I get the chance to write quite a bit about the topic of customer experience — how companies are measuring it, trying to implement it, and figure out what it actually is. Oftentimes, my focus is on North American-based companies, but new research conducted by Greenfield Online (in full disclosure, also sponsored by Genesys Telecommunications Labs) finds that not adequately following through on customer experience is leading countries across the globe to miss out on precious revenue.

According to the study, businesses in Australia, New Zealand, and India lost a combined $5.6 billion in revenue due to inability to meet customer expectations. That’s not chump change. The largest offender of the three was Australia, which lost $2.6 billion, followed closely by India, losing $2.46 billion. New Zealand came in a distant third, posting a loss of $995.6 million.

The consumer respondents complained that these three countries, in particular, were displeased with automated self-service programs that didn’t allow them to reach a human agent and were difficult to navigate. Also, working with agents who weren’t empowered to make decisions, and having to repeat information — such as name and account number — every time their call is forwarded to another department was another pain point mentioned.

While those complaints are also levied stateside, the study did come up with some interesting statistics regarding the price tag on how much lost relationships with customers really cost companies.

According to the research, the average value of a relationship ended due to poor customer service experiences costs:

• $338.85 in Australia; the average consumer ending 1.37 relationships;
• $257.33 in New Zealand; the average consumer ending 1.17 relationships; and
• $121.81 in India; the average consumer ending 1.84 relationships.

Scary numbers, especially since the majority of customers surveyed here will not crawl into a corner and cease to use the product or service in question. According to the study, at least 60 percent of respondents each of the three countries took its business to a competitor.

Do these numbers surprise you? Do you think the prices here are similar — or (gasp) worse — here in North America?

From my inquiries with customer service professionals, I wanted to get a generalized view of where companies are with respect to implementing the very best of customer service initiatives.

It’s become pretty clear that most are struggling with outdated technology, systems that are not integrated together, and archaic or nonexistent knowledge management software. They haven’t deployed proactive chat or ventured down the social media path.

Worse, these customer service professionals are unsure of how to document the extent to which these factors are increasing operational costs; reducing customer lifetime value; and lowering sales, revenue, and profit margins. And they don’t know how to make the business case to show that, if these types of things were changed, the return would not only be positive, but (in many cases) very large.

Meanwhile, despite these huge handicaps, their organizations continue to expect them to provide great customer experience.

Time for a Change! Seems like something has to give. Doing things the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity! The question in my mind was how to collect this information I was finding in the inquiries. “How can I help to bridge the gap between what companies must do to provide great customer experiences and where organizations are at?”

More after the jump…

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I know, I know. It may seem I’m piggybacking off of the excellent posts about the implications of Swine Flu by rock star Assistant Editor Jessica Tsai and fabulous Assistant Editor Lauren McKay. What’s peculiar about the influenza A(H1N1) virus is that it has so many different business applications.

In my coverage area of contact center/customer service, the implications come from all angles. What if every single agent — or the vast majority — came down with the flu and could not work? Do you have a back-up plan in place?

What if you get a flood of calls asking myriad questions about Swine Flu? Can your contact center scale? Will it become overloaded and keep impatient and worried callers on hold or, even worse, drop calls?

I wrote an article on a study by DMG Consulting a few months ago about disaster recovery/business continuity planning — or, the lack thereof being done by most companies.

DMG’s research found 63.3 percent of respondents were not fully confident in the effectiveness of their companies’ disaster recovery or business continuity plans. Twenty percent — one out of every five contact centers — had no plans in place whatsoever.

Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting and a regular columnist for CRM magazine, told me at the time that so many companies are ignorant or cavalier in its lack of planning because executives aren’t entirely convinced contact centers warrant that much attention. “Contact centers are mission-critical,” she said. “In times of calamity and challenge, people reach out to organizations in unprecedented numbers. If the customer can’t reach [someone], they will be upset.”

Fluss also argued too many just think about “acts of God” such as hurricanes and tornadoes, or man-made calamities such as terrorist attacks and war. Essentially, the potential danger is so rare, and so far-fetched, that it seems as though you’re throwing money at something that will probably never pay for itself.

