Voice of The Customer Strategies For Success - How To Listen To The Same Customer On Multiple Channels [PDF]

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Oracle

Best Practices Series

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DID YOU HEAR THAT?

Voice of the Customer STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS How to listen to the same customer on multiple channels

inContact PAGE 18

TODAY’S CUSTOMER: MORE VOICE AND CHOICE THAN EVER BEFORE

Verint ® PAGE 19

MOBILE, SOCIAL, AND VOCAL: MANY CHANNELS, ONE CUSTOMER

ForeSee

The explosion of communication channels in the past decade has enabled customers to make their thoughts known to anyone who will listen in a way that wasn’t possible just a few years ago.

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TURNING INTELLIGENCE INTO ACTION

Unfortunately, the ability of customers to express themselves has far outpaced the ability of organizations to get a clear understanding of what it is that they are trying to communicate. The deluge of information available can, and frequently does, overwhelm a business’ capacity to understand what is being said by its customers.

SAP PAGE 21

FOR THE MODERN MARKETER, HEARING (MARKET) VOICES IS A GOOD THING

But hope, solutions, and strategies are evolving that help organizations translate the enormous number of conversations being conducted into a language they can understand.

LiveOps PAGE 22

CAPTURE AND ACT UPON CRITICAL VOC DATA WITH A SOCIALLY-INTEGRATED MULTI-CHANNEL CONTACT CENTER

This Best Practices special report explores strategies and solutions companies can implement now to help them understand what their customers are intending to communicate, so they can better fulfill their needs.

IntelliResponse PAGE 23

VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER (VOC): THE DIGITAL ADVANTAGE

Bob Fernekees VP/Group Publisher CRM Media Information Today, Inc.

SPONSORS

2500 Green Road, Suite 400 Ann Arbor, MI 48105 734.205.2600 www.foresee.com

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555 Twin Dolphin Drive Redwood City, CA 94065 Phone: 1-800-411-4700 www.liveops.com

Bob Fernekees, Group Publisher 212-251-0608 x13 [email protected]

Adrienne Snyder, Eastern/Midwest Account Director 201-327-2773 [email protected]

500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Phone: 1-866-630-7669 www.oracle.com/rightnow

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Dennis Sullivan, Western Account Director 800-248-8466 x538 [email protected]

Produced by: CRM Media

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May 2013 | CRM Magazine

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Did You Hear That?

Sarah is not afraid to tell you or her friends all about your company. She is that customer filling out every survey you serve up and always shares her opinions on her social media channels. She has a lot of great ideas about how your company can improve but are you listening? 91% of all businesses wish to be considered a customer experience (CX) leader in their industry, yet 37% are just getting started with a formal CX initiative and only 20% consider their CX initiative 1 “advanced” . To be a leader in customer experience, companies require a successful Voice of Customer (VoC) program which must be supported at all levels of an organization, from front-line agents to executives. A thriving VOC program will not only improve each customer’s experience but also your bottom line. Examples of customer experience impact: • Increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS) • Customer issues resolved faster with fewer ‘bounces’ • View stores, website, and social interactions from customer point of view • Customers offer great ideas and suggestions Examples of financial impact: • Grow average customer spend • Increase loyalty leading to more profitable customers Companies achieving these results are investing in VoC programs with these three capabilities: 1. ABILITY TO LISTEN TO CUSTOMER’S THROUGH THEIR CHANNELS OF CHOICE

