ICMI's Customer Management Insight - September 2007 - (Page 49) EXPERT’S ANGLE gy that proactively manages the customer relationship to maximize connection. How? Solicit complaints and customer input. Most executives would rather know about an unhappy customer than not, but they fear soliciting complaints, anticipating customers with “illegitimate” problems. TARP has found that fewer than 2 percent of customers are trying to game the system. Deploy a CRS to enable effective contact handling and an actionable VOC process. A key tool to solicit, log, respond to, and assure use of a VOC is a consumer relationship system (CRS) that automates contact center processes and workflows and interfaces with other VOC data sources. A pioneer in CRS, Wilke/Thornton uses the Web to optimize contact handling in consumer product companies. Many now deploy CRS worldwide. The Web is here to stay. So the CRS provides contact handling through a Web browser. And Web forms provide consumers a self-service channel to communicate feedback. A Web-based CRS enables: > Logging contacts and submitting inputs from letters, calls, faxes, emails, Web forms, and chat with granularity that assures actionable output, > Replying to inquiries by fulfilling them quickly and appropriately with information, coupons, refunds, or replacements, educating, and selling and up-selling as appropriate, > Maintaining history of consumer experience and company replies, > Managing embedded surveys and promotion campaigns, and > Analyzing response and reporting insights to stakeholders. icmi’s insight A CRS enables staff to listen to live consumer/agent dialogues and recordings to make sure they stay tuned to customer sentiment that informs company success. How does a CRS optimize VOCdriven contact centers? Performance is measured by number of issues resolved on first contact, number of contacts processed per rep per period, increase in customer satisfaction, and provision of consumer insights to stakeholders. These measures contribute to company condition, factor into ROI, and reflect financial results. A CRS automates processing inquiries through a “rep desktop” that integrates information resources, making them available as reps handle contacts. A rep answers a call. CRS captures a caller’s telephone number and retrieves the caller’s address, verifying accuracy, or populates a new record. Simultaneously, another resource determines caller propensity to purchase items based on demographics, available by neighborhood, family, or individual. Such information triggers a selling dialogue. As the dialogue progresses, CRS brings detailed information about the caller’s past purchases and inquiries, and current information about the issue, retrieving specifics so the rep may reply instantly with accurate information to resolve the issue or stimulate a sale. Or, the issue can trigger an “embedded” survey. As the rep progresses, CRS generates a custom-tailored reply with approved attachment, or a sub-system, using syndicated data, which may identify a nearby store where the caller’s desired item is available. Intelligence from consumer insights can benefit enormously. More word-of-mouth referrals increase sales. Better consumer understanding of products increases use and loyalty. Create an analytical framework to translate the VOC into revenue and bottomline impact. To convert the VOC from the contact center into bottomline implications, you must be able to do or know the following calculations: > Estimate for each contact how many others exist in the marketplace. This multiplier is between 10 and 200. > Estimate damage to loyalty and word-of-mouth of each reported problem. > Determine purchase value of the average customer. > Determine regulatory and risk impacts. Ninety-seven percent of injured consumers do not sue. How their complaints are handled is a predictor of risk and legal expenses. > Generate an overall estimate of economic opportunity of each issue or problem set so priorities based on payoff are obvious and compelling. While you must develop the above analyses, your clients in the company — Quality, Marketing, Risk, Legal and Regulatory and Operations — must understand them and have access to the data themselves. This implies that you must provide the necessary education so that they understand and accept the analysis. Also, each department should have access to the data via a centralized CRS reporting system so that they can track issues without your active intervention. An effective call center-based VOC process is worth its weight in gold. But developing it requires hard work, risk taking and very effective systems. It is not for the | SEPTEMBER 2007 www.icmi.com 49 http://www.icmi.com
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