Knowledge Management and Service!

Without a robust knowledge management practice in place, customer/seller/merchant/client, or just about any other kind of quality support is impossible to augment. Customer experience and quality of support get spoken about a lot, but rarely would you come across 'knowledge management' getting the same attention, as a topic. Modern-day organisations are immensely complex, inherently multidimensional, and almost always non-linear, given that it is humanly impossible for 99% of the staff to commit details of products, outlines of policies and intricacies of the processes, to memory and therefore a knowledge repository is both essential and vital to support, the queries/requests and complaints that customers might bring to the notice of the brand for redressal.

The knowledge management practice of an organisation is much more than a stockpile of information though. It needs to be, as they say, 'smart', 'contextual', 'wholesome' and 'relevant' because more than customers being in a hurry the organisations of our times are hard-pressed to be painfully efficient. They wish to squeeze every second spent on customer support, more than a few times. So if you do not have a consummate assistant in form of a robust knowledge management practice in commission, you would invariably and uncontrollably commit one of these errors more often than you'd like or your customers would permit.

• Taking too long to respond - causing dissatisfied customers.
• Dishing out wrong information - Helps neither the customer nor the brand.
• Spilling incomplete or no information at all - no prizes for guessing what it does to cause of experience.

What are the building blocks of a good knowledge management practice, then? In my view, it should essentially have these three elements.

• A digital platform, the market is rife with knowledge management products. All of them claim to be unique and better than the rest, the fact is that all of them piggyback on one another. A feature gets copied/stolen (pick the term you like) quicker than you would read this post. All platforms are the same, to the extent of 70% to 80%. Don't worry too much, you won't be wrong in picking any off the shelf running product, look for a good organisation backing it. If you have an industrious team you can develop an awesome and fully functional repository all by yourself too, on platforms like Notion, Google site, even WordPress.
• Dynamic, Intelligent and near real-time, linking of the knowledge repository to 'top call drivers' and 'skill level index' of the front line agent - makes the platform intelligent. The idea is to spend as little time as needed in finding the information that is to be given out and that the information should be presented in as legible as short and as simple a form as the frontline staff would like.
• Content management strategy must be in place. Without correct content input, the smartest platform won't be of any use. You need to make sure that the information on the portal is updated, correct and complete; at all times. Put in place a robust audit mechanism.

If you can get these three blocks right, not only will you have improved the quality of conversation between the corporation and the customer but also created data sets that can be used to better training efforts, finding out what kind of articles are being referred to the most etc. You can then also build features like quizzes to gauge understanding of the staff, co-creation of content and support logging; the sky is the limit really. You can get as creative with the use of the date as your thought would allow.

Remember in ways more than one, the quality of knowledge management practice determines the richness of support.

Go review your systems and make changes, if needed.

Good luck.

Service Design for B2B customers.

We discussed the intricacies of B2C service design in the last essay, thank you indeed for receiving it so well - it was read 11K times in the last week, a number I am appeased with. I have been getting request emails since to address the same topic for the B2B (business to business) universe. So here I'm .. your wish is my command.

Let me begin this by posing a question for you.

Who buys a Rolex to see time?

The right answer for a vast majority of people who can't afford the watch is likely to be: No one.

The right answer for those who buy a Rolex to go with their Rolls Royce is likely to be: Well, I do. It is a fine timepiece.

Somewhere between these two different islands lies the water in which the dolphins of the B2B universe come to play. The popular view on service is that it naturally applies to B2C engagements better. Well, that is because it is an easier frame for people to imagine: a corporation serving a customer. If you think (deep thought) you would understand that there can't be a B2C without a B2B. Let me take an example of the ITES industry (as it puts food on my table, currently). For a BPO A to serve the end consumer of brand B, it is important that it serves Brand B well first because a disgruntled brand B, will cause the relationship to end abruptly, leaving no room for the end customer to be served.

The goal of both efforts (B2C and B2B Service Design) is the same.

Increasing comfort and convenience and reducing effort, thereby making the experience pleasant. It is vital to note here that, unlike a B2C arrangement in which the customer more often than not has limited resources and time to invest in changing supplier, in the B2B engagement it is literally someone's job to see if a relationship is serving the business interests. Someone assessing you 8 hours a day every day. 

Needless to say, you gotta deliver better.

So in the equation of service design with the core delivery and economic imperative, a whole lot of other considerations make entry too, listing a few here:

• The search, who can provide the same level of service cheaper?
  • Is there a provider who would provide better service for the same price?
• How do they (service provider) operate as an organisation, does it inspire confidence?
• Do I dislike the person, I interact with in the service provider organisation?
• Can changing this partner add to my equity within my organisation?
• By supporting them (service providers) will I be seen colluding with them?
• They don't pay me, I am paid by my organisation so I should make sure in the face of a conflict the one who pays for the invoice wins, which is my employer.

How does one deal with these complexities and come out as a winner, is the question?

Covid has not particularly helped the situation get any better.

The key to winning is to know your customer well and give them reasons beyond financial fitment to remain in a business relationship with you. The follow-up question is how do we do it?

It is important for us to find a way to meditate on below three aspects, with an extreme sense of urgency.

