You probably made your customer experience program a top priority five short months ago when you sat down to make your New Year’s resolutions for your contact centers. Let’s do a gut check…did the priority to better your customer experience program fall by the way side just like your resolution of a smaller waistline? I’m sure that your intentions were noble but the hectic day-to-day of running your contact centers can easily get in the way of your long-range goals. There’s still time to redirect your focus back to your goals.
According to a recent CustomerManagementIQ survey, nearly 76% of the customer management executives and leaders rated customer experience a ‘5’ on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being of the highest importance). Could those executives and leaders be your competitors? It’s very likely. All the more reason customer experience and a revision of your Voice of the Customer (VoC) program should be a ‘5’ on your list too. Once customer experience is your highest priority and you are ready to get to work, where should you start? Who owns the customer experience?
While in my opinion everyone should own the customer experience in some way, for the purpose of this piece let’s focus on how the contact center contributes to the customer experience. Think about how the contact center is responsible for many of the touch points and has influence over many other touch points. So the contact center can own the voice of the customer. The easiest place to start in building a customer experience program from the ground up, or revamping your current one is with post-call IVR surveys.
WHY POST-CALL IVR SURVEYS?
An effective post-call IVR survey has been a great tool that produces diagnostic analysis that drives organizations forward in real time and over time. Let’s face it, customers want immediate service, customers have the answers when it fails, and the contact center has access to more customers than any other department. A prime directive for you will be to design the measurement questions from a customer experience perspective and not from a market research perspective. When collecting insights from the customer perspective think about:
Brand Impact – How did the interaction today impact the brand perception or perception of the contact center as a resource.
Agent Contribution – What was the perception of agent performance with the key elements they can control and which the customers can evaluate.
Customer Effort – What is the customer perception of wait time, resolution time, service time, actions to resolve, attempts to resolve, etc.
SURVEY CALIBRATION IS A MUST
The beginning construction of a VoC program (or the redesign) also requires for the analytics map to be drawn prior to fielding the survey. The statistical analytics and reporting plan is critical to ensure that the VoC program will yield the predictive models needed to drive the organization. Do not discount the importance of utilizing a consistent survey calibration process. After sufficient data has been gathered in the survey phase, this data must be vetted and calibrated to ensure that the customer feedback collected is attached to the correct agents to encourage ownership of good performance and performance in need of improvement. Survey calibration is a critical ongoing part of an effective VoC program.
DESIGN AND MAINTENANCE OF YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROGRAM
When it comes to your customers, remember that every interaction counts. Even a short email exchange can mean the difference between an irate customer calling in to speak with supervisor and a customer that feels safe and informed about their order. Your VoC program will be specific to your post-call IVR survey findings and your company goals, but as long as you keep the customer experience top-of-mind through ownership, you will truly set your company apart as a customer-centric company. A high value VoC program is a dynamic program that must be monitored continuously. Always remember, if you need help with exercising this as a discipline, get a trainer.
