Yesterday I set out to purchase a car for my father, who just moved to Salt Lake City from Miami (don’t worry dad, the winter is not so bad here . . sigh)

In the interest of fairness and support to our ailing automotive industry I went to a Chevy dealer, in spite of my resent experiences.

I took some test drives with Christian, a nice young fellow who was very interested in my needs and working hard to address any of my questions, as we drove. Once we returned, as is expected, I soon met Christian’s manager, who also seemed pleasant and interested. However, he soon brought up the fact that the currently offered 0% financing was only available until Monday and that I would have to act fast. He asked me what was keeping me from the purchase and I mentioned that I was hoping to reach $XXX.XX as a monthly payment. He sent me off on another test drive and mentioned that when we returned, he would do his best to work the numbers so we could reach this goal. Great, I said, and went off to the next test drive with Christian.

On my return, after some niceties, I asked him “Perhaps we can go inside and see if we can work on those numbers”. His response, was shocking but not surprising “well, only if you are committed to purchasing the car”. At that point it became clear that the sales manager was interested in something beyond my best interest; perhaps his time. I said goodbye.

From there are I went to a couple of dealers. I purchased a Toyota. I reached the price point I needed, my dad likes it. Almost everyone won.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS!

Ed Vallorani’s posting is a great example (see here).

The key is to understand your customers’ pain points and needs, then its possible.

Committed to XCS !

it sounds easy, but the reality is that you can’t impose a new mindset, or a new culture.
What I find works best in creating a fast transition is to create:

1. Understanding of the logic – Why do we need to change or improve?
2. Provide the vehicles or processes that will carry new action and intention.
3. Create an expectation for results, coupled with effective Key Performance Indicators or metrics.

These three components do create change.

I believe the vast majority of people, given the opportunity, want to do the right thing, want to satisfy customers, treating them as customers should be treated.

However, if they don’t have the process, the information, the empowerment and the expectation from management, don’t expect miracles.

Extreme Customer Satisfaction happens when Management gets a new mindset !

(Some related posting to doing it) 1 2

Have you been on either side of this conundrum? It’s amazingly clear how wrong it is, but when you are in the moment, you can be so burdened with tasks (Task Saturation) that if you were a pilot, the plane would go down.

Stop and ask yourself, and allow your team to do the same. We have to give our staff the empowerment to use their judgement, and then back them up when they do right by it.

The specific scenario today goes like this: A man walks in the bank, he tells the banker “I would like to open a new account” The banker looks perplexed, agitated and strikes a glare before she realizes what she’s done (too late). Brings her facial expression to some sort of resolve, and says, “What kind of account?” to which he says, “the Kind with $200,000 that earns an APY of 3.27% for 6 months, but Thank you, I see you are busy” and he heads straight to the door. (She was under stress because she has a report due.)

The Report? “How many Deposits were opened in the last quarter, and the effects of customer service on new account openings”

Wait! It gets better!

This particular Banker I am speaking of is WONDERFUL! She is a lovely, personable person. How could this happen, then? I’ll tell you how. The incredible desire she has to be seen as valuable in the eyes of her management, had her completely blind to the most important thing – NO – The ONLY thing we are there for. To satisfy customers that will be willing to entrust their funds to us, so we can keep it safe and earn our livelihood.

She was caring and brave enough to convey what happened to senior management. Her manager contacted this person (how, I cannot tell you, I shudder to think that she actually ran out to his car, but, it could happen)

He was so bewildered by the most embarrassing move, that he actually came back and opened the account. I was amazed that he did, but with fuel prices as they are, he probably figured another 2 miles to another bank.. etc etc.

Lesson learned – Let’s make sure we don’t saturate our customer-facing employees with internal pressures that may cause them to temporarily forget that the customer is #1.

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 !

In looking at the activity on the blog, I noticed one of the most popular searches was the phrase “average speed of answer“. So, in the spirit of XCS, I thought I should say a few things about the topic.

First, I should mention that anything I know about managing call center KPIs, I learned from Don Szczepaniak and Lorraine Robbins who managed the Panasonic Consumer Call Center during my tenure there. They are amazing people that know much about the dynamics of call center statistics.

Average Speed of Answer (ASA) is one of the key metrics related to “accessability”, the measure of how easily a customer reaches an agent. Other related measures of accessibility are service level, and abandon rate.

Average speed of answer is defined as the average speed in which a customer is reached by an available agent after being placed in Queue. ASA does not include IVR time (the time it takes for a customer to go through the maze of options).

