Month: April 2014
Customer Satisfaction: Innovating with Lack of Resources
My post originally appeared on the DigitalGov blog.
As government contact centers, we all face financial and technological constraints in our pursuit to improve the customer experience. One challenge faced by many contact centers is staffing limitations to handle the volume of incoming customer traffic. There are barely enough employees to operate phones, let alone work on meeting or exceeding the organizational customer satisfaction performance goals.
One initiative that was important to the City of Philadelphia’s 311 non-emergency contact center was the successful collection of customer feedback and coaching our employees to improve the customers’ experience with each transaction. The 311 Contact Center serves as the single point of contact for over 1.5 million residents, businesses, and visitors needing City-related non-emergency services and information.
With so many daily interactions between our customers and agents, how could we improve customer experience if we did not have the means to ask our customers about their experience? With a limited technology and staffing budget, it seemed impossible to implement a customer satisfaction program in our government contact center. We needed to find innovative solutions to effectively collect, and manage, accurate and real-time customer experience responses.
A Solution
To create a credible program to measure customer satisfaction, our contact center partnered with a national Fortune 500 company who, pro bono, helped to develop an effective customer satisfaction survey and we partnered with a local non-profit organization for surveying and data entry staffing support. The benefit of these partnerships were two-fold: building a best-in-class program and providing a training environment to enhance clientele’s skills through their experience in a customer contact operations.
For example, in an agreement with the non-profit’s Work Experience programs, we provide opportunities for their clients to gain experience in an office setting. Work Experience employees work in our contact center for up to 20 hours a week for an agreed-upon number of months (based on the program) or until they found employment. Work Experience employees administer customer satisfaction surveys via the telephone.
In Practice
Formal training is conducted for our Work Experience/customer satisfaction surveyors to familiarize them with our services, the data collection processes and why their role is critical to our success. After this, surveyors are given a list of anonymous customers who contacted us within the last 24 hours and authorized the use of their number for a customer satisfaction survey (asked by our contact center agents at the end of each phone call). Over time we have enhanced the sample questions the surveyors ask. The results are entered into a centralized database. Following are the current baseline questions used in our survey:
- Did the agent explain the process for resolving your issues or concerns?
- Did the agent have access to the necessary information to meet your request?
- Was your call (or e-mail, or visit) handled in a timely manner?
- Were you satisfied with the service you received from Contact Center?
- Would you like to provide any additional feedback about your experience with the contact center?
- Would you like to provide your name, phone number or e-mail address, if you would like to be contacted.
As part of the process, surveyors are able to transfer concerned or dissatisfied customers to a contact center supervisor or manager to follow up on or resolve their issue.
Results and Overview
Results of the customer satisfaction surveys are shared with our contact center supervisors for meetings with their teams. The previous day’s average is also displayed on our contact center’s reader boards. Monthly and quarterly customer experience results are shared with Senior Leadership within the organization and posted on the department’s bulletin board.
Overall, our ability to gather customer satisfaction data has been instrumental in our growth as our city’s customer service center. The data has improved our technology and business processes, external communication, and service offerings as we continue to strive for customer service excellence. We continue to use Work Experience programs to collect customer satisfaction surveys and we have also expanded our initiative to include social media data mining. Designated agents monitor social media “streams” to see what our customers are saying about us, in addition to their “wants” as they relate to our services.
While we still face budgetary constraints, our contact center continues to innovate and find means to continually improve our customers’ experience.
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlue.com.
The Art of Creating Perfect Social Media Posts …
See on Scoop.it – Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
Each social media operates a bit differently, and each brand’s followers have their own preferences and moods.
See on www.scoop.it
Social Business Trends 2014 [INFOGRAPHIC]
See on Scoop.it – Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
Imgur is home to the web’s most popular image content, curated in real time by a dedicated community through commenting, voting and sharing.
See on imgur.com
Social Media Content for Customer Service
I recently read an article from McKinsey Quarterly about the role of social media in customer service. The article dove into the operational aspects of implementing a social media strategy. It also compared the use of traditional call centers vs. social media platforms for customer service. One point the article made compared the cost of the two channels: “handling an inbound telephone call typically costs a company $6 to $8; an interaction using social media, less than $1.”
The article also made another point to help illustrate the endless possibilities for customer service: social media platforms make it “easier to guide customers to relevant web pages or video content.” While this functionality has often been used for content marketing, organizations should tap-into this low-cost opportunity as a customer service effort, sending customers towards the answers and information they need. (Hopefully, before they ask.)
This is really a lesson in proactive customer service. If you are aware of your top customer FAQ’s, what’s stopping you from making 10 short videos and pushing them out through social media channels? The same goes for blogs, which are really just flexible platforms to quickly create (and post) relevant content.
While relevant video and blog content is relatively easy to generate, planning content ahead is how customers get the most value. For instance, weather emergencies or holidays could shape what questions your customers will be asking. If so, you can create a video or blog post before hand. Another way to find ideas for content creation is to pay attention to what your customers are saying on social media. If you see a trend, create content that addresses concerns with relevant information.
Through social media, your organization can not only answer customer questions instantaneously, it can push out an answer before it’s even asked.
Rosetta Carrington Lue is the Chief Customer Service Officer and Senior Advisor to the City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director. Follow Rosetta on Twitter @Rosettalue or visit her blog at www.rosettacarringtonlue.com
Nine Tips For Offering Exceptional Customer Service On Social Media
See on Scoop.it – Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
Customers are increasingly talking at the brands they love (or hate) on social media. Is your company empowered to respond in a way that works?
See on www.forbes.com
2014: The Year Social HR Matters
See on Scoop.it – Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
In 2013, organizations finally began in earnest to integrate social technologies into recruitment, development and engagement practices. In 2014, this social integration will become the status quo. The digital immigrants have now caught up to the digital natives – we are now all digital citizens. The fastest growing demographic on Google+ […]
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Social Media: Moving From Danger To Brand Building Opportunity
See on Scoop.it – Customer Experience Excellence Best Practices
In a few short years, companies have gone from seeing social media as a danger to be avoided to training employees to be social media brand ambassadors. Social media usage is now ubiquitous outside and inside companies Regardless of our age or generational cohort, we are now all digital citizens. Let’s take […]
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Innovative Customer Service Leadership Strategies 