The Winning Teams Blog

Pioneering call centre IVR standards

Yesterday, I stumbled along a very amusing but serious website: www.gethuman.com. The website title is “gethuman – advocacy for high quality customer service for consumers”. The gethuman project, which is run by volunteers, is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the US.

The most popular part of the gethuman website is the gethuman database of secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for customer service. Did you know that you can reach an actual human on an ivr by hitting “0” (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly?

More importantly, the gethuman team is working with Microsoft, Nuance and other speech industry leaders to define a new gethuman standard for customer service phone applications. Their goal is to make it easier for consumers to deal with any company over the phone, through common sense standard ways that their systems should work. Here are some of their suggested standards:

1. if a human operator is available when a consumer calls, the human should answer the phone

2. when a human is not available to answer the call, the caller must always be able to dial 0 or to say "operator" at the top level menu to queue for a human

3. do not ever make a caller repeat any info provided during a call

4. while holding, allow caller to disable hold music. if you play ads or promotions, allow user to disable them

Seems pretty sensible to me.

Customer service skills lacking - hospitality and leisure hardest hit

A recent survey (warning pdf file) by the British Learning and Skills Council reported that customer service skills are in short supply across a huge range of business areas, and that the hospitality and leisure industry is one of the areas hardest hit.

The survey, which involved interviews with 74,500 CEO’s, found that a quarter of vacancies are caused by employers not being able to find staff with right people skills. When employers were asked to identify the areas in which applicants are not fully skilled, customer handling was cited in 38% of cases, and basic oral communication skills in 35% of cases. Almost two thirds of all staff with skills gaps are reported to specifically lack customer handling skills.

David Way, director of skills at the LSC, said: “While employers do not expect everyone who comes into the labour market to be the finished article there are key 'soft skills' such as the ability to communicate effectively and work in a team which gives individuals a strong chance of succeeding".

Banking Websites Unable to Answer Basic Customer Questions

Online customer service from Britain’s banks has sunk to an all time low, according to the latest annual research published on CRM Today. Half of the banks surveyed were unable to answer a single one of ten basic customer questions asked via their websites. This is surprising given the growing numbers of customers utilising internet banking. As a result of this poor service, customers are turning to email or call centres for help. This migration to higher cost channels to find the answer themselves is likely to have a negative impact on the customer experience, as well as potentially increasing the cost to the bank of providing service.

Of those banks that provided the ability to email, they took an average of 22 hours to respond. Even the fastest response took 8 hours - a whole business day! The slowest response was 69 hours.

Only half the banks surveyed had Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) pages, and in many cases these were hidden away in obscure corners of their sites, rather than being easy to find. Perhaps bank website designers should read Jacob Nielsen’s definitive guides to website usability?

Banks Unable to Answer Product Questions

Retail Banks’ capacity to provide customers with accurate answers to specific product questions is at best erratic.

This is one of the findings of recent independent market research. The research “Customer Experience and Sales Effectiveness within the World’s Top 300 Retail Banks” (warning pdf file) was conducted by Datamonitor in conjunction with the European Financial Management & Marketing Association (EFMA). The EFMA is considered to be the leading association of banks, insurance companies and financial institutions throughout Europe.

The research clearly indicates that Banks globally are failing to realise substantial revenue benefits because of their inability to effectively manage customer enquiries as potential leads, and to ensure a positive customer experience.

Being able to provide accurate answers to product questions would seem to be a foundational requirement for delivering good customer service. However, our experience confirms the findings of the research. Very few banks are able to provide consistent, unambiguous and accurate responses to specific product questions, thereby negatively impacting the customer experience. If you have any doubts, call up your branch, and ask them a question. Call again later, and ask the same question to a few more operators. I predict that your chances of getting a consistent response are less than 50%!

I will be reviewing other findings from the research over the next few days.

Explaining Complex Concepts Using a 'Mom' Button

How do you explain technical concepts to non-technical buyers? This was the problem that technology firm xiotech faced. Their enterprising CEO challenged his team to come up with a solution. And they did. Explain the technology in such a way that your mom could understand it. Then they put together some excellent video clips of mom explaining the technology linked to a ‘Mom Button’. These clips have been around on the internet for awhile now, but they are brilliant examples of how to explain your product offering in simple terms that clearly shows the value to the buyer. And they are funny. How many of us could benefit from a mom button?

How Service Call Centres Can Boost Revenues

Many companies rely on outbound call centres to generate a large percentage of their sales. However, despite these successes many companies have held back from implementing a service-to-sales programme in their inbound call centres. A major reason for their reluctance to implement such programmes is the concern that customers seeking a service solution might be put off by sales pitches.

