Archive for the 'WOCAS' Category

Posted by: Peter Massey | 9.03.2011

What’s the most basic service requirement a customer wants from their mobile phone company? An accurate bill? A call centre that answers the phone? No – making and receiving phone calls would be the most basic thing. And it’s become a challenge. The best service is no service has been taken too literally!

I’m old enough to remember when MF tone dialling replaced pulse tone dialling – what does that mean? The phone at the other end started ringing the millisecond you pressed the last digit on the phone. Oh how I wish I could get that on my mobile phone. Some days, working in Soho as we do, I just wish I could make a call after any length of delay. Or just receive a call rather than picking up delayed voicemails on the way home.

It’s not a problem of reception or signal strength, just network congestion. Too many customers doing too many things.

My dilemmas as a customer are simple: Buy out of the contract and move. Or not. I dont have a common sense option of being let out of contract to get a service that works where & when I work.

The dilemmas as a business are slightly different. At a customer by customer level: let the customer out of the contract so they can get service from someone else. Or keep them locked in and take the money. “Bad profits” as Don Peppers calls it. At an investment level: spend many millions ahead of the growth curve to give good access to the services sold. Or slow down products going to market so the network always works. Or keep selling services and don’t worry about it.

So let me sit in the CEO’s chair: What data would I need to answer the question and do the right thing, or at least optimise the outcome? If I am CEO what do I do?

The first issue would be “How will I judge my success?” : Revenue lost/not lost over the next 12 months? Lifetime value of a customer lost times the number of customers lost versus the investment costs in the network? Or just living our values and doing the right thing? With any of these criteria surely it should be an easy decision.

But what about shareholder expectations? Do they want the best answer for this quarter, for this year or the next 5 years? Do they want anything other than a financial or customer head count? Can they judge the future financial value of the change in a short term retention figure? Will they judge your dip in growth of customers, or your long term revenue prospects?

And what if you only run marketing, or only new sales, or only retentions, or only revenues  or only service? How much do you need to optimise the overall success of the business vs your target or result?

These problems surface all over the business. The staff you talk to as a customer live with it everyday. They tell you so. People in store, in contact centres dealing with queries about network congestion which they cannot resolve. They become numb to it. There’s nothing they can do to change it.

Or is there?

As CEO or agent or silo head or customer, I can look on the customer forum and see that 83229 customers from 110078 have viewed a tech support entry called “calls go straight to voicemail”. Its the biggest issue. By far. And its been running from 2008 til now. And the manufacturer is getting a dirty name as their phone is being blamed.

Reading the original thread,  I can see the problem explained “I have a 3g {phone} and am having some problems. The fault is intermitant but happens on a frequent basis. When people call me the call goes straight to voicemail. If they leave a message it can take up to 2 hrs to come through. Also text message are arriving upto the same period after people send them. Sometimes it can take upto 30 secs to connect a call. I have been speaking to second line support at {telco} but they have thus far no answer. I am on my 3rd {phone} and second sim card. I am begining to think I may not be destined for a {phone}. If this continues will they change the handset for a different model ?”

You don’t have to read many posts to realise that customers, collectively, have eliminated all the options and some have worked out its not the phone or the sim – there’s a problem of congestion on the network. Yet tons of resource is still going into swapping phones and sims out.

In fact looking at all the forums there’s only one bigger issue with 153k reads – “Network down”. In fact that runs since 2008.

So maybe the network investment deserves some attention?

But as CEO, or silo head, I need real data to size the problem. This is where our WOCAS processes come in. They can help size the problem, rate the impact problem, root cause the problem, investigate the commercial opportunities around it and put it into a prioritisation framework. And if acted on, track & communicate those actions, transparently. If management wants to do this we know how to do this.

At the moment this provider seems not to be seeing the most basic service problem and no amount of sticking plaster or great measurement system or recovery care service will help that. No amount of “score me” post call feedback is going to help them see it.

Only if they start to talk about the problem openly will staff feel optimism, the investment get to the top of the agenda and customers think differently of them.

If giffgaff ran this network – how would it look then? What data would be published about network performance? What would be done about it? How much more money would it generate by doing the right thing?

And that’s the issue that faces CEOs everywhere – there’s no hiding place in the social world. if you are not open and transparent you face two problems. Customers know anyway and have the tools to share that knowledge. Staff know and if they can’t do anything about it then how do they feel?

