transforming the call centre to an experience centre … · why it’s essential to include your...

Why it’s essential to include your contact centre in any customer experience programme.

By Smith+Co

TRANSFORMING THE CALL CENTRE TO AN EXPERIENCE CENTRE

© Clarabridge. All rights reserved. 2

OVERVIEWThis eBook will explore the heart of the business—the contact centre—and discuss the practicalities of evolving the contact centre experience beyond the management of mere effi ciency, to deliver a brand-aligned, purposeful and emotional experience.

Using exclusive case studies and recent hard statistical and anecdotal evidence, this paper shows the benefi ts of a purposeful contact centre, and the brand dangers of treating this vital CX function as just a ‘necessary evil’ required to provide minimal customer support.


HEADLINE

The Value Proposition .......................................................................... 2

The Case for Contact Centres ................................................... 5

Facing Change ................................................................................................ 8

A Powerful Differentiator ................................................................ 12

Case Study: Lego ....................................................................................... 14

Case Study: Best WesternHotels International—GB .................................................................. 16

Case Study: Tesco Mobile ............................................................... 18

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 19

TRANSFORMING THE CALL CENTRE TO AN EXPERIENCE CENTRE

CONTENTS


THE VALUE PROPOSITION

The imminent and invaluable return that a holistic CX delivers

When a contact centre (CC) is seen as the heart of the business, it becomes more

than just a ‘functioning’ arm. Smith+Co case studies highlight positive impacts on revenue including:

• CC identifies and then maximises the drivers of CSAT, NPS, sentiment and ultimately, revenue.

• CC informs marketing campaigns with real stories, from customers, on what matters most driving the impact of marketing spend.

Successful contact centre leaders, who set a tone of excellence, consistently delivering a distinctive customer experience, understand that each and every ‘customer touchpoint’ is an opportunity for the brand to deliver on its promise. For the distinctive brands, a contact centre isn’t seen as a necessary evil, but rather an opportunistic event with the potential for creating memorable moments that attach to the company. Within this environment, individual team members will of course stand out, but for the best contact centres; success has to be strictly a team sport.

A brand’s entire PR, marketing and advertising efforts are put in the spotlight when a connection is made between your customer and your team. That one experience will be the culmination of all the time, money, and materials invested by both parties—and the outcome of which will be the memory the customer has of your brand, and whether or not they want more of the same.

© Clarabridge. All rights reserved.


When we talk about an ‘imminent’ ROI, courtesy of a distinctive contact centre, it is vital to start from the premise that revenue is made and lost every day not on price or performance, but by the quality of the customer experience. If this isn’t a clear starting point for a brand looking to maximise the output of a contact centre and create a rewarding omni-channel experience, one can expect a series of false starts in attempting to deliver a distinctive customer experience.

Providing positive customer experiences across the customer journey increases customer loyalty and repeat business, and reduces churn.

This, without doubt, creates a pressured environment and can feel like a burden to place on the shoulders of a contact centre team. However, this is purely a corporate perspective issue, because we know that managing the customer experience well, is never about abdicating responsibility for customer satisfaction to ‘front-line’ people. In fact, everyone from management to the product development team are on the line every time a customer joins a call.


For a tangible ROI, brand leaders must come to terms with the idea that experience is every fi rm’s value proposition. And consciously or not, customers make judgments on your brand promise at every touchpoint.

Percent of consumers that would expand their purchases if they had a positive customer experience. (Forrester)

89%Percent that would switch to a competitor due to a negative customer experience. (Forrester)

According to research by Forrester:

73%


So how best can your contact centre teams be taught to manage the customer experience to build business with customers? “CX drives three types of customer loyalty: retention, enrichment, and advocacy. Increased customer loyalty in turn tends to drive increased revenue growth. But for these drivers to affect an industry, customers must be free to switch providers, and providers must offer differentiated CX”. - Customer Experience Drives Revenue Growth, 2016 - Forrester

So how best can your contact centre teams be taught to manage the customer experience to build business with customers?

