Newsroom

11 Jan 2006

ContactCenterWorld.com Q&A: Customer Satisfaction

Submitted by:
Peter Bloom
President
Chris Rozum
Director – North America
Customer Operations Performance Center Inc. (COPC)
January 2006

Responses for Customer Satisfaction Feature: January 23 – January 27, 2006


1.Do you believe the "industry" is doing a better job at keeping customers satisfied compared to say 5 years ago?

No, while some companies have shown significant improvements our benchmark data, from over 800 operational assessments across 35 countries, suggests the “industry” as a whole is not doing a better job at keeping customers satisfied compared to 5 years ago. In fact, many companies have customer satisfaction results that have plateaued below their defined targets and our high performance industry benchmarks.

One reason organizations fail to do better is a lack of willingness to make an investment in areas such as compensation levels, training and development, and tool stability. Most companies are still working at a bare minimum as far as these important areas are concerned, and, until there is a shift in this kind of thinking, will not realize significant improvement in customer satisfaction.


2. What do you view as the biggest area for improvement in the industry when looking at customer satisfaction?

Executive focus. Frankly, senior executives talk about customer satisfaction but are not focusing on it. Customer satisfaction is not a key metric for most contact centers. For example: staff incentives are cost/revenue vs. customer satisfaction based. In those centers that do have a customer satisfaction metric, the targets are set at a level that they know they can achieve – not a high performance target. Other telling factors:

- Most business models are not structured around driving customer satisfaction but focus, in general, on cost and revenue.

- Speed of answer remains a significant focus, which our research typically indicates is not a significant driver of customer satisfaction.

- Customer satisfaction feedback is not frequent enough – the best companies are obtaining feedback daily and monthly, at a minimum, but most companies receive it annually or semi-annually.


3. The contact center by itself cannot significantly improve satisfaction; many parts of the organization need to improve in order to achieve high performance. For example, in healthcare insurance, customers receive letters from the company that are difficult to understand and that generate inbound calls. The solution is not to fix it in the call center. It is to make the letters more understandable. What 3 tips would you give a contact center manager looking at implementing customer satisfaction measures for the first time?

- Don’t try to do collect and analyze customer satisfaction data yourself. Our experience with those firms that have done it both ways is that independent research always displays lower results. This implies bias when doing this internally.

- At minimum, implement monthly customer satisfaction performance reporting.

- Integrate customer satisfaction into daily and monthly performance reviews. Set targets based on high performance benchmarks.


4. Which of the following do you feel has the greatest impact on customer service improvements: people, process, or technology and why?

Process is the answer. But what we find is companies are focusing on either technology or people. Our experience is that companies focusing on technology or people are not able to demonstrate significant improvements, but those focused on improving processes have significantly improved customer satisfaction.


5. Thinking realistically, do you believe customer service excellence is an attainable goal for most organizations? Please explain.

Yes, because we have seen examples of customer service excellence when a company really wants to achieve this goal. For example, we have seen several companies consistently achieve 70% to 80% top box (on a 5 point scale).

Many of the companies at this high performance level did not start there. They started in the 40’s and worked their way up. These companies walk-the-talk and make customer satisfaction one of the enterprise’s biggest priorities.

The executives in high performance companies understand that achieving customer service excellence can have significant impact on their bottom line. They make driving customer excellence a priority for the organization and incorporate this priority as a way of doing business. For example: tying incentives to customer satisfaction results; measuring satisfaction at a manageable frequency; taking action when performance is below targets. In high performance companies, all departments participate in the effort and implement process changes that yield a positive return to the customer experience.