1. Are we giving enough reasons for the B2B clients to continue doing business with us in these stressed times? If so, what are those: quantified.
2. How is specific work that we execute on behalf of our client projected to be in short term (0-90days)?
3. How strongly are the clients placed to continue in their operation and in relationship with us?

Extended lockdowns and weak productivity have substantially reduced the goodwill of efforts put in to ensure business continuity.  The toil of making the computing infrastructure, software platform and the employee (though in a reduced capacity) available for operation, is when scrutinised with objectivity, comes out to be an effort guided to secure self-sustenance of the service provider: self-preservation. You see if a service provider doesn't work, they go belly up. Therefore continuity can’t be seen or quoted as a differentiator.

A framework to provide the service providers with a basis for initiation of measured and informed action to meet the below objectives is needed.

1. Secure short-term and medium-term fiscal interest.
2. Create authentic short and medium-term projections.
3. Categorise risk exposure on the clients.
4. Evolve solution offering so that it remains relevant in the changing landscape of business and related operation.
5. Create exit plans on high-risk relations and adjust the cost accordingly.
6. Make investments in areas that are to remain positive.

There are four structural elements in the framework that I would like to put forth. The service provider should collect qualitative data/intel from their B2B clients on these.

1. Who is your customer/client?
2. What is the client busy with these days?
3. How are they planning to engage with their end customers?
4. What experience principle are they contemplating at the moment?

Let's explain these building blocks.

Who is your customer/clients?

The objective is to create personas for the clients so that we better understand the nature of our clients and the ways in which they are coping up with the turbulences of their business. In our qualitative input collection, we have to ensure the below.

1. Contextual research to develop a deep understanding of the client.
   1. What is the need of the client business in the current times, from us and from their paying customers?
   2. What actions are they taking to secure their needs?
2. What is the symbolic image of the service provider in the minds of the clients?
   1. Do they view us as key strategic partners?
   2. Do we have a role to play in restoring normalcy at their end?
   3. Is the crisis helping us upgrade our standing in their assessments?
3. Who are the other partners that they are doing business with?
   1. What is going to be the impact on those relationships?

What are the clients busy with, these days? 

The Pandemic has brought about a change in the routine and expenditure of all organisations. While some spending is still being done a lot of the cash outflow has been wilfully stopped or greatly restricted. From a set of activities that are being performed, when we collect the subjective input, we can determine the below.

1. Perspective.
   1. What have they gone through?
      1. What are they doing about it?
2. Dreaming.
   1. Which are the areas in which they have placed their aspirations into?
3. Planning
   1. What has been their business continuity plan at an org level?
   2. What does the restoration look like?
4. Purchase.
   1. Have they made a significant purchase recently at an org level?
      1. Acquisition?
      2. Major investments?
5. Experience.
   1. What steps have they taken to shape the experience of the below important stakeholders in their business, in this crisis?
      1. End customer.
      2. Employees.
      3. Vendors.
6. Review/ Sharing.
   1. What kind of public perception are they trying to build for themselves through the interactions that they have with their end customers?

How are they planning to engage with their end customers?

1. Value creation happens at the point of interaction between the brand and the customers. In the knowledge of this principle, we need to start becoming present in the medium in which they are willing to conduct these exchanges.
   1. Mobile Application: What is the thrust of the change? Learn and adjust.
   2. Website: How is the website changing? What is it trying to become?
   3. Physical visits: What is the message that the brand is sending out? From the promises that they are making will emerge your business opportunity.

What 'experience principle' are they contemplating on?

Organisations within all the limitations of the market and their own cash flow constraints will have to return to full-scale operation assisted either by fresh capital infusion by means of borrowing or other methods like sale of equity for additional capital, etc. When they do so they will need to devise a strategy for functioning wrt.

1. Value preservation
2. Growth within the segment
3. Expansion
4. Diversification

We need to understand which way are they going so that we adjust our collective post-COVID plans accordingly.

1. Exploration based.
   1. Are they planning to venture into new market segments geographically, demographically or in-class/price segment?
   2. Communal.
      1. Are they planning to milk the existing customer base to cross and upsell other service offerings?
   3. Hospitable.
      1. Are they planning on parting with some portion of their revenue to re-kindle loyalties within their customers?
   4. Local.
      1. Are they expected to get local or hyper-local? Is contraction their game plan?

Who in our (service providers organisation) should do it?

1. These strategic inputs have to be collected at an operational level. Therefore, the deep links within the client ecosystem should be put to use.
2. Sales and Operation leads are required to conduct this exercise for all the active customers/clients.
3. These have to be collected somewhat covertly, I do not need to tell you why.
4. A very high degree of integrity and sincerity will have to be displayed in conducting this exercise. Actively fight with the natural push of applying +ve bias to input.
5. A +ve report if it eventually meets with the -ve outcome; the world will know that in the exercise we lost objectivity and as a result added overheads.
6. Absolute confidentiality should be maintained in this task therefore delegation of work is not to be done.

If we succeed in conducting this exercise well, we will have all the inputs needed to base our service design on. To know what are the elements of service design, read the article published last week.

(Link to the article: https://www.lavkush.co.in/2021/06/service-design-for-indian-customer.html )

I must however point out that the distinction between a B2C and B2B is stark. In a B2C endeavour, we devise and design for groups of customers but in B2B set up we design for each customer separately. Personalisation pays better dividends in B2B.