“ CX drives three types of customer loyalty: retention, enrichment, and advocacy. Increased customer loyalty in turn tends to drive increased revenue growth. But for these drivers to affect an industry, customers must be free to switch providers, and providers must offer differentiated CX”.

—Customer Experience Drives Revenue Growth, 2016 —Forrester


Lower the cost of serving customers by

as much as

(McKinsey)

20%

20%

15%

Increase customer

satisfaction by

Lift revenues by up to Analysis across various

markets shows that maximising satisfaction with the entire customer journey has signifi cant impact.


THE CASE FOR CONTACT CENTRES

While companies race to invest in better retail experiences, invest millions in ecommerce

platforms and fall over themselves to get the latest social media tools, they often tend to treat the contact centre as the poor relation. They fail to recognise how EVERY other channel drives contact into the contact centre.

If 83% of consumers require support when making online purchases, how vital then, is the contact centre in the online experience overall?

If a contact centre is seen as an ‘experience’ centre, it can quickly become a key listening post for an organisation to tune into the ‘voice of the customer’ and derive and share insight from it.

Integration Customers now expect as a minimum, brands to offer interactions on phone, email, website, chat, online forums and communities, fax, traditional mail, in person, and social media platforms. Many customers will use these channels interchangeably, so integration is vital. The need for integration takes the multi-channel concept beyond just providing operational effi ciency, it also provides customers with choices about the kind of experience they wish to have and how they wish to have them.

of consumers require some degree of customer support while making an online purchase (Dimension Data’s 2015 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, © Dimension Data 2009-2015.)

The contact centre —an inseparable component of CX

83%


More and more customers around the world no longer want to pick up the phone and and speak to an organisation representative. In fact, should the communications evolution continue at its current pace, digital comms will overtake voice-based contact within two years. And why? Because customers demand it. A new generation of tech-fluent consumers within the market—mostly Generation Y—keep an actual phone call as a last resort for queries that couldn’t be solved by an alternative platform. The need for an aligned omni-channel experience is emphasised when overwhelming evidence shows that customers younger than 40 would much rather use social media and web chat than any other way of achieving their desired service outcomes.

The Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2015 highlighted a key point with regards to the evolving customer preference:

• 83% of consumers require some degree of customer support while making an online purchase

Smith+Co agree and would add:

• The CC can become a hallmark touchpoint for the brand

• The CC should inform operations on product, processes and services about the causes of customer dissatisfaction


An omni-channel approach to the contact centre is now becoming a necessity, and it’ll only become more of an essential notion as the digital touchpoints become second nature for customers. But surely this means that the contact centre is becoming less and less important?



No, for three very important reasons:

When customers need to resolve an important issue or get advice, they want to speak to a real

person who can help and provide an empathetic ear.

1

The contact centre should be the heart of all of your omni-

channel communications, not just voice.

2

As technology changes the touchpoints we have

with our customers, there’s an increasingly important role for your

contact centre to be a key touchpoint of your brand.

3

CUSTOMERS WANT TO SPEAK TO

REAL PEOPLE

CONTACT CENTER SHOULD BE THE HEART OF COMMUNICATIONS

THE CONTACT CENTRE IS A HALLMARK TOUCHPOINT

FOR YOUR BRAND


FACING CHANGE

Any strategic business choices will inevitably have a profound infl uence on how you think about

and manage your contact centre. Some organisations see the primary purpose of their contact centre as providing cost-effi cient sales or product support through interaction management. Some view the contact centre as a primary channel for generating new sales through CRM activity.

Many telcos and energy fi rms are at this stage. However, brands like Zappos or First Direct see the contact centre as an important touch-point for delivering the brand experience. It becomes a Customer Experience Centre. This shift in perspective means that cost becomes secondary to the quality of the experience.

For this reason they may not choose to ‘off-shore’ or ‘out-source’ this channel and instead invest in training and equipping their people to provide a seamless and branded experience across channels.

The majority of companies still fail to adequately invest in CXC What is a customer experience

centre?

