CRM evolution

Hi. It seems as though everyone with a computer has decided to write software and come up with their own spin on a CRM (Customer Relationship Management)system. No doubt, a good CRM strategy is a vital component to success,especially in today's economy. So what makes one better than the other ? I am not sure ;) ok the bells and whistles of the software, analytics and data mining need to be carefully looked at to determine what you really need. You also need to look forward and see where you are taking this initiative and make sure the CRM strategy is in line with the needs.

What I DO know is that the more successful companies point to their CRM system as the key to continued growth and customer loyalty. These companies use their data to understand the customers needs,trends,disappointments etc. they then plan accordingly to meet those needs. This is critical info that keeps the pulse of the company customer base. Some companies get off track and greedy...they see the CRM system as merely a marketing resource to send emails,direct mailings, offers etc. to their customers. This can backfire and cause customers to be turned off. Some of this is definitely OK and in fact helps deliver the ROI but keep an eye on the balance between Customer care and selling stuff.

NEW group formed on LinkedIN ! all the rage...

I started a group for sales professionals in the outsourcing industry. "Outsourcing Sales" is the group name. This site will focus on trends, ideas and general thoughts on what is happening in the ever changing world of outsourcing. Many times it is us sales people that are closest to the pulse as we are meeting with clients and prospects. Join if you are interested

LinkedIN value

Does anyone have anything interesting to say on the LinkedIN groups ? I joined a bunch of groups thinking that there would be great thought leadership discussions with back and forth of genius ideas... so far, the same people keep posting white papers and pseudo articles that coincidentally endorse their product and services.

In today's instant information world, I have become very wary of anything I read... who wrote this ? where did it come from ? what's in it for them ? cynical I know but sad truth. My local newspaper The Globe even has the front of their automotive section look exactly the same as it always does with a big 3 page review of a car... only problem is that it is now always a ringing endorsement, I got suspicious and noticed a small "this is a paid advertisement" disclaimer. Cripes...selling themselves and their opinions to the highest bidder.

My dad always told me "you can not fool yourself" so keep in mind that customers see through it all. The damage done by me finding out that the paper sold themselves out is forever lasting. I will no longer trust anything I read there...

Keep the faith !

DO it !

Nike said it best..."Just do it" another popular one is "Show me, don't tell me"

So many companies talk about "Customer Satisfaction" and have added CQO (Chief Quality Officer) positions. The proof is on the front lines, how is the customer experience when you call them ? Can you understand the agent ? are they reading from a canned script ? are they making you more frustrated than you were before you called ?

anyone have any stories ?

"Customer Service" FROSTBITE !!!!

I heard a story this weekend that I thought was a perfect analogy to the lip service many customers and executives are paying today for their "Customer focus" and "Strategic Customer Experience Initiative" ... sounds good in the board room and in the press to share holders but VERY few live it and make it a way of their company culture.

The ones that DO we all know, the ones that just talk the talk we all know too... we see them in the recent Hall of Shame service rankings from MSN
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/ConsumerActionGuide/the-customer-service-hall-of-shame-2009.aspx

if you drill down into the ratings you will see the canned responses from their spokesperson re the "new commitment to service" etc..., OK so here is the story...

I was at a father & son Indian Guide (like scouts) camp out this weekend and the Dads were sitting by the fire chatting about the economic meltdown and who is to blame. One of the Dads told a story about his time in the Army... They were stationed in Germany and frostbite was a big concern as they went out on maneuvers. The top leader (not sure of ranks...) at the European HQ told his next in command to check feet for frostbite at the end of every day. That guy told his next in command that the commander wants to have a frostbite check after every day. This went down through the chain of command until the squad leaders got the word. After a few weeks one of the soldiers got frostbite. Word went up the chain and the European HQ leader went ballistic. He showed up on site and ripped his next in command a new one and reassigned him. The leader also got reprimanded by the Army for not following through on orders. It was not enough just to say it "Check for Frostbite" his duty was to make sure someone was actually "doing it !"

I thought this was a great analogy to what we see today as quality and service become buzz words "we are a customer service leader" oh really ? then why do none of your customers agree ? "we have a new Chief Quality Officer" so what ??? what power in the organization have you given him/her ? can they impact your organization with your backing ? It is not enough to say it, you have to do it !!! Make it a way of life in your organization. Customers are too connected today and too savvy to put up with poor service, they can see right through the smoke... when options become available, they will leave you in the dust to a provider that treats them like a valuable asset.

