Proactive Customer Education: Positive Impact on Recommender Ratings May 8, 2009
Posted by onprocess in Customer Care, Customer Experience Management, Customer Understanding Research, OnProcess.Tags: Customer Experience Management, customer satisfaction, educate customers, improve customer satisfaction, net recommender, post-service management, proactive customer education, recommender scores
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How do you increase the likelihood of your customers recommending your company’s products or services to others? Proactively educating your customers on the features and benefits of your products and services is one way.
Our research shows that while you are interacting with your customers, providing proactive education at key customer touchpoints, like immediately following an installation or service call, you can increase your customer’s likelihood to recommend your products and services by 8% or more.
Even providing your customer with one proactive education event can yield an increase in the likelihood of your customers recommending your products and services by 5%.
The other benefits of providing proactive customer education are reduced service costs, increase product or service usage, and a reduction in customer churn thus reducing the possibility of your customer switching to a competitor.
Here is an example of our findings:
|
Number of Educations |
N Value |
First Net Recommender Score |
Second Net Recommender Score |
Lift |
|
0 – 3 Educations |
12988 |
53.5% |
58.1% |
4.6% |
|
4 – 6 Educations |
5325 |
50.3% |
55.8% |
5.4% |
|
7+ Educations |
820 |
50.6% |
58.2% |
7.6% |
–Mike Reid
Article / Study: Turning Customer Pain Into Customer Gain March 23, 2009
Posted by onprocess in Customer Experience Management, OnProcess.Tags: better customer analytics and engagement, Customer Experience Management, customer experience ownership, customer retention, customer satisfaction, maintaining customer satisfaction in a downturn
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A recent article in Forbes.com by Donovan Neale-May of the CMO Council is quite germane to our business and that of our most of our clients.
Frequent (or even occasional) visitors to this blog will see a familiar theme, i.e.:
Making sure that even in an economic downturn, you take good care of your customers!
A particularly strong excerpt:
In the current tough economic environment, the care and handling of customers becomes even more important to business success. It is almost always more profitable to keep and grow an existing customer than to acquire a new one, but today that may be even more true. Yet financial pressures will no doubt lead many companies to make cost reductions that may negatively affect the customer experience. Those who have the ability to closely monitor experience, loyalty and satisfaction and who have developed a culture that responds quickly to customer needs and challenges will be in a much better position to weather the downturn.
The article itself (and the study it cites) gives some great suggestions on how to operationalize these issues in a large organization. However, concerns about who in the organization should “own” the Customer Experience remain unanswered, with the predictable “silo” effect of multiple, incomplete and hard-to-act-upon efforts taking place throughout the business.
Obviously, we here at OnProcess Technology can help companies pull all this customer satisfaction effort together, with a combination of expert managed services, proven process management, and reporting that pulls it all together and gives your organization actionable results and insights. It’s all part of our CE360™ offering.
But for now, just read the article and consider its relevance to your company’s current challenges.
We’ll be here when you’re ready to talk.
–sk
Bringing Your Customer Experience Wish List to Life March 12, 2009
Posted by onprocess in Asset Retrieval, Customer Experience Management, Customer Understanding Research, OnProcess, Warranty Management.Tags: call center, CE360, customer experience improvement, Customer Experience Management, customer experience measurement, customer experience survey, customer touchpoints, data-driven insights, maximize customer satisfaction, optimize investment in customer satisfaction, recommender score, warranty replacement programs
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Wouldn’t it be great if you could know for certain which of your customer touchpoints are the ones that are key drivers of their satisfaction with you?
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to focus investment in those particular areas that your customers care about most, and not waste time and expense on those that don’t affect their satisfaction?
If you could identify the critical factors that drive the highest levels of customer satisfaction and recommendations, how much would that be worth to you?
Do you think it would be valuable to know what levels of customer satisfaction are adequate to retain the most customers, and what levels are most likely to drive defection, and to have that information in an intuitive visual format?
Like, uh, for example, this one?
In your warranty replacement programs, for example, would you like to be able to optimize shipping methods and shipping charge assessments to provide the highest levels of customer satisfaction AS WELL AS minimize shipping cost exposure?
You probably know where this is going, don’t you?
Yeah, you guessed it. Our clients get this kind of thing now. From OnProcess Technology’s CE360™.
Not just a call center, or a survey company, or a software company.
A total solution that provides program design and execution, answers, data-driven insights, huge cost savings, and differentiation on service, instead of price.
Let us know if you’d like to talk.
–sk
destinationCRM.com: 5 Recession-Busting Customer Service Strategies March 9, 2009
Posted by onprocess in Customer Experience Management, Customer Understanding Research, OnProcess.Tags: business strategies in a downturn, Customer Experience, Customer Experience Management, customer service, Customer Service in a downturn, economic downturn
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destinationCRM.com: 5 Recession-Busting Customer Service Strategies
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More on the theme of boosting customer service and the customer experience, especially in this economic downturn. A Forrester Research report is framed in the article.
I found this quote particularly telling:
A major issue Petouhoff finds with many companies is that the c-level executives do not realize just how important customer service is to the bottom line.
Really?!
The article quotes the report further, highlighting five action steps to be taken:
Organizations looking to make the most of what customer service can offer in a poor economy must first lay a foundation before bolting on additional software, according to the report. Petouhoff recommends a five-step process, in which software evaluation is the final leg:
- Reject the old paradigms that treat a contact center as nothing more than a cost center.
- Demand ownership of the customer experience.
- Listen to your customers as you create your strategy.
- Conduct a gap analysis of your customer service offering and then implement best practices to address those gaps.
- Evaluate software with customer experience as the top goal for a business case.
