Social Media: a distributed communication channel

2010 was the year that Social Media was really adopted by the mass. There is no way you could have missed that. You can’t watch a TV show without someone telling you to follow them on Facebook or Twitter. Customer complaints turned to media hypes and dominated the news. 2011 will be the year that companies start to realize that Social Media have induced a major shift in balance of power from companies to consumers and can no longer be ignored. Time to incorporate this 'distributed communication' channel in your multi channel customer contact strategy!

KPI's in perspective.

Increasing customer loyalty and decreasing their efforts it no rocket science. In fact, a lot of issues are already known, a lot of software applications and databases have already been installed, most reps have been trained properly and internal processes and procedures have been defined. And yet customers are unsatisfied and disloyal. So, how do you stop that? You could try to analyze the their frustrations. Customers can tell you what's wrong. Then define new, low effort, customer service processes and get some easy to use software which makes it easy for your organization to properly handle a call, integrally present relevant customer information, start up workflows in which customer information can be edited.

Interpersonal issues in customer contact events.

Now that we have started removing obstacles in order to decrease customers' effort, why don't we address other aspects on this subject. For example the emotional side of customer interactions. It may be an aspect hard to measure, but how things are being said, sometimes prevail on what is being said. When the message itself is clear to a customer, he or she does not necessarily have to agree with it.

Customers have to call back

What is the biggest cause of customer effort? Customers who have to call back. Customers find it annoying, it takes time and it can be avoided. Though companies believe they perform well on this subject, because of strong first-contact-resolution scores (FCR). However 22% of the repeat calls involve downstream issues that relate to the problem that caused the original call. There is a message here: Do not only resolve the current issue, be ahead of the next one.

Lean Six Sigma in perspective

Many people think that Lean Six Sigma is strongly influenced by Japanese companies like Toyota. That may be so, but Lean Six Sigma has strong American roots. Industrialists like Henry Ford and William Edwards Deming, who after the Second World War was heavily involved rebuilding the Japanese industry, have been great pioneers of the philosophy. Lean Six Sigma consists of two combined methods: Lean Thinking and Six Sigma. Both are focused at improving business processes and customers.

The Lean Thinking philosophy is aimed at those elements that do not add value to be eliminated from the process. As a result the final product improves in quality, which has positive effects on revenue streams. The Six Sigma philosophy focuses on the quality per element in the process and has a strong customer focus.

CRM + BPM = CPM

Customer Process Management is the merger of Business Process Management and Customer Relationship Management and it has led to a step forward in the area of Customer Interaction Management. Understanding that, why should an organization consider CPM?

Processes which follow on customer contacts, like a phone call, usually extend departments and involves several employees. For exemple, a customer calls or sends an email with a question about an invoice and he or she want to pass on a change in address as well. CPM manages these processes in a flexible, effective and efficient way. As a result, the Average Handling Time significantly decreased.