You need good data on your customers and they use a variety of channels for communicating. It’s important to listen effectively to what customers are saying and to use variety of means, both solicited and unsolicited, to collect information. Also make sure you gather the data several times

throughout the customer lifecycle. VoC insights include the combination of customer behavior plus feedback generated through all organizational channels. There are numerous approaches for gathering these including surveying customers directly, observing their behavior and comments in social communities and on websites, browsing customer-submitted emails, webforms, and even contact center agent’s comments from a phone call. As a best practice, you should develop a company-wide strategy and corresponding toolset to systematically gather, listen to, and monitor customer feedback across all customer touchpoints. Plan for the specific kinds of feedback desired, how, when and what tools to use for gathering and analyzing the information. Once it is gathered, you should ensure it is acted upon in the context of meeting your organization’s original strategic objectives. Oracle RightNow Cloud Service surveys help Big Fish track customer satisfaction. In February of 2007, the survey indicated that 58% of customers were very or somewhat satisfied, and 35% were very or somewhat unsatisfied. Three years later, surveys indicated that the percentage of customers who were very or somewhat satisfied had risen to 94%, and only 3% were very or somewhat unsatisfied. “We get comments all the time from customers, telling us how blown away they are by our responses, how impressed they are with how fast and professional our customer support is,” says Barrott. 2. INTERPRETING AND REACTING TO THE FEEDBACK

Interpreting customer feedback is more than just reviewing what your customers are

sharing. It means using these insights to act and drive change that continues to improve the customer’s experience every time they interact with your organization. Propose recommendations for improvement based on the insights. Present “actionable” information and not just data. Use actual customer comments to emphasize your point and tie feedback to each contact record providing a 360 view for your agents. Reacting to customer feedback and taking action from your interpretations of the findings is key to making a positive change. According to Gartner, while 95 percent of companies surveyed collect customer feedback, fewer than half of those bother to alert staff; much less inform their customers as to how their feedback was used. In fact, only 5 percent of the companies surveyed close the loop by letting participants know 2 what was done based on their feedback . As a best practice, implement a program for key stakeholders to systematically review, prioritize, and act on feedback that is interpreted and identified worthy of further action. Within this program, develop a means of closing the loop to notify customers how their feedback was used. Note that not all feedback needs the same level of action. Feedback received from particular customer segments, about particular products, about certain topics, or

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having certain characteristics (such as an extreme score) may require higher attention or priority than other feedback. J&P Cycles, the largest aftermarket motorcycle parts and accessories superstore, has a very thorough program in place to analyze the results of feedback and ensure actions are taken based on the insights. Rich Brecht, Director of Contact Center & Retail Operations for J&P Cycles, said “Due to the feedback gathered by customers, J&P Cycles has been able to improved accuracy of order information, added a multitude of new products, numerous improvements to web usability, improved print advertising, reduced order level for free shipping and increased % of customers involved in loyalty programs”. 3. VALIDATING IMPACT AND MONITORING RESULTS OVER TIME

Just as important as listening, interpreting, and responding to the voice of your customers is the ability to spot trends or common denominators. A historical view of the feedback captured can provide insight as to whether the actions taken from the feedback are making a difference or not. It could even help identify your most vocal customers and your most satisfied ones. Monitoring the results of capturing, analyzing, and acting on the feedback from your customers, can be the difference between success and failure for an organization’s VoC program. As a best practice, implement a program to achieve continuous feedback improvements measured and monitored using key performance indicators. Decide on what types of feedback you need to measure, and why, based upon your particular needs. Then, determine what measurements constitute success or whether improvements are even needed. With this understanding, develop a core set of feedback key performance indicators. Remember to baseline where you are at today and monitor over time to gauge whether or not improvement is occurring. Customer feedback programs

should always evolve as your business changes. “Oracle RightNow Cloud Service allows iRobot to collect valuable feedback from our customers,” says Maryellen Abreu, iRobot’s Director of Global Technical Support. “That ability to hear the customer’s voice and quickly respond to it is a major business advantage.” With the help of Oracle RightNow Cloud Service, iRobot has successfully turned unhappy customers into powerful brand advocates. Because Xactware understands that a positive experience drives customer loyalty, the company offers “We’re Listening” links throughout its website to encourage its customers to offer their opinions. This provides a forum for customers to ask questions, offer complements, and issue complaints. Every question and complaint automatically generates an incident in Oracle RightNow Cloud Service, making certain Xactware doesn’t overlook a customer issue. In addition, the company sends a closed incident survey after a customer has contacted the company for

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support to make sure it is providing the services customers require. Investing in VoC programs builds a defensible advantage for delivering great customer experiences. Those positive encounters lead to bottom line growth, profitability and improved customer loyalty. WHY ORACLE? Oracle RightNow Cloud Service offers a complete solution for organizations looking for a customer feedback, insights and response platforms go to www.oracle.com/rightnow to learn more. Oracle RightNow Cloud Service also conducted a global research study about the state of customer experience click here to get free access to what 1300 executives said.

