Customer Service Fails: How to Make Things Right
by Chris O'Brien on May 16th, 2012
When mistakes happen in the course of the customer experience, it upsets the delicate balance between customer and company: what is expected vs. what is delivered. If what is delivered is NOT what was expected, the only way to right that imbalance is to overdeliver, to exceed expectations.
Here’s an example. It’s actually an update to the dismal customer experience I had with an online retailer a few weeks ago. Would you believe that after all the pushback Company A gave me about cancelling a backordered item, I found myself in another customer service snafu with Company B?
Company B shipped the birthday gift I’d ordered for my husband in two pieces. (Some assembly required.) That was fine, but my “box 2 of 2” shipment never arrived. Instead, they sent me a duplicate of Piece #1. (This is where my smokescreen about it being a “watch” kind of falls apart, doesn’t it? Props to those of you who are paying attention.)
I wasn’t thrilled, but I was not yet irritated. Mistakes happen. I dialed Company B’s customer service number and explained the situation. I had two of the same thing, Piece #1, which was useless without Piece #2.
The agent thought about this for a minute. “We don’t sell Piece #2 separately.”
“But you apparently ship them separately,” I offered. “Can you just send me the box that contains Piece #2?”
“I can give you the phone number for the manufacturer. I think you’ll have to get it from them.”
Ergh. Now I had to call another business and explain the whole situation, and then hope they’d just take my word for it that I was entitled to a shipment of this random part. I bet you can guess what the manufacturer told me:
“We suggest you contact the dealer.”
ERGH! I went back and for the with Company B for some time, over e-mail, again over the phone, never quite getting a resolution. Then a few days later, a customer satisfaction survey conveniently landed in my inbox. I unloaded all of my frustration on that little form, but I assumed nothing would come of it. I didn’t expect an answer. It was just an opportunity to vent.
Within 24 hours, something magical happened. Company B won me back.
Here’s how:
- They apologized and admitted their error.
- They outlined the steps they would take to make things right: resend the item immediately and provide a shipping label for the return of their botched shipment.
- They followed through. I had a shipping label in my inbox, as well as tracking numbers for the replacement.
- They followed up. A subsequent e-mail again apologized for the error and assured me they would do everything possible to make things right.
Their fast, thorough response to my survey answers actually exceeded my expectations. I finally felt as though someone at the company not only cared about my problem, but was willing to bend over backwards to solve it.
They successfully reset the delicate balance.
Because mistakes will happen, organizations should be prepared to respond in a way that will overcorrect, to mend the damaged relationship and impress their customers with their eagerness to do so.
Bringing the contact center in-house to increase performance
by Mike Sheridan on October 31st, 2011
It often makes sense for companies, especially when they’re young, to outsource certain functions. When businesses experience rapid or sustained growth, they can reach a tipping point when the burden of managing the external vendor outweighs the benefits. This dynamic is particularly true of the contact center.
The decision to create an internal contact center brings with it the challenge of selecting the right platform and tools to enable service agents. In effect, the company is going from 0 to 60 in a short time frame, having to install technology in the contact center, put management in place, and hire and train staff. In these instances, any potential solution must be flexible and extensible to accommodate continued growth and changing conditions.
Establishing an in-house contact center
HomeShop18, India’s largest e-commerce company, faced this challenge. The company operates a 24-hour shopping channel with 11.5 million weekly viewers as well as a website that has increased traffic by 300 percent annually, to 2.4 million unique visitors per month.
HomeShop18 had outsourced management of the contact center, both inbound traffic and outbound calls, to an external vendor. Its leaders had recognized that customer experience was increasingly important to the business—repeat customers make up 40 percent of its base. To exert more control over contact center, HomeShop18 decided to move the contact center operation in-house.
Supporting operations with the required functionality
Empowering contact center employees with the right capabilities was a critical piece of the puzzle. Specifically, the solution needed to be able to accommodate requests from multiple streams, including e-mail and text messaging. To optimize the workforce, managers had to have the ability to monitor actions, route calls to the most qualified agents, and provide real-time coaching.
After reviewing available products, HomeShop 18’s leaders selected Aspect’s Blended InteractionTM because of its track record of delivering value at other businesses. Blended Interaction can integrate multiple point products for managing different contact channels, and its universal queue feature organizes incoming contacts across all communication channels into a single queue. It can then route them to the most appropriate agent based on wait times, incoming traffic volumes, and service levels.
Boosting performance significantly
When HomeShop18 compared its in-house call center’s performance with that of the external vendor, the results were striking: agent efficiency jumped 25 percentage points; the call-handling rate increased to 14, from 9; and sales conversions nearly doubled, to nearly 40 percent. Response times to other communications channels were even more striking: Blended Interaction helped reduce call response time for SMS messages from 12 hours to just 20 minutes
Over the past year, HomeShop18 has continued to expand its contact center. Today, more than 750 agents handle a total of 40,000 calls each day from a state-of-the-art facility, and Blended Interaction has been able to evolve and adapt with HomeShop18’s operations to handle this increased volume.
Learn more about HomeShop18’s journey here, and be sure to let me know if you have specific questions.
Gartner® analyst research, courtesy of Aspect
by Chris O'Brien on October 6th, 2011
This month, many of the IT industry’s leaders will be meeting in Orlando, Florida, for several days of networking, collaboration, and innovation at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2011.
Representatives from Aspect will be on hand as well to talk with individuals in pre-scheduled one-on-one sessions and to showcase our next-generation contact center solutions at the Aspect booth.
At Aspect, we pride ourselves not just on the quality of our solutions and customer service but also on partnering with IT professionals to develop flexible, scalable platforms and applications necessary for growing a successful business. Your organization is at the forefront of Aspect’s mission: to help you meet the heightened expectations of today’s socially networked, information-empowered consumers. We succeed when you succeed.