At the cost of repetition, let me say: there is no B2C without B2B.

At all times keep your B2B clients updated on both your intentions and tangible actions that you are taking and are planning to take to make their run pleasant with you.

Go design!!

Most importantly, do get vaccinated and take very good care of yourself.

Service design for Indian consumers!

 Plain sight is almost always anything but plain.

“If you happen to be wearing red glasses then red flags do not appear RED!”, said a wise man, nearly a decade ago. (Trivia, find out who said it)

The point of invoking this is to say that ‘knowing’ the way things are, is not a naturally occurring phenomenon or even a process. Knowing is a deliberate act. Many a time we get separated from reality by our own biases, beliefs and past experiences. We unknowingly often miss and sometimes even misread the signals present right in front of our eyes. Neither youthful exuberance nor arrogant assertion helps us reset the view as well as failure does. The failure, which comes out of the ‘I know it all" attitude.

Enquiries guided at gaining knowledge about a subject, thing, concept, group of people or a set of circumstance can’t begin until the bearer accepts that those are things that he does not know well enough. Efforts invested in the discovery of knowledge enrich our understanding and from following our resolve, we gain strength. Whilst, many agree that these fundamental principles apply to most walks and disciplines of life, many take these to be especially applicable in the context of customer service. We intend to expand on the very theory today.

‘20 years ago, the act of answering a customer on the phone within 5 minutes of wait time (The time between customer latching on the helpline number and a representative answering the call.) and then an assurance to remedy the issue in 10 business days would have been considered the gold standard of service. Contrast that with what might be categorised as supreme service today.

Do you realise the point that I am trying to make? You might expect me to ride on the wave of technological advancement, to surf around Omnichannel discussion and to throw in the mix axiom like ‘retaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one’ etc. But I won’t do that. Instead, I would like to focus on the nature of the beast we call the great Indian customer. A group, all of us are a part of.

I would like to put stress on, knowing the customer, beyond the categories that are populated in a spreadsheet based on usage, age on the network, net worth and other transactional markers but by a more fundamental predisposition - the consumer behaviour, as a subset of human behaviour. And to make it work understanding the motivations and the nature of the customer is perhaps the most important thing to get right. While no form of generalisation can ever capture the true sense of the various types of customers that a brand can expect to find in a continent-size country, India. Some categorisation will have to be agreed upon for ease of this discussion.

From the collective expression of behaviour around buying we can safely take these four characteristics out.

1. India is a time rich and resource-poor country.
2. Trust deficit runs really deep in the country.
3. Typecasting customers one way or the other is not the wisest thing to do because the same person behaves differently in different contexts.
4. Offline purchase is still huge in the country.

Let’s go over them, one by one, in some detail.

Time rich and resource-poor country

• On per capita income India ranks 33rd and 2nd on population - I hope you get the point. We have too many people with too little wealth.
• To understand it a little better, remember last time you were in a mall, you saw way too many people just loitering around without making any purchase? We’re so good at ‘Window shopping’ that if it were a category in the Olympics we would have bagged gold every single time. According to a survey for every one person making a purchase as many as 6 are present in the shop who do not buy.
• We’re a country in which people wait in queues to avail small discounts, drive kilometres to attend the sale of grocery. Buying the product that we want at the cheapest price is an art that this country has perfected.
• India is among the most discount spammed countries in the world because, here merely mentioning the word, ‘discount’, ‘off’ or ‘free’ will get you eyeballs.

So when you are deciding your service strategy keep that in mind. Well, this does not mean that because Indians are not short on time, one can make them wait. Making a customer wait is one of the stupidest things to even think about, must be avoided at all costs. The reason for mentioning it here was to make you aware of the motivation and the driving force behind a customer making a choice in the country.

Lack of trust is deep.

• Do you wonder why most advertisements/Commercials in India do not talk about the product at all, but how the product will elevate the ‘prestige’ of the buyer? Ads highlighting feature of a product is as rare as finding sense, news or even a true fact on Republic TV.
  • Advertisement for wall paint - Does not speak about how good the paint is, but how the pain will make the neighbours jealous and the passers-by take a note of the house.
  • Jewellery ads - Speaks about strengthening domestic relations more (women bonding, couples coming closer ) and less about the core quality of the precious metal or its design prowess.
• This sounds too good, ‘what is the catch’? Don’t we hear it way too often? It is just hard for someone born and brought up in India to naturally trust something, without doing their own set of due diligence. Indian people are not bad, we are just poor. Lack of resources has been found to be indirectly proportional to the sense of trust.

To overcome this just do something nice and honest without any hidden terms or leading exercise for the customer and chances are that they will never forget you.

Do not typecast customers.

• Any given customer in India exhibits different traits when they are shopping for these segments.
  • Shopping for self.
  • Shopping for a life partner.
  • Shopping for children.
  • Shopping for parents.
  • Shopping for social events.
  • Shopping for professional ground in social events.
• The shopper may skimp on things that they purchase for themselves but when they do so for their kids, and their parents, they behave differently. They are willing to go right at the top of their buying capability. When you estimate buying capacity of the Indian customer, think about these dynamics.

