“Customer Experience”

By: John Rushing, Founder

I had the good fortune to join MCI when I left the service in the early ‘90’s and strongly believe that the experience of working for the company at that particular moment in time set the stage for the balance of my career. I was always fascinated with the company’s history and its rise from a couple of microwave towers to one of the companies that lead the fight to break AT&T’s hold on the telecom industry and all that followed. By the time I joined, the Internet had existed of course, but HTML was still an academic pursuit of interest to a relatively small number of researchers. Many of whom, like Vint Cerf, later graced MCI’s hallways and boardrooms at various points in their careers which is another story in itself.

In any case, MCI’s selling points in those days could be boiled down to two points that were steeped in every employee from day one. The first was innovation and the second, customer service.  In those days, although the battle with AT&T was long-over, MCI still faced significant delays and other barriers as they tried to migrate customers from AT&T services to MCI. Business customers had to want to “switch” to put themselves and their companies through the effort. The same was true for consumers, of course. Anyone old enough will remember that switching your home phone service to any carrier other than AT&T was not a smooth and easy process back then.

The only lever MCI had was to make services so compelling that customers were willing to put in that extra effort. They did this through the creation of billing and other services that AT&T couldn’t match, or were still too sluggish to even try. They also rolled them out in rapid succession and across a broad array of segments from “Vantage” billing for business to 1-800-Collect, 1-800-Musicnow, Friends & Family, MCI calling cards, MCI Mail, and other services. These were all in addition to the less-visible “magic” MCI was building behind the curtain on the data services side. Behind all of these, however, was an extreme preoccupation with Customer Service. I started out teaching high-speed packet networking like Frame Relay, SMDS, ATM and communications protocols; far from the customer-facing side of the business. However, even I was aware of MCI’s obsession with customer service. On my very first day at MCI in Richardson, TX, I received an email making me aware of a fiber cut somewhere in the northeastern U.S. that was affecting thousands of customers. I was relatively new to email at the time and didn’t realize that the email wasn’t directed to me personally. I pretty much had a meltdown thinking that I needed to do something about this; like immediately. Fortunately, when I finally found my [very considerate] boss, he explained to me that MCI notified all employees of all significant outages and that I didn’t need to worry about it right now.  He even managed to do this without laughing at my apparent panic.

By the mid- 90’s MCI was well known for customer service and was consistently ranked in the top 3 companies for customer service nationwide, if not #1.  By this time, I had transitioned from data networking to a contact center focus. As it turns out, many of the companies that were jumping onto MCI high-speed, packet-switched services were doing so to enable their contact centers to interconnect more easily with backend systems – enabling their agents to access servicing applications and CRM, which was also relatively new at the time.

MCI’s ability to stay perched atop the customer service rankings gained the notice of other companies like Nordstrom’s, most major banks, and other predominantly large companies that seemed to be waking up to the fact that providing excellent and consistent customer service could be a differentiator.  At the same time, new technologies and applications were coming to the market like “Network IVR” (MCI) and Network Routing Services (Genesys Labs), among others. Voice over IP was soon to follow and, thanks mainly to Cisco’s buying spree in the late 90’s, unified communications was born, and a whole new race began.

In those days, customer service was all about knowing who the customer was, getting them to the right resource, listening to and understanding their needs, and doing your level best to make the data and services required to handle the customer’s call available to the agent as efficiently as possible. If you could do that, everything else rested on the agent’s abilities to use the information available and their training effectively.

Today, things have changed pretty radically in many respects. We speak about “customer service” less often and more about “customer experience.”  Customers today interact with the companies they do business with through a myriad of channels. Sharing seems to have become ubiquitous thanks to smartphones and ever-present access to high-speed data. People share experiences whether they are positive, negative, or indifferent and they do so continuously. Perhaps more perplexing to many companies is that quite often, they are not even a party to the discussion about their products or their services. 