The “it can’t happen to me” syndrome affects everyone. I haven’t been to a doctor in just about three years. Should I go? Probably. But I’m too lazy to set up an appointment when on the surface I seem to be — thankfully — perfectly healthy. That’s just it though, isn’t it? I could have something lurking, attacking my immune system as we speak, and yearly check-ups can help prevent anything life-threatening.

Same thing goes for contact center business continuity plans. While it may not pay for itself immediately — and in today’s recession, that can be a sticking point — having a plan in place and never having to use it is better than not having one, and then not knowing what to do. While a potential pandemic like Swine Flu may come once every couple of decades, it is worth the time to test your contact center infrastructure and other procedures to ensure you are ready for anything that may come about.

For the contact center professionals out there, how has Swine Flu affected your business? Even if it hasn’t directly affected it, has it changed the way you think about disaster recovery planning or at least started a conversation?

If you haven’t met me before, you know I believe companies live or die by their customer service.

I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this month, and it was great. I’ll write more about that soon, but what I wanted to focus on here was how surprised I was by my hotel accommodations. I was also surprised that I was surprised.

Let me start at the beginning: As I was getting ready to go to the conference, I realized a lot of the hotels were already booked. Since I wasn’t sure where to stay, a friend suggested I call the Pickwick Hotel.

[More after the jump...]

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In my entire tenure here at CRM magazine, I never thought that I would have Clint Eastwood in the title of any of my pieces. I included the Chairman of the Board in a story last year, but it was kind of a stretch.

Thank you, International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) for channeling the inner Western Cowboy in all of us with your latest study, “2008 Contact Center Operations Report.” The study culls responses from what it calls “a critical mass of contact center professionals from around the world,” coming up with some interesting results broken down into the good, bad, and ugly. Not unlike the famous movie starring Eastwood in 1966 except for the fact that there were no dead bodies or shootouts in the production of this research report … I hope.

While the study found that contact center pros were doing some good things, there were also plenty of harrowing places the study finds they can improve upon.

The good:

• most centers realize the importance of call monitoring;
• many formally reward and recognize agents who consistently meet or exceed key objectives; and
• the majority of respondents correlate employee reward/recognition with improved service quality, higher customer satisfaction, and greater agent morale.

The bad:

• most rely on internal quality monitoring instead of external customer surveys to measure satisfaction;
• only 40 percent of respondents even measure agent satisfaction; and
• 25 percent have no disaster recovery or business continuity plan in place.

The ugly:

• in approximately three out of four centers, leaders — be it supervisors or managers — are rarely held accountable for agent retention;
• only 39 percent measure first call resolution; and
• one in three centers do not measure customer satisfaction.

It’s a common theme that while contact centers are starting to do some things correctly, many of the basics are still falling by the wayside. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and the fact that almost 33 percent of contact centers surveyed still don’t measure customer satisfaction — one of the main goals of any customer service outlet — can be seen as downright pitiful.

Taking into account the fact that many contact centers have had a rough decade, the economic recession is arguably a great time for many to get back to basics with customer service. It only makes good business sense to keep the customers you have already.

For our contact center employee readership, do these results surprise you? What are you seeing in your own organizations right now?

As customer service is the key to many business’ success, it is important to recognize the people and companies that are going the extra mile to ensure satisfaction.

Besides our magazine’s sixth annual Service Awards coming out in April 2009 (today is the last day to nominate your company for awards), there are even more opportunities to get your name out there — the finalists were just named for the third annual Stevie Awards, which will be announced in Las Vegas on February 9.

According to the company’s Web site, the leading contenders that are finalists in multiple categories include:

• Broadridge Financial Solutions;
• The Cobalt Group;
• Crossroads Systems;
• Direct Alliance;
• Golden 1 Credit Union;
• Office Depot;
• PeopleAdmin;
• SDL International;
• Somerby of Alpharetta;
• SurePayroll; and
• TELUS Corporation.

Check out the full list of all of the Stevie Award finalists in the 27 customer service categories here.

According to a statement released by Michael Gallagher, president of the Stevie Awards, “The results of the judging thus far illustrate that even in a tough economic environment, companies can still outperform in customer service.”

For the customer service professionals out there, do you believe that there are enough opportunities for truly deserving companies and people to be rewarded for their hard work? Does it help boost morale during this difficult economic time, or do you find it to be self-serving?

Not to give the impression that I have a slight obsession with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), but it is an excellent source for customer service-related blog posts.