Call Recording

Do you use Nice or Verint for call recording ? these are great tools and the software has come a long way in providing clients with analytics. We partner with these solutions to maximize the user experience. If you know what to look for and how to interpret the data you can find out so many amazing things that are taking place on your call center floor between agents and customers. Weed out all of the BAD and reinforce the GOOD. Contact me at

rick_sherman@aon.com

and I can send you a great study we did with Verint on driving customer satisfaction.
- blog master Rick

QUALITY monitoring -ACCOUNTABLE !

Bottom-line on the outsourcing article below... If you ship your calls off to an offshore company to save money and do NOT manage them and hold them accountable for their performance with YOUR customers, then you are exposed. You MUST hold them to high standards and understand what experiences your customers are having with their agents. Does an agent in Manila or India give a rats @#$ about your Customer Satisfaction levels and Loyalty ? They better ! or your days as a company are numbered... Customers will no longer tolerate poor service or the perception of an offshore agent reading from a script without any empathy for their needs.

The REAL cost of OFFSHORE OUTsourcing

The *Real* Cost of Offshore Outsourcing
– Pam Baker, CIO
April 28, 2009

One would think cash-strapped companies would find a heavenly match on foreign soils with plentiful, cheap labor. But that would be the romantic notion and not necessarily the reality. "Companies often 'plan for the wedding, but not for the marriage,''' says Dalip Raheja, chief executive officer and president of the Mpower Group. Now that offshore outsourcing is roughly a decade old, it's time to evaluate lessons learned and tally the real costs before renewing any vows.

The Honeymoon Is Over
"After a period of explosive growth in offshore outsourcing many companies are moving past the learning curve when it comes to the tangible costs of moving services and production offshore," explains Raheja. "Experience has built more certainty around what was once considered previously 'hidden costs,' or costs related to transition, development, selection, etc., which could easily cancel out any financial benefit of doing business offshore."
Now that time has told its tale, flaws are revealed and divorce becomes an option. One example, Delta's CEO, Richard Anderson, announced this month that the airline canceled its outsourcing to India because its customers were very vocal against foreign customer service agents. The struggling airline desperately needs happy customers so it responded to the complaints.
Often it is not simply the loss of disgruntled customers, a loss bad enough in a down economy, but loss in efficiencies and productivity as well that leads to the severing of offshore outsourcing relationships.

"We often find that outsourced agents are not trained as deeply as agents who work internally for an organization, and often lack the tools to do a thorough job for customers," says Dr. Miriam Nelson, senior vice president of Aon Consulting, a global HR/human capital firm. "We hear them rushing through calls, merely repeating the same troubleshooting steps, since they do not have that deeper understanding necessary to explain issues in a different way for the customer."
When call center work is outsourced to an offshore firm, service drops even further according to Nelson. "Offshore call centers are not only challenged by being in an outsourced position, but they also have to overcome language barriers and cultural disconnects," she explains. "When we benchmark offshore service against onshore service, offshore scores much lower."
The cost of poor service translates to hard currency losses for any corporation.

One example: Aon recently observed an outsourcer in the Philippines and found the following, according to Nelson:

41 percent of all calls are placed on hold. The average total hold time is 331 seconds. Agents are typically looking up information or speaking with other departments during these holds. Reducing the average hold time by 30 percent alone would result in an estimated annual savings of $384,000.

Agents are not speaking clearly on 56 percent of calls. The average talk time on these calls is 232 seconds longer than necessarily. This represents an estimated annual cost of $1,219,594 to the organization.