1 Global Insights on Succeeding in the Customer Experience Era, Oracle, October 2012. 2 Customer Experience Management: Raising Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Advocacy, Ed Thompson, Jim Davies, Gartner webcast, 12/3/08.

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Today’s Customer: More Voice and Choice Than Ever Before

In business, the customer has always been king. However, in today’s multichannel, multi-media business world, the customer experience has taken over and the customer voice now reigns supreme. With the advent of social media, customers can easily “vocalize” – promoting a positive experience far and wide through Facebook, Twitter and various other social outlets – or spread an equally damning message through those same channels. The customer has more voice and more choice than ever before. With the majority of business interactions no longer taking place face-to-face, the opportunity to develop a personal relationship invested in customer satisfaction can be challenging. As the volume of business interactions reach into the millions, customers are connecting through multiple channels (email, tweets, texts, phone, website) and increasingly, the main point of all customer service communication is routed through the contact call center. The contact call center is more often than not the “face” of the company and its agents are responsible for building the personal, meaningful relationships key to growing a strong customer base. As such, it is no surprise that more and more attention is being placed on contact call centers. Recent studies have reinforced the importance of listening, and responding, to the customer voice. In a recent white paper by Ventana Research entitled “Using the Voice of the Customer to Gain Business Benefit,” businesses are realizing the power of the customer voice and understand contact center representatives are on the front line. The contact center is gaining respect and more resources are being

dedicated to providing representatives with the tools necessary to meet and exceed all customer expectations. The ultimate goal is a happy, pleased customer who serves as an advocate to the company and brand. Advocates post freely on social media – often touting the service – without any expectation. They are so satisfied and impressed they WANT to share with everyone. An advocate is an extremely powerful customer and can help spread brand awareness in the purest sense – without any incentive. On the flip side, you have detractors. Detractors are equally powerful, but wield negative words and impressions. At some point, a bad company experience was not resolved to their expectation. Detractors are unhappy and take their voice to the “streets” – proclaiming across social media and other platforms their dissatisfaction and distrust. A detractor can slowly erode brand integrity and devalue a company with a few sharp words. While all companies long for an advocate to sing the praises of its products and services, none want a detractor. Fortunately, with the increased emphasis on improved customer service and the growing advances in call center technology, it is easier than ever for companies to train and equip call center agents with the tools needed to create advocates and placate detractors. Historically, problems arose in customer service centers due to disparate systems and inadequate information flow. It is incredibly frustrating – for both the customer and the representative – to be faced with a problem that cannot be resolved because the information is not

readily available. CRM systems that did not “talk” across systems made it difficult for representatives to get a full picture of the customer’s situation. It was also frustrating for the customer because they often had to repeat the same information multiple times, to multiple reps, before the issue could be resolved. In addition, customers want to be able to communicate using their platform of choice (email, website, text, phone) and receive the same exceptional service. Instead, channels were not always connected and callers were often re-routed or re-directed with their issues remaining unresolved. Overall, it was unsatisfactory to both customer and agent and did little to build relationships. Fortunately, technology has come a long way in rectifying these concerns. As the leading provider of cloud contact center software, inContact provides a solution to improve communication within the contact center as well as between agents and customers. The solution is designed to synchronize contact center operations by creating a single integrated flow of multichannel interactions. This means that no matter how a customer reaches a call center agent, the agent is equipped to respond accordingly with appropriate tools and information. In addition, inContact offers solutions that sync with many popular CRM systems, so there is less opportunity for data disconnect and a lower likelihood of frustration. With these tools in place, contact center agents are now equipped to not only hear the voice of the customer, but respond to it with timely, accurate information – creating advocates and converting detractors along the way.

