CrowdSourcing for Customer Care

CUSTOMER Magazine

Crowdsourcing for Customer Service

By TMCnet Special Guest Wes O'Brien | June 24, 2013

http://bit.ly/11Zz69V

The growth of crowdsourcing is fueling the participation of consumers and professionals in everything from product testing to logo creation, collaborative ideation, even crowdfunding, as an alternative to angel or venture capital investments.

As someone who’s worked in the call center/customer care industry for more than 25 years, I’ve been increasingly interested in the opportunity that crowdsourcing now provides to extend and enhance customer service, while lowering costs. I call this crowd for care.

Crowdsourcing customers to provide customer service is validated by one simple reality: More often than not, no one knows a company’s products and services better than that company’s own end user customers, partners and employees.

If you’re responsible for making your company customer centric, here are five reasons to look into crowd for care.

Call Centers Just Aren’t Enough

While phone support is still a principal customer service solution, operating internal or outsourced call centers is expensive. Beyond call center costs, even though Americans make an estimated 43 billion calls to customer service each year

(two to three times per week), the title of Emily Yellin’s 2009 book

“Your call is (not that) important to us” succinctly articulates consumers’ negative experiences with phone support.

Take Away: Diverting a portion of inbound support queries that would have gone to CSRs to expert customers reduces reliance on call centers and improves customer satisfaction.

The Rise of the Connected Customer

While most Boomers continue to call an 800 number for help, Millennials want alternatives. A Forbes article suggested, “My way, right away, why pay?” as a motto for 80 million members of the Gen Y generation – a slogan backed up by data:

When they have a problem with a product, 71 percent of 16- to 24-year-old customers and 65 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds search for a solution online first, according to a 2012 SITEL study.

Forty-two percent of 18- to 34-year-olds expect customer support on social media within 12 hours of issuing a complaint or comment, according to Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report.

CRM is Evolving into Social CRM

With the growth of social media, CRM has evolved into social CRM, elegantly described by Paul Greenberg as business and technology “designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment.”

While social CRM is used for marketing and sales to monitor customer sentiment, conduct market research, and other ways to listen and learn from customers, peer-to-peer customer support is a core pillar of SCRM.

In a January 2012 blog post, Forrester’s (News - Alert) Kate Leggett presented results from a survey of contact center professionals, observing: “Social technologies are growing in importance for customer service professionals,” based on these results:

* 47 percent of those surveyed use customer communities;

* 39 percent use social listening technologies; and

* 42 percent offer customer service via social sites like Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter.

Take Away: Beyond evidence that social media brings customers and companies closer, investing in social CRM can expand the customer conversation to new possibilities for self-service by tapping into customers’ motivations, demand, insights and expertise.

Trust in Peers

Quality customer experiences have a direct correlation to satisfaction and loyalty.

As Office of Consumer Affairs research has shown, word of mouth is important: Happy customers who have their problems resolved will tell four to six people about their positive experience, while unhappy customers will tell nine to 15 people about it. Even worse, 13 percent of your dissatisfied customers will tell more than 20 people about their problem.

Since 2000, the Edelman Trust Barometer has documented how public faith in government and business has plummeted, and its 2013 survey indicates that 61 percent of survey respondents would put their trust in “a person like me” (rated just below technical experts, academics and other experts) as the most reliable and objective source of information and assistance.

Take Away: Crowdsourcing customers to provide support efficiently connects your clients with their peers (fellow end users), builds trust for your brand, and drives loyalty.

The Bottom Line

Last but not least, crowdsourcing favorably impacts your bottom line.

Customers have told us that crowd for care can reduce the cost of customer support up to 60 percent (in best practices) through diversion of requests from call centers to engaged crowd communities; reduce cost per call from $7 to $15 through a call center down to $3 to $10 per call. It also can divert daily requests to call centers up to

40 percent – 25 percent through cultivating and connecting with online support communities, and 15 percent using by monitoring/listening to inbound queries, intelligently filtering support requests, leveraging knowledge bases and smart routing of queries to expert customers who can best handle each request.

While the customer may not always know best, crowdsourcing your customers to help deliver customer service is something you’ll want to explore.

Wes O’Brien is CEO of CrowdEngineering (www.crowdengineering.com).