Problems Loom Large
However, problems with outsourcing are not contained to call centers; rather they cover the spread of business functions and business relationships.
One glaringly ugly example of a far-reaching problem: the Satyam Computer Services scandal which involved dual accounting books, mountains of forged invoices, faked bank statements and large numbers of unnecessary workers. Customers and investors alike were bilked and bamboozled by India's fourth largest outsourcing company.
"The Satyam situation dramatically weakens one of the fundamental pillars of the outsourcing model—that service corporations in emerging markets are fundamentally organized and monitored in the same ways as their client companies," explains Tim Carbery, principal of Axis Technology, a provider of IT and data security offerings for outsourcing with a client list that includes Bank of America, Wachovia, Fidelity and Citigroup.
This 'pillar' has been supported, according to Carbery, through specific contractual obligations (such as audited financials) between the BPO firms and their clients, which was considered the client firm's protection against local variations in business culture and regulations. "These client companies will now need to re-assess and audit their SOX and corporate policy compliance across all of their service providers to assure customers, and shareholders that they are not at risk," he says. "At this point only Satyam has been tarnished, but if irregularities surface at other providers through these assessments, even minor ones, then a significant portion of the industry could suffer lasting damage."
Paying the Tab
As the bills land in accounts receivables and checks flow out in payment, many think they have finally accounted for all the costs involved in outsourcing. But that may not be so. "Companies still have uncertainty around the intangible aspects of effectively managing and planning for a successful outsourcing relationship," says Raheja. "These hidden expenses include everything from the high rate of outsourcing relationship failures and the costs associated with a failed relationship, to underestimating the amount of time, resources and capital needed to ensure a successful outsourcing relationship."
There are other costs lurking in the shadows that are often overlooked. "Companies that outsource to China often ignore the big things like the potential loss of intellectual property and the legal costs involved in going to a foreign country," says Daniel P. Harris, attorney at HarrisMoure. "They also oftentimes fail to account for the little things as well, which can add up too. For example, I just finished working with a company that set up a software outsourcing operation in China and in doing their cost numbers, they initially completely failed to account for the fact that employers in China typically have to pay between 30 to 40 percent in taxes for every Yuan paid in wages."
Gutted and Gone
Perhaps the greatest unforeseen cost is how a now gutted company retains its shape after large portions of its inner workings move out.
"The most expensive long term cost is losing the expertise on how to do the 'simple things,'" says Alton Martin, COPC Inc. CEO and co-founder. "When you are outsourcing basics, such as IT, customer care, etc. the company looses insight to these departments to the third party, leaving the company at a loss when they need to fix more complicated issues."
Few companies realize this kind of loss applies to intellectual capital as well.
"Intellectual Capital (IC) includes the knowledge base—the expertise—your team develops solving problems," explains James C. Roberts III, Esq., attorney at Global Capital Law Group. "In this case, we see that the teams do not create the development toolkits they could use in the future. Conversely, the developer now has the toolkit to use for competitors. Intellectual Property (IP) loss arises when the U.S. company has to 'open up the kimono' to show the developers proprietary code in order to do the development."
"Losing the IP and IC is worse when the developed product or service actually requires on-going rights in certain underlying technologies or the developers' toolkit or even maintenance—especially if the offshoring partnership goes under," he added. "We find that much of this gets short shrift in negotiating the agreements."
The remaining elements contained in-house may mold a different vision than C-level management intended. "The greatest difficulty is in foreseeing what the organization will look like post-outsource,' says Dane Anderson, vice president of IT Services and Sourcing Technology & Service Provider Research at Gartner. "At first it was just a reduction in headcount. Now, holy cow, there's a vacuum where institutional knowledge used to be."

Upgrading TALENT in Call Centers.

Interesting article about companies upgrading their talent in this tough economy. There are many people in the job market...perhaps some better than who we have today ? should you clean out the poor performers and bring in the right people ? This could help a lot in SALES and COLLECTIONS roles...