I’m off to search the other communities to see who has least congestion problems. Apart from the company that locked me in for a year when they had no network coverage 21 years ago ( thats about £50k of revenue they have missed out on so far ) and the one that didnt want to help me 2 years ago when my phone was stolen and I needed a new phone straight away.

Customers have long memories when it comes to “doing the right thing”. I have a memory of pressing a button and the phone ringing immediately at the other end.  Have phones gone backward since 1976? Or from when they were invented: March 10th 1876?

Crowdsourcong & crowdservicing, Voice of the Customer, WOCAS, brilliant basics, customer experience, feedback, honesty, listening, social media | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 22.10.2010

A fabulous day in Bristol yesterday for a group of 25 clients who went to see how the RAC run the BSINS processes in full. Although I’ve seen them present what they do a few times, their enthusiasm and passion is still just as infectious. “An inspiring day” was a common feedback.

What have they done that’s so right?

They have connected all the dots. They have established fantastic staff and stakeholder engagement, are reducing unnecessary demands all the time, providing transparent intelligence from the front line straight to the business and continually changing the partner and customer experience. They’ve even been winning more business because of the intelligence they can provide partners about their customers and which their account teams can demonstrate.

It is clear why RAC won the Aviva Customer Cup from 450 entries worldwide. The agents would not want it taken away, it makes such a difference to them. And the quantified business benefits are significant.

Polishing the cup they are so proud of,  the RAC team shared their detailed experience of running the processes of Skyline and WOCAS ( What our customers are saying). The keys to success are action not words – continually acting on what front staff learn with customers and continually communicating. “Transparency” was a word repeatedly used. Managers around the business can see for themselves in real time what is bring suggested by customers. And front line staff can see for themselves what management is doing about what customers say.

One senior Aviva manager quotes was “This is the only part of our business where we know what customers think all of the time and it’s clearly measurable”. I wonder why the rest of Aviva aren’t using the approach after judging it the best thing for customers in the Aviva Cup?

Any comments?

Aviva, WOCAS, awards, events, world class | No Comments

Posted by: Ian Mapp | 18.09.2009

We talk a lot about the customer experience, but relatively little about the employee (or agent) experience. This is tightly wrapped up with that of the customer since often the two interact directly with each other.

More than simply sterile discussions and weasel words about employee engagement, a genuine shift of responsibility and leadership to the frontline employees leads to improved employee satisfaction – which will in turn be reflected in the levels of customer satisfaction. Dealing with an employee that can actually take responsibility for problems and get them solved is a refreshing experience!

Middle and senior management are often loathe to give up their power and perceived control – but wake up, those days are gone and there is a fundamental shift in the operating model and the way successful organisations are managing themselves.

Budd has long been a proponent of this culture of trust, through its WOCAS (What Our Customers Are Saying) processes and tools. So, it was good to read this article by Louise Druce at MyCustomer.com. Okay, it is only an introductory piece, trailing an event later in the year, but is a useful two minute introduction to the topic.

