Challenge:

Designing and embedding a Voice of the Customer program to drive both operational and cultural change

Financially regulated retailer, servicing over 1.6m active customers per annum across multiple channels, across 3 major contact centres based in UK and the Philippines. There was a requirement to understand the gap in customer experience from the customers perspective. This would enable the organisation to identify the moments that matter most to the customers and

prioritise change.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer:

Step 1: A new evidence based approach to improvement

The initial focus of the programme was to deliver a post-contact survey to customers after voice and email customer

service interaction.

The surveys captured key responses:

Net Promoter "on a scale of 1 to 10 would you recommend a friend"
Customer Effort "how easy was it to..."
Resolution "did we resolve your..."

To improve the Customer Journey the solution ensured that customers only received invites to surveys based on specific interaction types and frequency .

Annualised responses:

Circa 46,000 sessions captured per annum
Circa 34,000 customer comments received

The customer feedback proved our biggest fear...

"we were delivering an inconsistent customer experience across our customer contact centres"

The Approach:

Tackling the problem from multiple angles

It was recognised that the approach needed to support the identification and prioritisation of a catalogue of

improvements, this required an approach to insight from multiple angles.

KEY FOCUS

a. Reducing Avoidable Contacts: Reduce the customers need to contact, by removing customer effort up-stream

b. Exception Management: A new approach to coaching agents across Customer Service sites

c. Customer Journey Alerts: Pro-actively recovering poor experiences

a. Reducing Avoidable Contacts:

Understanding where customer effort is being created

Changing customer behaviour through education

Insight was used to feed into the self-service portal and to inform FAQ content, including language that was used to better meet customer expectations

Responses were also used to:

validate marketing messages e.g. "we offer great choice and value"
demonstrate opportunities and risks regarding existing service offerings

b. Exception Management:

Reducing the customer experience gap between locations

Leveraging the 'Voice of the Customer' insights supported the creation and implementation of a management framework

that is used to create a consistent continuous improvement approach to customer management across all sites.

Understanding where to focus management efforts

Team nanagers identify which agents are exceptions each week and coaching feedback and improvement
actions implemented
Best practice customer experience examples are shared within teams
Second line managers identify team managers who are exceptions and corrective actions are agreed and implemented
Weekly cross-location operational excellence calls share best practice and actions in place to drive improvements
Team Managers identify which agents are exceptions each week and coaching feedback and improvement

Seasonality continued to demonstrate fluctuation in customer experience, however effective utilisation of management demonstrates a significant reduction in variance across all locations

*The improvements in customer experience in overseas sites enabled the UK to shift its workload to focus on complaints, escalations and journey alerts hence the decline in UK NPS & CES

c. Journey Alerts:

Showing customers, we really care - making customer recovery a priority

Utilising customer feedback to create a proactive outbound 'customer recovery' process that protects >£1m in revenues per annum

Customer scores below a set criteria
Automated alert is pushed via workflow into a dedicated customer recovery team
Agent carries out investigation and creates a customer recovery plan
A pro-active outbound contact is made to the customer
Customers are re-surveyed post intervention to assess the impact made by the agent

The Results:

a. Introduction of analytics introduced to provide customer insight and prioritise change
- Additional customer insights by demographic enabling an understanding of what’s really going on beneath the surface
a. Customer feedback used to support change prioritisation – key driver for ‘self-help’ portal implementation
b. Sharing of ‘best practices’ across multiple locations
b. Leveraged feedback to support ‘active management’ programme and coaching to improve customer service
c. 75% of customers resurveyed moved from detractors to promoters
c. >£1m in revenues protected

Challenge:

Designing and embedding a Voice of the Customer program to drive both operational and cultural change

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

prioritise change.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer:

Step 1: A new evidence based approach to improvement

The initial focus of the programme was to deliver a post-contact survey to customers after voice and email customer

service interaction.

​

The surveys captured key responses:

Net Promoter "on a scale of 1 to 10 would you recommend a friend"

Customer Effort "how easy was it to..."

Resolution "did we resolve your..."

​

To improve the Customer Journey the solution ensured that customers only received invites to surveys based on specific interaction types and frequency .

Annualised responses:

Circa 46,000 sessions captured per annum

Circa 34,000 customer comments received

​ The customer feedback proved our biggest fear...

"we were delivering an inconsistent customer experience across our customer contact centres"

​

​

The Approach:

Tackling the problem from multiple angles​

It was recognised that the approach needed to support the identification and prioritisation of a catalogue of

improvements, this required an approach to insight from multiple angles.

KEY FOCUS

a. Reducing Avoidable Contacts: Reduce the customers need to contact, by removing customer effort up-stream

b. Exception Management: A new approach to coaching agents across Customer Service sites

c. Customer Journey Alerts: Pro-actively recovering poor experiences

a. Reducing Avoidable Contacts:

Understanding where customer effort is being created​

Changing customer behaviour through education

​

Insight was used to feed into the self-service portal and to inform FAQ content, including language that was used to better meet customer expectations

​

Responses were also used to:

validate marketing messages e.g. "we offer great choice and value"

demonstrate opportunities and risks regarding existing service offerings

b. Exception Management:

Reducing the customer experience gap between locations

Leveraging the 'Voice of the Customer' insights supported the creation and implementation of a management framework

that is used to create a consistent continuous improvement approach to customer management across all sites.

​

Understanding where to focus management efforts

Team nanagers identify which agents are exceptions each week and coaching feedback and improvement actions implemented

Best practice customer experience examples are shared within teams

Second line managers identify team managers who are exceptions and corrective actions are agreed and implemented

Weekly cross-location operational excellence calls share best practice and actions in place to drive improvements

Team Managers identify which agents are exceptions each week and coaching feedback and improvement

Seasonality continued to demonstrate fluctuation in customer experience, however effective utilisation of management demonstrates a significant reduction in variance across all locations

​

*The improvements in customer experience in overseas sites enabled the UK to shift its workload to focus on complaints, escalations and journey alerts hence the decline in UK NPS & CES

c. Journey Alerts:

Showing customers, we really care - making customer recovery a priority ​

Utilising customer feedback to create a proactive outbound 'customer recovery' process that protects >£1m in revenues per annum

​

Customer scores below a set criteria

Automated alert is pushed via workflow into a dedicated customer recovery team

Agent carries out investigation and creates a customer recovery plan

A pro-active outbound contact is made to the customer

Customers are re-surveyed post intervention to assess the impact made by the agent

The Results:

​

The customer feedback proved our biggest fear...

Tackling the problem from multiple angles

Understanding where customer effort is being created

Team nanagers identify which agents are exceptions each week and coaching feedback and improvement
actions implemented

Showing customers, we really care - making customer recovery a priority