The Customer Experience and the Call Center Part 3

In our call center consulting practice we often assist call centers understand and rationaize their Customer Experience strategy. This includes aligning the call center operational model with the desired Customer Experience.

In this third article in our Customer Experience (click to view Part 1 and Part 2 )and the Call Center series we examine how that alignment process can actually operate.



In the diagram above we can see the shift from the promise that Marketing makes to product delivery and the service supported by the call center. When considered in terms of how a customer perception is shaped the excitement or anticipation starts high and often degrades with the reality of delivery and after sales service.
Let’s look at a hypothetical organization with the following Mission Statement;
“To deliver World Class Customer Service to our Customers, by providing access to our products and services the way our customers want them, when they want them, while providing a positive, enjoyable and productive environment to our employees and delivering superior returns to our Shareholders”
From this Mission Statement we can see what the company values:
• World Class Customer Service,
• Unfettered access to products/services- based on time and based on channel,
• A productive, enjoyable and positive environment for staff,
• Superior returns for Shareholders
As we continue down the process we have set out a few minutes ago we would then meet with Marketing to discover the attributes of the Brand. The following is a reasonable set of attributes associated with our hypothetical brand;
Accessible,
Cares about Customers,
Daring,
Different,
Energy,
Fun,
Glamorous,
Stylish,
Trendy,
Youthful,

By looking again at the original emotional call flow we reviewed earlier we can now match the experience to the desired Brand attributes



With the ‘current state’ of our Customer Experience picture in hand, we can next look to the experience we wish to create.
Do the Mission/Vision/Value and Marketing messages support the Customer Experience we want to create?

What descriptions and phases would we use to define this experience?

What descriptions would our customers use to define this experience?

Now describe how we want a customer to feel following an interaction?

The answers to these questions become the starting point of aligning the contact center with the brand message.
We are now equipped with a number of building blocks that we will need to develop our customer experience roadmap.
Look at complaints. Map the processes required to support delivery of desire customer experiences. Identify policies and procedures that are in opposition to the identified customer experience descriptors? Identify all processes, policies and procedures that are not aligned with the desired Customer Experience and raise these with management for discussion, review and revision.

To summarize the steps in designing a Customer Experience Roadmap are as follows;
1. Know what the current experience is,
2. Know how you are measuring the experience,
3. Understand your policies, processes and any negative customer impacts,
4. Plan changes and tests,
5. Measure improvements/reductions as a result of tests,
6. Roll out positive changes and continue other tests,
Or displayed graphically



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