Owning The Problem

A few weeks ago, I was on the Kodak Gallery site ordering copies of pictures of my children for the 5 sets of grandparents. I wanted to simply pickup these items at my local CVS store based on the service promise of one hour pickup. I thought this was a pretty straight forward / no frills transaction. WRONG


It took me 2 drop ins to the CVS store, 5 calls, 3 different front line employees and some aggravation to get this simple order completed. On my first attempt, the young woman could not find the order in the system or in the store so I went home and realized I had to click on a button at the bottom of the shopping cart page. So, my bad but the site experience did not make sense.


Once I completed this, I waited and called CVS to make sure they had the order in the system. The young man on the phone saw the order but then proceeded to tell me that it would take 3-5 days because the order was being completed at a Kodak site and I would then have to come back in and pick it up. When I told him that the online transaction promised 1 hour in store pickup, he told me to call Kodak.


This is where the entire experience went downhill. Why should I call Kodak? This is a partner of CVS so my expectations would be that the front line team at CVS be empowered to own my problem and contact Kodak to resolve this issue.


Of course I called and a nice, but fumbling and not all that smooth of a call center professional assumed the responsibility and was able to get my order ready to be picked up. So Kodak absolutely recovered the situation but shame on CVS for not owning the problem.


Owning the Problem means finding a solution. Not every solution will be met with joy but it is a solution so ensure that you do not leave your customers hanging. Give your customers the rope and pull them back up.


Lessons Learned

• Teach your front line, no matter what their age, experience or pay level that they must own every customer problem. This is their job and if they do not exhibit these behaviors, it will be only a matter of time that their lack of support will be seen by management. This means that the the job profile, interview and training process must include and encourage this behavior.
• Use examples of solving the problem as stories for great service experiences. Highlight these in staff meetings, focus groups with the front line and in all forms of communications. 
• Surprise reward when possible. When seeing or hearing of a great experience, give a small reward and make a big deal about. 
• Use customer complaints as a learning tool rather than a form of punishment. 
• Teach empathy and patience to get through any problem.

Of course, not every good or bad experience will be known to the leadership team but the more aware the organization is of the impact of just one "owning the problem" experience, the chances are the staff will see this as part of their job function.


So I obviously will not be going back to the CVS in Springfield, NJ for my photo needs if I can help it. Kodak Gallery should spend some time training their partners on how to treat situations like these. 


I did not have time to do a CX Factor Score but I will and I am curious about what I will find with regard to this particular CVS store and the overall experience of Kodak Gallery users with the in store pickup experiences they have.

Take note Kodak!!

Michelle

The Customer Experience Factory

The CX Factor Score: Walmart vs. Target

A few weeks ago, I published the first CX Factor score for Target which came out to be a D. The report was based on 1 month of customer commentary found on various websites and 1 week's worth of commentary found on Facebook. While this score would seem rather harsh and probably not completely indicative of the average experience at Target, the information that one can read about a company can create a significant image of a consumer experience and can open the eyes of the average, non complaining shopper.

To compare their results to their largest competitor, Walmart,  the CX Factor score turned out to be the same grade, D for the same period of data. However, there were some interesting findings made.

• Target customers often complained of bad phone service experiences and poor results from return/exchange policies. Specifically, many comments were related to the offshore operations and considerable hold times and dial transfers.
• Walmart customers complained often of bad service due to rude and not knowledgeable  associates.
• Target shopping experiences in the store were mentioned as clean, organized while Walmart locations were inconsistent with their appearances.
• Walmart shoppers used the words fraud and criminals while Target shoppers did not voice as much concern about these words.
• Target customers complained significantly about the online experience 1 out of 4 comments while Walmart shoppers only mentioned the online experience 1 out of 7 comments. For Walmart, the biggest concerns were around the site to store experiences.
• Coupon redemption and price-matching were a consistent theme for both companies
• Of all the non Facebook comments read, Walmart shoppers often went online to complain (95% rate) while Target shoppers gave praise 24% of the time.
• Target's Facebook Page is not organized to provide online service commentary and Walmart leverages Get Satisfaction as their tool, enabling customers to easily voice their opinions and see action taking place.
• When customers mentioned that they were not coming back and that they were going to a competitor or down the street, Target customers mentioned Walmart but Walmart customers never mentioned Target.

CX Factor Voice: Walmart 

CX Factor Voice: Target 

Creating Jobs in the Service Industry

Last week, I went to Starbucks and picked up a brochure about how Starbucks is helping to create jobs. This was timely given the President's speech and clearly it is a hot topic due to the elections and the state of our economy. Over the past few months, I have given thought to this topic and I believe our government can not only create jobs, but they can develop careers and help corporate America boost their profitability which in turn can be further invested back into our economy. I call this plan, " A Career in Service".