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Mobile, Social, and Vocal: Many Channels, One Customer

Today’s consumers are shaking up traditional customer loyalty paradigms. Here’s a way to help meet this new challenge. What comes to mind when you think, customer loyalty? Repeat sales? Positive results on customer surveys? An uptick in participation in loyalty programs? Multi-star online reviews? Praise on social media sites? Today’s businesses have many ways to gauge customer loyalty—and therein lies a problem: Traditional measures of loyalty, such as repeat sales, post-call surveys, and even Net Promoter Scores®, tend to be focused on the particular channel in which they are deployed. For example, online sales tend to be segmented from in-store sales; post-call survey results are segmented from online survey results, and so on. Unfortunately, this can yield multiple sets of data in which a single customer— let’s call her Jane—might be treated as three or four individual customers in her interactions with your organization. There’s Web Jane, Contact Center Jane, Email Jane, Social Media Jane, and perhaps even SMS Jane. You have to cultivate loyalty with each of them! Multiply this across your customer base, and the logistics quickly become daunting. It would be far easier to keep Jane loyal if you could gain a single view of her

activities and treat her as an individual customer. VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER ANALYTICS— A POWERFUL ENTERPRISE SOLUTION

Voice of the Customer Analytics™ from Verint® offers a centralized means of detecting, gathering, analyzing, and acting on insights from your customers. Designed to bring together many sources of customer interaction data, it allows cross-channel analysis and individual customer tracking. It can provide a view into the customer journey across channels; automatic, cross-channel automatic trend analysis; root cause analysis; and the ability to forecast customer behavior using a full picture of interactions.

targeted, highly segmented customer feedback and sentiment as part of—or independent from—contact center feedback. • Impact 360 Customer Feedback™ uses short, context-sensitive, dynamic surveys to capture customer opinions on products, processes, staff performance, and more. It can offer a valuable “outside in” perspective for assessing customer perceptions. By combining these types of customer insight with other business intelligence across your enterprise, you can gain a single view of your customers—and better focus your loyalty programs.

Verint’s Voice of the Customer Analytics solution includes: • Impact 360® Speech Analytics™ can mine customer calls by searching terms and phrase combinations in structured and unstructured data, and can automatically reveal critical information that might otherwise remain hidden. • Impact 360 Text Analytics™ mines customer comments from a variety of internal and external text-based sources, including blogs, chat sessions, contact center notes, email, news and review sites, social media channels, and more. • Verint Enterprise Feedback Management™ provides an enterprisewide customer feedback capability, enabling organizations to capture

Verint. Powering Actionable Intelligence®. Verint® Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: VRNT) is a global leader in Actionable Intelligence® solutions and value-added services. More than 10,000 organizations in over 150 countries use our solutions to improve enterprise performance and make the world a safer place. For more information about Verint, visit www.verint.com.

Learn more at: 1-800-4VERINT www.verint.com www.verintblog.com www.facebook.com/verint

© 2013 Verint Systems Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

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Turning Intelligence into Action We all want to drive results, build stronger companies, and benefit our shareholders, our employees, and our customers. Capturing the voice of customer is not a one-time event. Measuring customer satisfaction is not a one-time event. These must be part of the fabric of your corporate strategy. How do you measure success? Was success yesterday? Is success today? Is success what happens tomorrow? Real success is certainly a combination of all three, but in fact you are only as good as tomorrow. Traditional measures and accounting reports focus on the past; customer satisfaction is the future. Key performance indicators evaluate the past; key success indicators predict the future. Look back, look forward, and always listen to the voice of customer. Most experienced companies have the right ideas, but the key is to use actionable, intelligent, customer-driven data to turn those ideas into the right actions. Let’s look at the process in stages. STAGE ONE: IDENTIFY OBJECTIVES AND DETERMINE THE ROLE OF EACH CHANNEL