Sharing experiences has always happened of course, but in the past, a customer who had a good or bad experience might mention it directly to a half-dozen close friends or family members. Maybe, if they were in a public space, the conversation could be overheard by one or two more individuals. Today, they mention it to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people on social media. Each of the people in that discussion might share it with tens, hundreds, or thousands of their contacts simply by “liking” or making a comment about on the original thread. Things can and do spin out-of-control quickly. Tools are generally available that allow companies to be aware of and even insert themselves into these discussions if they choose. Tools are available to capture the conversations wherever they might occur online and gather, analyze, contextualize, and otherwise process the unstructured data so that it can be used in a multitude of ways by companies that choose to do so.

In other words, today’s world offers both challenges and opportunities to any company that chooses to recognize and pursue them. Such was the case in the past when IVR, network routing, email, and later, basic chat made their way into contact centers.  Back then, the people responsible for managing contact center operations as well as those in marketing and sales departments were equally dismayed for a time – some, it seems still are but we’ll discuss that later.

The point is that although technology has evolved rapidly and will continue to do so, the basic premise of delivering customer service still stands.

To provide effective service today, you still need to know your customer, get them to the right resource, listen to and try to understand their needs and, make every effort to enable your agents to address those needs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Moreover, you have to do it every, single time.

Yes, there are many more channels that we have to contend with. However, the good news is that there are also many more ways to become aware of not only your customer’s needs, wants, and sentiments but those of all the people they choose to interact with. In the old days, you couldn’t listen in on the conversation across a customer’s dinner table or conference room. Today, you can not only listen in, you can join the discussion with the customer and 1000 of their closest friends. 

In a book[1] I read recently, the authors described social influence as “sort of like democracy coming to a country that has only known a dictatorship.” I honestly cannot imagine a more apt description of social media’s influence on customer experience, or its potential impacts (good and bad) on those who choose to embrace or ignore it.

What is interesting is that despite all the talk about customer experience now, and customer service in the past you still don’t need to look very hard to find companies that don’t seem to get it.  While we all go on and on about the possible benefits or risks associated with AI, machine learning, RPA, and predictive analytics to mine and make sense of social media content you can still find companies that can’t figure out who you are based on the number you’re calling from – even if you’ve done business with them for years using the same phone number.  Still others know who the customer is but choose to do nothing with that information. 

I’ve compiled some quick examples below just from the last few months of my customer service experiences with companies I do business with personally.

Major Hotel Chain

Overall experience with the brand: Very good

Time with Brand: over 25 years, the last 19 I’ve used them almost exclusively

Personal Brand Loyalty: Neutral

Issue:  I travel a lot as most of us do.  I have the brand’s top-tier rewards status and have for a very long time.  Due to the nature of our projects, I routinely stay at the same properties for months on end. Returning every week, or every other week for another 4-5 night stay.  With the exception of one property, the front desk never seems to have any idea that I was just at the hotel last week or the week before, let alone that I’ve stayed there 100 nights over the course of the last 2 years.  They give me a bottle of water and bag of cookies upon arrival and thank me for my loyalty but then go into the script about where breakfast is served, where the gym is, etc.

I have never quite understood why the company would put in so much [good] effort into making the experience on the website, over the phone, on their mobile app and everywhere else excellent and then choose to drop the ball like this on the 1-yard line. 

Like many business travelers, I take it for granted that I’ll be able to book a room wherever I go, whenever I want to and the process will be painless.

What I notice as a long-standing customer is how I’m treated when I arrive and stay at a property.

Satellite TV Provider

Overall experience: To say it was terrible, would be an understatement.

Time with Brand: slightly less than two months

Personal Brand Loyalty: Does not apply

Issues: I could probably write a book, but in the interest of time, I’ll skip to the final interactions. I had problems with the service sporadically from the first week it was installed. About four weeks into the contract, the unit in my bedroom began to shut down randomly. After a few days of this (and several calls and visits to online support), it stopped working altogether. I called the company and eventually got routed to support, and they arranged to send a tech out to fix the box.  A couple of days later, the tech arrives on-schedule and “replaces” the unit. I had reset the unit multiple times using self-service on their support page and knew the unit’s serial number by heart at this point. Later the same evening that the tech was on-site, the unit died again. I flip it over, and it turns out it’s the same unit. The tech came to the house, spent 30 minutes “swapping the unit” out, and it turns out he didn’t do what he claimed at all.

