About a year ago, I changed banks from Bank of America to MetroPacificBank in Irvine Califormia.  I was not happy with the customer service of BofA and decided to bank at a small single-branch bank hoping to get more personal service.

It was a good decision.  This last year, I had the best banking experience of my life without major issues and with great customer support.  But, as luck would have it, last month MetroPacific Bank was acquired by Sunwest Bank.   As is normal in these cases, most of the management team, including my banker, VP Colleen Brady, was let go.  At first I was a little nervous but figured that Sunwest deserved a chance.

Three weeks ago I had to open an new business account, and in making the request I soon found out that my great experiences with MetroPacific was more based on Colleen’s care and empowerment, than the result of mature customer centric processes.  My account is still not open. So, I decided to leave, in spite of the great personal efforts of Chris – a very customer centric account manager left in charge of my account. (thanks Chris !)

The lesson I learned:

When customers figure out that their satisfaction is the result of employee commitment and not the result of an institutional customer focus, they realize they are not loyal to the brand, but loyal to the employee.

I immediately called Ms. Brady and asked: “what bank are you going to?”

It’s great to have passionate, customer centric employees.  But, great employees are no substitute for institutional customer centricity.

We need to back those employees with tools, processes and policies that help them promote a corporate commitment to the customer and thereby create brand loyalty.  In addition, our customers need to see that the effort is not only in the employee, but innate to the company’s intention and values.

I hope Ms. Brady doesn’t go to Bank of America.

Rudy Vidal
Creating Profitable Customer Loyalty

For my friends that are not aware of the incident with United Airlines breaking guitars, I am posting the video link below.

It goes without saying that we need to be careful how we treat our customers.  Three million views in less than a week is a lot of negative press!

I’m sure during the development of this issue, the United representative(s) felt the customer should have received consideration outside the policy, but did not feel appropriately empowered.

Although generalized policies are necessary in any large company, these should always be backed up by employee empowerment.

Individual customers never like to be shown they are being treated impersonally by “broad brush” policies that leave them without identity or options.  ”I’m sorry Mr. Jones, there is nothing I can do, this is our policy”, is a good way out for the representative, but could be the worst thing to say to customer.

(Before you upset a customer, ask them if they own a video camera)

here is the link: United Breaks Guitars

Rudy Vidal
Creating Profitable Loyalty

I was listening to a talk by Iqbal Quadir an inspiring entrepreneur who is changing the world through human empowerment. He said two phrases that made an impact.

“Connectivity is Productivity” and “Specialization is Productivity”.

Both of these make sense, but bringing them together is powerful.

Although I’m not a math major, I could not resist doing the logic.

If Connectivity = Productivity
and
If Specialization = Productivity

Then it follows that:
Connectivity = Specialization

As I thought about it, it didn’t take long for some of the challenges and opportunities in our markets to start making more sense.
One of these changes is the shifting marketing paradigm that is largely ignored.

For the last couple of hundred years, business has relied on raw POWER as the deciding factor of success. Although brilliant ideas and management are still necessary, the power to reach more people, to build more products, to move them faster, is the engine for success. We only need observe mass mailing, television, or the number of SKUs in Nike’s shoe lineup, to see that it’s about POWER more so than efficiency.

In the end, we are forced to homogenize our segments, compromise the essential value in our products and dilute our brands in order to widen our mass appeal. In essence, we destroy, destroy and destroy in order to deal with the inefficiency of the paradigm.

But maybe the equation: Connectivity = Specialization, presents new possibilities.

The drastic increase in Connectivity accelerates the normal rate at which we create “specialized” communities of like-minded people. These communities form faster and become larger and more powerful than would normally be possible. In essence, they become large networks of beacons searching for more resonant experiences, people, products and brands.
Suddenly, we find we may not need to look for them, they may be inadvertently looking for us.

The problem is that in order to be noticed we need to resonate, we need to have a point of view, a stand or clarity of purpose, what Simon Sinek might call a clarity of WHY?

This new paradigm has potentially meaningful characteristics:

1. It is personally meaningful
2. It is deliberate (not passive, like mass media)
3. It provides an opportunity for deeper connections.
4. But, it requires TRUST.

