article-from call center to engagement center-(7.29.16)

From Call Center to Customer Engagement Center 1 www.theEPGsolution.com

FROM CALL CENTER TO CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT CENTER Learning How to Overcome the Challenges and Design the Change You Want to See

By Marty Moynihan

At the recent Call Center Week conference, I was fortunate to attend the half-day workshop presented by Microsoft. It was entitled: From Call Center to Customer Engagement Center—Leading through Change. In this workshop, Microsoft discussed some of the challenges of creating a culture of engagement, and they led us through a process that can be used in overcoming the challenges to transitioning from a call center to a customer engagement center. A primary goal of the workshop was to help workshop participants to more fully understand how better customer service can be achieved by improvement in employee empowerment, adding channels, and enhanced insights and analytics. A secondary goal was to give everyone attending the workshop some specific techniques and best practices to take back to their call centers and put to use in their own journey of transitioning from a call center to customer engagement center. The workshop was highly participative and gave us all a chance to learn the concepts from the Microsoft Presentation Team and then to work with our Table-Group Team to apply them to our own situations. I was fortunate to work with a highly enthusiastic Table-Group Team of call center executives, which included Nicole Harrop, Manager, Email Support, Thumbtack; Marie LeBlanc, Senior Director, Customer Service, Louisiana Healthcare Connections; and Laurie Walter, Senior Operations Manager, Customer eXperience Center, Whirlpool Corporation. We all enjoyed working together to discover answers to the three basic questions posited by the workshop:

1. Where does service stand today, and where is it heading tomorrow? 2. Where are you now with your call center culture? 3. How do you overcome challenges and design the change you want to see?

WHERE DOES SERVICE STAND TODAY AND WHERE IS IT HEADING TOMORROW?

Tricia Morris addressed this first question of the workshop in her presentation entitled: Setting the Stage: See Where Service Stands Today And Where It Is Heading Tomorrow. Tricia is Senior Product Marketing Manager of Parature at Microsoft. She is passionate about customer service at Microsoft and has been recognized as one of the 20 Customer Service Influencers You Have To Follow On Twitter, one of the 20 Best Customer Experience Blogs That You Must Follow, and one of the ICMI Top 50 Customer Service Thought Leaders.

Tricia helped us to understand the bottom line significance of “Customer Service” by reviewing the Microsoft State of Global Customer Service-2016. This year, Microsoft’s customer service preferences and expectations survey polled 5,000 consumers across Brazil, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In answer to the key question of “How important is customer service in your choice of a brand or organization,” 97% of the survey responders in the USA said very important. In Brazil, 100% of the survey responders said it is very important. The survey reinforces the fact that Customer Service is the new differentiator, and concluded that: “as a key stakeholder in driving the customer experience, brands can no longer afford to view customer service as a cost center. Customer service must be viewed as a value and moment of truth center where a brand’s commitment to customer centricity and the customer experience is tested every hour of every day.” Elements Advancing Change. The survey also emphasized the growing importance of multiple channels and social media, and the presentation identified three key elements in the enterprise that can advance the transition process from call center to engagement center:

1. Empower Employees. Employees must be empowered to deliver consistent, efficient, satisfying service across more channels than ever before if you are to obtain and retain customers.

2. Prioritize New Channels. Use the preferences and expectations of your next generation customers to prioritize innovation and the addition of new channels.

3. Personalize Engagement with Analytics. Drive more personalized, predictive, proactive engagement by using insights from analytics.

“Customer Service is the new differentiator.”

97% agree in USA

100% agree in Brazil


WHERE ARE YOU NOW WITH YOUR CALL CENTER CULTURE? Jessica Bush and Rob Young, Microsoft Solution Advisors, introduced us to the Customer Service Maturity Model. The model developed from a Nucleus Research report that was commissioned by Microsoft to conduct in-depth interviews with approximately 40 customers and to analyze their operations. Customers interviewed had customer service solutions deployed from 18 months to 10 years. Microsoft was interested in determining what characteristics were consistent with brands operating at “Good,” “Better,” and “Best Levels” of customer service. The main factors of maturity considered in the research were: Organization, Management, Channels, and Technology. This study included a Customer Service Maturity Model, which helps to define the characteristics of the contact center at various stages as it transitions from a “functional center” to a “dynamic center,” or as characterized in the title of the workshop, from a “call center to an engagement center.” The CSM Model focuses on three elements advancing change—Employee Empowerment, Omnichannel Engagement, and Insights and Analytics, and it suggests three basic stages of maturity in the transition process:

FUNCTIONAL (Call Center)

TACTICAL (Transitional)

DYNAMIC (Engagement Center)

The concept of three stages of maturity can help call centers to determine where they are now with their call center culture, and can provide them with a road map to follow as they think about the elements in their contact center that need to change as they make the transition from a call center to an engagement center. I have used the idea of a “road map” in replicating the Customer Service Maturity Model introduced by Microsoft. In order to make it easier to visualize the three-stage transition, I have put the three stages across the top of the Model and the three elements advancing change down the left-hand side.