At this point, I was more than a little upset and resolved to call them the first thing the next morning. I spent about 15-18 minutes on-hold which, was not unusual at all in my experience with the company. However, what made it intolerable is that while I was on-hold, they kept playing queue messages telling me my place in-queue and approximate wait time. At no point was the wait time provided estimated to be more than 10 minutes, sometimes it was a little as “less than 2 minutes”.  The issue, however, was that it kept changing – while I was in-queue.  It literally would go from next call to be answered and an estimated 2-minute wait-time to as high as 3rd or 4th in-queue and a 10-minute wait-time.  At about the 18-minute mark, I got on my computer and found that they had chat support available. I was still on the call and in-queue when I initiated the chat with a support agent and had it on speaker-phone at my desk. The chat agent was available in less than a minute which was great but had no idea that I was in-queue at the same time and worse, had no idea that I’d called at least four times in the last week; or that I had a technician on-site the day before.

The agent was polite, but his first suggestion was to pay them an additional $19.95 for a new unit. My blood pressure was about 30 points higher than usual at this stage, but I politely let him know that  I wasn’t interested in paying more to get the service I was already paying for to work. His next suggestion was to pay for an equipment insurance plan.  That way I could have any piece of equipment replaced at any time when it didn’t work.  At this point, I was still on hold, and it was pretty clear that things were only going to go downhill from here, so I just told the agent to cancel my service altogether. I wound up having to pay over $450.00 on top of what I’d already paid for installation, and service for the first two months to cancel. In my opinion,  it was $450 well-spent. Much cheaper than a visit to the cardiologist which would have been my next stop if I had to deal with this level of customer service again.

Seemingly to add insult to injury, during the chat conversation, the agent told me that they would send me a box with return labels included for all the equipment and that I should keep an eye out for it.  For reference, this was the first week of May 2018.  14-days later, I still had not received the box, so I very reluctantly called back. This time, I was informed quite curtly that the company stopped offering its “equipment recovery service” in January of this year.  I explained that not only had the agent told me to wait for the recovery kit; I had an email from the company informing me that the package was on the way. I was told quite rudely that this was a mistake and that I’d needed to return the units to a UPS location or I would be charged for them.

There are many issues here to unpack but suffice to say; this company does not care a great deal about the customer experience it provides to its customers. Even though they operate in a very competitive and crowded market.  I hate saying that of course but what other conclusions could you possibly come to. I really believe that they assume that their excessive cancellation charges will keep customers from leaving, but I’d be willing to bet that some pretty straightforward data analysis would prove that assumption to be entirely wrong.

National Wireless Carrier

Overall experience with Brand: Good

Time with Brand: Since 1997

Perception of Brand: Neutral

Issues: I’ve been with my carrier for quite some time, and overall, it’s been a very positive experience.  I genuinely believe (and routinely test) that they have the best coverage for both voice and data. The costs are very high, but in my opinion, you get what you pay for in this case. The good news for them is that I rarely have any reason to contact them. My billing is fine, my service is fine, and I rarely have issues with my phones.

When there is an issue, however, things get interesting rather quickly. I began noticing some time ago that my text messages were being delayed randomly.  Sometimes they’d be delayed by an hour or two, other times by up to 8 or more hours.  Before calling them about it, I decided to check the issue online.  In just a few minutes using google, I found that the issue had in fact been reported by others.  The reports went back at least as far as 2010.  The interesting part was that their response to the problem going back to 2010 when customers’ first reported it, was identical. By identical, I mean the same wording and phrases, questions asked to help resolve the issue, etc.  Worse still, they were the same on follow up questions as well, in most cases, it didn’t even matter how the customer responded to the original question.  I fully understand that there can be many variables driving cell phone issues but even given that, it seemed clear that in the 15-20 minutes I researched the issue and more specifically the customers answers and the carriers responses, that this was not a WiFi versus cell network problem, or an issue related to a specific device type, or even a setting (at least not one the customer had access to).  Yet, these were the exact questions the carrier was asking customers reporting the issue over and over, for 8+ years running.