The old paradigm of PUSHING our value to the masses is giving way to the need for CLARITY and TRUTH that allows smaller more aligned groups to hear us. A clarity and truth about who we are, and what we stand for as companies. ?This clarity of purpose, turns the brand into a resonator that draws all that are tuned.

Only one problem . . .

Companies today are not good at CLARITY or TRUTH.

We find it difficult to be clear on what we stand for. (read your mission statement lately?).
And we find it difficult to be truthful because we want to maximize potential customers as we aim at the masses.

Are we sure of our WHY? Can we be true to it? Can we resonate?

I vote for investing some resources here, so we can stop sending junk mail.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Profitable Loyalty – XCS

One of the most common hurdles in trying to improve the customer experience, is that we view the customer’s situation through our own internal filters, limitations, policies and generalization. In effect, we can hear the customer but what we “know”, doesn’t let us listen.

Those that touch the customer daily know more than anyone about what the customer considers important. As surprising as it may be however, I find that those that touch our customers every day are not the ones designing the customer experience. Those that decide are often somewhat removed and rely on their “past experience” to make the right decision.

Some time ago, I gave a contact center manager a challenge to transform the customer experience with the representative by only changing the rep’s greeting. At first, the feeling was that the greeting could not change the experience. The content of the experience was so much more important than the greeting that it could not be overshadowed. Just to be nice, she played along. After considerable thinking and word-smithing, the new greeting was surprisingly similar to the original. The reasons for the measured change were all logical and full of merit, backed by experience and knowledge in customer service.

Because I had done this exercise before and new the potential results, I pressed on. Otherwise, I would have likely agreed with the logic and “let sleeping dogs lie”. Instead, I provided an idea for the new greeting. “Hello, thank you for calling XYZ, my name is Rudy Vidal. I am committed to resolving your issue today, please let me help you.” This new greeting was received with raised eyebrows and determined to be “corny”. I agreed it could be “corny” , but in whose eyes?

To a contact center person who is aware of all the difficulties associated with actually resolving an issue, it may sound corny. But to a customer who is having a bad day, who has just gotten escalated and has lost hope of resolving her issue, this greeting could be comforting, perhaps even surprising. It could disarm a person who is ready to take two full minutes to expound, at high volume, why she is so upset. At the very least it is unexpected.

We tried it in a small group of representatives. Customer Satisfaction increased by double digits, representative satisfaction did the same, first contact resolution went up.

Sometimes, it is difficult to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. We see their situation, only through our own. We try to walk in their shoes, but fail to remove ours.

By the way, the most surprising aspect of that experiment, was the effect it had on the representatives. They were more loyal to the customer, more engaged in the solution, more committed. First call resolution went up, not because empowerment policies changed, but because the representatives changed. What they said to the customer changed what they did.

Two suggestions:

• Make sure to include people that directly touch customers in the creation of new solutions.
  Have them represent the customer without regard to internal limitations or
  common knowledge.

• Try new things, after all nothing will change until something changes.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS

Sometimes I talk about the idea of Profitable Loyalty and often I’m asked what I mean. So, here it is:

Not All Loyalty is Profitable, therefore, Not All Loyalty is Good.

Profitable loyalty is the result of a successful alignment of our corporate goals and capabilities with the values of our strategic customers.

When we are aligned with these customers’ values, we have a greater likelihood of setting the right expectations, of delivering on those expectations, and of creating partnerships based on mutual trust and benefit.

When we are not aligned, we find ourselves with large numbers of unprofitable customers who never seem to understand our capabilities and often demand that, which we find difficult to deliver.

Profitable Loyalty comes from clearly defining who we are, who we want to become and with whom we want to do business – Segmentation.

Once this is clear we can develop and maintain policies, processes and delivery mechanisms that add value to strategic customers who are aligned with our direction and understand and value what we do. It is here we want to invest in creating positively emotional touch-points.

There is nothing worse than having customers push us to be something we are not, and don’t want to become. It adds instability and costs to our business. It creates frustration in our employees and stresses our processes.