McKinsey recently completed a study of call centres in North American banks. (This McKinsey study is unfortunately only available to premium members.) The authors point out that there exists a tremendous unrealised potential among banks in using call centres to increase revenue. At the end of the study they concluded that successful efforts to cross-sell during inbound service calls could boost a retail bank’s sales of new products by 10 percent.

The study found that the agents of each bank, on average, cross-sell less than one core product for every 100 inbound calls they handle. Yet the authors indicate that some North American banks sell up to four core products for every 100 calls handled, and as many as five additional relationship-building products. They conclude that in retail banking this implies that every five inbound service agents could generate as much new retail business as one mature branch, whilst simultaneously performing their service function.

However, it is obviously extremely important that in trying to cross-sell products, call centre agents must keep as their top priority the resolution of service issues. Clients are unlikely to want to purchase additional products if their primary service needs have not been met. Call centre agents need to understand that clients are likely to be receptive to buying new products when agents meet their service needs and then ask them about their broad needs in a sincere way. Companies must first provide consistent, high-quality customer service. Only if this is met should executives concentrate on implementing programmes that ensure that employees have the proper mind-set, motivation, and skills to cross-sell. (See my previous post "Smiles Don't Mean Sales".)

August the 14th is "International Nagging Day"

Hi I’m Debbie. I am new to blogging, and don’t really know where to begin, but I have decided to jump right in and start making a contribution.

I am sure that you didn’t know this, but August the 14th, is International Nagging Day. International Nagging Day was designed to celebrate and remember the gift of positive nagging. (I was not even aware that there was such a thing as "positive nagging".) In celebration of International Nagging Day, I am going to nag my colleagues to get started in writing their blogs.

I recently came across a really interesting article about holiday promotions. It is entitled 'Tis the Season: Early Planning Is Key to Holiday Gifts and Promotions’. It offers some practical advice on how to nurture your customers during the holidays.

Let me know what you think.

Smiles Don't Mean Sales

Accenture, the global consultancy firm, recently published a research paper entitled 'How Transforming Banking Sales Behavior Can Spur High Performance', or more accurately 'Smiles Don't Mean Sales'. The paper's main theme is that superior customer performance alone will not translate into higher financial performance. What they found is that there is no correlation between the integral role of customer service and sales performance. Clearly, rude bankers won't get much business, but it takes specific sales initiatives to generate financial rewards.

One example they give is that a fast-growing US bank has taken to recruiting new branch staff from auto dealers and retail clothing stores. They believe that it is easier to teach salespeople about financial products, than it is to teach bankers how to sell! This point of view is a bit extreme, but what the Accenture paper highlights is that it is possible to teach old bankers new tricks.

In one European bank where sales specific initiatives were introduced, cross-selling increased by 70%, new customers increased by 5%, and customer loyalty increased by 25%! A targeted marketing initiative, properly managed, can deliver revenue increases of 20% - 40% within a single quarter. A transformation programme guarantees the sustainability of the improvement. Three of the specific actions that they recommend for salesforce transformation are:

• Keep marketing campaigns simple and easy for the salesforce to execute
• Coach salespeople daily in order to change behaviour
• Make it clear that management takes performance seriously and is tracking it

Of course, Winning Teams has always advocated clearly articulating product knowledge in sales literature, coaching for superior performance, and measuring performance improvement. By implementing a similar method, one major European bank has discovered that a concerted effort to improve salesforce performance can deliver impressive financial results in the short term, and help maintain that high performance in the long term.

We Missed You in New York

We recently visited our business associates in New York. If we didn't get to see you then, please leave a message at our website to arrange a visit next time we are in town: http://www.wteams.com/pros_clients.asp.

From left to right, Jody Hollis, and Denzil Hollis, Directors of Winning Teams visiting the Bank of New York at 1 Wall Street, NYC in April 2006.

At the World Mail Awards in Paris

We recently attended the World Mail Awards in Paris with our client the South African Post Office (SAPO).

Here we are at our stand prior to presentation of the awards. From left to right are the CEO of the South African Post Office, Mr Khutso Mampele, Mr Raymond Modiba of the South African Post Office, and myself Jody Hollis and Steven Wright, Directors of Winning Teams.

SAPO had been nominated for a World Mail Award in 'People Management' for some of the work that we did with them.

Although they didn't win an award in the 'People management' category, we are very proud that they came out as winners in the 'Customer Services' category. You can read about their success at the Innovapost website: http://innovapost.com/en/news/detail/64.html. Well done, we are very proud to be associated with the South African Post Office.