I have no idea if this is an automated response or a template used by a human agent but after eight years, you’d think that if the company can’t fix the problem, maybe it would be best to tell the customers that they’re aware of it and are trying to resolve it. The current approach only serves to irritate the customer further. I say this because I never did find a customer inquiry that was solved. The conversations all just stopped at some point. My guess is that happens at about the point that customers’ realize the carrier’s response to this was pretty much a waste of their time.

It has been fairly well-documented that millennials and all of the generations that have come since are very much inclined to get online and try to resolve issues on their own rather than picking up a phone. When you google a problem like this and see the results laid out as Google does in its search returns, it becomes pretty apparent very quickly how a vendor is responding to support request on a given item.  It looks terrible when there are multiple inquiries related to a given issue and no resolutions spanning years. Worse, when you click into one or two of them and see that their awareness of the problem has not evolved.

So, What’s the Point

I did not mention the above to shed light on these companies’ deficiency; I did it to make a point.  Customer Experience, or more specifically, providing an on-going positive customer experience is driven by more than how many channels you offer a customer, or how useful your website is. It even transcends how great your product or service might be to own or use.

Customers’ experience of your company’s brand is driven by the totality of their experiences with your company. If I have a great experience booking a vacation and then arrive to find that my room isn’t ready, or the amenities I was promised aren’t as expected, my experience is going to be poor no matter how easy it was to book. In my case, I have been with two of the three companies mentioned for an incredibly long time but in both cases, all it would take is a single positive experience with one of their competitors and that long relationship would end.

Consider the hotel chain for instance. The one property that I mentioned as the exception is one in Manhattan. By the end of my very first stay at the property, the staff at the front desk and even the doorman knew me by name.  I returned two weeks after my first visit, and they greeted me as I came in the door, by name. Similarly, the manager of the hotel often emails me after a stay to ask if everything was okay with my stay and reminds me that I am welcome to call him directly on upcoming visits if there is anything I need while I’m there.

That is customer service, and that is what drives a positive customer experience. Even if I never stayed at another hotel in the chain in the future, you can be sure that I will still stay at that property when I visit New York.

By extension, imagine if the hotel did make an effort to enable their staff to see a guest’s previous visits.  Not only could they welcome guests correctly, they would also have the ability to start using that information in other useful ways such as using predictive analytics to determine when I am most likely to arrive so that they could have my room ready for me.  They could know that I am a business traveler when I stay at one of their vacation properties and don’t want to be called every visit with an offer to have a family portrait taken during my visit. They would know that not only do I like a high floor which I can mark in my profile, but I also prefer a quiet corner room and anything but a pool view, so I didn’t have to request these every time. The possibilities are endless but more importantly, even if those were never implemented, merely showing that you know “who” the customer is, would be a significant improvement.

For the satellite provider, having more channels to reach them is excellent as a customer. However, if they are not able to track and provide to the agent a history of interactions with the customer when they contact the company through one of those channels, all they’re doing is increasing the number of channels through which they can irritate and eventually lose customers. When we consult with customers that are interested in implementing a multi or omni-channel solution as part of their overall customer experience improvements, one of the first things we do is check out the channels they already have and how well they are used to support effective customer service. 

There is value in taking a step back and considering a pragmatic approach to customer experience management.  Yes, companies need to be in a position to pursue omni-channel communications in their contact centers. They need to be in a position to pursue chatbots and all manner of AI in their contact centers and elsewhere. However, before a company can do any of those things effectively, they need to instill in their organization the core principles of effective customer service.  Before any organization can succeed in omni-channel, let alone social media engagement, it must have the ability to consistently utilize the channels already in place to deliver customer service efficiently. I am in no way advocating not pursuing new technology or related capabilities. However, the reality is that if an organization does not have a clear and unyielding focus on providing excellent customer service, implementing a new piece of technology is not going to fix the problem. 

