While putting the finishing touches on a white paper on contact center cultures, this spilled out onto the keyboard.
It’s may not be right for the white paper but I thought I would share it.
(This is what happens when you listen to Schubert while working.)

Contact Centers form very specific kinds of cultures, which require special care and attention, and present challenges not usually seen elsewhere in the organization.  They are labors of love.

At times, it is difficult to discern a contact center culture from that of a production line, a command center or a hospital.  The origins of the contact center workforce is often diverse, at the same time, constant and committed.
Contact centers may have the highest turnover rate of any corporate discipline, but are kept running by devoted individuals that often offer entire careers to the service of those they don’t know.
A contact center reads the life-pulse of any organization, feels the tremblings of a failed business and the trends of immense growth, usually before the rest of us.
Customer contact centers hold the key to the future of our businesses through their access to the hearts and voice of our customers.  Yet, we often see them as cost centers, necessary evils in our effort to create brands.
Contact centers collect the leaks of corporate miscalculation and work knee-deep in water everyday.
Customer contact centers are one of most powerful touch-points we have, and the most directly impacting tool in creating Xtreme Customer Loyalty.

Support and visit your customer contact center, it’s good for business.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

This story is sad, but a little funny at the same time.

Continental Airlines Flight 47 kept about 50 passengers on this regional Jet on the tarmac overnight.
Fifty people in a regional Jet with babies and backed up bathrooms can be a pretty scary thing.

The airplane was diverted and landed in Rochester about 12:30 am.  Passengers were not let off of the plane because the security officers had already left for the day.  The airport reports that it told the crew they could deplane, but the crew disagrees. (full story on USA TODAY.)

Of course, we can expect confusion when a flight is diverted after hours to a small airport that is not serviced by the airline.
But what a difference a little front-line EMPOWERMENT would have made !

A crew member calling the police on their cell phone saying – It seems very unreasonable for us to keep 50 people in here all night.  Can you help us reach some authorities that could give us options? – Instant emotion, Instant Loyalty.

Take a chance on Empowerment, it works !

(I wonder what a SouthWest Airlines crew member would have done)

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy Vidal

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of CCNG members in Cincinnati, and the topic of contact center cultures came up, again.  Seems to be a popular theme lately, so I thought a couple of points on contact center culture management might be nice.

Because it’s rare that people agree on the definition of corporate culture, I feel I should put one in. So, here is my definition (since I don’t like wikipedia’s)

A set of generally accepted norms and values that result in the behavioral/operational paradigm of an organization.

Regardless of the type of organization, I have found some consistencies with cultures:

• Cultures require management ownership
• Cultures cannot be changed.  They are either shifted or destroyed
• Cultural shifts cannot be mandated.  Mandate=Destroy
• Cultures are not the employees
• Cultures are usually the effect, not the cause.
• Cultures are a labor of love.

Key Levers

Before any culture work takes place, management must assume responsibility for the current and future cultures.

Culture management is much like gardening.  When the harvest is poor, an expert can easily point to our errors: we planted at the wrong time, used the wrong soil, provided too much or too little water, etc.  However, when the harvest is plentiful, we can hardly take credit for the miracle of nature, when all we did was ensure the right conditions.  Management’s responsibility is to place the right components in the right conditions and keep the balance.

When boiled down I find the key levers to be

(Expectations + People&Capabilities + Environment)/Purpose

Ensure clear Expectations.
Ensure the right People have the right Capabilities (knowledge and tools)
Provide an Environment conducive to gaining the desired results.
Alignment of each to a clear and accepted Purpose

The shifts in culture are determined by the balance of these variables in relation to the corporate purpose.

Please note: All of these variables are under the sphere of management control.  Again, management ownership is key.

Simplified Dynamics
When the key levers are sufficiently aligned to the purpose of the organization, things tend to go well.  The culture rarely feels problematic and business issues can usually be addressed through specific and focused action – ie. changing a policy, adding a person, adjusting a process etc.