Sound basic? It is – but maintaining a consistent focus on the true role of each channel is difficult. Define the objectives of each channel to define the experiences consumers should have with each of those channels. STAGE TWO: MEASURE INTELLIGENTLY

You cannot manage what you don’t measure. Establish and implement tools and methodologies that generate credible, reliable, predictive, and actionable metrics. The results create a benchmark for evaluating changes and improvements and for analyzing short- and long-term trends. An effective measurement system requires two layers: 1. Customer Experience: Measure every experience customers have, at every touch point and transaction. By measuring these experiences through the lens of customer satisfaction, you not only measure the success of each experience but provide the diagnostic capability to manage the customer’s experience forward. 2. Customer Relationship: Measure the total relationship with the customer. Understanding how each experience impacts the total relationship provides the

measurement intelligence to manage the business forward. STAGE THREE: SET PRIORITIES BASED ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ROI

Understanding the needs and expectations of your customers helps your business allocate resources to the activities that maximize return on investment. Using a sound methodology determines the impact different initiatives and improvements can make on customer satisfaction and makes prioritization much easier. Allocate resources to efforts that improve customer satisfaction. Then, you can predictably impact customer behavior and create loyal and profitable customers. STAGE FOUR: MAKE THE CHANGES THAT MATTER MOST

Identifying what to change is only the first step. Making changes that actually improve customer satisfaction is an important but difficult task. Using observation to take analysis down to the individual customer level can help provide guidance. Make improvements, and test those improvements using the same metrics. Analyze, improve, test, analyze – keep making the changes that lead to the ROI you seek. STAGE FIVE: BENCHMARK BROADLY

Competition does not exist solely in your category or industry. Businesses compete for a share of wallet against all purchases. Benchmarking performance against competitors is important, but so is benchmarking against top performers in other spaces. Learn from what makes others successful as well as from what others do wrong. Also, benchmark against your own performance over time and across multiple channels. Standardize measurement tools so you compare apples to apples, even in multiple channels – that way you can better evaluate cross-channel causal factors and the impact of initiatives in and across all channels. STAGE SIX: TEST, TEST, AND TEST AGAIN

Effective testing is based on effective measurements. For example, usability studies measure the user experience across key audience and customer segments. A/B testing compares a baseline control sample to a variety of single-variable test samples.

The value of most channels goes beyond the transactions of that channel. Focus not only on short-term metrics like transactions and conversions but also on long-term metrics like customer satisfaction, purchase intent, and loyalty to truly understand the impact of changes and determine how customers experience the changes made. STAGE SEVEN: MEASURE SUCCESS…

Customer-centric scorecards measure results both internally and in regards to your most important assets, your customers. Measuring customer satisfaction is a critical task. Higher transactions, conversions, loyalty, and profits are a by-product and result of increased customer satisfaction. STAGE EIGHT: … AND NEVER STOP

The bar constantly rises even as you improve and better satisfy your customers. The customer has the knowledge and is in charge. Measuring customer satisfaction and making predictive changes to improve customer satisfaction can never be a onetime event. The process of measurement must be continuous. Use intelligent measurements. Turn data into information and information into intelligence. Use that intelligence to make decisions that optimize the investment. Monitor the results and link the impact of your efforts to goals like sales, conversions, retention, loyalty, and word of mouth. When we focus on satisfying the customer we reap the benefits of increased customer loyalty and customer retention – and financial success. ABOUT FORESEE As a pioneer in customer experience analytics, ForeSee continuously measures satisfaction across customer touch points and delivers critical insights on where to prioritize improvements for maximum impact. Because ForeSee’s superior technology and proven methodology connect the customer experience to the bottom line, executives and managers are able to drive future success by confidently optimizing the efforts that will achieve business and brand objectives. The result is better business for companies and a better experience for consumers. Visit www.ForeSee.com for customer experience solutions and original research.