So the thing to do is not just looking at the behaviour but also the contests in which the purchase is being done, or a service is being requested for.

Most of the country is still offline.

• PVR published some of these numbers a year and a half ago.
  • Nearly 54% of all its booking still happen over the counter.
  • 84% of these bookings happen 30 minutes before the showtime.
    • Corroborate this with the earlier example of people loitering around in the shopping complex that we spoke about. They form their audiences, mainly.

What this tells us is that even at the urban centres, where PVRs are, more than half of their purchases are offline and that too highly driven by impulse, so when you’re trying to solve a problem do not get blinded into believing that everyone behaves as you do, take this movie viewing example, as a marker of difference. Having said that, it is absolutely ok, should you want to only focus on those who book from an application and then land at the show.

In light of these facts, we can think about including these in our service design.

Be on the display

• The customers will need to get a real feel of what is it that you offer up and close before they choose to trust you with their money; so try and be as available and be so comprehensively as possible. The customer should see you as an approachable brand, aspirational and yet attainable. Meet the customer wherever they are.
• Brand communication should not alienate any section of society.
• Let people know that you're there to serve them all.

Transparency

• A trust deficient country can be won over by transparency. Organise yourself in a manner that there remains nothing to be found by an over-enthusiastic customer whose life mission is to find out what you may have hidden.
• Keep no hidden clause.
• Bring in the open, everything that is there to be offered.
• In making schemes/offers sound incredible and unbelievably amazing do not hide the portion of reality from the communication that could take the lustre away from your message. If there are such facts, know that your offer is not good for your long term business interest.
• When you do make a boo boo accept it and say sorry unconditionally. Do not defend or deflect.
• Be out there for your customers and when you do walk the extra mile, do so without expecting the customer to do something in return, for it. Customer effort has to be minimised, at all cost.
• Just be nice, without a reason.

Personalisation is vital.

• Knowing, ‘what’ is probably not going to be enough. You need to know ‘why’ and ‘for who’ so that you can make the essence of the brand response be an informed one, one that is addressing the context too and not just the content of the request that the customer is making.
• Knowing the customer and his motivations in some detail will help you establish a special kind of bond with the customer, one which outlasts any other shortcoming that you might have in your proposition/offer. To know more is to serve better.
• Let the customer know that you care for the ‘reason’ for which they make the choices that they do. Let them know that you are with them in their decision totally and completely. Make sure that you through your actions make it clear that the brand stands right alongside the customer, in this and in every other endeavour.

Diversity is cool.

• Being present every step up the way and in every shape imaginable, way and form in which your customer expects you to be, is the real way to create the base from which your batch of brand loyalist will emerge.
• Do not think, that you know any segment well enough, keep exploring.
• Keep re-validating your stance. Data based decision making is key.
• The offline or less savvy customers would also be willing to pay you just as conveniently as the customer who is ready to reach you on a web platform. If you decide to provide the offline customer with just as much care as you display for the one who plays on the app. Do not differentiate between customers.

Most importantly, be on your guard from - ‘I know, what the customer wants’ syndrome.

“We know how the customers feel, what they need, want and desire, because we have been in the industry for so many years”; Whenever you come even close to this sentiment know what you’re about to make is an error of judgment, quickly take a step back and think again. Ask for more evidence, data, instances to revalidate, your prior knowledge.

In this ever-changing world, the customer is not static, either.

In your service design, you’ll need to be inclusive, understanding, compassionate and above all empathetic.

Go make this a memorable day for your customer!

Good luck and goodbye!

From service to “Customer Experience” !

Hi People, 

How have you been? Thanks for your time and suggestions on the last article .. I appreciate every minute that you spend on my blog and deeply care for the suggestions and recommendations that you make. Many of you have requested that I keep the customer experience series going. Your wish is my command, in every sense of the expression. This is the fourth one that we are doing today, together as always. I shall link the other three at the end of this blog, to save you time and effort of finding it, in case you happen to be one who is reading this articles as the first one from the series. Well, then let’s get started!

Customer service for the future; is what we shall explore today. BTW, do we still just use customer ‘service’? Service is undeniably critical but, if I may say so, has outlived its utility. Service alone isn’t exciting anymore, so much so that excellent customer service practices of yesterday has become “hygiene” for operation today & are listed in the bucket labeled “bare minimum” in the minds of the customers. The customer is that one person or group that keep us going .. that is where the payment for all that we offer comes from ... therefore imp, isn’t it?

The transformation that we are going thru is rapid, every sphere of life is undergoing massive modification as we speak. We do not do things the way we used to let's say a decade ago. In very little time .. a lot has changed and perhaps forever. How many of us write letters now? Do you even recall walking to a bank branch for withdrawing cash or even making a deposit? The favorite bookstore for most of us is no longer crosswords but Flipkart.com / amazon.com - not to say that we do not like stores but we prefer shopping from our homes more. Fundamentally, things have changed, instead of us reaching the goods/services, the goods /services travel to reach us and on that organization compete .. who reaches faster .. fresher .. fuller etc. Take a look at the humble Pizza, '30 minutes delivery or free' has become more imp than the pizza itself, at least from the narrative that is being built. A whole lot of organizations, some close to a billion dollars have come into being, aggregating stuff .. Ola, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy; you name it - ridding on this wind of change.