Let me be clear. I‘m not saying we should not listen to our customers when they are asking for new capabilities or innovation. Great customer communications and flexibility to meet market needs is a basic tenet of Loyalty. However, trying to be everything to every customer is a sure formula for failure. There are things we do well, there are thing we need to improve and there are things to which we need to say NO.

If your company is NOT concentrating on Profitable Loyalty, you may be experiencing some or all of the following:

• Your most important customers are the least profitable.
  
• Price is the prime negotiating variable
  
• Process exceptions seem to be the rule
  
• You are becoming increasingly reactionary
  
• Customer attrition is increasingly an issue.

At times these symptoms seem endemic to an industry and therefore, par of the course. Accepting this as our reality, puts us in danger of racing our competition to the bottom. On the other hand, we can thrive in the face of adversity if we are able to re-align ourselves with the values of our strategic segments.

All customers are not created equal.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS

During a seminar last week, someone asked the following question:

“More industries than ever are experiencing runaway price and margin erosion. Why is that? More importantly, what can we do about it?”

I believe value is being lost as a result of our lack of understanding of shifting paradigms.

Economies naturally progress through value shifts. For example,

from Raw Material Economies (pre-industrial)
to
Product Economies (Industrial)
to
Service Economies (post industrial)
to
Experience Economies. (information)

Although we can still find economies at all four levels throughout the world, most of the higher systems are now Experience Economies. In experience economies, by and large, consumers place lesser value on Raw Materials, Products, or Services. Instead, they place more value and are willing to pay more for the Experience. Products and Services, although required and expected, are no longer the prime field of differentiation. Their expected high quality is simply a minimum business requirement.

Sadly, within our experience economy there are companies and entire verticals that may not have yet noticed the shifted paradigm and still offer products and/or services as their key value proposition. A perfect example is the consumer electronics sector, which continues to assert product features as their key value. Features, however, are easily copied, creating short-lived differentiation. In the absence of other differentiating value, they turn to price. And so, the cycle begins: Lower prices causes reduced margins which causes diminishing profits which creates pressure to reduce costs which causes layoffs which brings reduced purchasing power which prompts the need for lower prices. You get the idea.

A surprisingly large portion of top management I meet believe customers demand and cause lower prices, without considering the possibility we may simply be misaligned with customer values, which ultimately forces us to turn to price. After all, although lowering price is not usually the best course of action, we cannot deny it is an easy and generally effective way of getting attention; if only for a brief moment.

Maybe we should learn from others:

• American auto manufacturer’s have refused to see the new paradigm. They are still selling cars as if it were 1950.
• Nordstrom, on the other hand, sells the same exact merchandise as other department stores, but charges a premium based on the experience.

(I’ll leave more, and perhaps better examples to you – please share through a comment.)

Perhaps it’s time we listen to the voice of the customer and align ourselves accordingly.
If we don’t, our only recourse will be lower prices, outsourcing and ultimately layoffs.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS

I often encounter the confusion between frequent purchase programs and Loyalty strategies. I don’t believe these are equivalent and would like to address it.

For a long time, the marketplace has endorsed the lowering of prices as a justifiable form of value-add. And, although a lower price does, in fact, constitute value (more for less), it is hardly productive.

By now, most of us have figured out that the incremental sales achieved by a lowering of price will only last as long as the price advantage. We would all agree this increment should not be attributed to Customer Loyalty.

Points, free merchandise or discounts through frequent purchase programs, no matter how well camouflaged, still result in a perceived reduction of price. And, although customers may act more loyal due to the accumulated points in their frequent purchase accounts, they are in fact, attached to the points, NOT the brand. We should be careful not to equate captivity with LOYALTY.

I have a Delta SkyMiles account. Although I am somewhat captive, I took a United flight to LA (which I don’t like) because it was $200 cheaper. I am somewhat captive, but certainly not LOYAL. Captive audiences will stay as long as it is advantageous, but let’s not say that we are creating LOYALTY.

