Mr. Robert’s recent comment inspires me.

I share his passion and feeling that students, especially in Business Schools (in my mind), need to hear this message. Very few Business Schools have curricula on theory, techniques and benefits of Customer Centricity; not for lack of material, knowledge or proven value. As a result, most business executives place much of their focus on the acquisition of new customers with little regard for the inherent value of our current customer base.

I often comment on what I believe are three key powers of influence and control in the world. Government/Education, Corporations/Business and Personal Values.

One of these three has a place in the other two, and is ultimately, the true driver of progress.
Of course it is Personal Value.

There is a place for personal values in Government. It is through our vote that government officials are chosen and driven to act in manners congruent with our values. However, the voice of personal values (customer values) is not so well represented in business, where all too often we see the choice between customers, ecology, and other popular standards take a back seat to the bottom line and shareholder expectations.
Asked to choose between the best short term interest of the customer and the bottom line, the customer is almost always asked to wait. By design, the system usually accounts for the customer only in the most drastic or catastrophic cases or after considerable evolution of mass expectation.

I don’t pretend that we can change the fundamental business drivers of an open economy, which we all know has more benefits than flaws. However, I believe that if we can show corporations that customer satisfaction and loyalty are of greater value than currently perceived, we can begin to make a fundamental shift. Even if XCS enters the board room through the back door, I think it can help to enhance the corporate bottom line as well as improve people’s quality of life far and wide.

Committed to XCS !

The last survey I posted asked two simple questions:

1. Are you dissatisfied, satisfied or Extremely Satisfied with the brand of your last purchase?
and
2. Will you definitely, without a doubt, buy this SAME brand again when you need a similar product?

Although the sample size of 25 is limited (too few of you like to take surveys), I still think its worthwhile sharing. Participants purchased a wide variety of products from beer to cars (hopefully not at the same time).

The results were interesting but not surprising, although I think most of those taking the survey must have already drank the XCS cool-aid:

Buy again?
Dissatisfied = 4 = 16% 0%
Satisfied = 17 = 68% 6%
X-Satisfied = 4 = 16% 94%

I think the first portion regarding how satisfied you were with the brand of your last purchase says much about a well balanced marketplace, where the vast majority (68%) were satisfied with the their purchase. An equally balanced 16% on each side were Dissatisfied and Extremely Satisfied, the two limits.

What is more interesting is that in this case (probably due to the small sample), none of the dissatisfied and only 6% of the satisfied participants said they were loyal to the brand as a result of their experience.

On the other hand, 94% of the XCS’d participants would be loyal to the brand based on their experience.

For at least 25 of you Extremely Satisfied may be the line that has to be crossed for loyalty to be reached.

[Please note that although fun to look at and discuss, you should not use this survey as a source of difinitive market tendencies due to its limited sample size and lack of industry segmentations].

Committed to XCS !

As I write this post, I’m in the middle of a customer visiting caravan. A six week-long stint of airport hopping and fast food that takes a lot of time and doesn’t help the efficiency of handling day to day issues. However, at the end, the most productive and important six weeks I could ever spend.

So far in the last few weeks I have been reminded of many of the issues that are truly important to my customers and as such, I feel empowered with clarity and energy to make things better.

I think much of our delay to action comes from a lack of clarity, at times, caused by high levels of complexity in our attempt to implement perfect, all encompassing solutions.

Because we have experience and know what our customers need, we feel that we can act on their behalf.

Most of the time, this is true, but at times our efforts become mired in internal considerations, seemingly equally worthy of attention. The result rarely exceeds the customer’s expectations.

The voice of the customer has a way of simplifying and focusing us on those things that really matter.

This may sound like common sense, but my experience is that we don’t listen to the customer enough.

Talk to some customers today, especially if the complexity of your solutions seem to be increasing. You’ll gain clarity, a sense of empowerment and purpose.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking at the annual gathering of the Hampton Roads Contact Center Group in Virginia Beach. I had a great time and I was able to see some old and valued friends.

During the discussion the issue of better hiring practices arose -it always does.

Although hiring well is important across the entire organization for obvious reasons, hiring always seems to have a solid place on the 3 contact centers issues list, so I thought I would comment on it here.

When we don’t hire well, turnover increases and productivity and quality decreases. It all adds up to additional costs, both hard and soft. So, it’s important to find the right match for the job.

A question came up during the meeting: Can a good agent be made as opposed to hired?
We spend lots of time and money looking for the right candidate with the appropriate experience etc. More ofthen than we’d like, after all this effort, we still find an unacceptable level of risk in our hires. So, would we be better off training them from scratch?

My political answer is Yes and No. (I should run for office)

Of course, I think we can train and purposefully develop great agents, however, some people have better aptitute for particular types of jobs than others. We can probably agree that a collections agent is not usually the same person as a customer support agent.

So yes, training is necessary and can be very effective, however, if climbing trees is the goal, I would much rather start with a monkey than a chicken. You know what I mean?

Although I think we can develop much of what is in a great agent, I would still rather start with a person that has many of the key skills, personality traits and cognitive abilities critical to job success. Looking for these candidates from the “get-go”, increases our chances of a better fit.

The right match means the right aptitude, cognitive skills and attitude as well as experience and skills. Given a choice, I’ll pick the first 3 over the experience. When building from an appropriate base, training is more natural and faster, and the results are better and longer lasting.

Of all the problems related to hiring at Contact Centers, the single largest and most costly is Short Term attrition. The majority of agent attrition occurs in the first 90 days and is a direct result of poor fit.

The average cost for an attrition-ed employee in the first 90 days is between $5,000 ~ $8,000. You can do the math yourself, by counting how many people you lost last year iduring this period.

Anything we can do to improve our ability to identify and hire the required skills, personality traints and cognitive abilities, the better off we will be.

Two things that have made a difference in my experience.

1. Improved communications regarding the job.
So many applicants arrive at their first interview (phone or in person) not fully understanding the job for which they are applying. Mostly because of poor communications about the particulars of the position. A full, clear, and honest explanation of the job is very important. Also, a download-able or a stream-able recording of typical calls can make a significant difference.

2. Understand and Look for the characteristics that matter most.
If we could assess an rate the critical characteristics for successful agents across your population, we would be better served to start looking for candidates that more closely match these characteristics in personality traits, cognitive abilities, and the like.

I belive in profiling. It provides the opportunity to identify the key required traits and then allows us to assess new prospective employees against these requirements.

I have found dramatically decreased short term attrition as a result of these two practices.

There are software products out there that can assist in this area: wp_attrition11

Yes, we can create make the agent we want, but the resources and time required are dictated by how close the new hire matches the proven and appropriate profile.

Committed to XCS !