The moot point that I’m trying to make here is that; the wind of change is not just blowing but is sweeping everything that is coming in its way and it is all for the good - I can say this today, not sure how will it be seen a decade from now. When we have all depleted natural resources greatly to fuel our outrageous ambitions; but then we must leave that discussion for some other time ( do hit me on my email if you’d like to hear the environmentalist, that I hide inside me, glaring about the changes that I see).  Considerable change in customer expectations is putting a tough challenge to the organization to manage, meet and exceed what is to be delivered to the customer, day in and day out.  

Before we get into specifics let’s just get the definition out of the way.

When you fix a problem that the customer has reported and done it promptly, polity and in a manner that makes the customer feel safe, it can easily be called service. Customer experience, however, is a different ball game it is not only about reactive care/support but also all the proactive measures that you take to ensure that customers do not go thru any of this ever on your platform. In one of my articles, I’ve argued that a set up that minimizes or better yet completely eliminates the need for customer service is the best firm for customer service. Attaining that is not easy, it would mean every nut and bolt of the organization is tightened and enough that before something reaches the customer it is 100% complete, and what follows it is a series of customer education; one that brings the customer up to speed. There the level of customer education is elevated … to the standard of advisory!! You need to make sure that you advise your customers on matters that matter to him, and the quality of advisory is so good that they become dependent on you. More like a dictionary .. when you do not know a word .. that is the only solution that you have .. you consume it on the web or flip physical pages .. .it is dictionary service that gets you to the meaning. That is what is needed for brands to create dictionary grade accuracy and reality and recognition.

What is also abundantly clear is that incremental enhancements to do with reducing cost can no longer be passed to the customers as a gesture of service, let alone, experience. You can no longer shut the telephone line and say that we are doing so because we care for our customers, phone in our view is an intrusive method so we decided to go all and ‘only’ digital. Your customer will read right thru it and know that you are cutting corners to grow your balance sheets fatter at the cost of customer experience and they will not miss a beat in choosing your competition over you should there be any offering what in their mind is better customer support. We need to understand that free flow of information is now a reality, customers can read reviews, learn about how others have experienced your brand in a matter of moments - it is all out there available and free! The way we learn about a product or a service, the way we compare and the purchase decision that we make today is supplied with a decent amount of data & research. Impulsive purchases are no longer the largest contributors of growth and certainly not a reason for a repeat purchase. A continued association is only possible if you service your customer well. There is no other way, really. 

It is as simple as this; if you want the customers to remain loyal to you and get you more users you’ll have to invest in their experience, sweat for them to feel the breeze of convenience. If you do not make "customer experience" your priority you will no longer remain your customer’s either. Make the choice, while you still can!

Championing the cause of customer is rather easy if you are a small org or let’s say a single identity; it is that much more difficult if you have a group of companies or an org that is well spread out in vast geographies. But there is a way out and I’m here to present that to you in what I call a customer experience toolkit :) 

It has five elements; much like our universe that is made up of five elements ( air, water, earth, sky, & fire); accordingly to the wisdom of the Vedas ( Veda for some other time). 

Here is the list in no particular order.

1. Create customer centricity organization/Group.
2. Integrate customer touch points 
3. Customer interface based innovation 
4. Sell “service” for revenue  
5. Build high-performance operations.

Let’s get down to each one of them, individually. 

Create customer centricity organization/ Group: Our values are important because they help us to grow and develop. They help us to create the future we want to experience. Every individual and every organization is involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. And purpose singularly should be “customer satisfaction”. You’ve to encourage all your people to think from the customer’s perspective. Everyone has to do it not just customer-facing units. From person working the accounts, the tech guys designing systems, to the IT personal fixing computers to the pantry staff to the security guard, everyone right up till the CEO/MD must make sure that every decision that they make; is made for the customer. I’m not saying make your organization non-profit charity but you have to make it sensitive to what your customers care about .. and that will be a good beginning.

Integrate customer touch points: Synergy gets built when you integrate smartly, you have to integrate your product lines; you can’t be selling one thing from one store and another from some other even if they are related. It is like selling a pen at one store and ink at the other to create a specialization, while it helps your logistics it doesn’t help the customer. The customer would want both the fountain pen and the ink to be available at the same store, placed beside each other. If you are a group that offers multiple products .. you got to integrate similar ones together. This integration will keep your customers from getting confused. After product lines coming together comes Sale and service integration; You can’t deny service at the point of sale, for all practical purposes it is the point of sale that the customer first gets introduced to, you have to make use of that familiarity to make your service outlet coexist with POS. Service where you sell and sell more because of your good service.( that is what Apple does). And then comes the touch point integration; Go omnichannel, make use of customer history and profile information to make your pitch contextual and win the customer over with detail, quality, and speed.

