I have read enough on CRM and customer care. What actually I fail to understand is human feeling like satidsfaction can it be measured at all and if it is measurable does that mean all human feelings can be measured on a standard scale? Then how do we really measure satisfaction once satisfied with a service or product does it mean second experience is as sweet as first? I fail to understand this logic.Can David Newton Dines answer this for me?Cannot wait to hear from him ...such a genius...

People reading your last comment would think I am paying you!!

Customer Satisfaction CAN be measured reliably and consistently.

It is based on sound psychological principals that transend, culture, race, gender and age.

With regard to the measurement of all human feelings, I have yet to take what we do and expand it so. However, my initial reaction to the question is yes AND no. Let me explain. The uppermost level of feelings, the ones we measure can be as they are biologically programmed into human beings. However, each of these high level feelings are themselves made up of many many components and as yet we have not even looked at isolating these components and their measurement.

For example, if I ask if you are 'happy' you can instantly tell me so I can measure it. However, if you look at what it is that constitutes happiness its a much more complex question. So the full answer to your question is, "High level human feelings can be measured on a standard scale but not, thus far at least, all human feelings."

The answer to the q about the sweetness of the experience second time around is
actually irrelevant in the context of a customer experience. The reason for this is because the question is asked ofthe customer and it is the customer that takes into account their whole experience. I guess what you are really saying is, "Do the goal posts move?" The answer to that is definately yes. It is teh responsibility of the customer to understand in which direction they are moving and to move the service with them or indeed in front of them. The only time this would 'mater' is if teh company is trying to apply a formulaic approach to service. If they do that it becomes 'solid/rigid' and as such 'out of date' or inappropriate very quickly.

Email me direct Vedula dnd@customermeasurement.com

David, I seem to be following your posts around today, honest I'm not e-stalking you :-)

You mention 'goal posts moving': in my mind, any repeat experience is tempered in some way by the initial experience, and so is subjective. Like our perception of colour and brightness, we as humans react to contrast (relatives) more than value (absolutes), so when we have a certain experience, it 'primes' the next experience so that our expectation is changed.

Or am I misunderstanding your point in this?

Bob

You're not missing the point Bob, I don't thinl I made myself clear enuf!

We must not get too wrapped up here with follow ups. The ONLY person able to comment on the appropriatenes of the experience, and more over how they feel about it, is the customer. From what little I know, the issue of how impressive a repeat performance is only rears it head when one is NOT addressing the emotional motive in an interaction. So when you give 100 airmiles with every Big Mac after a while those additional 100 air miles become the norm and the management of expectations become an issue - i.e. you have to give more or people feel robbed (even though they were just a little something at the beginning)

If, however, you can make someone FEEL good is is deeply and fundementally satifying in that they finaly FEEL satisfaction.

Bear in mind that at a concious level human beings only have two drivers - happiness or security. So when they are addressed you've reached the end of the road. For me its a bit like yawning. Occasionally you try but you cannot quite get there, you do not feel complete, so you keep trying. However, once you have yawned 'fully', and of course feel that satisfaction, you stop.

David wrote:
"when you give 100 airmiles with every Big Mac after a while those additional 100 air miles become the norm and the management of expectations become an issue - i.e. you have to give more or people feel robbed (even though they were justa little something at the beginning)"

That's so true. I'm thinking of those bargain book stores or the discount menswear outlets which seem to have sales on all of the time - we take it for granted and expect even greater discounts. It's all relative.

"If, however, you can make someone FEEL good is is deeply and fundementally satifying in that they finaly FEEL satisfaction."

And the key here is *how* do we make someone feel good - do you have any good tips?

Bob

The answer Bob is BUNDLES! However, that's what people pay for so I can pay the mortgage...

The 'global' answer is put yourself in your customers shoes and think how they feel.

David

Hi Bob and DND

It was nice to see you people add your valuable tips on my topic. let me take the discussion to a real time problem which all call centres face...

In most of customer interactions the first impression is the best impression.For repeated purchases or interactions the customer expects the same level of service as he experienced the first time thus setting a standard for one-to-one interaction.

The future interactions are evaluated in comparison to the first experience thus over a period of time the customer would have developed a measurable standard which is true for him.

Can we extend this logic to all customer interactions and thus achieve true one-to-one, customer focused service metric?
Your views are most welcome.

Vedula your question here has a number of points which may not seem immediately obvious so I’ll address them in my own disjointed style!

The first appears to be about consistency. Consistency is absolutely CRUCIAL. Let me explain.

