Tag Archives: Benchmarking

Putting the Customer back into Customer Service…

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I’ve been spending some time lately with a new working group of Customer Service organizations to improve their performance measurement and management practices, and to better align these practices with the dynamics that characterize today’s Customer Service organizations. There were a lot of drivers behind why I initiated this working group, but the primary one was the frustration in watching the world around us change dramatically, amidst a measurement and accountability system that has remained largely unchanged for decades.

If you work in or around Customer Service organizations, and are a good student of customer behaviors, you know what I mean. Customer behaviors are always changing and adapting- thats not new. But in the last 12-18 months, that change is approaching lightening speed. The expansion of mobile applications, alternative transaction mediums, customer’s acceptance and use of social media, and the vehicles they use to acquire and distribute information have all changed radically in that timeframe. In fact, current research is telling us that we may be hitting a new threshold, where things that were becoming “common place” for the “early adopter ” community, are now becoming fully embodied by the mainstream. Yet many of our customer service platforms look strikingly similar to how they looked  almost a decade ago. Thats not to say  we haven’t changed our organizations and processes at all. Most of us have made changes that look and feel significant to our organizations. But in contrast with what has happened in our customer communities, they only scratch the surface.

So what needs to change?

  • WHAT WE MEASURE IS WHAT WE MANAGE-
    This is an age old adage in performance management and all of us have heard it throughout our careers. But are we taking it to heart as it relates to our CS processes? Take a hard look at what you measure, track and routinely benchmark in your business. What is the proportion between conventional metrics (e.g.”average” speed of answer, hold times, abandon rates, first call resolution, etc.) and metrics that align with the new customer dynamics we are seeing? Some of us have started this journey in measuring things like % paperless billing, self service transactions, and web usage. But this is really the tip of the iceberg. We need to think bigger and bolder. Social media interactions, mobile channel transactions, “near misses” on customer churn, and  payment behaviors are just a few areas where we have new ground to plow. But it starts with changing our perspective, and aligning it with how our customers have changed.
  • HOW WE MANAGE IT NEEDS TO CHANGE TOO!-
    As CS Managers and Executives, we know how to manage our conventional processes, and most of us know what behaviors WE would like t see change. Some of us have even begun adopting some of the measures I mentioned above. Take something like the percentage of self service transactions- our ability to steer customers from the call queue to the web, for example. We may have made it a priority OF OURS, and may have even added a new metric or two to our management reports and tracking systems. But have we changed our processes and activities in any material way to enable that to happen?
    I heard a good example of this from someone I sat next to on a flight last week that I’ll share to reinforce the point. He was having trouble with his new TV/Internet provider and had been procrastinating in calling them to inform them of the problem. He remembered this when he was on the way to the airport and decided to contact them from his car but didn’t have their number handy. He googled the term “”company x” customer Service phone #” (not something i advise doing from the car…and I sure hope he pulled over for that step!) and the top 5 hits were simply redirects to the company’s website- urgh!!!. Then the madness really began. He had to go 2-3 layers down into the site to find the number. At that point, he called them, but because he didn’t have his account info handy, he had to go through 5 IVR menus (no bounce out option) before he got anywhere. When he finally got to the agent queue, he was put into a hold queue for 12 minutes (something he remembered clearly because it sits at the top of the call screen on his smartphone!) before finally giving up. From the company’s viewpoint, he ended up doing “his part” to resolve  the issue later that evening with a trouble ticket on the website. But all of this clearly produced a pretty frustrated customer who ended up telling others about his experience (and i assume it was more than just me since he was an avid user of social media.) I am not certain about this, but I suspect all of this went unnoticed by the company, and to make matters worse, the company probably felt pretty good about things since it got another “self service” transaction to add to its performance stats. Changing the metric without changing the process is a sure recipe for failure.
  • DONT BE AFRAID OF RADICAL CHANGE- Dealing with situations like the one mentioned above is going to be a complex challenge. It will involve seeing things differently, listening to customers differently, and being brave enough to sometimes start over with a real “blue sky” thinking. Some of the best advice I ever got was to try and “see things from the customer’s customers eyes”. That means climbing into their world, understanding where they live, how they interact , and conforming our business model to that way of thinking. Those who are really doing that are finding that the changes they are making to their processes are not incremental, but rather “orders of magnitude” changes to their entire CS operating model.