 

A Career in Service 

Education

When one thinks of a job in a contact center or retail environment, a college degree does not come to mind as a requirement. Unfortunately, our country which prides itself on the concept that the customer is always right does not encourage the art of service as being a skill requirement for these customer contact jobs.  Other countries, specifically the Philippines, have created an education program for the contact center industry which prepares their students for a contact center job upon graduation and therefore gives their country a global competitive advantage.  

Suggestion: Local community colleges should offer a 2 year Service Professional program which teaches students everything about the service industry, the art of service, basic business skills, training/coaching skills, contact center technology, retail industry basics and customer experience. A four year program in this field would yield a Customer Experience business degree which is an emerging field that both marketing and operations students would be interested in. As part of the curriculum, these students would intern at local contact centers and  malls by working a minimum of 8 hours weekly towards their credits. Companies involved in the program would pay a student hourly wage and offer financial incentives for performance. During their internship, they would have a performance scorecard consistent with everyone in the program. Upon graduation, they would highlight not only their GPA but also their stats such as their average Net Promoter score on their resume. 

Incentives

In the contact center industry, countries that can provide wage arbitrage have attracted outsourcers and American companies in large numbers for the past decade. Many companies chose to keep their centers in the US because of tax advantages, premium service experience or regulatory needs. 

Suggestion: While offshoring is not going to go away, the government can do more to keep these contact centers here not by just providing a tax advantage, but by contributing to the salary of these employees and by investing in training and education programs. Employees who have strong performance scores can earn special federally funded financial incentives and all employees who are interested in a career in the service industry, can earn their degrees by being trained on site by local colleges.  

The Cool Factor

Reality TV has certainly helped bring attention to those tattoo artists, hair salons, pawn shops and those crazy housewives. Someone needs to highlight the world of contact centers in the US and not only in India. There are so many interesting stories that can be told and if the media world could pay attention to this industry, it may attract a different talent set and innovate the hiring process.  Companies that value the customer, value the people they hire for contact center roles and ensure that these people are the best and brightest in their field. For many companies, they view these roles as entry level positions and a must to establish their careers within their organizations.

Suggestion: The government can partner with the entertainment industry to bring the “cool factor” to this field to attract college educated job seekers and recent college graduates. How about a documentary on contact centers in America or a reality show where the viewers travel across the country visiting various contact centers and retail stores to profile the people working there. OK so maybe it isn't totally exciting but someone with a more creative lens can figure it out. 

Happy Employees = Happy Customers = Higher Profits

For anyone who has worked in a contact center or in a retail environment, most people there are only working for the hourly wage as opposed to investing in their career. The impact of this can be attributed to poor customer experiences. If companies are able to hire from a higher skilled workforce across all levels of their frontline organization, their ability to improve the customer experience will be strengthened and this will resonate with retaining customers, higher spend rates and reduced costs of marketing initiatives to acquire back their customers. Companies will not be eager to offshore these call centers simply to reduce costs because the revenue generating results will be difficult to match.

What Happens to those not so happy employees?

Clearly, when raising the bar on service, the employees who fall to the bottom of the performance scale will have to work harder to improve their results or be left without a job. If the industry collectively raises the bar and hires properly skilled workers, the choice of these customer not so friendly workers will be to get the proper skills or take on roles where they do not interact with the customer. This will would make us all happier customers! 

So the question is, how can we get started? 

Happy Wednesday!

Michelle

The Customer Experience Factory

Introducing the CX Factor Score

The CX Factor Score represents a company's service performance based on customer feedback found online over a period of time. The methodology is a work in process but the blog will begin to highlight a different company each week and discuss lessons learned and opportunities for improvement. I want to encourage visitors to the blog to provide feedback about these companies and plug in comments on the blog. In addition, visitors can visit Facebook or Twitter and grade their experience.

What does the grade mean?

To keep it simple, the grade is similar to a school grade so that A = excellent, B = good, C = neutral/average, D= at risk and F = failed

What to expect?

Each week, at least one company will be graded and reactions to their grade will be assessed. Based on the power of feedback provided by our  readers, the grade will be adjusted to represent their perspective. We will send this information to the company and any updates/discussions/meetings will be shared on this blog.

Additionally, plans are in place to develop a digital product to measure the customer views of brands and their experiences. Your feedback will be used to help us design something amazing.

