Every service and support organization quests after a better knowledge base, one that is easier to navigate, has a more intuitive interface, and even includes technology that proactively suggests relevant content to staff during a customer interaction, all in an effort to improve organizational performance.

This is a bit of an unrealistic panacea—for a price, it is feasible to get all of this, of course—but the average company is more focused today on investing resources into customer-related technologies like CRM and VOC analysis tools than a support tool like the knowledge base.

The truth is, however, a better knowledge base can be (nearly) as simple as tracking the right metrics at the leadership dashboard level.  Indeed, a major reason knowledge bases don’t work well is that they’re full of junky, outdated information that clutters up the system.  Maintaining focus on knowledge currency and utilization can actually go a long way toward improving knowledge base efficacy.

My colleagues have written in the past about continuous knowledge improvement—a technique technical support organizations, which really live and die by the knowledge base, follow very effectively.  I want to share another lesson learned from the technical support world that has to do with the dashboard metrics they track related to the knowledge base, in essence to track the health of the knowledge base.

Here are some sample metrics: Read More »

This is the second post in a four-part blog series on multichannel portfolios. Last week, Judy introduced the new framework we’ve developed to help you make service channel investment and divestment decisions. This week, we will focus on step 1: making smart investment decisions.

Today’s service channel landscape isn’t as simple as it was a decade ago. Sure, contact centers still rely on the phone, but many also focus on building websites, adding chat tools, and expanding e-mail. Moreover, new channels – think mobile apps, video chat, social media, and SMS – seem to appear daily, each one promising lower costs and more satisfied customers.

As new channels emerge, companies are quick to adopt them. 63% of service organizations surveyed in 2011 report that they have invested in new service channels in the past three years.

When we spoke with service leaders for CCC’s 2012 research, many told us that they were adding channels against their better judgment, often simply because they felt pressure from competitors, customers, or direct bosses.  Moreover, these additions often turned out to be difficult to manage, expensive to maintain, or hard to integrate with existing channels. Read More »

A recent customer survey we administered found that only 20% of the nearly 1,000 customers surveyed said they trust customer service departments in companies today.  In fact, 42% said they did not trust customer service.  And 37% say they trust customer service less today than in the past – meaning the distrust is only growing.

Services like GetHuman.com embody that customer sentiment.  Founded by Paul English, their website says that it is, “…a movement. We are customers that believe that we can improve customer service for ourselves if we join forces, share valuable shortcuts and information, solve problems in the public forum, build the right tools, and together point out which companies are great at customer care, and which ones are not.”

One of the most popular services on GetHuman’s website is a listing of the ways to circumvent the automated IVR system for each company to quickly reach a live rep.  And that offering has been around for years – I remember looking at it back in 2007.  But, they also now distribute callback, web chat, and e-mail links and steps for companies.

And, they’ve gotten into the customer feedback space as well.  Customers can now post qualitative reviews of their service experiences and rate companies by their support quality, communication and responsiveness in service interactions.  These ratings are averaged and posted on the website.

It seems like is a pretty popular site.  In fact, GetHuman.com was ranked one of the top 50 websites of 2011 by Time Magazine.

What is it about services like GetHuman?  Well, while it probably isn’t the only reason customers don’t trust service organizations; it seems to me that a perceived lack of transparency from the company is driving at least some of this customer distrust.

Customers feel like companies are ‘pushing’ them in directions that only benefit the company or ‘hiding’ the customer’s preferred options from them – leading to a cry for shortcuts and a focus on things like ‘communication.’

So, how can you respond? Read More »

It’s always an exciting moment when we launch new projects—and for me, the most exciting of these are the kinds of projects where we have the opportunity to turn existing best practice research into direct implementation tools for CCC members.  And that is exactly what we will be doing across the next few months with our research on Modernizing the Quality Assurance Function.

A quick re-cap of the research…QA originally was built to monitor a productivity world—where our expectations were for staff members to provide scripted, standardized service experiences to customers.  That was 10+ years ago.  And while there are still some things that are important to be standardized (e.g., information accuracy), the majority of service today needs to be much more flexible.

