The building blocks of exceptional customer service!

Building blocks of building customer service from the seminal work - Outside -in paraphrased in my words!

• Service Strategy 
  • Best defined as intended experience, what is the kind of experience that you wish to extend to your users. Is it going to be COSTCO or Apple? Is it going to be an Airtel or LG? It is important to clearly define what is it that you wish to extend to your customers as experience. The strategy, therefore, is an expression of intent more than anything else.
• Understanding of the customer
  • Knowing who your customers are what is it that they want? What their expectations are from the organisation? Understanding customer expectations is only the half job done. What is it that they call good service? Archetypical segregation of customers is a good way to devise a strategy that will fit different kinds of customers that have to be dealt with. The methods that can be deployed range between
    • Solicited feedback and other unsolicited ways.
      • Surveys and using various opportunities to interact with the customers to form an understanding about them.
    • Communicating the findings with the staff is another equally important thing to do as only after they understand what the expectation is, will they be able to deliver on them.
• Service Design
  • Everything between envisioning and implementation of interactions that create the customer experience. It is about being intentional about designing the process, people, technology, platform, and inter-departmental exchanges to tailor the kind of customer experience that the brand wants to extend. It also is about opening a lab kind of a concept in which, feedback from customers and understanding of the staff and the partners on the impediments to excellent exchange between the customer and the company can happen, to be discussed and solutions to be found. It is about making sure that no bad design makes it to the real customer world. It is about bringing intentionality into the entire process.
• Measurement
  • Is a discipline that makes the organisation measure the quality of customer experience by assigning relevant metrics to it, that matter the most to customers, in a consistent manner across the organisation. The end goal of measurement is to give actionable insights to the organisation uncovering areas of improvement, alongside given pointed descriptions of :
    • What must be fixed immediately?
    • What should be improved over time?
    • What should be maintained at the same level?
    • What should be touted as the strength of the organisation?
  • The goal is to understand what are the elements in the organisation that help customers be loyal and then create systems to make sure that those things are taken care of.
  • Another important utility of measurement is to put the quality of customer service parameters right up there with business metrics like sales and profitability.
• Governance
  • If customer experience strategy is game-plan, governance is the referee and the rule book. The job is to constantly monitor and weed out bad causes from creeping into the customer service design. It is responsible for holding people accountable to the commitment to serve. It can be the conscience keeper and at the same time also a practice that has the ability to steer things back on track, if and when things go wrong.
• Culture
  • A set of shared values and behaviours that focus employees on creating exemplary customer service. Culture is the bloodline of any organisation, getting it right is most daunting and time-consuming. It requires constant reinforcement. Three key steps are
    1. Hiring - Hiring for value fitment, “hire for will and train for skill”. Commitment to service, customer centricity are a few traits that must be evaluated in hiring people.
    2. Socialising - The stories of the great customer experience must be told and re-told. The objective is to find the right rituals and the routine to reinforce the need to value customers and act in keeping with the highest standard of customer service delivery in mind.
    3. Reward - It is important to link both formal (promotion, raise, confirmation) and informal awards (spot awards, RNR) to customer experience. Behaviour consistent great customer experience must be rewarded.

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.

Action in curious times!

We're in confusing times, making choices have never been more taxing, as a result, more often than not, we find ourselves attaching the cart before the horse. Humans have never quite known the future when I say this I discount the audacious claims that the astrologers make. We have, however, mastered the art of basing our predictions of the future on a combination of historical performance and present prevailing conditions. Even when the output of our models does not meet the realm of reality with a degree of accuracy enough to make us proud. We take comfort in the consistency of the present. We have a natural talent for neutralizing things, at least in our imaginative and somewhat delusional minds and that makes for a tranquil compromise between the actual and the desired.

COVID-19 has shattered that peace brutally and perhaps also irreversibly. Not only is our current condition unpredictably unstable but our faith in the history of human triumph has also been shaken curtly, by it. To cope with the tragedy, depending on the mental make-up, some of us are doing the wise thing of picking up books that have a detailed account of human response to comparable tragedies in the past. There are also those who prefer inferior in quality but a quicker way of gaining some insight, however superficial it might be - Google searches/Youtube and whatnot. Everybody is looking to find inspiration for a workable solution to the grand mess. Information overdose is not helping the situation, either. Let's take a moment to analyze the visuals that surround us today: What are we consuming these days?

1) Stories on the growing number of infected.

2) Mounting deaths.

3) Painful tales of human tragedies.

4) Unprecedented economic damage.

5) Wage cuts.

6) Loss of livelihood.

7) A slew of bankruptcy petitions.

8) Shortcomings of the government.

9 ) The apathy of society, particularly the rich and the privileged who even at this tragic time has not stopped their vulgar and foolish show of wealth.

These are indeed disturbing developments and none of them are either fictitious or rooted in propaganda to paddle a frightening narrative forward. Death and every other form of destruction are indeed common in 2020.