LOYALTY is the ultimate goal in a commoditized market. To have customers that have accepted our brand as part of their life’s value structure is a privilege and takes hard work. We can’t buy this kind of LOYALTY. If we want it, we’ll need to think about adding value to our customers’ lives, and making them emotional in the process.

Most companies have not been able to quantify the ROI on Customer Loyalty and therefore, find it difficult to commit the resources to creating it.

Instead, we continue to feed the price-erosion monster through masqueraded lower pricing, and add insult to injury, by calling it LOYALTY.

If we want Loyal customers we’ll have to do more than offer double points on any purchase before the end of the month.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS

Two things drive me to a posting on Average Handle Time (AHT).

1. A previous posting on Average Speed of Answer (ASA) remains the most popular posting on the blog, so I thought another Contact Center metric may be welcomed by our visitors.
2. A recent discussion with a group of the Contact Center managers clearly showed AHT to be a point of interest.

Metrics can be a subjective bunch, and as such, definitive answers about their use may be ilusive, so please be ready for some generalizations based mostly on my personal experience – which by no means is definitive.

AHT is an often misunderstood metric because on the surface it looks like a problem to be managed, while if we look deeper, it tends to act more like a symptom.

AHT Definition: The average length of time it take agents to handle a customer, wrap-up and become available for the next customers? (This differs from Average Talk Time (ATT), which excludes wrap-up and other ancillary activities such as research).

The obvious benefit of a short AHT is that agents can take care of more customers in a set time and therefore, less agens are required to handle the incoming load. Expectedly, management, usually upper management, feels very comfortable placing attention on AHT as a way to control the largest cost of a contact center, people. Likewise, many Contact Center managers concentrate on AHT ensuring agent efficiency, at times incenting agents to achieve lower an lower AHT levels.

In my experience, the control-point for AHT is not the agent. In stead, AHT is more directly affected by our ability to provide the appropriate environment, knowledge, tools and expectations.

Here are the areas I believe contribute most to AHT.

Appropriate Staffing Levels
Staffing can become a vicious cycle. “If we had more staff we would not have this problem, but, if we were more efficient we would not need so much staff”. Although this posting is too general to address this important balance, we do know that bad Average Speed of Answer, Service Levels and excessive hold times which are greatly affected by staffing levels, can add 30 to 60 seconds to your AHT. Primarily, in the time it takes to calm down irate customers and the composure time for agent stress. Irate customers have a great effect on agent morale and the efficient flow of the call. It’s amazing how much more efficient we can be when our customers are cooperative and our agents are not stressed out.

Training
It goes without saying that knowledgeable agents have lower AHT than new agents. But technical and product training only take us so far. Our agents must also know how to quickly assess a customer’s needs, troubleshoot and create an interactive flow that is conducive to quick resolution. They must also know when to escalate. An simple analysis of call length within a queue can show us the tipping point of AHT. Passed a certain call length, we can see calls have a higher likelihood of reaching astronomical AHTs. That is the point at which to intervene and ask your agents if they need help. I know of a team that calls this the 12 minute rule – at 12 minutes a lead agent or supervisor would simply ask “need help?”. Less stress for the agent, lower AHT.

Processes
How many screens do your agents need to manage in order to manage an interaction? Do they need to get up from their station and send faxes, pull manuals, etc? Inefficient processes can add considerably to handle time.

Empowerment
An empowered agent is a less stressed agent who knows he/she has some decision-making power to do the right thing for the customer. Less time is spent working towards an unlikely solution while giving the agent more ownership of the outcome and more perceived value as an employee.
Of course, empowerment is not for every agent and requires proper training and clear guidelines, but we would do well to push as much empowerment as possible to the front lines of our customer touch-points. Surprisingly, empowerment can be easier to manage than the policies and processed designed to ensure customer satisfaction through escalations.

Attrition
Attrition is an indicator to most, if not all agent inefficiencies. It is the single most costly event in a contact center, mostly occurring within 90 days of hire and costing up to $8,000 per agent.
When we have high attrition, our average newbie rate on the floor is high, which means knowledge and efficiency is low (just think what happens to your stats -including AHT – when you have a new team nesting? uhgg!).

