These days it seems you can\u2019t buy a cup of coffee without being asked to fill out a customer satisfaction survey.<\/p>\n
But, despite companies\u2019 well-intentioned efforts to get customer feedback, having so much data is like having too much of a good thing.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s particularly true for companies that have millions of customers.\u00a0The sheer\u00a0volume of data that comes in\u00a0every day\u00a0as customers are surveyed\u00a0time and again\u00a0makes analysis\u00a0a slow and laborious\u00a0process. And, in the end, it\u2019s hard to get insights.<\/p>\n
Why did you call me?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This becomes a huge problem for companies that are accelerating their move to the online world and the cloud in response to the pandemic.<\/p>\n The questions they should be asking are: How is our customer satisfaction rating now that our people are working from home? When our stores are closed? When we had to limit their choices to accommodate deliveries?<\/p>\n During the course of my career, I\u2019ve run call centers and have been responsible for customer support for millions of customers domestically and internationally.<\/p>\n In my opinion, running a call center is one of the most challenging jobs you can have in a company. You have to deal with customers, employees, metrics, product and pricing changes, not to mention unforeseen circumstances like service outages and natural disasters. That is why during my career I\u2019ve helped guide upcoming executives through a path that would have them run a call center to gain leadership experience.<\/p>\n One of the big challenges in running call centers has always been how to analyze trends and understand the root cause of why customers are calling you.<\/p>\n But today, there are tools that allow\u00a0leaders to listen, in a virtual way, to what their customers are saying and get actionable insights. These insights can help leaders make their customers\u2019 experience \u201ceffortless\u201d.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been looking at it the wrong way<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n In his bestselling book \u201cThe Effortless Experience,<\/a>\u201d\u00a0Matt Dixon<\/a>\u00a0explains that we\u2019ve been looking at customer loyalty the wrong way.<\/p>\n He argues what the customers really want is an effortless experience.<\/p>\n So effortless they don\u2019t even need to call.<\/p>\n Dixon\u2019s premise is a radically different way of looking at customer service.<\/p>\n Almost as radically different as the way\u00a0Tethr<\/a>*, where he serves as Chief Product and Research Officer, approaches the measurement of customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n Forget the surveys<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n To begin with, Tethr does away with post-call surveys.<\/p>\n Instead, it takes the recorded words, digitizes the conversation using natural language processing, and then applies analytics on those digitized words to dissect the call, figure out what is giving customer trouble in doing business with you, and then rates the call so you don\u2019t need a survey.<\/p>\n And it provides\u00a0actionable<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0insights<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0in hours, not days or weeks. This enables leadership to take actions right away instead of spending time analyzing voluminous data.<\/p>\n These\u00a0actionable<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0insights<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0enable client companies to pivot quickly in response to the voice of the customer.\u00a0For example, to smooth out a point of friction such as when a new product or upgrade is causing problems for a select group of customers.<\/p>\n JD Power<\/a>, the standard in recognizing excellence in customer service, recently announced\u00a0a collaboration with Tethr to launch\u00a0Conversation Analyzer<\/a>, a new diagnostic tool that can help companies\u00a0explore and pinpoint the specific areas needing attention so they can improve their customer experience.<\/p>\n As a loyal user of JD Power services for many years, I am excited about this announcement.<\/p>\n Newer, faster tools<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The way companies have pivoted their operations as a result of the pandemic is nothing short of amazing. Many have implemented in a matter of weeks what otherwise might have taken them months, if not years.<\/p>\n Still, they must not lose sight of what those changes look like through the eyes of the customer. Now it is more important than ever before to understand what customers like and dislike about a change in your operations, and what may strengthen or weaken their loyalty.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more: they must know that quickly, in a matter of hours or days instead of weeks or months, so they can take appropriate, immediate action to provide an\u00a0effortless experience<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n In this context Dixon and his effortless customer experience paradigm are right on. And there is no better process than what Tethr has developed to ensure you and your company are providing\u00a0effortless service.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Bottom line: if you don\u2019t know why your customers called you yesterday and your tools don\u2019t give actionable insights in hours without the need\u00a0for\u00a0customer surveys, I strongly encourage you to look at the newer tools available.\u00a0Some new innovative tools like Tethr and Qualtrics work great together to help customers manage their user experience from beginning to end.<\/p>\n In today\u2019s environment, your measurement tools must be as agile as the operational changes you are working so hard to implement.<\/p>\n Ralph<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n * Full disclosure: I’m an advisor to and an investor in Tethr.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2002,"template":"","publication":[20],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/2001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralphdelavega.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication?post=2001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}