Customer interface based innovation: Organization needs to keep reinventing themselves by shifting their focus to truly reshaping the customer interface as a core driver for new value. Again, technology and service innovation is no longer solely used to enhance productivity and drive down staff costs. You have to be on the latest technology platform and keep your plan for migration into the future techs ready. Deploy state-of-the-art voice recognition systems not only to understand what customers say using natural language but also to detect emotional “vibes” thus making the routing system that delivers the call intuitive and intelligent. In addition to applying channel-specific technology innovations, more companies are leveraging technology to enhance the interplay of channels. Turn the ordinary business of technology troubleshooting into a customer adventure, a game for instance. Classic Web service features include live chats with service agents, moderated communities and forums, employee and user blogs, and product demonstration videos. Two-way interfaces capture customer suggestions and allow service agents to comment or directly follow up. Striking a smart balance between contact automation and human interaction is a key success factor for service organizations.

Sell “service” for revenue: Service is of strategic importance in a market that is crowded with low-cost options, the way for you to gain customer’s attention is by serving them right. A shift in mindset from contact avoidance to active contact management is one of the most fundamental changes in next-generation customer service. Rather than decreasing contact time with the customer to reduce cost, organizations must discover new value by using each contact to generate new consumer insights, build loyalty, and leverage the interaction for cross-selling and up-selling. Make customer- specific recommendations, for example, the system displays products and services already purchased by the customer on the line, automatically proposes new products and services, and simultaneously provides the agent with a script to help pitch those recommendations. This can also be applied to larger groups who have more than one organization. When you make a pitch for one service .. make sure you let your customers also know about some of the other capabilities that your company has to offer. 

Build high-performance operations:  Before we get into explaining why high-performance operations is non-negotiable, let us take a moment to understand how imp it is to keep the workforce meaningfully engaged, highly motivated and goal oriented. An unhappy person can never generate great results.. you have to work towards making sure that you pay right, you pay on time, you give your staff the tools and space needed to perform and above all make them feel needed. Value the person behind the title and it will all start falling into place. You have to, however, make sure that from a design perspective your companies/groups goal is very well distributed towards each function and all employees .. KRA and goal setting is a great tool to apply in this case. Poor service actually drives customers away; in others, inefficient processes are inordinately expensive. Focus primarily on changing or optimizing existing operations—processes, systems, and staff qualifications. Employee motivation is a prerequisite for efficient operations and high-quality service. Set realistic yet ambitious targets and use predictive and predictive analysis to sound early warning alarms and then if it comes to that .. you have to performance manage your people, indiscriminately & dispassionately.

Well, we are done with our toolkit. I do not claim that these are the perfect set or one that will solve all problems but I can with reasonable confidence can say that there is no way it will not work. These come from a mix of my own work experience, reading, and imagination using the former two.

As promised here is the link of the other three articles written for the customer experience series.. 

#1 Customer Experience - It matters!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html

#2 Customer Feedback, should you care? 

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care-enough.html 

#3 Service & Churn!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2018/04/service-churn.html 

See you in the next one .. you have a pleasant Sunday!

Service & Churn!

Agreement on the need to retain customer is easily arrived at, not too many views against this motion is voiced because it is no longer a closely guarded secret that mighty aren’t those who acquire customers at the rate hurricane destroys whatever comes in its way alone but also those who retain a great majority of those who choose to stop by, more like what a humble piece of sponge does to water when they get to date. Companies that become formidable brand force .. do so not solely by their aggressive acquisition drives but by building a solid foundation of loyal customers. Customer who are willing to come back for more!!

Enough has been said and written already to establish that cost of keeping a customer engaged in the long term is almost always lesser than acquiring a new one. I do not mean to paint customer acquisition effort as anything any less important, you need the denominator to gain weight by every passing day to survive, what is truly, an unforgiving and unapologetically so, market. New customer acquisition is key to success because your investors and other stakeholders will beat you to death if you do not beat your projections. A humble product becomes a brand when it has by its side a sea of customers who keep returning to them; take top ten companies in any sector and you will realize that all of them have done a phenomenal job in retaining their bases. You always get to choose which segment you wanna target .. thing here to remember is that same choice is also available with the customer .. in the same price range whom does he or she want to do business with, is up to them.

The real question then is;  what is it that gets the customer to keep making a brand a provider of their choice? If 100 people were asked the reason, at least 95 of them will list below 5 in their top 10 reasons in different order of priority. Here is how I see the sequence.

1. Price 
2. Usefulness/Relevance 
3. Reliability
4. Ease of use 
5. Experience.

If you try to club these further .. you’ll be left with just two broad components.

1. Product construct ( Price and features) 
2. Customer Experience  (Service, value and everything else in between)

Proof of price and validity of usefulness gets answered conclusively by the rate of acquisition. If people are buying you; you have certainly got some bit of it right! Keep looking for ways to optimize and get better but the fact that you’re selling gives you a reason to remain in the business. But always remember what got you here .. won’t get your there ( there being a higher place, in this argument)

Then comes the complex question; how many are you really retaining in the long run? Or simply put why customers who saw value in pursuing you initially, have pushed you out of their lives, eventually? What went wrong? With price there is only so much elbow space for you to do things, because you are constrained by viability and innovations, powerful ones, do not spring like mushrooms after rain, every day, sadly, if it did you could broaden the horizon. The other part, however, which is ‘customer experience’ is limitless - You get to play the part you choose in the theatre of service. This mind you, is not as much about throwing money at the problem as much as it is about applying thought and building solutions. Here you can get as creative as efficient and as smart as you perhaps would want to be. Money makes the world go around and service quality is not an exception to that rule; budget may limit you to remain minimal. Which is why in my view you can pick these three elements to make a difference. (I'm no expert at this .. I'm learning the trick of the trade)  