Also, high attrition floors have more challenges in agent dynamics which make empowerment, quality, and employee participation less likely and more difficult.
Average Handle Time is therefore, greatly affected by our ability to hire and keep the right employees. If you have an attrition rate of more than 50%, don’t worry about AHT. You’ve got bigger problems.

Perhaps most controversial, is the topic of agent relations.
At times, we can enter into contentious cycles with our agent community. Usually driven by frustration in our inability to improve operations, we’ll begin to feel a disconnect and a difficulty sharing the same side of the fence with those who directly manage the customer.

As long as it’s acceptable for us not to share the same side of the fence with our agents, AHT will remain difficult to manage and, unfortunately, we will continue to press the wrong button, expecting different results. AHT is not a measure of agents approach or willingness to follow direction, but a measure of management’s ability to Train, Hire and Empower.

I believe AHT is not the best indicator of agent efficiency but a greater indicator of management effectiveness.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS!

Today I was brushing up on Mahatma Gandhi, his philosophy and methods. If you are not familiar with his works and philosophy beyond what media or folklore provide, I highly recommend a closer look.

While reading, it occurred to me that part of the reason customer service has a large impact on our lives is not because it is special in and of itself, but because it is an extension of the golden rule and therefore, of good social order -

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

The curious thing is that in order to follow the golden rule, we must be willing to temporarily disengage from our own condition. That is to say, we must focus on the customer’s point of view, putting ourselves in their position.

We cannot offer good service only when we feel the world has been fair to us, when things are going well, when all is just as we want it. Good customer service requires that we consider the needs of another, even as we struggle with our own. OK, this is sounding a little dogmatic, but isn’t it the essence of good customer service.

I often notice three types of customer service people.

1. Those of us whose willingness to provide XCS is dependent on whether or not we are receiving it.
2. Those of us who are simply trying our best to do a difficult job
   and
3. Those of us who have realized, strangely enough, that our own quality of life is usually positively affected by our honest effort to consider the needs of others.

Those of us in the first group, need to move to either of the others, or should consider a diferent line of work. Most of us, however, find ourselves in the second group as we move forward day to day to do our best at a job that is, at times, difficult. This is not a bad place to be.

But, the blessing of customer service work can more readily be felt in the third group, where our lives tend to improve because of our work. Where we become more tolerant and our problems seem to become less debilitating as we disengage from the idea that we are the center of the universe, while we concentrate on helping someone else.

Service does not need to be monumental or earth shattering. It just needs to consider the customer’s point of view separately from our own.

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – Mahatma Gandhi

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS !

Different types of customers have different needs and thereby, benefit from different customer satisfaction strategies. One type of customer is the Business to Business (B2B) customer.

Due to the symbiotic relationship between supplier and customer, the B2B customer can have a heavy and seemingly uncontrolled reliance on the supplier’s ability to meet their operational expectations. Whenever there is potential lack of control, we see a need to manage trust.

Customer relationship management is more of an art than a science. But it’s one of those art-forms more easily managed when the basic principles of the craft are known and followed. In my view, one of the most important of these CRM principles is response velocity.

The Inherently weakness in the armor of a CRM relationship is the customer’s fear in not being able to control a supplier’s personnel or business processes and thus not being able to control their own fate. “Will they deliver as promised? Am I one of many customers and will they give me the attention I need to be successful? Will they add value to my business?

This fear is tested every time a customer reaches out and makes a request. The manner in which the request is acknowledged and followed is used as a measure of a suppliers intention to serve. A high perceived intention to serve will translate to trust.

So, few things strengthen a CRM relationship more than high response velocity. Even when we solve a customer issue within the expected time frame, if the response velocity is slow, trust will be diminished.

Bottom line – When our B2B customers calls, answer right away. When we get an email, answer it immediately-not one hour later, even if just to say, “I got your email, I’m on it”.

Build internal expectations and standards for response velocity.

Delays in getting back to our customer or in reaching out when we should, creates lack of trust and weakens the relationship.

Giving them more than they expect, feels better on both sides of the relationship.

Committed to XCS !

Rudy Vidal