ASA has a high correlation to customer satisfaction. It is, in fact, an inversely leading indicator of Customer Satisfaction. That is, by managing ASA you are directly and inversely influencing Customer Satisfaction (as ASA goes up, customer satisfaction goes down).

Another interesting aspect of ASA is that it is laterally skewed. That is, if ASA is very high, your customer satisfaction is guaranteed to plummet. However, a very good ASA does not guarantee improved Customer Satisfaction.

ASA has a precarious threshold upon which it begins to exponentially impact customer satisfaction, your call center’s efficiency and costs. Past this threshold, which differs by industry but is rarely higher than 5 to 7 minutes, customers grow impatient of waiting and begin to abandon (hangup). This is the antithesis of a call center’s mission and should be fought at all costs. Priority number one is always . . . “answer the phone”.

What is an acceptable ASA?: The acceptable ASA for your customers will depend on your industry and the main reason for the call. The acceptable ASA can be estimated by correlating the ASA to average talk time (the time it takes an agent speak with the customer which excludes wrap time), and the abandon rate. You will see in your stats that both, average talk time as well as abandon will suddenly increase at a certain level of ASA, usually in that order. You may want to set the upper limit of your service level standard slightly below this number.

ASA is similar but different than Service Level. Service level measures the percentage of the customers reached by an agent in a certain period of time. For example, 80/30 is the service level where 80% of the customers reach an agent within 30 seconds during a prescribed period.

Service level, as a measurement is not affected by highs and lows, it simply measures the percentage of total calls answered by a certain time. This measure is usually taken every half hour in order to provide statistically meaningful and controllable sampling.

These are some of the ways that ASA affects the call center and your customer (not an exhaustive list).

High ASA is inversely proportional to Customer as well as Agent Satisfaction: After a certain level of ASA, perhaps around 5 minutes for an order taking call center or perhaps 7 minutes of support call center, customers will begin to abandon.

High ASAs affect your efficiency: If the customer stayed on the line even as they grew impatient of waiting, the receiving agent can expect to spend anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds listening to a now difficult customer, who may find it necessary to vent their frustrations. This imposed dynamic on the call usually results in difficult communications and a reduction in First Call Resolution rates.

One should not underestimate a customer’s need to prove their point about waiting too long, as source of dissatisfaction. Once a customer is upset about having a long wait they can (consciously or unconsciously) make it very difficult for the agent to help.

ASA will increase your costs: As ASA increases, you will pay that much more in telecommunication charges as well as the associated costs of the inefficiencies and the lack of Customer Satisfaction mentioned above.

Causes of increased ASA:

Here are some causes (not exhaustive)

Staffing – Lack of appropriate agent staffing will increase ASA as customers wait for a shortage of agents to become available. Where there is insufficient agent staffing levels, any other solution will rarely have large scale affect.

Training - Lack of appropriate training or agent ability will increase Handle Time, and will therefore increase the ASA.

Inefficient processes or system response time- Again, anything that increases Handle Time will increase ASA. Make sure your agents are not distracted away from the call by inefficient processes.

Poor or no skills based routing – The main goal of any call center is to match the customer’s need with the appropriate/knowleable agent. Lack of ability to match a customer’s needs with the right agent skill will increase ASA.

Some technologies that can help manage high ASA:

Workforce Management: Scheduling the appropriate number and skills on half hour intervals through a scientific and consistent methodology is key to staffing appropriately. Depending on the size of the call center and the number of queues, manually calculated schedules and staffing can cause great staffing difficulties and thereby ASA problems.

Skills based Routing: The ability to better match an agents skills with customer needs will improve ASA by reducing handle time and increasing First Call Resolution. (Customers whose problems were solved on the first call don’t need to call back another time!)

Auto Call back features: Although this feature should not be used as a permanent solution to ASA, it can be helpful in managing an ASA emergency. The auto call back feature prompts the customer for a phone number and allows the customer to hang up while keeping the customer’s place in line. When the customer’s turn in Queue arrives, the customer is called and immediately placed with an agent.

Agent Station-based Electronic Training: Increasing an Agent’s skills will help reduce handle time and thereby decrease ASA. Station based electronic training will push training content, as prescribed by a supervisor, during valleys in call volume. This is a cost effective and proven method of focused training.

This post is much longer than I’d like (Sorry), so I will stop here although there is so much more to say.

If there is interest, we can cover management of ASA in a subsequent post.

In fact, I can ask our resident call center operations guru, Dru Phelps, to get deeper on the topic than I could ever hope to do myself.

Let me know.

Hope this was of assistance.

Committed to XCS !