I recently moved to New Jersey, which means several things. A shorter commute, less tax taken out of my paycheck, and — unfortunately — a new driver license.

In order to comply with all the residency laws the Garden State has to offer, I decided to trek to the closest DMV division to show my six points’ worth of identification along with all of the other documents proving that I am, in fact, a Jersey Boy now.

After hearing all the horror stories, I was fully prepared to camp out and wait as long as it took to walk out with a brand new license. I brought my iPod, a snack, and a copy of December’s CRM magazine. Surprisingly, all of the employees were very helpful, despite it being 8:15 a.m. I was able to fill out all the proper paperwork, and go take my new picture for the license.

As I was waiting at the counter for my picture to process and my new ID to print out, I overheard two DMV employees talking to each other about a particularly difficult customer who had been ahead of me in line. Half-way through the process, he unreasonably demanded that he be able to change some very important information — which simply wasn’t possible.

Needless to say, there was a lot of yelling, pounding of fists on countertops, and audible sighs.

The two employees were complaining, which didn’t surprise me one bit. What did shock me was that it was not entirely about the customer, but rather about the processes they are forced to abide by. They wanted to help out the man despite his innate rudeness, but they were hamstrung by policy and procedure. It really opened up my eyes to the “other side” if you will, of the customer service equation. A lot is said — and written — about the end-consumer’s satisfaction, but sometimes the agents themselves fall through the cracks.

As you wait in long lines this month — whether it be for the DMV, holiday shopping, or on the phone trying to get a bill dispute resolved — try to remember that it isn’t always the fault of the customer service rep if your issue can’t be fixed right away. Just like you and I have policies at our jobs we may not necessairly care for, the same goes for them.

For companies, it may be worthwhile to take this time to rethink policies and processes that you may be able to change to give agents more power to fix problems on the front lines, as opposed to routing an increasingly angry customer to different levels of management. Studies show that empowered agents can make happier agents, thereby reducing attrition, which is still a problem in the customer service space.

For executives at organizations who have decided to give agents more wherewithal to solve problems on the front lines, has customer and employee satisfaction risen? Has productivity gone up? Or has it been business-as-usual?

Keeping employees engaged and signed on to the team concept is one of the main themes here at the sixth annual North American Conference on Customer Management here at the Disneyland Hotel in balmy Anaheim, Calif.

Who better to talk about teamwork than Joe Torre, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers? Yesterday he wowed the crowd by opening up his speech into a question-and-answer session allowing the crowd to pick his brain about anything from his thoughts on the Chicago Cubs to handling George Steinbrenner, his former boss when he managed the Yankees to four World Series championships. “You have to understand, you never handled George,” Torre said. “You dealt with him.”

Whether he liked Steinbrenner or not is inconsequential. Torre explained that being able to actually sit down and talk with him made a big difference. “Managing in New York, I was able to speak with George and I really made the most of those conversations,” he said. “When I managed the Braves and Cardinals, I rarely got to speak with [respective owners] Ted Turner and August Busch III.” The takeaway — if you’re a contact center supervisor or manager, make sure your door is open and you’re willing to hear your employees’ concerns. You may learn something.

In connecting with the primarily CRM audience, Torre spoke about how handling a customer service team and a baseball team can be parallel to one another. He explained that in tough times, it is important to keep your cool and try to bring perspective to the situation at hand. “I try not to forget what it was like being a player,” he recalls. “You have to respect your employees, and try to understand why they reacted the way they did as opposed to blindly responding to their actions.”

Torre went on to explain that our society is predicated on looking at the sexy statistics, in baseball that can be home runs, strikeouts, number of hits, or consecutive games played. For the contact center, that could be individual agent key performance metrics such as average handle time or first call resolution. While stats should play a role, Torre stressed that it is important that everyone works together — fantastic individual numbers or not — to help the team win in the end. “You need a group of unselfish people who care about winning and not just their individual performance,” he said.

Leaving the crowd with one more nugget, when asked how he deals with players who are paid exorbitant salaries he made it very clear that when you walk into his clubhouse the Swiss bank accounts are checked at the door. “Never forget blood runs through everyone’s veins,” he said. “You have to deal with people as human beings no matter what they get paid.”