WOCAS, agent experience, customer experience, fast+simple | No Comments

Posted by: Ian Mapp | 16.07.2009

The insurance industry is a perennial favourite for generating stories about bad customer experiences. Particularly car insurance, and especially policy renewal.My wife’s car insurance is currently up for renewal. For many years we, like lots of others, had used and trusted a broker to secure us a ‘good deal’. This despite the fact that we moved 100 miles away from them more than 20 years ago!Again like lots of others, the Internet has now replaced the broker for our research, or at least to find confirmation that the renewal quotation we have received from the current provider is competitive. As a I work within customer experience, I naturally offered to do the work, and surf the web. As a marketer, I am also observant of smart advertising – and went straight to a price comparison website. On this occasion, comparethemarket.com.The process of entering all our details into the many pages was straightforward and I quickly got lots of quotes! A number of them were significantly cheaper than our current provider and I chose one that seemed particularly appropriate for our needs – by no means the cheapest but offering the better overall value.Satisfied with the experience, I was surprised to receive a phone call a few minutes later resulting from my visit to the website. The agent calling offered me the possibility of an even better deal, as a result of one insurer wanting to speak directly with me.My reaction to the opening part of the call was a mixture of shock and anger. Shock that what I understood to be the source of the best deals (the website) might not be – completely undermining the comparethemarket.com proposition. At that moment, the first reputation died.The anger resulted from feeling hoodwinked. I realised that somewhere along the way I would have agreed to being contacted – but it had not been obvious. And the speed at which it had happened so soon after visiting the website only compounded the sense of somehow being betrayed. The information is actually on the home page, only in very small font at the very bottom.Back to our story. The agent checked some details that I had entered in the web forms and then offered to put me through to this particular company that was so keen to have my business that it wanted to speak to me immediately. I declined when the name of the company was mentioned, as they have a poor reputation in my mind.Incredibly, and by an amazing coincidence, there was a second firm also ready and waiting to talk to me – Allen and Allen (I presume The A&A Group Ltd). By now, professional curiosity had kicked in and I was keen to see how the whole process would be concluded, and so I agreed. It was explained that there was no ‘cheesy’ or irritating hold music, but there was a long silence before a new voice came on the line.The silence was broken and news was not good. What the agent actually said was that no-one was available and  could they call back later? But what I heard was the death rattle of a second reputation. Incredible! Here I was, a living, breathing prospect on the point of purchase (a perfect opportunity you would have thought) and no-one was available? Except of course the guy who spoke to me no-one was available … only he couldn’t sell me insurance!Our passion is to help clients stop doing ‘dumb’ things to their customers – and believe me I was, by now, very very passionate … just not in a good way.When reflecting on the call, I realised that the original agent had not identified the company that they were calling from – I had assumed it was comparethemarket.com but a little more digging on the Internet suggests that it was probably LeadX Ltd (a comparethemarket.com trusted partner). Frankly, based on my experience, I wouldn’t trust them. Others seem to view them in the same negative light – a third reputation bites the dust.I realise that I am only a single customer and it is very unlikely that any of the companies are interested in my feedback,  but if anyone from comparethemarket.com wants to talk to me about this, then please get in touch. I know you know my phone number.  Killing three reputations in single phone call really is quite an achievement.17/7/09 update – just received a follow-up call from LeadX, so they obviously have not read this blog!

WOCAS, complaint, customer experience, dumb things, insurance | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 18.04.2008

Gareth Kirkwood and David Noyes at BA made the papers in a way that any operations or customer services director would prefer not to. Terminal 5’s launch may have been a disaster, but could it have been avoided? What could they have done differently?

Yes, listen to what your staff are saying – according to the papers.

It appears that many staff were saying they weren’t trained, rehearsed or just plain didn’t know their way round. And they had told management so. Then with a feeling of lack of transparency growing, customers and the newspapers went to town on the issues.

Backed up by word of mouth, a whirlwind developed. I only know 2 people who got held up or lost bags or both. But interestingly my daughter said there was nowhere to sit, too many shops (and that’s a first for her…) and many shops didn’t have stock – that being 2 weeks after launch.

As a customer, evidently it isn’t part of BA’s culture to listen. I’ve tried giving feedback a couple of times at the airport. The staff direct you to the website. When I say I don’t get a response that way, they have no options or alternatives.

And if you’re from Virgin, don’t feel smug. They’ll take the feedback but it doesn’t change anything e.g. the staffing of desks for self service check in or premium economy haven’t changed over time.

So the incoming replacements may want to consider how they can implement systematic listening as a process…..cue what our customers are saying

BA, Virgin, WOCAS, airlines | No Comments

Posted by: Peter Massey | 4.04.2008

first direct’s withdrawal of mortgages to new customers took the news by storm yesterday. It wasn’t a surprise. As we reported on the 11th of Feb blog entry, it was evident the product was selling “too well”.

 So how come it took til now to do something? Why did it have to reach crisis point? I wonder who’s getting what blame?

But they did get brave and do the right thing. Look after the existing customers and the ones who already applied and stop taking more business that couldn’t be handled properly.

Bravo!

Listening to customers it must have been evident it had to happen. I wonder why they didnt just up the rates a bit in February and take more business at a higher margin, avoiding the negative publicity and “first rock” factor?

It’s interesting that there’s now a BBC Today programme on Saturdays that’s designed to do exactly this. Pick up the stories from the customers before the journalists can.

What our customers are saying is in the public domain. Shouldn’t you be picking it up in your business first?

Talk to us about the “what our customers are saying” process

Uncategorized, WOCAS, first direct, listening, word of mouth | No Comments