CUSTOMER SERVICE MATURITY MODEL Transitioning from Call Center To Customer Engagement Center

ELEMENTS ADVANCING CHANGE

FUNCTIONAL

(Call Center)

TACTICAL (Transitional)

DYNAMIC

(Engagement Center)

1. EMPLOYEE

EMPOWERMENT

(Empower Employees)

Scripted customer interaction. Limited or no knowledge base available to agents Multiple transfers or escalations.

More Personalized customer interaction. Agents empowered by centralized knowledge base to find answers. Agents empowered to perform multiple service functions. In addition to customer feedback, agent feedback is valued and acted upon.

Personalized customer interactions. Agents solve issues without escalation or approvals. Agents are brand ambassadors

2. OMNICHANNEL

USAGE

(Prioritize New Channels)

Few (1-3) disconnected channels. Channels typically include phone, email and online portal. Knowledge base departmentalized.

Multiple channels established (4 or more). Includes functional channels as well as chat, social, community. Consistent knowledgebase across channels

Seamless service across channels. Automated assistance. Knowledgebase proactively suggest solutions before escalation.

3. INSIGHTS

& ANALYTICS

(Personalize Engagement with

Analytics)

Out of the box dashboards. Packaged standard reports. Limited or no self-service reporting.

Customized reporting for business specific KPI’s. Self-service consumption reports. Feedback & satisfaction reports. Knowledge management reports.

Predictive analytics and machine learning integrations. Data integration from outside the customer service department.


HOW DO YOU OVERCOME CHALLENGES AND DESIGN THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE? The findings of the 2016 State of Customer Service study helped us to understand the important elements that advance change, and the Nucleus Research Guidebook to Customer Service Maturity helped us to understand how these elements need to change in the transition process from call center to customer engagement center. Now we were ready to apply what we had learned and participate in the Design Thinking Table Group Project, which allowed us to take on some specific transition challenges in our own call centers. Cassandra St. Louis and Joe Dickerson, UX Microsoft Leads, introduced the purpose, process and payoff to Design Thinking. They referenced a Harvard Business Review article written by Tim Brown of IDEO who defined design thinking as “a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs to what is technologically possible and a viable business strategy to convert into customer value and market opportunity.” They pointed out that the solutions that materialize at the end of the design thinking process should be desirable, feasible, and viable. After Cassandra and Joe introduced the theory of design thinking, they made it practical by taking us through the design thinking process using specific examples of obstacles that each of the table group members were facing in their own call centers and showing us how to use design thinking to overcome obstacles and design the change we want to see. 1. EMPATHIZE—Learn About Your Audience. Table Groups members were asked to locate their call center on the Customer Maturity Model, and to discuss what benefits would accrue to their enterprise by transitioning to an “engagement center.” 2. DEFINE—Construct Point of View Based on User Needs. Table Groups members were then asked to identify the greatest obstacles in their call center cultures that could prevent them from moving to a dynamic call center. The Microsoft presenters asked us to use post-it-notes and “write down as many problems or challenges your call center or customer service department is currently facing as it relates to Employee Empowerment, Omnichannel Engagement, or Insights and Analytics.” Each Table Group was asked to put their problems, obstacles and challenges on post-it-notes and put the notes on a flip chart. The presenters reviewed the rules of brainstorming, and we were asked to use the rules as we worked together. Our team followed the brainstorming rules and we encouraged wild ideas, deferred judgment, built on the ideas of others, stayed focused on the topic, used visuals, went for quantity, and kept to one conversation at a time. It did not take our team long to identify over thirty problems and to cover our flip charts with post-it-notes. On the following graphic which represents our flip chart, I have listed the obstacles that we identified. We were then asked to group the obstacles that were similar or might have a common solution. On the graphic representing “Our Table Group Post-It-Notes Flipchart, I have underlined and italicized the ones that we thought might have a common solution.


OUR TABLE GROUP POST-IT-NOTES FLIPCHART From the “Obstacles” Brainstorming Session

What are your call center challenges and the changes needed to transform your call center to an engagement center?