To celebrate the spirit of thought-leadership, research, and innovation promoted by the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, we are pleased to offer complementary reprints of two Gartner research documents, available for download for a limited time.
Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide presents the analysts’ view of the contact center marketplace and breaks down factors that contribute to a provider’s position in the Magic Quadrant – such as the organization’s completeness of vision and ability to execute.
Business Benefits Drive the Alignment Between Contact Center Infrastructure and Workforce Optimization Software documents the workforce optimization (WFO) capabilities of all the major contact center infrastructure(CCI) vendors in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Contact Center Infrastructure, Worldwide. The provision of a single solution spanning CCI and WFO reduces the total cost of ownership and provides incremental business value not otherwise achievable with stand-alone solutions.
Our customers have reported significant cost savings one year following implementation of their Aspect contact center solution, including 20 to 30 percent lower annual maintenance costs.
Hopefully the ITxpo will offer us a chance to connect and discuss these possibilities in person!
Aspect and the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
by Bill Gay on August 18th, 2011
A few weeks ago, there were several people from Aspect who attended the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 2011), where we had a good time in Los Angeles meeting other partners and Microsoft personnel. This was my second trip to WPC, and not only was the weather great but there was significantly more focus on Lync this year. Mike Butts did a great job describing the general “Lync” tone at the WPC in a previous blog.
I want to mention that Aspect was honored by receiving an award from the Lync Voice team. Aspect won the Microsoft 2011 U.S. Lync Voice Partner of the Year for our services work for the State and Local Government sector within Microsoft. This award was related to deploying Lync to our new and existing customer base. Of course, Aspect performs Lync services work across all industry segments, but it was this specific area of focus where we had the largest impact with Lync deployments.
So thank you to Microsoft for the recognition!
What also impressed me during the conference was the amount of buzz around Lync. I suppose when someone refers to Lync as the “next billion-dollar business” (as Jon Roskill did) or talks about the potential of the Skype acquisition, it tends to get people excited. I believe Microsoft has several things that are working in their favor looking ahead over the next few years:
1) A general shift in the marketplace toward Unified Communications
2) Aging technology and the need to make decisions about new or replacement infrastructure
3) Large client base that already owns Lync licenses
Aspect decided to take the replacement path several years ago, and it has worked out very well for us – most people I speak to internally just couldn’t imagine doing business any other way.
Finally, there are a couple of videos I would like to share from the WPC that I strongly encourage you to view if you have not seen them. The first one is Kirk Koenigsbauer’s “The Future of Productivity.” In this video, Kirk talks about the momentum of Office products, including SharePoint, Exchange, and talking specifically about Lync’s advanced capabilities.
The second one is from Kirk Gregerson, who discusses “Going Big with Lync: Delivering a New, Connected Experience.” This video is focused on Lync specifically, and there is a reference to some work that Aspect did for Microsoft. You can see the specific Aspect application that Kirk demos at the 17:30 mark in the video.
Aspect worked with the Microsoft engineering team to track the status of their work with partners and in fact, Aspect developed the SharePoint site and Lync integration that he demonstrates in the video. The application has lots of interesting contact center and internal uses, as it pertains to contextual information and how people want to reach others in a collaborative organization.
I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the latest developments and products that emerge from the Microsoft-Aspect partnership. And I’d love to hear from others about their experiences with Lync and how it’s transformed the way their organization functions.
Huge cost savings and rapid ROI with Lync
by Jamie Ryan on January 31st, 2011
When Aspect replaced Microsoft OCS with Lync, it had an immediate impact on our entire organization. A few facts tell the story:
- Deployed to 1,900 employees in 22 countries just 5 weeks after Lync’s general availability (GA)
- No training required to move from OCS to Lync
- Reduced server footprint by 80 percent
- Achieved ROI in just 9 months
For more details, check out this video:
Aspect Unified IP 7 – Enterprise Routing, Unified Command and Control, & High Availability
by Serge Hyppolite on January 11th, 2011
Aspect’s Serge Hyppolite discusses the Contextual Enterprise Routing, Unified Command and Control, and High Availability capabilities in Aspect Unified IP 7.
The silver lining in cloud computing for the contact center
by Aspect on January 6th, 2011
Recently, No Jitter posted an interview with my Aspect colleague and fellow blogger Mike Ely that outlines the value of cloud-based computing. Here’s an excerpt:
What is the most attractive factor of a cloud-based solution?
The cost can be cheaper than an on premise solution. The cost of hardware has decreased substantially in the last 10 years. Software and licenses are now the main cost factors.
When an enterprise is considering a call center replacement, the enterprise should examine cloud based services to see what savings can accrue to the enterprise. The cloud service may be cheaper but may not offer all the features and functions desired or may not offer the necessary security.” …Read more >
A blizzard brings customer experience front and center
by Aspect on January 4th, 2011
As someone whose family vacation was a casualty to the Christmas week blizzard in New England, my experience brings to light some process improvements that all enterprises in the travel business should consider to help improve customer service even in a crisis situation. …Read more >
To provide a great customer experience, you have to identify what your customers want
by Aspect on December 30th, 2010
I came across a great article by Bruce Temkin, a customer experience expert, where he highlights the need for companies to develop a customer experience plan for 2011. One of his key points is the importance of understanding your customers’ motivation for engaging with the contact center.
“If you haven’t done it already, then plan to map your customers’ journeys. You need to uncover the motivations, goals, and needs of your customers—and understand how that translates into when, where, and through what channel they interact with your company. This effort will highlight the places where you should be investing your time and energy. To gain the full insight, you need to go through this exercise for all of your key customer segments.” …Read more >
Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.