While this may sound scary to a some of you, it can also be a new beginning- an opportunity to set a bold new mission for what Customer Service means to your customers and your organization.

If you are wrestling with this topic, I invite you to comment and join the debate. I’d also appreciate any thoughts you may have  on the subject, and anything you may have done to bring your CS measurement and management systems into better alignment with changing dynamics of your customers. You can also email me at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com with any thoughts or perspectives you may have on the topic.

-b

Author: Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience and has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com

Benchmarking your performance: Don’t forget to level the playing field

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Part of every performance manager’s repertoire involves some degree of benchmarking or outside performance comparisons. Through the years of my career in performance management, I have yet to meet many who actually look forward to this part of their job (save for a handful of you super quant jocks). Nope… for most of us, it’s a necessary evil, laced with the almost certain stream of data denial and defense shields that follows just about any type of benchmark study. So what you’re saying, Bob, is that we should just grin and bear it? Not quite.

Actually, there is a lot that can be done to minimize the kind of negative reactions most of you face. But you need to first understand the root of all data complaints. And that is, acknowledging that your company is, in fact, different. For example, throwing comparisons up on the wall that compares maintenance budgets of two very dissimilar companies would almost beg dissent. How big are they, versus us? What differences exist in customer base? What differences exist in the labor workforce? The list goes on, but you get the idea.

So you, as performance managers are faced with two choices:

a) Compare only against companies that look just like you? (virtually impossible unless we’re cloning companies now), or,

b) come up with some kind of way to level the playing field .

And it’s the latter that will improve your ability to defend your findings.

There are five things that I’ve found to be useful when attempting to level the playing field:

1. Make sure you definitions are clean and clear. When you ask for apples, are you asking for red apples, green apples, or both.? Are you looking for them with the skin on or off.?…you get the idea. Definitions matter A LOT!

2. At a minimum, adjust for scale. This is a fundamental requirement when looking at any performance ratios. Cost per customer, cost per million dollars of revenue, cost per employee are all good proxies for scale. Sounds simple, but you wouldn’t believe how many managers still report comparisons of total budget without any regard to scale differences (A special note about scale- sometimes, there is a secondary adjustment required because scale effect is not always linear- for example, very large companies should have a lower cost per unit, all else being equal, simply because of the transaction efficiency involved. I’ll expand on this in a later column.)

3. Adjust for workload, and its complexity if possible. Ok, so you’ve made adjustments for company size, but what if the maintenance requirements at company x are more than those of company y, because of say, regulatory requirements? Far better to adjust for the actual workload involved. For example, cost per square foot maintained might be a better indicator for a cleaning crew, than cost per customer, which may be more useful when measuring customer service functions.

If you want to add another level of rigor, try making adjustments for the complexity of work. If your company builds in hilly / rocky terrain, ask how much more difficult that is versus more average soil conditions. If you can gauge that, then a simple adjustment vis a vis the mean effort required in that particular task, can be made on the appropriate cost inputs. It may seem like a complicated and unnecessary step, but not adjusting for workload can seriously distort conclusions.

4. Adjust for key inputs, particularly those management cannot control. For example, if you are in the northeast US and you’re comparing yourself against a southeastern company, you’ll need to give some consideration to the embedded wage differential that exists regionally between the two, again, with all other things being equal. Same thing for cost of living, and differences in material costs. You can use things like bureau of labor statistics or CPI to help define the necessary adjustments. Like workload adjustments, this can be the difference between a decent comparison and a meaningless one.

5. Create enough diversity, so that there are a few companies that do look “a bit” like you. So let’s assume you’ve done all your homework and you’ve taken into account all of the above forces and drivers. You still have skeptics, because some people are just hard to please. That’s why I recommend trying (and I emphasize trying because its virtually impossible to match one for one) to find at least some companies that match your company demographics. It’s always good to show comparisons with your attempts to level the playing field, but conclude with a few comparisons from your “like peers”. Trust me, it will neutralize a few of the snipers out there.

So there you have it- a few items that will help you level the playing field. Remember, we’re looking for indicators to help you navigate, not statistical perfection.

-b

Author: Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience and has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com