But most service organizations have not evolved their QA functions to keep pace with these changes.  In fact, 88% of surveyed companies say that their current QA function is ineffective.

To evolve QA into a more effective part of customer service, we propose that QA evaluations should: Read More »

Customer Service News

• Google launches new ”Trusted Stores” program to help online consumers shop smarter and seek the best customer experience [Reuters]
• More than 3,000 major companies have partnered with a free mobile and web application that endures customers’ hold times for them [Washington Post]
• Outsourcing practices become campaign fodder in the latest round of presidential attack ads [U.S. News]
• Wimbledon 2012 will feature a match analysis technology applicable to companies looking to improve customer service [The Guardian]

At a recent CCC executive retreat, one of our longtime clients commented that every year we build on our customereffort concept – showing him a deeper look at ways to reduce effort and building out more tools to help him achieve his goals.  And he said he appreciates that theme because it doesn’t just feel like ‘something else to do,’ butinstead is part of a larger framework we are building together to improve the customer experience.

And it’s true – customer effort has been central in much of our work over the past 5+ years.  We have partnered with countless companies around the globe to integrate customer effort – the single most powerful thing a service organization can do to drive customer loyalty – into service delivery models.

Today, 65% member service organization measure effort and companies who have embarked on low-effort initiatives have seen results like a:

• 20% increase in top-box CSAT,
• 10% increase in FCR, and 26%, and
• lower effort scores than their industry peers.

As part of our commitment to customer effort, and to continue to partner with our membership as they embark on the journey to become low-effort service organizations, we are extremely excited to announce the launch of the Customer Effort Assessment – Read More »

This is the first in a series of four blogs about channel portfolios, when—and when not to—invest or divest.

It’s no secret that we live in a multichannel world. Whereas ten years ago a call center was truly just a call center, today we have almost too many channels to count. New offerings like video chat and SMS make it tempting to keep adding—but is that really the right strategy for your organization?

From our conversations with contact center executives, we’ve discovered that some of these channels may not be a good fit for every portfolio. Companies want to be where customers are, but not every channel is suited for every issue. It can be easy to add without removing (80% of your peers do so), but it’s crucial to be principled about your business decisions. Add the channels that make sense for your organization, and don’t be afraid to know when to remove the ones that don’t. To help, we’ve created a service offering investment and divestment decision tree to help you think through this process. Here are the crucial first two steps:

Read More »

There is something about a business-to-business relationship that enables companies to be very direct and surprisingly honest and candid with customers.

Forget beating around the bush with “How well are we doing as a company serving and supporting your needs?”  It is not uncommon to ask on a B2B relationship survey about customers’ thoughts of their experience with your company, but also perceptions of how your company stacks up to others.  Some B2B organizations even go so far as to directly ask for examples where service delivery fell short of expectations.

It is clear that the major revenue at stake in a B2B relationship drives a higher level of accountability and transparency, but it is curious that in today’s increasingly competitive environment that B2C service organizations are not similarly direct in seeking customer input.

B2C customer experience surveys typically ask a variety of CSAT and loyalty questions, but they primarily focus on the positive, of what’s working well.  “How well did we exceed your expectations?” and “How satisfied are you?” are common customer experience survey questions we see, for example.  Rarely, however, do B2C surveys get at “What went wrong?” or put another way, “Where did we fail?”

Read More »

We know that smartphone apps are good for taking retro pictures and launching birds into pyramids of wood, but can they also help keep you healthy? With the latest mobile medicine app, it seems that the answer is yes.

A new smartphone telemedicine system, MD247, puts a doctor at your fingertips. In the event of a health emergency, subscribers of this service (for $20/month) can call MD247 and describe their symptoms to a nurse. Within a few minutes, a board-certified physician calls back with a diagnosis and prescription, if needed.

The introduction of this technology in the healthcare world comes at a timely moment.

Read More »

Customer Service News

• Startup company aims to turn product fans into customer service reps [USA Today]
• Facebook IPO hurts the company in a survey of customer loyalty among online brands [All Facebook]
• What do public speaking and good customer service have in common?…more than you’d think [CBS News]
• Despite the hype, companies continue to take divergent approaches to serving customers via Twitter [Time]