Note that software is last in the list, purposefully. We like items 1 & 4 in particular. Hey — this IS our blog after all — we don’t sell software, we sell solutions and beneficial outcomes.
–sk
Focus on the Customer and Win in the Downturn December 12, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Customer Experience Management, Customer Understanding Research, OnProcess.Tags: Customer Experience, customer experience assessment, Customer Experience Management, downturn strategies, focus on the customer, strategies for managing in economic downturn
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It seems obvious enough, but when things get tight and cuts loom, sometimes it’s important to take a moment and remember what you can’t afford to forget.
Here’s a good article from InsideCRM.com:
Every economic downturn in history has inevitably been followed by an upturn, so embracing a good customer strategy during a slump will greatly increase your chances of still being in business when the recovery comes around. Ultimately, a recession can actually help differentiate companies and their service propositions. It is therefore worth making the case that cutting into customer-service spend is not necessarily the right option.
More at: http://www.insidecrm.com/features/focus-customer-win-downturn-111808/
Critical to this approach is knowing what areas of your customer experience are delivering value and which are hurting you. Need more visibility into customer-service related issues at this critical juncture? You may want to talk to us about our proactive customer experience management programs.
–sk
Does a Pleasant Tone Really Matter? October 17, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Customer Experience Management, OnProcess.Tags: Customer Experience, Customer Experience Management, Duarte Esteireiro, Impact of Pleasant Tone on Satisfaction, Tone of Voice
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In basic terms, being nice to customers is good for business. We all know that! Right?
If you’re a skeptic like me, hard numbers are the best way to support any theory. With that said, I have some exciting news.
Recently, we sampled over 1,300 customers and asked them to rate the tone and courtesy of our representatives. The majority of the customers that were sampled had expressed some level of dissatisfaction and we wanted to determine if a positive customer experience would have any impact on the their overall impression. At the end of the survey we asked customers if they would recommend the service and this is what we found:
Positive Impact of Pleasant Tone of Voice
As the theory would suggest, if the customer felt that they received an outstanding level of customer service, they were very likely to recommend the service regardless of their prior experience. As the customer’s impression of our tone declined so did the likelihood that they would recommend the service.
In business, mistakes will happen but customers are very willing to forgive and forget as long as they feel like their issue is taken seriously. We understand that you can’t please everyone every time but by making a solid effort to deliver superior customer service, you are more likely to retain that customer.
–Duarte Esteireiro
Complex Devices: Greater Opportunity, Greater Risk October 15, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Asset Retrieval, Customer Experience Management, OnProcess.Tags: Asset Recovery, costs of returns, customer education, Customer Experience Management, customer frustration, digital tv, PDAs, smart phones, Steve Kirstein, wireless devices
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Summary:
- Complex devices such as “smart phones” and digital Pay TV services have steeper learning curves, leading to user frustration and higher-than-expected return rates.
- Costs of handling these returns, as well as training users, are high and getting higher.
- Opportunity costs of these returns are high as well, as anticipated revenues plummet and unanticipated costs escalate.
- Proactive customer outreach and training can mitigate these costs and keep per-customer revenue levels higher.
As our consumer technologies become more complex, the opportunity for wireless carriers, device manufacturers and Cable/Pay TV operators to realize higher per-subscriber revenues increases substantially. Data plans, bundled voice and data, digital programming and on-demand pay-per-view can enhance your customer’s experience while driving higher usage and, therefore, cash flows.
A casual sampling of our markets revealed that Sales of these newer devices have increased between 15 – 30% in ‘08 versus the previous year.
The downside of this digital revenue bonanza, however, has begun to emerge. The promise of an enhanced user experience has been shattered by the reality customers are finding: steep user learning curves, overly complex menus, unknown feature sets and unrealized benefits of increased capabilities.
As a result, users are returning complex “smart phones”, downgrading digital TV converters and, in so doing, often expressing their frustration by changing carriers and providers.
Ironically, the more that these more expensive devices are adopted overall, the greater the exposure to companies in the areas of Capital Expenditure, Replacement Stock Management, and Lifetime Value per Subscriber. Have a look at this graph:
Smart Devices expose companies to ever-increasing return costs
In this example, we assume a typical wireless device, with an internal cost of about 1/3 that of a “smart” device, and a return rate of roughly half that of ”smart” devices. With an ever- increasing proportion of “Smart” devices as a percentage of total adoptions, the expense of returns of these devices increases substantially over time. Chances are, you have under-predicted the level of returns you are experiencing.
This makes the need for a comprehensive approach to both Asset Retrieval and Customer Experience Management so critical.
If your Reverse Logistics and returns programs aren’t completely buckled down and optimized, the hit on your Capital Expenditures will be much greater, due to the increased cost of the more complex units. In addition, if the Customer Experience is not proactively managed during this critical time of frustration and dissatisfaction, you can easily lose a customer instead of satisfying them.
Moreover, by proactively educating new customers and upgraders to a few key features and procedures on their new equipment, you can stem the flow of returns and realize those increased revenues you previously forecasted!
–sk
Who are you, and what do you do? September 4, 2008
Posted by onprocess in OnProcess.Tags: Asset Recovery, Customer Experience Management, OnProcess, reverse logistics, Steve Kirstein
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Yeah, we get that a lot.
As we start to get this blog going, we’ll be answering those questions and more. It’s an interesting story, actually.
In addition, we’ll be talking about the issues we and our client companies deal with in general, because believe it or not there are a lot of folks who want to know about reverse logistics, asset recovery and improving their customers’ interactions with their people and equipment.
So stay tuned, subscribe if you want to our RSS feeds, and let’s see what happens.
–sk