A battle for talent
By Rebecca Knight
Published: March 19 2009 20:44 Last updated: March 19 2009 20:44
It may be the worst job market since the Great Depression, but here is the good news: some companies are still hiring. But the reason they are hiring is because they are clearing out mediocre employees in the knowledge that they can hire better replacements.
In consultant-speak, it is called "up-skilling". Companies eager to take advantage of the surplus of talented workers looking for jobs are cutting more of their own employees to make room on the payroll for new hires with specialised skills.
"Organisations are taking this opportunity to upgrade their talent," says Seymour Adler, a senior vice-president in Aon Consulting’s human capital practice. "They recognise that there are better people out there so they ‘over-correct’ on the downside to take advantage."
Of course, companies that shed jobs do so to save money. But according to human resources experts like Mr Adler, they often reduce their headcount more than they necessarily need to in order to re-stock their pipeline of fresh talent.
Last year, US companies shed 2.6m jobs, the largest number in a calendar year since 1945. The unemployment rate in the US now stands at 8.1 per cent, according to the US Department of Labor, and many economists predict it could reach 10 per cent this year.
"Companies are talking about exploiting the environment," says Mr Adler. "There are some highly qualified people out there, and companies are taking the opportunity to assemble an A-team. They are taking the Draconian, Jack Welch approach of cutting the bottom 5 or 10 per cent, and replacing them with people who are going to be top performers."
Perhaps the biggest reason companies over-correct during tough economic times is that they can bring in new talent more easily – and often more cheaply – than they could in a good economy.
Mr Adler says this is particularly true of newly minted MBAs, or entry-level positions for recent college graduates. "They can be had for a starting salary of 10 to 20 per cent less than what the market would have demanded two or three years ago," he says.
The trend is evident in industries from finance to marketing to IT but is most pronounced at technology companies and consulting firms. "These companies are very attuned to the need for fresh blood, fresh ideas and innovation," Mr Adler says. "They realise they can bring in two bright people fresh out of school with the latest and greatest models for the price of one of their [current] employees."
Mr Adler says most companies use a rule of thumb of 5 per cent, meaning that if the organisation aims to decrease its payroll by 10 per cent, it downsizes by 15 per cent. "You do it in a way that it won’t make a material difference to meeting the needs of the business," he says.
‘Organisations recognise that there are better people out there so they "over-correct" on the downside to take advantage’
Simultaneous hiring and firing is standard business practice, but it has been exacerbated by the depth and severity of this recession, according to Emory Mulling, a consultant who runs an outplacement firm in Atlanta, Georgia.
Companies are not simply taking a hard look at their headcount but trying to think more strategically about their human capital: where they most need employees with specialised skills, and which departments are expendable. "There’s a saying that there’s nothing quite like a recession to get a company in order," says Mr Mulling.
Tough economic circumstances force companies to scrutinise employees – especially in the ranks of senior leadership – to determine whether they are the right candidate or whether there may be someone better, according to Elaine Eisenman, a former corporate human resources manager who runs the executive education programme at Babson’s business school just outside Boston. In a robust economy, poor performers tend to be shuffled into different jobs or moved to different locations; in a bad economy, they are let go.
"These are typically opportune times. Suddenly, you can get poor performers out with a lucrative [severance package]," she says.
Companies are also more likely to announce mass job losses today than they were 20 or 30 years ago, which also enables them to over-correct, says Detlev Suderow, a professor at Brandeis International Business School who specialises in international human resource management.
Shedding thousands of workers at a time is not a stain on a company’s record, and it does not damage its ability to recruit and retain workers. "Most companies realise there is no shame in laying people off. It’s normal, it’s accepted. Companies used to hire employees for life, but that’s not the case any more," he says.
Some companies, however, can go too far by mistake. Rather than a strategic, thoughtful restructuring of their workforce, they embark on a short-term cost-cutting exercise where they let workers go, but soon need to go on a hiring spree because there aren’t enough employees left to do all the work.
"There are some companies that have cut the number of people, but don’t reduce the work," says Eric Abrahamson, a professor at Columbia Business School who studies techniques for managing organisations and their employees. "That works for a while, but then the quality drops. There’s a reflex of cutting costs by getting rid of people, but you have to rationalise the work, too."

Improve Collections with Quality Monitoring

Aon Consulting Quality Monitoring is based on behavior analytics, how to impact customer behavior. This approach can help a lot in collections. The insight to understand the interaction between customer and agent is valuable in leading to a desirable outcome. For example:

-with a collections group of a national bank we identified specific rep behaviors that made it more or less likely for the rep to secure payment from the customer. Understanding this, we were able to work with the customer to increase rep production, provide more consistent collections forecasting, reduce delinquencies and better manage uncollectible lists.

-with a financing division of a computer company we identified which behaviors are having the strongest impact on their customer satisfaction. This was specific to their product and industry. We implemented a quality monitoring program that improved their customer satisfaction scores by 12 points in the first year.

Our team of Industrial Psychologists works with our clients to focus the customer experience on your needs. I will be happy to share some case studies and customer best practices in the collections area with you. Reach out to me if interested.

Aon Consulting delivers human capital consulting with service areas for talent strategy, talent acquisition and management, and organization improvement.

 Expertise in the strategic management of human capital, from talent alignment and workforce planning to human resources optimization strategies
 Ensure our clients have the talented employees and leaders they need now and in the future
 Strategic communication and change management expertise to ease clients through initiatives and small- and large-scale change
The methodologies used to evaluate the customer experience consider the customer perspective of the agent’s empathy and understanding of the reason for the interaction. Agent behavior measurements correlate to customer satisfaction objectives. The analytics identify business process opportunities and actionable recommendations. The ultimate goal of the monitoring program is to provide management with feedback to drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, revenue and profitability.

What makes this practice different from others is the use of graduate-level training in psychology and a third party perspective that delivers analytics following expected bell curve results. An example of a study completed by an internal QA department and Aon Consulting illustrates this point:

The findings in this example found the internal QA team ratings were not correlated to customer satisfaction. The third party model uses proven techniques and eliminates bias. A baseline for continuous process improvement can now be established.