Education - You need to understand that what is simple and intuitive in your assessment may appear complex and limiting in your customer’s worldview. Users will always think differently about your product and services simply because they have not partnered in designing, development, or roll out of your services. There are other things that they do all day long, unlike you. To take your message across you will have to create a map of understanding, one in which the customers has to make little or no effort in getting ahead. Every communication that you make with your customer is an opportunity for you to make your customer more knowledgeable about your product and services. We love what is easy and customers are no different, the day your customer learns your services well enough it will become the reason for them to stick. Let’s take an example .. why do most windows users willingly stick to it despite knowing that a Mac is a better operating system? Familiarity ( price also is) is the reason.. you have to make your users as familiar and friendly with your product as possible.

Service - Moment of truth is when the rubber meets the road. No matter what you conceive how well you think you have executed it .. it will break down every once in a while and when it does you will need people to fix it swiftly on one side and on the other you will need to work with those who are impacted - service recovery! Customer service is not only about sorries or thank you(s) it, as a matter of fact, is also everything else in between. I’ll link two more articles that I have written on customer service here for you to go thru - write-ups clearly defines the design and their significance - DO MAKE TIME FOT IT.

#1 Customer Experience - It matters!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html

#2 Customer Feedback, should you care? 

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care-enough.html 

Close looping - People and organization do not fail in constructing a comprehensive coherent design, what gets missed, more often than not is the fact that different pieces of the puzzle do not come together in time for the storyboard to get complete - for the customer to read effortlessly. Creating a list of sweet adjectives is one thing, calling them ‘values’ is another and upholding them in every task that is undertaken is a different ball game, altogether. If even one activity in your organization places your own interest over your customers .. you aren’t as customer-centric as you claim to be - truth be told. Simplest examples could be: 

1. Lucrative deals that conceal conditions.
2. Keeping revisions from your customers.
3. Benefits that are promised but not processed in time.
4. Choosing to design systems that require ‘lesser effort’ despite every logical argument pointing towards the alternative approach.
5. Counting coins… going back on stated commitments.

Orgs ignore to value their commitments after that coveted purchase has been made by the customer. Litmus test - “Benefits not received” if this thing makes even a portion of your customer feedback - you clearly haven’t done a good job in getting everyone in your organization to understand ‘customer centricity’. People have creative ways of explaining such slippage, they blame it on systems or lack of it, some even have the audacity of pushing ‘was busy’ argument in for such mayhem etc but for all you and I know, it is never about excuses. At the very core it is about that individual or department or organization caring little - just that, nothing more .. nothing less! This is not a situation however that can’t be corrected but it will certainly take the investment of ‘giving up greed ’, not getting 'seduced or sucked into mindless urgency' and building a 'culture that values customers more than everything else' .. even profits in the short term. You will have to learn to wait till you are ready, make arrangements for your workforce to abide by those principles. Play by the rules .. win but always remember that winning fairly is more important. Ends do not justify the means. 

Basically, close looping, in this context, means that you will have zero difference between your thoughts, words, and actions - not an easy thing to attain but whoever has ever got there has remained a darling to their customers. 

On that note... I leave you to think and correct whatever is broken because there is never a better time than NOW to reboot…

Customer Feedback, should you care?

Many of you wanted me to follow my blog : Customer Experience - It matters!

( http://lkstates.blogspot.in/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html )

up with an article on "customer feedback management", so here it is!

The fundamental question;  whether or not your product/services has it, gets answered fairly and squarely in the first few rounds of customer acquisitions. Is your product needed, have you priced it right etc are questions that get thrashed more often than not very thoroughly, given the fact that most mid to small sized organisations work on capital that they raise or invest in the hope of securing rounds of financial assistance in the future and therefore  it is taken fairly seriously. As you become an organisation which is more than a handful of people who you may have handpicked when you started off, it becomes highly important that you lay down processes to structure deliveries, build controls and measure performances of each of the processes to not only identify errors but also make the delivery water tight, weeding out inefficiencies making the process as automated as possible. Basically trying to be future ready!

It’ll be truly wonderful to build a system so neat that it packs every possibility in it and handles every exception well and without a human intervention- Sadly for now, it remains a dream .. perhaps 50 yrs from now with AI gaining grounds, we may get an inch or two closer to that dream. At this point I must be sounding ridiculous to you, let me give you some facts, you’d then get the perspective right. 

Google - Employees more than 3K people here in India to read and categorise content on youtube alone.

Facebook - Has more than 5K people pitching & managing ads to traders.

Microsoft - Employee more than 4K people to neatly tag search results on bing.

There is a reason why smart algorithms are not so smart just as yet! ( They come at a cost .. which you may not be able to afford given other priorities that you'd like to cater to, first)

That being the case, thing about building a sustainable and scalable bussiness as far as making efforts to retain the customer with you goes, it revolves around, these key things, Identify a problem .. establish a cause .. take corrective and preventive actions .. loop it back with customers.