Clients that are interested in learning more about how to apply this score to their operations and customer experience strategy, should visit the Work With Us tab for more information.

CX Factor: Target Retail and Online 

A few weeks ago, I visited Target to return an item and arbitrarily graded them an A. Based on the CX Factor grading system, it was more like a C because it was an average experience and it met my expectations. When I began to read about how others viewed their Target experience, I found that many were not as neutral or positive. The challenge to reading customer commentary is that it is more often than not that one will take to the airwaves and complain vs. say thank you or good job. That said, there is so much more than can be done to improve the experiences of the  customers who took to their computers and voiced their opinions. 

The Customer Voice  

Based on the above assessment, there are 4 key themes spoken by the unsatisfied customer. For each, we propose an in depth assessment of processes that are in place to evaluate what may not be working as expected. Below are key questions that arise from the commentary by topic.

A Few Ideas

§ Tell the story with data:  Detailed assessment of barriers across all customer touchpoints based on existing data, interviews and current internal assessments.

§   Design a goodwill program and customer loyalty program: Test program at several stores across the country before launching nationwide.

§   Review and assess changes to performance management program for all frontline staff. Develop detailed solutions, process change plans, cost benefit analysis and support integration where needed.

§   Assess store and call center performance. Develop a performance matrix, cost of performance assessment and proposed changes based on in depth data assessment and customer feedback.

• 
  
  

Tis The Season for Returns

By now, many folks have taken back to the malls to return those holiday gifts that were just not right. While the country celebrated a great shopping season, overall returns were higher than average for this time of year. Obviously, the more shopping one does, the more likely there will be a return. I wonder though if stores have also made it easier to do returns and especially when the customer does not have a receipt. I admit, I am not good at keeping my receipts so this has always been interesting to me. Typically, the experience I will get is that I can return the item for the amount it is currently selling in the stores. Usually this is not a problem but after the holiday season, prices are immediately marked down so I bear a bit of risk if I want to return an item without the receipt.


So last Friday, I tested out this policy at different well known retailers; Target, Pier 1 Imports, and Lord and Taylor. 


Target
visited East Hanover, NJ location


I am a huge Target shopper and a fan of their store for many reasons. One of the key reasons happens to be their customer friendly return policy. I have never had an issue returning anything, whether it was a product I purchased online, 3 months prior, no receipt, not carrying the original form of payment on me, open packages  ... you name it. The representative behind the counter could be a little friendlier, but, I am never waiting for more than 5 minutes and the entire process takes less than 2 minutes. Friday was no exception to this rule. I did return a gift without the receipt and recieved the current store price in the form of a Target Gift Card. They met my expectations and off I went to the next stop on my adventure.


Rating: A


Lessons Learned: Keep it easy and customer friendly. Give customers a reason to want to come back. Target does need to work on their service manners however. Service with smile!


Pier 1 Imports
visited East Hanover, NJ location


I received a very lovely gift from my brother and his wife from this store. Unfortunately, I didn't find a good use for it and couldn't see it matching the style in our house so I thought I might attempt to see what else they had. I seldom visit this store and did not know about their return policy. I also did not have a receipt for the gift so I was about to test out my theory on store credit for the current price of the product. The ladies behind the counter did not recognize the item but fortunately there was a tag on the bowl and when they scanned it, they offered the price in the system (I am sure the price was cheaper than was paid but to be expected). I was able to find some nice picture frames, exchanged the item and off I went. 


Rating: A+


Lessons Learned: Keep it easy and customer friendly. Service was pleasant and very comfortable shopping environment.


Lord and Taylor
visited Livingston Mall, Livingston, NJ


After a day of running errands and being met with very easy to do business retailers, I could have used a drink after this last experience. My mother-in-law is a very loyal customer of theirs and frankly, I am not a department store shopper so I usually pay little attention to these stores. That said, I am all over it now and very displeased with their service. I received a  pair of PJ's that were too big so I thought I would just return them and find something else on another day. The woman behind the counter was unfriendly, full of attitude and clearly had no desire to be there. She told me the price of the refund to be $9.60 which I assumed was the current price. Again, no receipt in hand. When I was done, I stumbled upon the table with the same PJ's and they were actually $28.00 (discounted from their current price). So I went to another counter and asked the woman (again, full of that same L&T attitude) that I think a mistake was made. She repeated the store policy which is no receipt returns = lowest price in the system. I said that doesn't make sense and it should be the current selling price which is currently discounted. We went back and forth and I asked for the supervisor. Yet, another indifferent woman, who just read the policy to me again. At this point, I am super disgusted and wanted my PJ's back. 