"So long as we're alive we will have to hustle", I'd like for you to read this devoid of any motivational undertone, I don't like passionate exuberance. I'd like you to evaluate it as hard cold truth; an undeniable fact. In the last article, I argued for us to make peace with the Virus and in this one, I'm trying to, extend that argument further in a more functional way. I offered "questioning everything as the SOP" for creating co-existence with the cruel Corona Virus.

We will have to re-imagine every facet of our life and then reorganize our ways around the new design to survive first and then someday, hope to prosper, again. How should we begin, what should be the sequence of events and where should we stop. Are important questions and conventional wisdom of human existence tells us to adopt. Disclaimer, you may not agree with one or all of these and it is ok to approach it differently: let me reiterate “NOBODY HAS THE BLUEPRINT". But guess what we do know the common mistakes that we humans have made, let us begin by committing to not repeating them. Let's talk about the 4 most common errors committed through the course of industrial history.

1) Not asking the right question: If you do not ask the answer is always going to be a NO. Asking the right question is vital because responses are almost always as good as the question. A psychological thought experiment was conducted at Harvard to verify the impact of question on response. In the test, a visual of a car crash was shown to three different sets of people, each was asked the same question but framed differently.

Set 1 - What might be the speed of the cars at the time of contact?

Set 2 - What might be the speed of the car at the time of the collision?

Set 3 - Guess the speed of the car when they smashed into each other, BOOM.

This is how the respondents reacted.

Set 1 - Recorded lowest average speed, in response.

Set 2 - Almost everyone in this group guessed the speed to be higher than Set1. The difference was about 30%.

Set 3- Guessed the highest speed, it was twice as much as the speed that Set 2 had guessed.

You can try this experiment too.

Do you understand the power of the question? When you do ask, make sure that you ask the tough questions and do not mix emotions with your quest. Remember your customers do not pay for how you feel about your business but how they feel. Your emotion must take a back seat. A good question Inspires curiosity, creativity, and deep thinking.

2) Putting tact before strategy: We often pick up our "to do" lists and label them as a strategy. The list populated by most basic and commonsensical items, pristinely presented as 'end all be all' response to a situation. The suggested actions have been commonly found to have no root in data or any other kind of qualitative research. People relegate strategy to mere things to do because it makes them feel good, in-charge, and especially because it comes at little cognitive investment. From lack of intellect to absence of awareness/ experience/ exposure to emotional imbalances like fear/anxiety to plain laziness causes one to fall in the trap. The idea is to not stigmatized those who may have got it wrong but to gently steer them to the realization of shortcomings of their approach. To subtly guide them to what may be a more comprehensive thought exercise. If your response to the plan is not answering the below, it is not a strategy yet, you have got work to do.

a) Does it tell you how your identity is going to change?

b) Does it give you a sense of your revised organizational/unit/ goal, objective, and value-based goal?

c) Does it provide for a framework to asses your current offerings?

e) Does it provide the new outline of business as a whole and not ways of doing it?

e) Does it cover existential threats?

3) Putting off tough decisions for the future: We do not enjoy taking tough decisions, so much so that we procrastinate, sometimes even indefinitely. Like closing our eyes does not make the world a dark place it only darkens our vision of it, not attending to a tough situation does not make it go away. You're better off facing up to it. There is no escape from it. The more you delay the costlier the delay will become. Correcting cost is painful, saying no does not come without heartaches but you gotta do what you gotta do. So get on with it.

4) Resistance to change: This one is lethal and omnipresent, there is not one atom in the universe that can deny its love of inertia; all of us are suffering from it. But not all of us suffer from it in all areas, as long as you do not wish to change your personal life and its settings - it is ok. But if your choices impact others or your organization you have no right to hold ‘change’ hostage. The harsh truth is that if you do not change the market won’t halt its transformation for you to alter your resolve. The world has witnessed mammoths like BlackBerry, Kodak, Nokia, and numerous others that resisted change more than they could afford as a result of being market leaders they became inconsequential, in no time. You have a clear choice in front of you; Would you rather accept to change or let progressive movement in the market force you out of the scene. Considering to change is not when the change actually comes into effect. It is a continuous journey, as a leader you’ll need to support it in an unabated fashion, keep removing bottlenecks, keep encouraging and facilitating change for the larger good. The buck for change stops at you, in simple matters like choosing humble Namaste/ Adab ‘hand-wave of Hi’ over handshake or also in complex affairs like steering the organization out of the COVID19 mess.

Darwinian survival of the fittest is also about the elimination of the weak. Who would you rather be, the strongest or the one that got eliminated?

Optimism without action is daydreaming.

Pessimism without action is fear-mongering.

Realism without action is promoting ‘status-quo’

Pick whichever ideology suits your temperament and appetite but in the end, to remain relevant, you’ll need to ACT.

Until we meet again : Stay well, stay safe!

Linking the first article in this series here: you may wanna check.

Title: CO-EXISTING WITH COVID19!

URL: http://www.lavkush.co.in/2020/05/co-existing-with-the-covid19/