In theory, it looks as insanely simple as cracking a joke or two about Rahul Gandhi or simply getting scared when our PM holds the mic at 8 PM and starts with Mitro!! Real execution can be strangely complex in ways more than one. Reasons range from out of control levers to inability of reading situations or sheerly lacking experience in correcting things as swiftly as needed, sometime you may not have required cash to correct too. 

Where does that then lead the organisation? It starts with rising unpopularity and then ends at minuscule customer repeat buying numbers- that, for all practical purposes, is the end of the food chain. When the rate of customer churn begins to become comparable to customer acquisition pace you should know it's time to ACT else even before you realise the number will keep growing like an elephant’s baby .. couple of hundred kilos in less than a few months.

What is it that you should do then? Well, simply put you gotta put your customers at the very centre of your decision making - another simple sounding philosophy but one hell of a thing to achieve in reality. Even brand like Apple and Google sweat at it more often than not, don’t believe me .. go find a 3.5mm headphone jack either on iPhoneX or Pixel2? Hope you understand what I’m trying to push here? Even if you do not understand — it is ok, that is why I’m writing this one for you ;) ( Sorry for being cheesy .. but it is ok being one, once in a while) 

Here is the thing .. you willingly spend 10% to 15% of your overall expenditure on marketing ( Ok, this number is not sacrosanct .. different companies.. different product and different cash reserves may cause different spend levels but I have seen this number being in close proximity of that range that I’ve spoken about and therefore myopically choosing it to make a case.) What are the prime objectives? Gaining attention, capturing mind-space of the buyers, building a brand, educating customers on the products and its offerings. And of course, all of this is done to win customers - and it helps!

A new customer may get swayed by your swanky ads & outlandish offers . But if you think they will also stay back, just for that - you gotta be kidding! What keeps a customer going on your network is only and only the sum of utility of your product/services and the experiences, nothing else and nothing more.

In “experience” alone lies the key of repeat. You gotta continue doing what is liked by your customer, stop whatever bugs or troubles them and start whatever they may expect you to. But the questions is where do you get the intel from? Can there be such a data source? If yes, what is it that can be done to exploit it? 

Well, two top things come to my mind when I ponder over it.

1 Customer satisfaction survey intel.

2 Customer complaint info. 

There is enough and more reports available to believe that for every one complaint that you get there are 25 poor customer experiences worthy of becoming customer complaint but because people see no value in taking the pain of reporting , they silently move away from the brand - yeah, that is your churn number.

The other source customer satisfaction survey, for every 100 surveys that you’ll throw you’d get anything between 9 to 12% response if it is on email and up to 32% to 47% if it happens to be a hand off between a human interaction and a survey tool, let’s say an IVR.

On this write up, I wish to explore ways and means for you to make the most of your satisfaction surveys .. so you can derive marketing insights from it, sound enough to make you retain customers and because in the whole process you also elevate the quality of your products it also means substantial boost to your acquisition efforts.

Customer satisfaction drive is more than asking a few questions, mind you!!

Here are some things that you may wanna do right at the stage of institutionalising your survey process.

Co-Create the content of your survey - The business, you, and your customers should not have a hard time understanding the question. Simplicity is the key, here. Limit it to as few as possible. 

One to one invitation works - Let the address NOT be generic. You know the profile of your customer, use that information. Make it appear personalised. Your order data or CRM can be intelligently integrated with survey system - spend here.

Progress annotation is imp - If you ask your customer 5 questions, while on the 2nd he should know that he has 3 more to answer and it would take let’s say 4 more secs. Informed customer stays for longer, my experience says.

Explain the intent - Be wise in telling your customer why would you want him to invest those 10 secs in you .. what is in it for him should be stated. If your budget is healthy, give him some useable credit.

Build relation on negative sentiment - Make provisions for instances when you hear an unhappy news from the customer, make him your best friend - resolve his issue at a lightening fast speed. You can actually win the customer.

And once you’ve formulated the whole design, here is what you gotta do to make your organisation take a note of the findings.

All from the book 

Measure customer satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) in financial terms:

This lets the organisation prioritise current threats, to customer retention, positive referrals, and opportunities for improvement, in terms of their potential influence on the financial and strategic outcomes to their business.

Establish a customer experience baseline of satisfaction, loyalty & dissatisfaction:

A customer experience baseline helps you identify the problems that customer currently experience doing business with your organisation and prioritise them for remedial action.

Improve customer-response and complaint-handling skills, processes and systems: 

Customers who make contact looking for help can then be assured of a consistent and effective response and timely problem resolution. An effective response can improve customer loyalty and advocacy.

Increase feedback from customers by making it easier for them to contact you:

This, combined with improved customer response, increases the number of dissatisfied customers your organisation can turn into satisfied customers, reduces your potential negative reputation and increases the amount of data available for preventive analysis.

Establish a formal "Learning from Customers Programme":

Customer experiences can then be monitored on an ongoing basis and recurring failures in service and product quality can be quickly identified and addressed.

Conduct ongoing tracking of customer satisfaction with key processes:

A systematic approach to satisfaction tracking provides the organisation with an effective ongoing management tool to support the management of critical customer experiences.

If you’ve done these right - you’re headed on the right path. Well if not, check your customer (buying) repeat % .. it will shout out for help and perhaps then you’d realise the importance of qualified customer service.

That’s all for now, see you on the other side :)