refrigerator — sometimes called “Iron Chef.” The same concept of doing less can be applied to improve agent and customer experience. Recent examples include the books Subtract1, and The Friction Project2 as well as other posts on CustomerThink3.
As these authors put it, it’s easy to do more. It’s harder to figure out what to do less. However, thanks to advanced analytics and AI, we can now zero in on the “critical moments” that customer-facing agents and customers themselves experience. We can also measure the impact of complexity and doing more and analyze the positive impacts of subtracting or doing less. Here are four examples for you to consider.
1. Fewer processes and fewer steps
In my second book, Your Customer Rules!4, my co-author and I argued that the customer experience leaders we interviewed around the world shared common practices. Among these practices was analyzing constantly the number of processes that they required of their staff or customers and the steps in those processes, and then reducing those processes and steps by 30% or more every year. Now, as we presented in our third book, The Frictionless Organization5, with sophisticated customer journey mapping, and the ability to track customer experiences step-by-step, you can figure out which processes are snarling up the customer or frustrating them, and which steps are unnecessary or provide no value.
For example, if your company frequently changes prices on everyday items, your customers will probably request a price match. Instead of forcing customers to figure out that they could have bought something cheaper today, let’s say within a 30- or 60-day window, you can simply credit them the difference and send a notice to the effect of, “We’re looking out for you; you don’t have to do anything; here’s your refund.” MCI Telecommunications used to do this back in the 1990s when it noticed that customers were no longer using certain plans or features for which they were paying a premium. Instead of waiting for those customers to figure out that they no longer were using them and request cancellation or a refund, MCI would refund two to three months’ usage and then notify the customer that they were no longer required to pay the additional fees. Customers were delighted and surprised, the opposite of what many companies go through with bill shock.
2. Far fewer knowledge articles and windows
It’s well-known customer service agents suffer from needing 10 or more windows and data sources open on their screens and hundreds, if not thousands, of knowledge articles that they might have to search to resolve the customers’ issues. Today, you can track which articles are being used by your agents, perhaps augmented with a “Was this useful?” request, and remove those that are rarely if ever used. This can also be applied to customer-facing articles or tools, which I’ll cover in the next section.
For many years, we could overlay multiple data, databases, or windows with a simplified user interface, as pioneer Jacada and other companies. There’s no excuse today for having multiple windows open on any agent screen. AI-powered agent assist tools, such as from ASAPP, are taking this several steps further. The AI bot listens in real-time to the customer/agent interaction and offers the best-fit recommendation to the customer-facing agent. This greatly simplifies the job for the customer service agent, reducing handle time and the time to resolve by 15 to 30%. It also increases FCR (First Contact Resolution) and customer satisfaction.
3. Simpler digital tools
In the rush to be “Digital First,” many organizations have thrown as much as possible onto their digital tools including IVR, IVA, chatbots, and customer apps. As a result, customers are often confused and bypass these valuable digital tools to speak directly to an agent who can help them. Instead, by measuring the containment rate for each of these tools and their recommendations, you can rationalize and greatly simplify what is offered to the customer. It’s a sad fact that most digital tools have below 30% containment rate on average with some in the single digits. This means that 70% or more of digital tools are failing the customer and the company. They’re also causing unnecessary downstream costs with the assisted agent populations.
Instead, by measuring and finding ways to achieve containment rates above 90%, akin to 90% FCR in assisted support, you can simplify operations and subtract effort and costs. It’s also important to track customer satisfaction so that it matches and corresponds to the higher usage levels. In other words, customers might use an app but if it doesn’t solve their problem they will provide a low satisfaction score and that means the company needs to retool the recommendation.
4. Slash the number of offers, promotions, and devices
Development teams love to build stuff — to add. They often produce too many features in the same way that marketing likes to increase the number of offers or promotions. It’s natural, of course, to try to induce or convince customers to buy more or to buy the first time, but many offers and promotions fail for one or more of these reasons:
- they are attached to irritating intents or reasons that rarely render a successful sale;
- they’re not tailored to the customer’s needs and requirements but are rather broad brush;
- they’re offered during the middle of another promotion or offer but are not available for that customer, which frustrates them; or
- they confuse customers and agents.
I’ve seen significant improvements in this area with telco companies reducing the number of plans or offers by 80% yet not losing track on revenue or revenue growth. By analyzing which offers and promotions are working and which ones are not, you can slash offers and promotions by 50% or more right away. The hard yards are to figure out how to slice or reorient the remaining offers and promotions so they are successfully taken up by customers.
In a similar vein, telcos and many other companies have way too many devices that they offer and then have to support. Consider Southwest Airlines’ decision years ago to standardize on the Boeing 737 aircraft (let’s not get into the whole issue here about Boeing’s current quality problems). Southwest and other airlines have standardized on one aircraft type to simplify pilot training, maintenance, and potential swaps of aircraft should they need to replace faulty equipment. I’ve seen cases where companies have analyzed the complaint rate per device and challenged those device manufacturers or equipment producers whose rates are higher than the average such that if they can’t bring it down to the historic average, they’ll be replaced.
These four examples are just scratching the surface of how companies can improve agent and customer experience by doing less. You can find more in my third book The Frictionless Organization5. Instead of addition, think subtraction!
Notes:
1 Leidy Kloss, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, Flatiron Books, 2021. https://tinyurl.com/d3dtpc2n
2 Robert I. Sutton and Huggy Rao, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder, St. Martin’s Press, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mt8z7k3m
3 For example, see Paul Sloan, “Product Innovation — What Can you Subtract?”, 1 March 2022. https://customerthink.com/product-innovation-what-can-you-subtract/
4 Bill Price & David Jaffe, Your Customer Rules! Delivering the Me2B Experiences That Today’s Customers Demand, Wiley, 2015. https://tinyurl.com/ymw88396
5 Bill Price & David Jaffe, The Frictionless Organization: Deliver Great Customer Experiences with Less Effort, Barrett-Koehler, 2022. https://tinyurl.com/2r9uvmw4