Roundtable breakouts in brief
Participants at the Spring ICAE Roundtable were challenged by presenter Scott Broetzmann to answer three salient questions about perceptions of the customer care experience at their companies and within their industries:
1) Have your companies/organizations or industry truly embraced the customer care experience?
- “Maybes” throughout the room
- Some are building customer service into compensation/performance management
- Senior management exposure to customer care issues
- Some have escalation/resolution teams
- Improved reporting has helped somewhat
- Technical and professional training has also helped
- “More work to do!”
2) Which elements of the customer care revolution present the greatest challenge?
- All employees need to be onboard, both direct and indirect customer facing
- There must be employee training to advance understanding of customer expectations
- Also helpful would be advocacy education, i.e. training employees to become customer advocates within their own organizations
3) What three things can we do tomorrow to increase a comfort level for embracing the revolution
- Simplify our products and do a better job of educating customers
- Partner with consumer advocates, even those involved in online social media
- Improve technology, but focus on the needs of specific customer groups
- Tie employee recognition to superior customer service
- Personalize communication to customers; “no form letters”
- Encourage management involvement
In addition, Roundtable attendees got a chance to vote on what they identified as the top customer “satisfiers” and “dissatisfiers” during interactions with service providers:
Satisfiers
- One contact for resolution of problem
- Representative has the authority to resolve the problem
- Representative is following through on promise
- Consumer can contact the same person if unable to resolve in one call
- If transferred to another line, the representative stays on the line and introduces caller to new representative
Dissatisfiers
- No option to speak with a person when calling
- “Scripted” answers
- Customer required to repeat information time and again
- Representative interrupts while caller is explaining
- Customer is speaking with an agency outside the USA