Efficient • IM (Interaction Management) • Inbound • Focused on functional-cost • Customer support

Effective • CRM • In/Outbound • Results focused • Customer loyalty

Experiential • CEM • Multi-directional and channel • Customer focused • Customer advocacy/CLV

Effic

ien

cy

Effectiveness

Inefficient/Ineffective

© smith+co 2008

A

B

C

D

What is a Customer Experience Centre (CXC)?

EFFICIENT• Interaction

Management• Inbound• Focused on

Functional-cost• Customer

support

INEFFICIENT/INEFFECTIVE

A

D

EFFECTIVE• CRM• In/Outbound• Results focused• Customer loyalty

EFFECTIVENESS

EFFI

CIEN

CY

EXPERIENTIAL• CEM• Multi-directional

and channel• Customer

focused• Customer

advocacy/CLV

C

B


FACING CHANGE

The Harsh Reality...

“ The majority of contact centres are still run as cost centres, not as strategic business units.”

Dr Brownell O’Connor - Global Customer Experience Consultant

Dim

ensi

on D

ata’

s 20

15 G

loba

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tact

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tre

Benc

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king

Rep

ort,

© D

imen

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09-2

015.

52% of CCs don’t share customer intelligence outside of the CC

of contact centres do not listen to customer sentiment

60% of CCs have no capacity for social media

40% have no data analysis tools

24% have no quality management

81%

80% say IT won’t meet future needs

29% do not have WFM systems


FACING CHANGE

These fi ndings lead us to two major observations on creating the omni-channel experience:

1. All channels have to be integrated so that they provide choices to customers and the means for your staff to provide a seamless customer experience.

2. You must listen to your customers. Capturing the ‘voice of the customer’ can take many forms. One approach is touched on in the ‘Product and Services’ step, but when we’re talking about integrating a multi-channel customer experience, it’s imperative that each customer interaction has a feedback process. That way, interactions that are good, or not so good, can assist with continuous refi nement and improvement.

In any attempt to tackle this disconnect, it is important not to adopt a ‘one size fi ts all’ approach. Different customers will interact with you for different reasons at different times.

• 43% of ‘Millennials’ are using Social Media to interact with brands

• 28% of ‘Baby Boomers’ choose Social Media to communicate with brands

• Millennials are more than twice as likely to use ‘Self-Service’ and automation as older customers.

• All customers, regardless of demographics, prefer to talk to a real person when there is a major problem. (Convergys)

FUNCTIONAL

VALUE ADDING

EMOTIONAL

ConsistentIntentionalDifferentiated Valuable

Customer Loyalty

The change in focus...

Products

Services

Experiences

What is a customer experience centre?

Efficient • IM (Interaction Management) • Inbound • Focused on functional-cost • Customer support

Effective • CRM • In/Outbound • Results focused • Customer loyalty

Experiential • CEM • Multi-directional and channel • Customer focused • Customer advocacy/CLV

Effic

ien

cy

Effectiveness

Inefficient/Ineffective

© smith+co 2008

A

B

C

D


FACING CHANGE

Or as Shaun Smith, author of ‘On Purpose, delivering a branded customer experience people love’, says: “We are seeing the effect in every market place; the shift from competing on products to, services to experiences. Brands that create an emotional connection to customers share four characteristics: They are consistent, intentional, differentiated and valuable to target customers.”

If your organisation has a contact centre, this requires that it lie at the heart of delivering a branded customer experience across channels.

The reasons for a lack of investment...The typical hurdles that are mentioned by those wanting to create an effi cient contact centre that delivers a great customer experience are:

• Insuffi cient time, money and/or technology (resources)

• Confl icting priorities

• A lack of communication, collaboration and understanding of the contact centre

• Lack of senior support

The sobering backdrop to these often valid stumbling blocks is the reality of how important investment, training and development is for every contact centre. This was emphasised in the Dimension Data* report of 2015:

“A major change is occurring, not just in the structure of contact centres, but also across the broader service industry. The digital revolution is forcing us to adapt or die. It’s time to help your contact centre face the change and take the fi rst steps towards a dawning future.”

“ The digital revolution is forcing us to adapt or die.”

*Dimension Data’s 2015 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, © Dimension Data 2009-2015.