Supply & Demand of Call Center Agents

Competitive Job Market for Agents

Contract Agent Attrition Turnover

Need unlimited time

Multiple Systems (16) Employees want to create a brand memory

Expectations of Agent Role by Leadership & other Departments

When leadership does not act on agent feedback

Need leadership alignment of contact center sites

Cost of empowering agents with financial resolutions

Dynamic Expectations with Functional Budgets & Resources

No buy-in on brand loyalty

Need skills based ice breakers Need dynamic training Lack of coaching to

decrease transfers Not enough knowledge to resolve escalated issues

Need to survey customer needs

Need to define business case for coaching agents

Need to know and advocate for a total solution

Sustain best practices when implementing new initiatives

Need to understand customer needs

Processes are aligned to company rather than customer

Not update articles with relevant information

Need special training for influencers

Lack of awareness of customer insights

Need Virtual training of remote employees Need Walking meetings Need to hire different

strengths to teach each other

Need to train agents on customer expectations

Lack of knowledge based articles.

Need to understand agent needs

Need to manage the speed & dynamics of agent product knowledge

Define—Identify Key Issue. Our Table Team went back through our list and identified our key obstacle as knowledge, and we identified Training as the cultural intervention that would be the largest single contributor to creating a dynamic call center in our companies. 3. IDEATE—Brainstorm and Come Up with Creative Solutions. Working with Training as our overall solution, we brainstormed a number of ways of making the training solution happen within our organizations. Once again we followed the rules of brainstorming and encouraged wild ideas, deferred judgment, built on the ideas of others, stay focused on the topic, used visuals, went for quantity, and kept to one conversation at a time. By sticking to these rules we came up with a lot of good ideas. 4. PROTOTYPE—Build Representation of your Ideas. Cassandra and Joe then asked us to pull together our best ideas for our solution, and to put it together as a presentation to give to the other participants at the Workshop. Add “Magic” and Craft the Story. The Microsoft presenters pointed out that one of the key strategies in effective change management is to tell a persuasive and exciting story that helps others in the organization understand the obstacles, how your proposed solutions can overcome the obstacles, and gets them excited about implementing the suggested changes. So, they challenged us to add “magic” to our presentations. They gave us 25 minutes to “Craft the Story.” We were asked to be creative, to use drawings, to identify the problem/challenge, to identify our “magic” or “secret weapon,” and to show how it could solve the problem. We were given post-it-notes and 2 flip chart papers to outline our story and illustrate our solution to our obstacle to an engagement culture with a magical analogy.

“Logic is A to Z.

Imagination is everywhere.”

~ Albert Einstein


Our Table Team brainstormed a number of good ideas for our solution. We decided on the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz as our magical analogy. In our story, our Goal/Destination is the “Emerald City,” the location of our empowered Agents in our engagement center. Our Project Team has the courage of the Lion, the knowledge of the Scarecrow, the heart of the Tin Man, and the Coach with the Ruby Red project management slippers to keep us on course in implementing our plan. Our Plan/Action Steps consist of 14 golden bricks on the yellow brick road. I have summarized the presentation below:

OUR “MAGICAL” PROJECT TEAM for creating EMPOWERED AGENTS

1. Dorothy: Coach with Ruby Red project management slippers.

2. Lion: Courage to take on obstacles and solve customer problems.

3. Scarecrow: Knowledge of products, technology, systems and options to provide customer solutions.

4. Tin Man: Heart to empathize with customer emotions and passion to persuade.

5. Good Witch: Positive self-talk and positive environment.

6. Wicked West of the West: Inertia, status quo, obstacles, negative self-talk.

OUR “MAGICAL” PLAN FOR EMPOWERING AGENTS

THROUGH KNOWLEDGE and SKILLS TRAINING

GOAL: THE EMERALD CITY & EMPOWERMENT

1. Employees are willing and able. 2. Employees are competent and confident. ACTION STEPS: THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

1. Survey Customer Needs

2. Survey Agent Needs

3. Survey Interdepartmental Needs

4. Answer the Question: How do we contribute to our stakeholders?

5. Product Knowledge

6. Technology Process Knowledge

7. Emotional & Social Intelligence Skills

8. Communication Strategies

9. Peer Coaching & Supervisor Coaching Skills

10. Brand Immersion

11. Personal Development

12. Career Development

13. Assess Results

14. Retrain


5. TEST—Test Your Ideas. At the end of our presentation, our Table Team celebrated with a round of applause. We were all impressed with the power of the Customer Service Maturity Model and the Design Thinking Process to help us to quickly define our goals, identify potential obstacles to reaching those goals, brainstorm solutions and come up with a plan that was desirable, feasible, and viable. The team members look forward to testing the ideas when they return to their own calls centers. LIST OF BEST PRACTICES FOR INCREASING CUSTOMER SERVICE MATURITY At the conclusion of the workshop, the Microsoft team made sure that we walked away with a summary list of best practices gleaned from their research—best practices that can be used for increasing customer service maturity. I have included the list of the best practice ideas that Microsoft shared with all of the participants. 1. EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES

Moving from the Functional to the Tactical 1. Provide each agent with individual productivity scorecard. 2. Incorporate agent feedback to improve your service responses and delivery. 3. Provide agents a centralized knowledgebase. 4. Include best course of action in knowledge articles. 5. Empower employees with multiple skills and responsibilities.