When one or more of these key levers are sufficiently misaligned with the overall purpose of the organization, the culture will shift in an effort to regain purpose.  The shifts seem to happen in 2 major ways:

1. The culture will compensate through one of the key levers  (ie: people may work harder) or

2. The culture will adopt a new value system to reconcile the imbalance and justify the misalignment.

An oversimplified example:
A contact center is asked to cut costs through headcount reductions, and expected to increase its service levels.  The culture may keep alignment to the purpose by working harder.  If this solves the issue and is sustainable, the shifted culture compensates.
If the adjustment is not sufficient to achieve the management expectations, a new value system may be adopted – “Management is Unreasonable”.  This newly added cultural value will help or hinder the culture’s effectiveness (alignment).  As before, if it helps, it is accepted and maintained.   If it does not help, yet another value will be formed to further cover the gap – “the harder we work, the more they expect”.

In short, any time the culture has a continuous perception of being ineffective or misaligned, a new wave of value adjustments will take place to address the gap.  This will continue until the culture sees itself realigned or until it reaches “shift saturation”; the point where it stops making  adjustments for the overall benefit of the system.  At this point, shifts become personal in nature (at the employee level), and the inherent power of cultural wisdom is lost.

We can’t over-emphasize the importance of communications (to ensure correct perceptions) and the maintenance of balance to avoid a a series of shifts that do not serve the company well.  It is also important to keep in mind that the key levers for change hold considerable power in managing the culture and the effectiveness of the business.

Cultures Drivers
Although I know organizational behaviorists will not appreciate this oversimplification, I’ll throw caution to the wind in exchange for a graphical explanation of  cause and effect.

-    Management expectations or beliefs, set the wheels in motion.
-    These expectations result in the creation of policies & procedures.
-    The policies and procedures create an environment which promotes (or not), the attainment of the management expectation.
-    The interaction of all these with employees (at all levels), produce a cultural paradigm.
-    This culture interacts with customers.

The power of WHY?
Most management with whom I speak regarding culture are looking to “change it” in order to gain better business results.  However, the culture is rarely the cause of good or bad business results.  Unless the business model or market expectations have drastically changed, I find the culture is usually effect of an underlying cause.  Although it may definitely be problematic, it is rarely the cause of the problem.

I believe many of the difficulties in today’s corporate cultures are the result of an unclear or undefined purpose.

Most companies know WHAT they do
Some companies know HOW they do it
Few companies know WHY they do it.
See Simon Sinek

Without this clarity of purpose, the culture is usually left to rely charismatic leadership, which when changed, causes havoc and great loss of direction.

Next post: considerations for creating culture shifts.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy Vidal

At times I find it difficult to illustrate to clients the idea of emotional customer experiences that transcend the product or service.  They often feel obliged to openly explain the product features or benefits in order to present a clear value proposition.

Although features have their place, in a commoditized market they are no longer effective differentiators of brand.  At best, and only marginally, features differentiate products.  In fact, continuing this practice can put entire industries in insatiable races to give customers more for less.

As we know, for the time being the differentiating power is now in the experience.  So, I have decided to start compiling examples of what I think are well executed experienced based campaigns so I can show the point in action (A video is worth a thousand words).

I thought it would be interesting to post one of my favorites, take a look: IQ font

In this example, Toyota uses the concept of typesetting fonts to demonstrate a feature, without mentioning it.  In doing so, it creates an experience outside of our expectations that reveals things about Toyota that for me, makes it more  human, organic and real.  The emotional requirement is achieved (we would never expect a car company to relate itself to typesetting fonts), yet the effort is still in context with the brand.  But wait, there is more.  The font is downloadable and available for us to use, thereby continuing the experience and incorporating the brand into our daily lives.

In today’s market, a company that is simply surving is no longer intersting.

Would love to hear your comments.

Rudy Vidal
Creating Profitable Loyalty

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