A POWERFUL DIFFERENTIATOR

With so many contact centres lacking in resource, purpose and insight, customers can

expect more negative experiences with brands. However, this is also a timely opportunity for those companies with the vision and understanding to recognise today’s most powerful differentiator: Customer Experience.

Beyond multichannel, contact centres should want to create a structured omni-channel strategy. Determining not just what works for the customer, but also the impact that each new interaction may have on the brand; is a diffi cult but important step.

This could lead to questioning if sales conversion rates are stronger over the telephone, or can an assisted online interaction provide the same value?

Whether or not a customer has experienced an integrated journey should be the criteria for measuring the success of a contact centre.

The overarching question: Is the brand’s intention for the contact centre to create genuine business value? Analytics will play a vital part in measuring this.

Leveraging Customer Intelligence and proven methodology for maximum business benefi ts


A POWERFUL DIFFERENTIATOR

Two great starter questions in the process of creating the omni-channel experience centre are:

1. How can technology harm your defi ned customer journey?

2. How can technology enhance your defi ned customer journey?

There is no doubt that technology can provide immense insight especially when embedding personalisation into the contact centre experience. However, technology is not a silver bullet for a consistent and pleasant omni-channel experience, rather it should enhance the CC ability to respond effectively and cost-effectively.

Ultimately the goal is to empower personalised service.

The real solution includes technology, people and process where the technology is well integrated, easy to use, represents the voice of the customer and brings knowledge and empathy to the customer service representative. Ultimately the goal is to empower personalised service with the best possible agent at the helm.

Look to build solutions that scale with your business needs and customer preferences while ensuring the entire contact centre team is empowered to offer fast, relevant help that delights customers. Finally ensure the solution provides a holistic, journey wide view of customer interaction.

© Clarabridge. All rights reserved. 14© Clarabridge. All rights reserved. 14

CASE STUDY

What happens when your CC staff feel empowered to personalise the customer experience? A seven year old called Luka saved his Christmas money to buy a Ninjago kit of the Ultrasonic Raider. During a shopping trip, Luka’s minifigures fell out of his coat. On hearing about Luka’s plight, a Lego member of staff wrote to the boy:

When ‘humanness’ is encouraged and nurtured within a brand (especially its contact centre), more often than not there is a tangible sense of staff empowerment (enough to go the extra mile), without encouraging unaccountable vigilante behaviour.

...”It sounds like you are very sad. My bosses told me I could not send you one out for free because you lost it, but I decided that I would put a call into Sensei Wu to see if he could help me. Luka, I told Sensi Wu that losing your minifigure was

purely an accident and that you would never ever let it happen again.

...”He told me to tell you, “You must always protect your Ninjago minifigures like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!” Sensi Wu also

told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay and told me it would be okay if I included something extra for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.”


CASE STUDY

This customer experience journey image below shows the levels of detail that Lego executives are willing to go into, in order to fully understand how to deliver an omni-channel experience that’s aligned throughout the entire brand.



CASE STUDY

Highly distinctive contact centres, including the multi award-winning centre at Best Western

Hotels UK, have achieved a healthy balance between holding the values of the brand tightly but adopting a ‘loose’ approach to behavioural instructions for staff. Paradoxically, many organisations are very ‘loose’ when it comes to what their brand and contact centre stands for, and the kind of experience they wish customers to have; but very ‘tight’ when it comes to telling employees how to behave.

Brands that deliver great experiences usually allow their contact centre team the freedom to decide how to best engage with their customers. In 2010, Best Western International in Great Britain was a mid-market brand struggling to stand out in a sea of budget hotels and prove its value to customers. Partnering with Smith+Co customer experience consultants, Best Western designed a way to deliver a differentiated customer experience aligned with its new hotels with personality.

Solution: individuality is the source of CX and brand differentiation

The cornerstone of the strategy was training hotel employees to share stories about the hotels to bring the customer experience alive and create ‘wow’ moments. By empowering employees to understand and share the unique stories behind each hotel, staff engaged customers on an individual level and solidified the distinctive experience of a Best Western Hotel, often from the contact centre.


Brands that deliver great experiences usually allow their contact centre team the freedom to decide how to best engage with their customers.