Letssplit the interaction outcome, in terms of its impact on customers, into three. It can be either BAD, NEUTRAL & GOOD. Our experience shows that it is NOT the majoritive experience that we are left with as an overall impression – i.e. if the experience is NEUTRAL 70% of the time and GOOD 30% we do not leave with a Neutral feeling. What we leave with is a feeling of it being GOOD! It’s a bit like the weather. If it rained heavily 10 days last month and was neither rainy NOR hot the other 20 days, whenrecalling the weather we tend to say it had been a wet month. Conversely, if it had been HOT for 10 days and neutral for the other 20 we tend to say it’s been a hot month. I have no idea why this is, it just is! Its been demonstrated by our research time after time but we have no particular ryme nor reason for it. No doubt someone somewhere knows.

So, going back to our customer experience, if that ‘experience’ is say bad for 30% of the time and normal for 70% of the time the impression left oncustomers (what we call the Trend) is BAD. There is a problem with this though. If the experience balances out with say 30% Good, 40% Neutral and 30% Bad we end up Neutral. This means that to really drive forward, there can be no bad experiences and you must strive for consistent good ones.

There’s a bit more to be taken into account here too. Gestalt theory suggests that all people need completion before an issue is closed. If an issue hasn’t been addressed – e.g. when a practical motive has been addressed but not the Emotional, we are left with unfinished business. When an issue has been resolved to our satisfaction (i.e. both motives satisfied) THEN we have closure, then we can forget it/file it away.

Uncompleted issues stay inour conscious mind and often amplify with time. For customers this means that what seems like a simple issue to the business, is VERY important to them and the business thinks the customer has blown things up out of all proportion. The customer thinks the organisation doesn't care. In effect, the issue is never finished and it can be a huge cause of stress. If however, BOTH motives are addressed then satisfaction follows and effectively the relationship is reset – back to ground zero.

So, this hopefully addresses your second point, our experience is that we then approach the next interaction with slightly more optimism. However, we do not generally let this optimism rule until a very clear pattern (established by the company) of exceeding our expectations (i.e. delivering REAL satisfaction by addressing both motives) has emerged over time.

To answer your 'real' question, in terms of having a metric, that metric already exists in our system and it scores both the Practical and Emotional performance of the business. Moreover, it works with all businesses, cultures and nationalities

By the way, whilst a ‘first’ impression is important as it sets the tone/stage for the rest of the interaction it is NOT the be all and end all.

Think about it. In a call centre it is virtually impossible to be able to deliver a welcome to every caller that makes them FEEL extremely welcomed in the ultimate/personalised way. This is not through a lack of drive or willingness, it's simply that technology does not yet exist where we can GUARANTEE that we know with 100% accuracy WHO is calling. So, we cannot say, “Good morning Vedula, it's really nice to hear from you again. How can I help you today?” The best greeting we can offer is one of a genuine friendliness but, driven by the lack of supportive technology, it must be generic in nature and almost anonymous. "Good morning welcome to the Customer Experience Company."

As important, is what we term the ‘Close’, the end of the interaction. The very best description I have ever heard of this element of the interaction is, “The beginning of the rest of the relationship.” and this is the one I use today. If you think about it, at a superficial level the last contact is the one you relate to first. So when you recall the interaction it's nearly always the impression you were left with at the end that stays with you at a conscious level though the rest of the interaction does impact you but at a deeper level.

Hope that helps a bit but sorry, the metric is already invented and works…

Interested for India Vedula?

David

David wrote:

"If the experience balances out with say 30% Good, 40% Neutral and 30% Bad we end up Neutral"

David, I am genuinely surprised by this - after all, I would have argued that a good experience would be less significant for 'perceived satisfaction' purposes than a negative one, since it is human nature to dwell on the negative (or maybe that's just me ;-)

For instance, if an individual expects good service (and we do, really), then the perceived 'good' experience is of less significance relative to our expectations, as our expectation is closer to 'good' than to 'bad' (i.e. somewhere slightly above 'neutral'). Therefore, what might be considered a 'good' experience might well carry less overall significance than a 'bad' experience due to the fact that the 'bad' one is further from our expectations.

Of course, I'm no expert in these matters, and defer to your own obvious experience, but I do think that a 30:40:30 would be perceived as 'bad' (or shall we say 'unsatisfactory' experience).

Then there's the issue of consistency - a 30:40:30 experience is quite varied; we would perceive this as 'a bit hot and cold' as opposed to a 10:80:10 experience, even though they would (by your arguments) balance out.