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For The Modern Marketer, Hearing (Market) Voices Is a Good Thing By Jonathan Becher, CMO, SAP

ways that we’ve discovered in our research with CMOs so far:

CMOs make a strong case that marketing should represent the “voice of the customer” for their companies but, in my opinion, that doesn’t go far enough. We need to represent the voice of the market. Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks Coffee famously said: “Customers don’t always know what they want. The decline in coffee-drinking was due to the fact that most of the coffee people bought was stale and they weren’t enjoying it. Once they tasted ours and experienced what we call the third place – a gathering place between home and work where they were treated with respect. They found we were filling a need they didn’t know they had.” If Schultz had stopped with the voice of the customer, he would have gotten out of the coffee business. Research into the market revealed why customers weren’t buying coffee. By recognizing the cause of consumer behavior, Starbucks was able to identify and satisfy an unmet need for great coffee and community. Said another way, the voice of the customer is still important, but it’s no longer enough. Today, companies must also capture the strategies and viewpoints of everyone who is not a customer: prospects, business partners, competitors, economists, trendsetters, and anyone else who may influence their business or industry. Representing this aggregated voice of the market is one of five key responsibilities that we as CMOs must embrace to be successful. Market voices will reveal new trends, uncover needs for products and services that we haven’t created yet, and identify opportunities in adjacent markets that we could be capturing. For example, in a global survey of 3000 business leaders, GE’s latest Global Innovation Barometer found that 91% of respondents said understanding customers and anticipating market evolutions are the keys to successful innovation. So how do we connect voice of the market with business results? Here are four

START IN THE FUTURE AND WORK BACKWARDS.

Hope Frank, CMO of Conviva, which provides streaming video optimization services to global media companies, is focused on helping define what will happen next with Internet video—and the impact on viewers.??“I’m focused on where the streaming industry will be in 2020 and committed to the viewing experience being better,” said Frank. By taking this view, Frank’s team can build a business case for change. For example, Frank’s team found that if today’s streaming video experience doesn’t improve, media brands stand to lose $20 billion in revenue as viewers shift to new or emerging content experiences, and advertisers follow. “With these types of metrics, it’s easy for our development teams to have valuable conversations with our clients in regards to the importance of elevating the quality of the viewing experience today,” Frank said. BUILD A DEDICATED MARKET INSIGHTS TEAM.

At the Gap, Global CMO Seth Farbman has built a trends and insights team that’s charged with helping the Gap stay culturally relevant. “Giving our designers a sene of how the world is changing and where the culture is going inspires them to create styles that are a little more forward-thinking,” said Farbman. “If you’re always looking backwards in a dynamic industry like ours, pretty quickly you find yourself three or four years behind.” CAPTURE BEHAVIOR, NOT JUST DATA.

At financial software developer Intuit, founder Scott Cook started a “follow-mehome” ethnographic program to spend time with customers where they live and work. The goal of the program—which involved all employees, not just marketers—was to gain insights by observing not just how customers used Intuit’s products, but how they went about their lives. An early insight involved mobile

devices. “Our hypothesis was that only power users were doing any types of smallbusiness transactions on smartphones,” said Nora Denzel, Intuit’s former senior vice president of marketing (she left last September). “But we found that even the non-power users were running businesses from mobile devices.” Identifying the trend early convinced the leadership team to invest heavily in mobile product development. “When you have hundreds of employees spending time with consumers in the field, you get a pulse that you wouldn’t get by just doing primary or secondary research,” said Denzel. “That was our secret sauce.” LOOK FOR EARLY SIGNALS OF CHANGE.