CASE STUDY


customer research, customer-stay data, results of internal customer experience surveys, and TripAdviser ratings, Smith+Co modelled the relationship between areas of the customer journey and net promoter score.

It then completed the impact of improving NPS on hotel market share of profit, to point to tangible financial results from planned customer experience initiatives aligned throughout the company, including the contact centre.

The ROI:

• 27% increase in sales

• 31% increase in online sales

• 1606 hotels, (40% of Best Western Hotels globally), earned TripAdvisor’s certificate of excellence - a distinction reserved for typically only the top 10% of all hotels

• A record number of applications in 2014 from individual hotel owners who wanted to join the brand, adding at least 25 new hotels in 2015.

The role of the contact centre was pivotal to delivering a memorable experience that was rich in personality. The customer experience strategy was supported by:

1. Numerous modifications to the website after an extensive audit

2. Revised internal communications strategy

3. A refreshed complaint handling process to enable its employees to be more responsive

The brand showed how influential an aligned contact centre can be for all wider brand activity. Staff were trained at six pilot hotels, which were selected to include a mix of customer experience quality and owner buy-in, to prove that the strategy could work at all locations.

What did it actually look like? Best Western appreciated the importance of understanding the customer from all angles to empower employees to serve them better. Using


CASE STUDY


Tesco Mobile supports more than 4.5M mobile phone users in the UK. In an effort

to ensure they kept up with the current customer’s needs, they implemented a social customer care function inside their contact centre.

Tesco started with a team of two focused on social customer care with emphasis on listening, engagement and social message management. After a successful launch, proving the value and helping customers in near real-time, Tesco Mobile added in a new process to programme. Knowing that customers always love proactive support, Tesco Mobile follows up with new customers shortly after they onboard. This progressive use of social media surprises and delights customers and resulted in Tesco Mobile receiving the Best Social Media in Customer Service award from the Call Centre Association in 2016.

Tesco Mobile’s success has driven customers to trust their social care programme, the team has scaled to eight with advanced routing of messages depending on bandwidth and expertise. Tesco Mobile proudly believes they have turned their contact centre towards an experience centre. Customers agree!

and social message management. After a successful launch, proving the value and helping customers in near real-time, Tesco Mobile added in a new process to programme.

Knowing that customers always love proactive support, Tesco Mobile follows up with new customers shortly after they onboard. This progressive use of social media surprises and delights customers and resulted in Tesco Mobile

Best Social Media in Customer Service award from the Call Centre Association in 2016.

© Clarabridge. All rights reserved.

CONCLUSION

If the customer experience is a primary strategy for an organisation, then the role of the contact centre should be elevated to become part of the brand promise. The contact centre is a fundamental component of the business strategy and it’s teams should be empowered with the true, omni-channel voice of the customer.

Customer experience centres must be technology-enabled. The best solutions combine the right technology, process, and people. This enables the contact centre experience to work harmoniously with the brand; providing value to the customer and the organisation. For companies that believe customer advocacy is a key driver of business growth , Smith+Co advises a shift in focus from efficiency or effectiveness to experiences.

For example, USAA is a brand that has created a seamless experience for researching, financing, and insuring vehicle purchases. As a result, the company saw a 77% year-over-year increase in visitors to its car-buying site, a 15% increase in completed auto loans, and a 23% increase in vehicles sold.

However, it is worth remembering that you cannot design a customer experience to accommodate every eventuality. Things will go wrong, touch-points will fail, people will continue to make mistakes. This is where a brand purpose serves as a foundation alongside the values and the promise, to work out how to deliver a better experience. These are the pillars of any intentional steps towards creating the omni-channel experience.

About Clarabridge Clarabridge offers the leading out-of-the box SaaS solution to power customer experience management initiatives. Businesses gain insight to improve the customer journey, spanning all business processes, all parts of the organization and all customer interactions. Contact centre’s use Clarabridge to provide a real-time response to customers, improve first touch response and reduce the cost of support. The result: a better customer experience. For more information,visit www.clarabridge.com.

www.smithcoconsultancy.com

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