Honestly, Lord and Taylor, you are offending your customers. Not all customers are bad and have bad intentions. When you have customer policies that assume customers are stealing, then your customers will be annoyed and stop coming back.  You do not  offer anything special and I know I can find the same great products and prices at Macy's or Bloomingdale's. And another thing, spend some money on basic customer service training skills. It appears that your entire staff could use it.

Rating: D


Lessons Learned: Customer policies should be clear and tangible. Assume the best in your customers and not the worst. Get rid of rude customer facing staff. There is no room for that attitude at great companies.


In speaking with some friends, I hear that Home Depot is amazing and Babies R Us / Toys R Us could use some work. If you want to share your stories, please add comments below or visit the Facebook page, the customer experience factory and post your stories there. 


Happy Returning and Happy New Year
Michelle
the customer experience factory

Potty Training and Praise

Last week, I had an interesting conversation with my just turned 3 year old son. At this age, our conversations tend to be focused on potty training and I am happy to say, we are making significant progress! 

When we started this journey, my husband and I had no idea what we were doing. We asked friends and family for advice and used so many different methods which did not seem to work. One method was  having him run around the house without any pants on so he could see what happens. This particular case study involved lots of messy wet spots and dirty corners and after three days, not much progress had occurred. The second method was titled "pay for performance" which involved 1 M&M for situation #1 and 5 M&Ms for situation #2. In the beginning he understood how to get his reward for #1 but he had no desire to reach for the stars and achieve the 5 M&M status. 

This process took place in early September and then by mid-September, he was in a new classroom at his daycare. The third method came from his teacher, Ms Marilyn, who is a genius when it comes to the 2 & 3 year old! Her trick is to keep a consistent time every day when the children  know they must situation themselves coupled with a sticker (reward) and tons of praise. Once they get to a certain comfort level, no more pull ups and the constant praise and recognition of their success is used to make them confident that they can achieve this monumental step in their lives. 

At home, the success continues with praise and excitement. We have mastered situation #1 but situation #2 is a work in progress. The interesting thing about situation #2 is that it occurs at the same time every night, in a certain corner in his bedroom and when he is wearing his safety net, pull-ups. We are afraid to see what would happen if he went to bed without those pull-ups. Recently, he has begun to tell us that he has a #2 situation and we run with excitement and laughter to the bathroom. After he has been successful, he immediately asks for his 5 M&Ms and 1 marshmallow (he is quite the negotiator). As we give him his reward, the most important part of the process happens when my husband and I tell him with joy how proud we are of him. 

The 5 M&Ms are nice, but these comments seem to make him happy and more confident that yield more of these moments. My conversation with him last week was about how proud I was of him and he asked me many times that morning, "Mommy, are you proud of me?".  Children need to feel the excitement, the pride and joy in their accomplishments in order to continue their successful path in life. The M&Ms are nice but are not critical for their success.

The point of this story which is not to talk about potty training but it is about how at the core of every employee, exists a child. We were all children at one point and we all wanted our parents or guardians to be delighted in our successes (big or small). In the workplace, this behavior has extended to our bosses. In many ways, whether we like our boss or not, we still need to know that they are proud of our accomplishments or will make us feel confident that we can overcome the challenges in front of us. Great leaders can take difficult situations, state the case and use confidence and warmth to help their teams along. They remind us when we need it, that we are doing well and how to be even better. They challenge us by giving us goals that are not comfortable and then praise us along the way with every small step we take towards achieving those goals. 

Employees are not motivated by reward alone. It is always nice and interesting but throwing money at a problem does not bring the solution that one wants. There are many HR professionals and employee satisfaction strategies out there so this isn't anything new. The correlation between happy employees and happy customers is becoming a hot topic and companies are taking note of this. Customers see and hear what the representative of a brand is saying between the lines. They can feel the brand in that one moment. Educating the service professional about that one moment is critical and encouraging them along the way, regardless of how seasoned they may be is the secret to creating a happy customer. 

Therefore, companies take note! Remember the child in everyone and why the holiday season is special. It is simply a time to love and appreciate one another. Take the time out to do so before your employees go home to their families. When you come back to work, find ways to continue the praise and do not wait for the formal review process. 

Your employees are always thinking, "Are you proud of me?".

Happy Holidays!

Michelle

the customer experience factory