CRM - January 2009 - (Page 29)

THE FEEDBACK FUNNEL “Web 2.0 is the best place for feedback. The customer service world is generally very data-driven, but [social media] really translates into the customer story.” channels, have a centralized environment, handle analytics, and communicate the information throughout the organization in a timely basis.” In the past, companies collected feedback in the hopes of being able to solve a consumer’s problem—and also to keep tabs on contact center agents to ensure they were doing their jobs properly. “You had the feedback of how the agent performed during the experience, and then internal quality teams also monitored them for quality and customer assurance as well,” recalls Roger Woolley, vice president of marketing for Autonomy etalk, a provider of quality monitoring and analytics solutions. “So it was a very quality-centric application, and it still is today. However, we’re really seeing this information used more to drive business operations.” Home Shopping Network (HSN), a St. Petersburg, Fla.–based multichannel retailer, uses Autonomy etalk to obtain customer feedback—not only to monitor its own performance, says Ricardo Wald, director of performance support services at HSN, but also to discover opportunities for improvement in how agents service customers and manage the business. “First, we’re able to use it to calibrate our internal [processes],” Wald says. “We’ve identified standards and defined what our expectations are, but the benefit of having this survey technology is we can ask customers some of those same questions and see how we score it compared to [them]. That way we make sure we’re focusing on what’s relevant to customers.” www.destinationCRM.com These operations aren’t limited by the walls of the contact center. The aim is to spread the wealth throughout the various traditional silos in a company—including sales and marketing.“The ideal use of this data is to use it throughout an enterprise,” Fluss says.“You can use one department to do a survey. However, the concept behind EFM—from a practical perspective—is that, regardless of who was responsible, that information needs to be available and shared with all the appropriate constituents throughout the organization.” Just as important as the technology are the processes a company puts in place to handle the information flowing across multiple departments, Alban adds. This is where quality-assurance teams, which Alban says have been long underutilized, can be instrumental: as a starting point to dissect the customer information and then forge relationships with other departments, such as sales and marketing, to share the wealth. “That allows marketing people to share the voice-of-the-customer information they’re hearing, and it also allows [that department] to give feedback on what they’re about to do so the contact center can be prepared,” he says. “Believe me, that’s easier said than done…it’s been a horrendous relationship until now.” Many early adopters report difficulty in breaking down the silos and getting a cross-functional group of employees together to use this information—and to create actionable strategies as a result— but it’s getting better. Autonomy etalk’s Woolley says he’s seeing more customer service departments asked to give enterprisewide access to accumulated data.“It’s definitely improving, because the contact center has become [viewed as] a more strategic element of the business,” he says. The EFM technology itself deserves some of the credit for bringing companies together in the name of customer feedback, Allegiance’s Cottle says. As these solutions become integrated with preexisting CRM systems, the benefits made possible by that integration become clear. Fluss agrees, saying that the EFM industry is responding to what is going on in today’s marketplace—namely, the fact that the voice of the customer (VOC) has EFM Integration Checklist A llegiance’s Chris Cottle says that integration with CRM systems is a growing trend in the enterprise feedback management (EFM) space. Brad Bortner, a Forrester principal analyst, recently published a report, “The Next Wave in Customer Satisfaction Studies is CRM Integration,” offering several recommendations on how to proceed with an EFM/CRM integration in order to maintain and build strategic relevance. • Drive, rather than passively witness, these implementations. • Maintain quality control on design and analysis. • Harness EFM to control disintermediation. • Be clear about the higher costs of these implementations when making decisions. SOURCE: FORRESTER to be heard and acted upon, enterprisewide. “It’s only in the last couple of years that these solutions have gotten good, and they’re still getting better,” she says. “Everyone has to care, and the [VOC] needs to be a component of the goal…not just customer-facing ones, but the fulfillment [aims as well]. Every group needs to be beholden to customer satisfaction.” ANALYZING UNSOLICITED FEEDBACK As the market matures, there’s been an explosion in the number of channels through which customers can reach out and provide feedback. It’s not just companies pushing surveys, but also consumers proactively giving compliments, complaints, and suggestions. Cottle says that the challenge of handling unsolicited feedback—essentially, as he puts it, “anytime anyone gives input”—can be daunting. “How does a company bring it into a centralized system, add in case management, route it around with the right people, and give 29 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JANUARY 2009 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - January 2009

CRM - January 2009 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Shots Heard ’Round the World 30,000-Foot Views Of the Cloud Stuffing the Ballot Box— With Complaints The Marketing Line for ’09 CRM on Twitter Technology Helps Insurance Weather the Storm Required Reading The Google-ization of CRM The Feedback Funnel Email: What’s Inside? Shake Your Moneymakers Lead Sweet Lead Incentives at the Speed of Lightpath Sales Contentment for Content Management A Worthwhile Excursion Into Call Recording Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - January 2009

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