In fact, it is far more likely to make matters worse by diluting the focus of essential business and technical resources that might be better utilized building a strong foundation on which to grow.

Establishing a framework to deliver positive Customer Experiences consistently

The question then is how to know if you’re organization is ready to take the next step in customer experience management.  I believe that the steps outlined below are an excellent place to start.

1. Executive engagement – If you’re an executive in a company, regardless of whether or not you have direct responsibility for contact center operations, spend as much time as possible in the company’s contact center(s). You can hop in a car or on a plane to visit customers face-to-face, but in terms of the sheer volume and diversity of interactions you can observe, there is no better place to start than the contact center.
   1. Also, the larger a company is, the harder it is to gain either consensus or traction on new initiatives (like improving customer experience). Having hands-on executive involvement is an excellent way of encouraging team members to work together, find solutions, and ensure that those solutions are driven forward.
   2. Executive engagement should be on-going, not a one-time or sporadic activity if your company truly values the customer experience it provides to its customers. When senior executives are routinely present in and around the contact center, it sends an unambiguous message to everyone that customer experience matters.
2. Find out if the organization has a Customer Experience strategy. If it doesn’t, the question of where to start has been answered. If it does, ask for a copy of it and check the following;
   1. Is there an actual document that describes the CX strategy?
   2. Are there associated goals and promises that the company makes to customers that are directly tied to the strategy; ensuring that it is tangible and measurable?
   3. Speaking of measurement, what metrics have been defined for the strategy so that the organization can measure results. How are the metrics defined, where and how are they measured, and who is responsible for disseminating the results to key stakeholders (the “stakeholders” here should be just about everyone).
3. Through observation of both processes and metrics, how well aligned are the operations of the business, the defined CX strategy, the company’s brand, and the actual needs and expectations of your customers?
   1. If all are in tight alignment, you are a customer-centric organization. If not, the first step should be to start looking at the company and its offerings from your customers’ perspectives to understand where alignment has been lost.
   2. Take a look on indeed.com, glassdoor.com, or other sites to see what current and former employees think about the company’s culture and management. Similarly, if your company provides consumer products or services, search for it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites to see what the broader public has to say.
   3. Look for broad and consistent trends in the reviews and see how well these line up with your personal perceptions and those of your management teams. A significant mismatch here could warrant a deeper and more introspective look at the organization overall.
4. Perhaps most importantly, engage frequently and openly with management and staff across the enterprise and particularly in the contact center(s). Deploy mechanisms to encourage, support, and act on feedback within the organization if they do not already exist. If these mechanisms exist but are under-utilized, they probably need to be emphasized more within the organization. Employees on the front-lines are generally very aware of how customers perceive the products and services a company offers

Alternatively, you could contact us. 

Our CX Design services can ensure that your CX strategy is well aligned with your CX goals and desired brand experience. We will also ensure that your CX strategy can be or has been operationalized in a manner that ensures that it can be measured and managed.

Our Contact Center Design and Optimization services will allow your organization to understand where it is today and will serve to ensure that you are building out any new CX capabilities on a solid and stable foundation that fully supports you CX vision rather than impeding it. 

Our Customer Journey Analytics services will help your company understand, monitor and even interact with customers to ensure that their real journeys are smooth and positive. We will enable predictive modeling of those journeys to identify and direct customers around obstacles before they encounter them.

Finally, our Channel Monitoring & Optimization services will enable your organization to ensure full testing of all channels before they are “released into the wild” while also enabling monitoring of those channels to detect errors or other problems in production. This helps to ensure that your operations teams are aware of issues well before your customers are.

[1] Smart Customers, Stupid Companies: Why Only Intelligent Companies Will Thrive, and How To Be One of Them Paperback– April 17, 2012 by Michael Hinshaw  (Author), Bruce Kasanoff  (Author)