ICMI's Customer Management Insight - December 2007 - (Page 23) IN THE CENTER tion and to measure their service experience. ADVAN Premium Service representatives are held to the highest standard. They must consistently handle demanding customers extremely well and must articulate and confidently dialogue with each customer. They must be able to quickly establish their credibility and rapport. On the telephone, they have just seconds to “shake hands” effectively and address issues well. Our ADVAN Premium Service goal is to establish and maintain strong relationships with the manufacturers who distribute their new cars equipped with Yokohama ADVAN tires, with their dealers, and with car owners who use these tires. In providing customer care beyond expectations, we convey a passion for excellence in service and product knowledge that will make us stand out in the marketplace. HEARING THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER with and augment our reports. CRS reporting has sufficiently enhanced our customer satisfaction knowledge and is directly impacting our growth and expertise within Consumer Affairs and Yokohama Tire. SELECTING THE BEST CRS FOR YOKOHAMA A key challenge we faced in moving to contemporary best practices has been to provide better consumer response reporting to our management. Our specialized CRS provides a catalog of reports, including Early Warning Alerts that help us quickly detect product issues in the marketplace. Early awareness of potential marketplace issues enables the company to take corrective actions quickly to avert negative impacts. “Effective response to customer concerns, avoidance of dissatisfaction, proactive service and preventive design are major challenges for companies. Having fact-based customer satisfaction information is critical. Often the ‘voice of the customer’ speaking inside the company is what focuses attention on the key facts and provides us with the breakthrough moments for which we all strive,” explains Technical Service Manager Guiney. Our CRS reporting enables us to provide the current status of such typical issues as product performance, as well as to convey customer compliments. “Voice of the Customer” reports are distributed routinely to marketing, product development and quality assurance groups. Now Yokohama executives and managers quickly and clearly hear the expectations of our customers. CRS information complements our warranty information. The digital voice logger captures customer calls, and CRS enables the recordings to be attached to contact records. Issue subject codes and verbatim response data collection help contact records match icmi’s insight Before we chose our CRS vendor, we had been considering potential solutions for years by visiting vendor exhibits at SOCAP International’s national meetings. We developed a good sense of what we most needed in a CRS for our particular operation. In assessing vendor options, key factors were system functionality and the character and quality of the vendor’s staff. We were attracted to staff that communicated well, showed helpfulness and understood our operating needs. Eventually, we invited the preferred vendor to give our senior management their CRS overview and capabilities demonstration. Also of critical importance was that the selected CRS enables our product liability administrator to track issues and comply with NHTSA reporting. The tire industry is regulated for product safety, and NHTSA requires quarterly status reports. Our early warning alerts and status reports may be downloaded from the CRS as soon as they are available. Our key CRS selection criteria focused on how well the offering met the needs of our contact center representatives. We had to have a specialized system that meets the demands of their daily workflow. Since we knew that the transition from our previous handling to the new approach would be huge, we decided the representatives should “road test” any new system. Acceptance of the selected new CRS was great. Reps liked the contact entry and processing flow and quickly bought into the Rep Desktop interface to our online CRS that they access through their Internet browsers. The implementation went well. As group manager, I oversaw the project, working closely with our CRS vendor’s consultant. The administrator of our product liability group participated in visits to the vendor during evaluation and selection. We worked with the CRS consultant to develop our application tailoring (configuration settings) needed to meet Yokohama’s unique workflow and reporting requirements. Implementation entailed a multi-month effort that involved: 1) analyzing and building our hierarchy of products, plant and dealer locations, and customer issue subjects; 2) training frontline reps in operations; www.icmi.com | DECEMBER 2007 23 http://www.icmi.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.