Discuss (33 marks)... :-)

John

Firstly, how about changing the order of these threads please? Its a real pain to come in at the beginning and have to scroll to the end every time! A button would do it for me! Oh whilst you are at it a repeat of the new topic/reply buttons at the end too please...

to your question. John we were surprised too. However, this has been our consistent finding!

Oddly enuf, the reality is that people are not quite as sceptical as you might think. Overall there is balance between optimists and pessimists – but not necessarily in the individual work environment as there you are more influenced by the culture of the business – another can of worms opened me thinks!

We only dwell on the negative when we have unfinished business as mention previously. However, the negative vibe grows as time goes by IF we continue to deal with the same company otherwise it can fade

In the 3rd para you mention what is a weighting issue. Our scales for scoring are actually far more detailed than I have described here, so it becomes difficult to elaborate without giving it all away, but they are still ‘narrow’ compared to the range of human emotion we tap into.

Our natural default is to be neutral in our expectations – despite allour bull to the contrary – and we have found that a ‘wonderful’ experience affects us as much as an ‘awful’ experience. We all know of the research done by IBM where of 100 people with a problem only 4 make a formal complaint. However, the horrible reality is that each of the people who have a problem actually mentions it to 9 others…

What this translates to is 1000 people (100 originals PLUS 900 others told) being aware that you have not performed but you only hearing about 4 of them… That’swhy complaints are soooooo important. Unfortunately, I have yet to come across a study into what happens where people felt real satisfaction.

I guess as part of our ‘conditioning’ we are more ready to mention negative things to others as the positives are so rare and we all like to have things in common… The good experiences actually carry more weight in some terms as they are so rare. If exceptionally good experiences occur consistently they replace the negatives conditioning more quickly than vice versa. Oddly enough, our propensity as human beings generally is to seek a positive outcome as much as we can as it makes us feel good about ourselves – its an association thing.

The 30:40:30 issue gets a little complicated here… Its difficult to explain without demonstrating how we work it all so thus hog-tied I’ll try anyway. We have to define some terms. You have BAD as one end of a scale, Neutral means NOT bad AND NOT good, Good means good. If we were talking about contact, Bad would be pushed away, Neutral would be no contact and Good would be Embraced.

So, what 30:40:30 gives is effectively a ‘non experience’ it leaves us with no lasting impression, it just was! You are right the positives and negatives effectively canceleach other out.

How many marks then?

David

How about an email notification of when a post has been replied to? Oh and whilst you are under the bonnet (hood) a spell checker too and lastly a mind to make sense of it all....

David

David, oh, I think you earned your pass there - I'll be stern and give a B, as we can always do better :-)

Interesting to hear about the issues re: 30:40:30 actually being perceived as balanced (i.e. no lasting impression). This is an area I'm very interested in personally as I used to do work with usability and interactive design analysis.

On the point of 'improvements', yes, you're right about the scrolling thing - however, if you come to the topic via the 'latest posts' screen, you will be directed to the post you click upon. You must be coming in via either the 'popular topics' screen or the technology forum screen, both of which assume you want to read from beginning to end. It's difficult to cater for both groups of people, i.e. those that are familiar with the topic and wish to read only the latest bits, as opposed to those who are coming to the thread for the first time. That's why we devised the Latest Posts screen, as a means for 'coming in at the post level, rather than at the topic level. I'll ask our technical guys if they can embed a button or something which will allow you to go to the foot of a topic, though; this should be easy enough to add I'd have thought.

As far as the spell-checker goes, oh, that's a way away (licensing and performance being the issues there) and I will ensure that we have reply buttons at the end of a topic as well, although we'll have to schedule those in with the next incarnation of CCV (v1.05) which is due in about a week's time.

We're looking into the idea of email notification - it's in the pipeline, shall we say!

Cheers,

John

Sorry, David and everyone else...

The link I posted didn't work (I did it from memory). It should be:

Latest Posts.

Hope this helps,

John

Hi David,
Recently I read in an Australian Site ( related to call cenres) the management of Call is a high priority. The title of the article was Call Quality Management.

can we define "Interaction management" here and distinguish it from Call Quality management which is all about recording and training agents. similarly .

Is THERE A WAY FOR SATISFACTION monitoring??? dON'T SELL ME PIECE OF SOFTWARE BUT

Recently I read in an Australian Site ( related to call cenres) the management of Call is a high priority. The title of the article was Call Quality Management.

Vedula, please don't feel afraid to post the url here - we're all for sharing good links with other sites!

can we define "Interaction management" here and distinguish it from Call Quality management which is all about recording and training agents. Is THERE A WAY FOR SATISFACTION monitoring???

