Metrics this and Metrics that ...

Context: Are organisations losing the emotional thread (with customers) that led them to their prior success?

Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Increasing customer retention by 5% tends to increase profits by 25%+. Nonetheless, customer churn challenges are faced by every industry with median churn rate ranging from 10%-11% for Energy-Utilities to 19%-20% for FS to 30%+ across Telecom, and Consumer Goods.

Hence, Customer Experience (CX) tends to be amongst the key priorities for CXOs. One would imagine that organisations have the right blend of people, process, and technology to improve CX, drive customer retention, attract new customers, drive revenue growth, and improve profitability. On the contrary, we come across situations shared on social media, which reflect the apathy of organisations in how they deal with their customers, the not so good quality of services or products, and over arching poor experience faced by customers.

The moot question is what drives this inconsistency in CX? Let us explore possible factors:

Factor #1: Organisations’ rapid growth can be unsustainable ?

Is growth not good? Indeed growth is good, but if growth outpaces the ability of the organisation to manage it effectively can lead to long term ramifications. Rapid growth can lead to quality challenges, inefficiencies, create strain on people, other resources, and result in customer dis-satisfaction. Growth has to be sustainable.

Factor #2: Businesses need to assess if they are becoming pure metrics crunchers.

Metrics, measures are important, but they do not tell the complete story. CSAT, NPS are a good place to start. More valuable is the customer feedback narratives. There are metrics for this, and metrics for that. Focus tends to be more on tickets closure, SLAs, KPIs, CSAT. The customer service agent (CSA) is measured by the ticking stop-watch. The more a CSA spends time to close the ticket is a negative reflection on the CSA. Do not need a behavioural scientist to gauge what will be on top of CSA’s mind in this backdrop.

Factor #3: Do organizations’ have the right set of metrics?

There is nothing wrong about gathering information, and collecting data. The challenge is the desire to collect data, and use it for measuring the performance becomes so intense, it comes in the way of doing the right things - for the customer, and for the enterprise.

In customer service, each business will have its own metrics to track. These could include FCR (First Call resolution), CSAT, AHT (Average handling time) amongst others. The right metrics to monitor will depend on the pertinent objectives of each business. There could be better insights from the CSA call chat or other medium chat conversations with the customer.

Factor #4: Is the front-line function able to make informed decisions?

It is important that the team on the front-line is empowered to make informed decisions,? judgements based on the context they know, and the data they see. Inability to provide a potential solution, timely response, and passing on the call(s) to other CSA irritates, frustrates the customer.

Organizations create metrics which may not tell the entire story. There are insights, trends, improvement plans crafted based on these data, which could miss the true picture of what are the key causes for customer dis-satisfaction.

Factor # 5: Are CSAT, NPS serving its core objectives?

Customer, business surveys like NPS, CSAT require the target audience to respond on a set of questionnaire. Once a year CSAT survey is sub-optimal in today’s always-on, connected world. The surveys could be too long, may have not so relevant questions, and hence may not get the response or the desired response from the target audience.

User surveys through the ticketing systems is one of the common techniques for measuring UX CSAT. But these surveys provide binary response, and do not actually give the required UX insights. Hence, there is a need to explore alternative approaches to measure CSAT, possibly without surveys. Probably the Sales, Services team calling the customers, and elicit live feedback, and / or have periodic user forums where feasible.

Factor # 6: Data tends to give the illusion of control.

The path from collecting the raw data to get to meaningful insights to enable informed decision making is complex. Based on the data collected, one tends to jump into a conclusion without collecting further evidence or understanding the root cause of the customer feedback. This can result into a slippery-slope as the improvement plans tend to based on the raw data collected. For example, AHT may be well within the prescribed target, but the factor of number of varied CSA connects for one user in conjunction with the AHT will tell the real story.

How do we capture CX, measure the effectiveness of metrics when the support is enabled through a combination of CSAs + Bots:

Usage of AI chatbots is pervasive across most if not all of the business covering B2C / B2B segments. Hence the question which arises is what is the impact on CX, on customer churn through AI chatbots + CSA driven customer support. The routine tasks, queries are handled by chatbots effectively. Chatbots will get better through usage, more data collected, experience gathered. The more effective path is to asses which of the user tasks can be managed by AI, and which ones will need CSAs intervention, effectively enabled by AI.

In addition to FCR, AHT, explore tracking measures likes Contacts per resolved experience, Agents per experience, Resolved on Automation rate (ROAR) (which measures the % of customer queries resolved through AI chatbots). All these measures will provide better view of CX. Key is to have the right balance between efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Efficiency reflects part of the story, and needs to be complemented by a happy customer.

Alternate methods to reduce customer churn, improve CX:

What are the refinements, which organisations can bring to bear to ensure that the ‘emotional’ connect with their customers is not lost:

• Invest in Training: Invest disproportionately in training definitely for CSAs, front-line staff, and covering other functions, emphasising Purpose, Empathy, Customer First principles.
• Refine metrics: Include measures, which will provide better view of CX. In addition to FCR, AHT, track measures like Contacts per resolved experience, Agents per experience, Resolved on Automation rate (ROAR) …
• Gain insights from customer sentiment analysis: Analyse text collected from customer comments, feedback from social media, ticketing systems interactions, chatbots, in person meetings, surveys. Provide timely response to the feedback, queries raised.
• Continuously improve systems, AI tools: Refresh KM systems, AI tools with ‘cleansed’ data, and experience on a periodic basis. Feed these into the training systems.
• Be in the trenches: Leads need to expend 1 day per week or appropriate frequency time with the customer, CSAs to gain a first hand experience of the customer interactions. This will help to understand what is working well, needs to be refined across people, process, and Technology.
• Compare CX trends within, and outside organisation: Get outside-in view to gauge the CX sentiments, ROI on AI, trends on customer churn. Compare with industry benchmarks, competition within the industry.

Summary:

In today’s VUCA world, which is always-on, always-connected, every experience counts. An adverse comment on social media can bring a brand ‘under radar’. Brands deal with real people, real emotions, real feelings. It is always the little human stuff, experience which remains etched in our minds. One needs to realise that at times for the best of people, best of companies, few things may not go as per plan. In such cases, what matters is how you show class after a mess-up, and provide disproportionate response to address the customer concerns.

To summarise, Customer Connects, CX are:

• Not less human. More human.
• Not majestic plans. Small actions, to make it through the day, tomorrow, coming weeks.
• Not being in the confines of the office. Be in the trenches with your people, and customers.
• Less complexity. More simplicity.
• Not just Services or Products. Superior usability, Experience.
• Less talking. More listening, more caring.
• Not just big things. Little human experience, stuff has high recall.
• Do not ignore upset clients. Disproportionate time to solve, spend time with upset clients.
• Not just ‘metrics’. Assess sentiments of interactions.

Today pace of change is 10x, 100x, and it tends to be about numbers, metrics, Speed, Speed, and Speed. In this process, enterprises realise it late when they have lost the ‘emotional’ thread with their customers. Hence enterprises, leaders need to shift their mode to nurture relationships, develop trust. ‘Experience’ is about Patience, taking time to Listen, to Care, and only metrics do not reflect this in entirety. AI is there to stay, but ‘human’ touch is not going away, atleast till AI builds a human touch.