Provide Each Agent with an Individual Productivity Scorecard. Set benchmarks, goals for agents with weekly reports that show customer satisfaction score, tickets resolved, knowledgebase articles suggested, etc.

Moving from the Tactical to the Dynamic 1. Promote real-time collaboration and knowledge sharing among agents. 2. Work with teams outside customer service to drive customer-obsessed culture. 3. Implement agent service desk that consolidates all channels. 4. Empower employees to solve issues and make decisions without escalation through training and

reasonable compensation boundaries. 5. Provide 360-degree view of the customer for personalized and contextual service.

Promote real-time collaboration and knowledge sharing among agents. Use community and/or social tools to help speed resolution of trending issues. 2. OMNICHANNEL ENGAGEMENT

Moving from the Functional to the Tactical 1. Stage releases of new channels. 2. Formalize knowledge management workflow. 3. Research and implement best practices for each new channel. 4. Track metrics and add routing rules specific to each channel. 5. Don’t forget your customer’s mobile experience may be their primary service experience.

Stage the release of new channels. Roll out a new channel to a limited set of customers to begin, and have top agents learn and work with the channel before customer-wide rollout.

Moving from the Tactical to the Dynamic 1. Establish seamless contextual view of the customer. 2. Differentiate your service by becoming an early adopter. 3. Improve the omnichannel customer experience. 4. Consider automated assistance if appropriate for your business. 5. Proactively reach out to customers – it’s a win/win.

Establish seamless contextual view of the customer. Integrate channels and analytics for increasingly seamless service.


3. INSIGHTS AND ANALYTICS

Moving from the Functional to the Tactical 1. Create and analyze case management reports. 2. Use trend analysis to improve productivity. 3. Improve self-service through channel-specific insights. 4. Share voice of customer feedback across teams. 5. Analyze resolution workflow to improve satisfaction

Create and analyze case management productivity reports. Review case management (support ticket) handling to determine best agent responses, resolutions to improve processes.

Moving from the Tactical to the Dynamic 1. Share with customers improvements made as result of their feedback. 2. Improve future service by finding patterns in customer inquiries and issues. 3. Leverage machine learning capabilities for more intelligent service. 4. Personalize your interaction using insights pushed to agents and customers. 5. Predict upcoming interaction and group into current interaction.

Share with customers improvements made as a result of their feedback. Collect feedback across all channels. Move beyond listening. Let customers know you’ve heard them and have taken action in customer service, product development, etc. PUTTING THE IDEAS INTO PRACTICE The members of my Table Group Team and the other participants in this workshop took away new insights into engagement and ways to increase engagement in the call center. I would like to thank the Microsoft Presenter Team and my Table Group Team for a very enjoyable, participative, enlightening, and practical workshop. The workshop helped us all to more fully understand how better customer service can be achieved by improvement in employee empowerment, adding channels, and enhanced insights and analytics. The Customer Maturity Model, the Design Thinking Process, and the List of Best Practices are all practical tools that can be used in the journey from call center to engagement center. The format of the workshop and the effectiveness of the Microsoft presentation team gave everyone in attendance some valuable hands-on experience in using the tools and techniques introduced in the session. By the end of the workshop, the challenge of transitioning from a call center to a customer engagement center did not seem quite so daunting, and the members of our team felt that they had new tools and methods for taking on this challenge and putting these new ideas into practice.

© MTC 2016 About the Author: Marty Moynihan is the Chief Engagement Consultant for the Engagement Performance Group (EPG). He is responsible for EPG’s client development as well as the implementation of EPG’s Sustainable Engagement Culture Process. Early in his career at IBM, Marty developed his passion for working with enterprises that endeavor to be both employee-centric and customer-centric, and that consciously strive for higher levels of both employee engagement and customer engagement. Marty has served as Vice President of Client Development at Merit Training Corporation, and has held executive level responsibility for customer engagement as Managing Director of Learning Systems at BI Worldwide, The Global Engagement Agency; Regional Director at Linkage, The Leadership Development Company; and as Director of MCI University. He has an extensive background in transformational change management and leadership development specifically in the area of the customer experience. Marty partners with our client executives in the design and execution of customer engagement improvement strategies in a number of industries including Medical Devices, Financial Services, Healthcare, Technology, Telecommunications, and Public Utilities. He graduated with a B.A., Communications from Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. ([email protected])

article-from call center to engagement center-(7.29.16)

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