Several years ago, SAP’s analytics products were called Business User Solutions. (Personally, I never liked that term because I don’t know what a “business user” is. But for two years, the name stuck.) Then we stumbled onto something interesting. By analyzing the search terms that were sending traffic to the analytics portion of our website, we found that the phrase “business user” wasn’t even in top 500. The top phrase people were using was “business intelligence.” But we also noticed that “business intelligence” was trending down—the numbers were dropping almost every week. In hockey terms, that’s where the puck had already been, not where it’s going. But another search term was rising in popularity: “analytics.” So we changed the name of the product line to SAP Analytics. The market helped us determine the name that would drive more awareness—and ultimately, more sales. These practices show how having a more complete understanding of the market can give CMOs the ability to prevent their businesses from getting blindsided. Marketing must become the cultural catalyst that uses market insight to keep the organization from getting stuck in the success of the present and prepares it for the next big shift. Sounds hard, but all we really have to do is become better listeners.

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May 2013 | CRM Magazine

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Capture and Act Upon Critical VoC Data with a Socially-Integrated Multi-channel Contact Center

One of the key principles of a next generation customer experience is the ability to service customers on their channel of choice. While some customers prefer interactions through email, others require the reassurance of speaking to a live representative. Others still, led by the tech- and social-media-savvy “millennials,” are pushing the envelope further by demanding communications through their mobile devices and social networking accounts. Yet, despite this growing mix of customer engagement, many contact centers are ill equipped to capture the voice of the customer through these modern channels. For starters, most agents—those on the frontlines of your organizations—lack visibility into social media communications, as marketing has traditionally managed this medium. However, in turn, critical data necessary to delight customers often times elude agents. Thus, while it is essential to service customers on their channel of choice, it’s equally essential to give agents what they need to efficiently work – an integrated agent desktop – which is something overlooked by organizations. Cloudbased, contact center with a 360-degree multichannel plus social and mobile view of the customer and ability for agent to pivot customer conversations between channels enable brands to interact with customers in very flexible ways. By providing agents with a single point of collection for critical customer data,

organizations can help ensure that their customers are being heard and responded to in a timely manner. In fact, this improved agent experience has a direct impact on improving customer experience and overall profit contribution. In a recent research report completed earlier this year by Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, noted Social Media Author and Strategist, three companies were subjected to a time-motion study to monitor the effects of technology on customer service agents’ attitude and how it relates to productivity, performance and profit contribution. More importantly the results quantified measurable gains in an agents standard KPI’s like a 25-50% gain in agent productivity as well as 50% reduction in repeat interaction costs. These factors all reinforce the strong connection between agent and customer experience. In one study of a large, publicly traded electronics manufacturing company, agents had been measured on quality of contact and technical proficiency. Agents are assigned to specific channels like voice or email and typically do not monitor or engage with customers via social channels like Facebook and Twitter. The results of this case study support the fact that if agents had a unified agent desktop to manage social interactions they would be significantly more productive and would also yield significant cost savings and much higher customer satisfaction. Of particular importance to note is the fact that agents would feel empowered to take corrective

action via a socially integrated desktop to turn a potentially negative interaction into a positive one. In the end, it all comes down to this: A Better Agent Experience = A Better Customer Experience = Better Customer Lifetime Value. This truly is the formula for customer success. Brands that are looking to deliver an extraordinary customer experience across multiple channels need to integrate both current and historical customer interactions across all channels including social and mobile, and package it all on a single screen. SUMMARY

Traditionally VoC programs have been owned by Marketing but these days many companies are realizing that the contact center needs to take a more active role. As companies create roles like Chief Customer Officer and VP of Customer Experience they are ensuring that their organizations are best equipped to administer VoC programs across the entire organization. Customer Service is now driving the VoC cross-functional collaboration and that integration and use of VoC data makes all departments more effective and efficient. Today’s savviest Customer Service organizations are also actively integrating social media channels with traditional interaction channels to ensure agents are empowered to not only listen to social media but to actively engage with customers to resolve issues and protect their brand. As consumers turn to social media to be heard by brands it is incumbent on those brands to listen and respond.