I think I'll defer to the great DND for the definition, as it's definitely in his sphere of expertise.

John

Evalue... hmmm

You'll always get what you always got if you always do what you've always done - that’s my opinion of them. Having said that, they have a business that is thriving so the very best of luck to them and beside it is Australia.

Every aspect of a call, its management, its structure etc etc ARE important. However, their importance increases when you approach each call with the WRONG attitude. So, they are LESS important than the approach you have. Adopting the, “I’m going to put myself in this persons shoes and do everything in my power to help” line will bring you more and more MUTUAL benefits than all the focus on call management etc

The reason for this is simple. What you physically do when you are ‘in tune’ with the person calling is to naturally do the vast majority of those things anyway.

Most of the time, these control techniques are focused upon because call length is too long. “For whom” one might ask! The real reason calls are too long is because the agent only listens to the Practical needs of the caller and never explores the Emotional needs.

Here’s an example. Its taken from an article I did about some of the psychology involved so is a bit longer than necessary.

You have justbeen ‘let go’ from your company and you have a mobile phone. You don‘t want rid of the phone as you know you’ll get a job quite soon and you been given a massive payoff. However, being a prudent person, you want to minimise any unnecessary expenditure.

So, with that background, what goes on in your mind is a process that you are not aware of totally that says, “What do I know about mobiles that impact my expenditure to a point where I may be spending money needlessly?” Answer – tariffs. You think, “Hmmm. If I’m not on the right tariff, I could be spending more money than I really need. I’d better call to check I’m on the best one” The outcome of this thought process is an action for you and this for many people is the first time the have given it high level conscious thought - i.e. been made aware of it.

So you have an itch and you need to scratch it. You dial you airtime provider and open the call by saying, “I’m just calling to check I’m on the right tariff.” It is very rare for people to dip into the emotional reason for contact initially as no relationship has been established. The natural tendency is NOT to allude to the underlying reason why you are really calling (even if you are aware of it).

Unfortunately, what the CSR‘hears’ bears little resemblance to your real needs. they ‘hear’, “Please look up all the tariffs on your system and read them all out to me so that I may make up my mind as to which is right for me.” As a consequence they do exactly that job and ‘dump’ a load of tariff info on you so you can do what they have ‘heard’ you want.

This of course is nothing like what you want and what’s more makes you even more confused as it raises further questions. The relationship between you deteriorates and you take your leave of one another. Both of you are dissatisfied. The CSR feels you are unreasonable – after all, they gave you what you asked for (in theirs ears) and you feel they couldn’t care less about you as they took no interest in you and didn’t understand you… You were left with ‘unfinished business’ as Gestalt calls it and as a consequence tell others what an inconsiderate bunch they are … blah blah blah.

What the CSR could have said is, “Thank you for the call Mr X. What exactly promptedyour question?” The chances are that you would then explain a bit more as they are ‘taking an interest’ showing they care. On hearing – and understanding – your real request the CSR could then explain to you that what they were going to do was look at your recent calling profile to see which would be best for you. “Well you’ll be glad to hear that looking at your calling profile you are already on the best available tariff. However, if when you make the bulk of your calls changes or the people you are calling changes please call me back and we can reassess the situation for you.”

The original interaction takes ages and has an outcome that please no one. The second is actually just under twice as quick but you go away feeling ‘happy’ and relieved(feeling satisfaction) and the CSR feels they have done a good job too and really helped someone. A win/win/win situation (customer/CSR/company) what more could you want.

The monitoring of real satisfaction Vedula is not free and is not available from anyone else .

Call me ‘old fashioned’ but I have worked my backside off over a number of years to understand what I do and get to this point. The last thing I wish to do is say, “Ok everyone come and get it - for free!!” Sorry.

Lastly, a call IS an interaction. It's just an interaction via a particular medium. The comments I make relate to ALL interactins regardless of medium - i.e. telephone, web, letters, marketing material, one-on-one etc.

David

Vedula, I think that your firm could do a lot worse than contact David's company The Customer Measurement Company or send an email to info@customermeasurement.com to progress this. I think that a subject like this takes more than a few choice comments on a thread - it's a highly involved process which I believe requires expert and independent assistance.

John

I must admit that I dragged it bit too far in a one-to-one way. Sorry for that.My intention is not to take expert advice but to generate a good deal of heat about a subject very few really understand the importance.The fact that call centres have revolutionized the way business is done. The fact thatunderstanding the customer needs is more important than what company has to offer to the customer is a good sign of consumer awareness induced business re-engineering. The innate ability of the customer to adopt to changing times and demand what he wants ensures, the corporates are kept on their toes and the customer focussed selling becomes the standard than exception.