EXTREME Customer Service

great special edition of Business week March 2,2009. Focus of the articles is how the smart companies are making sure their customers are satisfied and loyal...even as they are going through economic trumoilInteresting case studies too. Check it out !

copy this link and paste into your browser address.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/09_09/B4121customer_service.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

rick

Measurable solutions through immeasurable insights

Quantity is not Quality. Are you substituting performance metrics for Quality metrics? Most call centers have software that capture this hard data you need --- number of calls answered, talk time, handle time, ASA. Do these relate to Quality? I suggest that measuring these alone has little if anything to do with Quality.

Let’s look at talk time. A shorter call can be perceived to be a good thing. But how do you know the call was successful? Did the caller go away happy? Did they end the call short due to frustration? What does a short talk time show other than it was a short call? We can also look at a long call. Was this a good thing because the agent was engaged with the customer solving problems, upselling or generally improving customer satisfaction and loyalty? Or was the call long because the agent did a poor job of answering questions, following the call roadmap and/or engaging the required resources to resolve the issue? Looking at call time alone does not really tell you much.

You need to take the time and listen to the calls to understand exactly what is taking place. What is impacting call time? What trends do you see? How can you improve the experience? This is the same for the other performance metrics too. Number of calls, hold time Queue etc. the numbers alone do not mean much. If you are truly looking for Quality you must listen.

The qualitative elements of a call can only be captured through listening --- and really hearing --- actual calls with the ears of an objective outsider. Only highly trained assessors can tell you:
 Did the agent address both the customer's stated and unstated need?
 Did they flexibly follow the call flow?
 Was there an opportunity to educate the customer?
 What else could have been done to delight this caller?
 What were the opportunities to reduce talk time while providing better service to this customer?
A good monitoring solution delivers measurable improvements through immeasurable insights. Do not fall into the trap of only looking at the numbers. Quality and satisfaction can not be measured by numbers alone.

Call Center Layoffs: Retain your top talent

Are you in the eye of a hurricane of layoffs? Once done, your call center will be a changed organization. Will it be changed for the better? Will you be left with a smaller, yet stellar, team of front-line service providers? Will you be better positioned to meet a fiercely competitive landscape?

Job eliminations are a delicate act. If not conducted soundly, costly and distracting litigation is likely to follow. With that in mind, it is tempting to simply base layoff decisions on agents’ operational and productivity metrics, such as AHT, adherence, and attendance. Call centers will easily shy away from using call monitoring and other customer-centric metrics as an input into personnel decisions, as these measures are typically laden with biases and their scores do not differentiate top performers from the rest of the pack. But do the operational metrics alone help you retain your best service providers, the front-line Reps who truly delight customers?

Aon can identify your outstanding service providers quickly, accurately, and defensibly. Aon objectively monitors the effectiveness of call center staff on behalf of call centers across industries, in the US and off-shore. By listening to calls remotely, “with the ear of the customer”, our professional assessors are “blind and deaf” to the factors which are related to potential discrimination. Our behaviorally-based monitoring approach sifts out your top service providers --- those who you should retain --- from those with weaker call handling skills.

Our proprietary methodology, called Service Talent Audit, has been developed by Ph.D. Industrial / Organizational Psychologists according to legally defensible procedures and applied systematically and consistently. We have conducted these behavioral assessments for over 30 years. We have never lost a legal challenge.

Retain your top talent. Make your workforce reductions legally airtight. Aon can help.

For more information, please contact:
Miriam Nelson, Ph.D.
Aon Consulting
p: +212 441 2152
e: Miriam_Nelson@aon.com

Rick Sherman.
Aon Consulting
p: +617.457.7675
e: Rick_Sherman@aon.com

outsourced call centers in trouble ? poor quality

did everyone see this report last night on the news ? watch the whole thing... there is some ad first

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6765103

Outsourced centers are having a tough time retaining customer loyalty. US based clients are pulling calls back to US. DO NOT jump to conclusions about the Philippines or India. They CAN in fact provide exceptional service. The issue is one of poor management and lack of quality in the centers. If management does not give a hoot about language skills and overall communication skills then service will in fact be horrible... not rocket science that you need to have agents that speak some english, have a good attuitude, solid training and a good management layer. Some outsourcers are doing an exceptional job. One of the keys is probably a quality program or monitoring to track how the agents are performing. Anyone using an outsourcer should demand monitoring review and performance metrics. NOT how many calls answered or how fast... that is useless and only contributes to this issue. Need to look at behavior on the calls. A quality call is much better than a lot of calls... My two cents.
-peace