“See ya later,” says Mike in the red polo shirt as he hands me my change. I grab my pack of Trident and 32-ounce fountain drink and exit the glass doors of my local QuikTrip. I say aloud, “I love how the QT guys know me well enough that they say ‘See ya later,’ to me. They know I’ll be back tomorrow.” My friend flashes her “You’ve got to be kidding me” face. “They say, ‘See ya later’ to everyone,” she says, bursting my bubble and not seeming to care. Crushed as I was that the QuikTrip employees weren’t singling me out for my repeat business, I couldn’t help thinking what a simple, yet great customer service and branding idea that is. That one phrase made the cross-over from formal to friendly. If I was fooled by the “See ya later,” surely others were too (right?). QuikTrip, although a Tulsa-based convenience store chain (sorry you coasters, it’s mostly in the Midwest and the South) still maintains that neighborhood-store kind of feel, where you think everyone might know your name.  

That got me thinking about corportate catch-phrases — ones to convey brand identity and remind customers what company they are interacting with. [Sidenote: In college, I waitressed at a sports bar that insisted on its servers shouting "Game On!" when placing plates of food in front of guests. Needless to say, I did not last long at that particular establishment.] It truly can make a difference, albeit slight, in the customer experience. The trick is to make the saying short enough to not warrant a phone click. Think of being on the phone with a customer service rep. Your need has just been taken care of and now all you want to do is get off the phone, but the rep starts spealing into a memorized/read monologue to the extent of, “We value your business Mr. XXX at XYZ. We hope you…blah, blah, blah.” Do you stay on the phone until the agent has finished his required speech? Or do you try to hurry the ordeal along with several snippy “yeahs,” “uh huhs,” and “thanks.” [Hint: the agent won't speed up... no matter how ubruptly you encourage it.] Or do you simply end the call without hearing how grateful the agent is for your call and your business? 

It’s funny how words can make such a difference. When researching this topic, I came across a list of the “Top 15 Things Retailers Should Never Say.” I think many of these can be applied to CRM in general:

1. I don’t know
2. All sales are final
3. Calm down
4. Did you see any?
5. We’re closed
6. Will that be all?
7. It’s over there
8. I can’t do that
9. That’s not my department
10. We’re out of that
11. It’s against our policy
12. I’m new here
13. Hold on
14. I’m busy right now
15. You’re wrong

In the ramp up for Bozeman, Mont.-based on-demand customer experience management provider RightNow Technologies’ Summit 2008 here in Colorado Springs, you can expect many of the attendees to yearn for — and ask about — ways to continue to improve their companies’ customer experiences amidst an economy that has taken the country for a roller-coaster ride in the past several weeks.

Expect some more “on-the-scene” blog posts after some conversations with key executives and customers as the summit officially kicks off in a couple of hours with a keynote speech from RightNow Chief Executive Officer Greg Gianforte.

Nevertheless, there was a recent survey conducted by Harris Interactive (and in the pursuit of transparency, sponsored by RightNow) on the impact of customer experience. In its third year, the study finds that the experience is becoming more important as consumers continue to demand the service bar to be raised.

Here are some highlights drawn from the poll of 2,112 United States consumers (age 18 and older):

• 87 percent will discontinue business with a company after a negative customer experience, an increase of 7 percentage points from 2007;
• 58 percent will “always or often” pay more for a better experience during a down economy;
• 84 percent of those polled will tell others about a bad customer experience, up 10 percentage points since last year; and
• 51 percent of consumers want the option of a live Web chat session.

What was particularly interesting was the way in which consumers react to poor service. According to the study:

• 26 percent have sworn;
• 17 percent have shouted;
• 9 percent have felt sick;
• 5 percent of males say they hit or break something; and
• 9 percent of females cry.

With customer service hubs becoming the first interaction touchpoint for many consumers, the study finds it is imperative for companies to ensure they are doling out the goods for both instant and future business success. Fifty-eight percent of respondents are “at least somewhat likely” to make a purchase during a service engagement. Additionally, outstanding service is the top reason respondents would recommend a company to someone else–coming in at 58 percent. Low prices and product/service quality came in second and third, respectively.

Now for the call to action. For the companies out there waging the war of customer service every single day, are these stats surprising to you? CRM magazine and other media publications have been writing about the customer experience for some time now, but is it really hitting home or is it just another nice-to-have for you at this time?