This not only enables true relationship marketing but also seamlessly integrates the affectation dimension into business processes.

Repeat purchase, referals and cross-buy and up-buy are the true indicators of customer satisfaction.

The fact that organizations are always run by individuals means human interface in business process is always a necessity than exception.No automated solution can be implemented without human intervention at some time or the other in creation of loyal, profitable customers.

The data pertaining to a customer when logically analysed leads to customer information. This information when analysed and related with external and internal processes the strong relationships are developed there by leading to customer insight. Once the organization can accept feedback from customers and improve its services, the satisfaction levels rise beyond expected levels and place organizations in a profitable position to derive true benefoits from fruitful partenering and customer relationship. The value addition to customer service is vital for business to survive.

Any comments?? DND or John

I must admit that I dragged it bit too far in a one-to-one way. Sorry for that.My intention is not to take expert advice but to generate a good deal of heat about a subject very few really understand the importance.The fact that call centres have revolutionized the way business is done. The fact thatunderstanding the customer needs is more important than what company has to offer to the customer is a good sign of consumer awareness induced business re-engineering. The innate ability of the customer to adopt to changing times and demand what he wants ensures, the corporates are kept on their toes and the customer focussed selling becomes the standard than exception.

This not only enables true relationship marketing but also seamlessly integrates the affectation dimension into business processes.

Repeat purchase, referals and cross-buy and up-buy are the true indicators of customer satisfaction.

The fact that organizations are always run by individuals means human interface in business process is always a necessity than exception.No automated solution can be implemented without human intervention at some time or the other in creation of loyal, profitable customers.

The data pertaining to a customer when logically analysed leads to customer information. This information when analysed and related with external and internal processes the strong relationships are developed there by leading to customer insight. Once the organization can accept feedback from customers and improve its services, the satisfaction levels rise beyond expected levels and place organizations in a profitable position to derive true benefoits from fruitful partenering and customer relationship. The value addition to customer service is vital for business to survive.

Any comments?? DND or John

Couldn’t agree more about the importance Vedulaa.

As to call centres ‘revolutionising’ the way business is done… I have to agree that IF they were implemented with a view to bringing together systems, skills and resource with the sole aim of improving the delivered service to ones customers AND, that implementation is appropriately executed then indeed it revolutionises service delivery as the customer really does get a better service – much more speedy and a single point of contact – and moreover staff benefit too with huge potential for multi skilling.

However, the reality has panned out very differently. Cast about and ask customers what they think companies open up call centres and the most popular answer you get back, when analysed, is, “To cut costs”. If you ask, “What do you feel about the level of service you are provided?” they say its bad/worse/lower than pre call centre. The biggest issues being that it is ‘less personal’, the staff are more pressured and the staff don’t know as much as they used to.

Having said all of this, a very important point has come out. People DO NOT blame the staff of call centres AT ALL. They recognise that they are simple doing the job they are told to do and realise that staff would d more IF ALLOWED.

As I have already mentioned, people (users) now use the words HATE, DREAD & APPALING when describing their experiences of call centres. No matter how you look at it, if the original vision was indeed to provide a ‘better’ service it has failed…

Does this mean it can’t work? NO it doesn’t. Does it mean customers will never, through choice, call them? NO it doesn’t.

What is needed however for a call centre to work to the benefit of customers, and ultimately for thebusiness for all the reasons you have already alluded to, is for a company to realise that every call is , as Jan Carlson coined, a moment of truth.

Its strange isn’t it that the investment in most companies is highest the further away from customers you get… Its about time they realised that customers see and realise that too. What customers see is that costs seem only ever to be cut at the point of contact with them! When a company finally has the balls to publicly say, “Come to us because wehave INCREASED the time you can spend with our advisors. We recognise that you need time to fully understand and get the best for yourself and your family out of what we can do for you.” They’ll benefit too from much better sales BECAUSE of the better relationship developed. THAT’S relationship marketing.

THAT’S when a call centre revolution will really begin… Until then it’s a cost cutting exercise that benefits no one but the technology companies.

You are right in principal when you talk of data turning into information however, to do so requires ‘Translation’ – the view from the customers perspective only. If you think about it TRANSLATION is the only word to describe it but it also requires that you speak BOTH languages. Business only speaks ‘Business’ at present and desperately needs to learn ‘Customer’. Vedula you could not translate Indian to English if you were not fluent in both.

Trying to do it any other way will simply deliver a new definition of madness – doing thesame as you’ve always done but expecting different results…

Thoughts anyone?

David