CRM Magazine | May 2013

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Voice of the Customer (VOC): The Digital Advantage The internet has permanently changed the dynamics of customer interaction. The digital landscape we are all immersed in on a daily basis has become more complex and multifaceted. Today’s enterprises must be able to deliver answers and information to customers quickly and effectively across multiple selfservice and assisted channels 24x7. Are consumers more empowered than ever before? Does this new reality present a challenge for the enterprise? The answer on both counts is YES. As with any challenge, there is a massive opportunity hidden just beneath the surface. In this case, that opportunity lies with the untapped ability to understand the “hearts and minds” of consumers, their concerns, their interests, their patterns of behavior, and how all of these can change and be influenced by corporate decisions. UNDERSTANDING THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

The “old way” of assembling voice of the customer (VoC) insight is still the status quo at most organizations, and this presents all manner of problems for marketers and customer experience professionals. At most organizations, customer insight is still typically siloed by traditional means of research such as: • Focus Groups • Surveys • Interviews • Call center interactions And they’re grossly ineffective and rarely in real-time – resulting in “insights” that are dated and often “inferred” rather than coming directly in the authentic voice of the customer. Not surprisingly, two-thirds of companies report VoC programs don’t deliver financial results. Why? Because these old school approaches to voice of the customer are rife with problems. VOC THE OLD WAY: PUTTING LIPSTICK ON A PIG?

A close look at the “quality” of data gathered with traditional approaches to VoC

reveals the quality of information collected is highly suspect, due to the inherent resistance of customers to participate in research events. It all amounts to putting lipstick on the proverbial pig; trying to force customers to spend time doing something they just don’t want to do, and then—worse still—making campaign decisions based on the answers they give while in this resistant state of mind! VOC THE NEW WAY: ACTIONABLE INSIGHT THAT DRIVES RESULTS

Today, the real opportunity that our omni-channel, web-centric world provides is the ability to get real-time access to that authentic voice of all customers. By authentic voice, we mean natural language questions posed to your brand’s key online destinations—where your customers choose to initiate the interaction. Online self-service technology—and in particular, virtual agents/virtual assistants— can be at the forefront of this new capability. Think about how effective Apple’s Siri product has been and the data that a tool like Siri can generate? It’s an absolute goldmine because it is by nature permissionbased data that is driven by the end user. WHAT IS A VIRTUAL AGENT?

Virtual Agents (VA’s) are software services that engage in automated conversations with customers in self-service environments. VA’s empower customers through their journey for answers and task completion by simplifying the process of delivering information across multiple interaction channels.

In this way, today’s leading virtual agent technologies deliver benefits that resolve the key problems faced by marketers who struggle with the old approach to VoC. Most importantly virtual agents can be located in every channel including web, mobile, social and agent desktops. Customer experience and marketing professionals no longer need to wait for data to be organized and distributed throughout the company. Virtual agent platforms enable visualization of data in real-time – empowering leaders to make faster, higher quality decisionmaking that can have an immediate impact on customer experience and conversion. HOW ARE COMPANIES BENEFITTING FROM VIRTUAL AGENT POWERED VOC?

When virtual agents are used to identify themes and trends from customer questions, the organization benefits in the form of actionable insight. The benefits of these insights take many forms, and include: • Opportunities for new products, services or feature improvements • Early warnings on potential customer issues that can be identified and resolved quickly • Competitive insights in the form of customer questions that reference competitive offers • Correlations between recent promotional efforts and the receptiveness of those messages • Early warnings on customer problems

VIRTUAL AGENTS AS ENABLERS OF AUTHENTIC VOC

To schedule a no-obligation assessment of your online self-service and Voice of the Customer performance email us at [email protected].

Virtual agents effectively serve as 24x7 research agents that sit on digital channels to collect customer-entered questions, and push information back to the enterprise in real-time. Collecting a question, as typed in by a customer in his or her own language, and then having real-time access to the themes and trends automatically extracted from those questions is a marketer’s dream.

About IntelliResponse Systems IntelliResponse provides virtual agent technology solutions for the enterprise. We create profitable online conversations for our private and public sector customers around the world, via engaging virtual agent technology that delivers highly accurate answers, captures key voice of the customer insights, and delivers relevant offers that improve conversion.