NICE Fizzback Blog

Customer Experience Metrics of the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:45:00 +0000

NPS or Net Promoter Score is a term I am sure everyone reading this blog will be aware of. Over the last couple of years there have been a number of attempts to replace this favoured metric to measure the customer experience. These have ranged from trying to measure Customer Effort to a recent example I saw of WoMI or Word of Mouth Index.

These new metrics have not only sought to bring a greater and more accurate understanding of what customers think of the brand, but also how they act on those thoughts with friends and family. It is true that NPS was created in a very different world to that which we live in today, smart devices were still a number of years off hitting the mainstream and Facebook was still a year away from being created in Mark Zuckerberg’s college bedroom. Today customers interact with business across more channels than ever before and in more complex ways. In NICE’s Consumer Survey last year, respondents said on average they interact across six channels with an organization, not so long ago it would have been a stretch to name six channels across a business.

New metrics seek to readdress how businesses understand, measure and subsequently try and improve the experience they offer to their customers. This is a very understandable approach, yet seeking to create the ultimate KPI or metric is somewhat missing the point. By asking a different multiple choice question, or an additional one for that matter, is your business truly gaining a clearer insight into the customer experience? And perhaps more importantly are you gaining a better understanding of what and how to improve?

A new way of asking a question may give better insight into a particular part of the customer experience, or a particular effect it is having, but largely fails to improve the holistic understanding of the customer experience and how to improve it. One of the questions which springs to mind for me, is what level of granularity do you need to gain an “accurate” view of the customer experience? Taking WoMI as an example, asking an additional question about how the customer will act does add an additional level of detail, but does this mean it is any more accurate than a measure like NPS? There is a huge amount of potential information to take into account such as how many friends that person has, both online and offline, what opinion their friends have of the person, what sort of personality they have, are they trusted etc. While I’m not advocating collecting all this information, the point I’m making is that certain metrics can create an illusion to the level of accurate insight they are offering.

This is the point where I’m coming to the crux of my argument; when measuring the customer experience and the impact it is having, it is too complex to simply ask a number of well phrased questions and expect an easy route to customer experience heaven. The onus must be taken off the customer to respond to metrics that organizations believe are important. Instead customers should be able to comment on the experience they’ve had in their own words, and shift the onus to the company to analyse that, match it to other behavioural information and act on it.

While I’m not saying that metrics aren’t important, as ultimately businesses need a number to be measured and tracked on; but this should not be the focus for improving the customer experience. Listen to your customers, what they are saying in the feedback they give to you, or what they say online, and improve the customer experience you offer from these insights. Then the numbers will take care of themselves.

Tom Lynam

For more information on NICE Fizzback, please click here.

Interactions 2013: The Key Themes

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:14:00 +0000

Last week the annual NICE User Group (NUG) event, Interactions, took place in Orlando, Florida. Attended by over 1500 customers the event brought together professionals from all industries, all who were focused on providing a better experience and level of service for their customers.

The event featured a number of Fizzback customers from Sprint, Alliance Data and Capital One on the main stage presenting keynote sessions to Virgin Money, Bell Canada and Talk Talk in breakout tracks. It was a true showcase of the value that leveraging and operationalizing direct Voice of Customer within the enterprise can bring.

In this post, I want to draw on some of the key messages that I thought ran through the event for those focused on the Voice of the Customer (VoC).

The growth of Voice of Customer: Even as recently as last year’s event, the type of conversations that I was having with customers were about whether or not they measured NPS or customer satisfaction. Yet now this seems to be the norm, and companies are increasingly looking into how they improve their measurement techniques and if they can discover new and better ways in which they can measure the customer experience. This is reflected in the recent work from the Temkin Group who states that companies are becoming more mature in their approach to VoC.

Quality Driven Feedback or Feedback Driven Quality: One of the key themes was the relationship between quality metrics and feedback scores. As direct VoC becomes more commonplace within the business I have increasingly heard and spoken to customers who are now utilizing feedback to drive what quality metrics they are measuring off the back of an interaction. For me this is a key shift as businesses start to measure performance not by what they perceive to be a good experience, but by what the customer perceives is a good experience.

Driving Cultural Change is key: While collecting feedback and acting on it is obviously important, it is equally important to drive cultural change as well. To effectively improve the customer experience it is imperative to have the backing at a strategic level, and to use the directive to drive change throughout the business. All our presenters talked about a strategic level desire within the business to offer a better experience to their customers, and this filtered down through the business to have a positive impact on the frontline. While these were achieved in a number of different ways (the company choir singing verbatim comments in the lunch hall or bonsuing staff on c-sat scores to name two examples) the effect was ultimately the same, a cultural change within the business of delivering a better customer experience.

I want to finish this post with a short conclusion; as the world in which you interact with customers evolves, it is increasingly important to understand the experience that they have, get closer to your customers and ultimately offer an exceptional level of service. While this might sound alarming, it is also an opportunity to differentiate yourselves through customer experience, driving increased revenues, loyalty and satisfaction.

Tom Lynam

For more info on NICE Fizzback please click here.

A New Retail Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 03:09:00 +0000

The ever present news that yet more well-known brands are struggling on the UK high street (Jessops, Blockbusters and HMV to name just three in recent examples) is sad to see, and it is a worrying time for many others. Their fate is causing many businesses to rethink how to approach their retail strategy and one of the new ideas is the development of a new style of retail stores which aim to provide a better customer experience for the shoppers and customers.

The traditional retail store is a place where all products were laid out to view, so that customers could go and see, touch and feel the products that they were buying, and in some case try the product first hand. Many brands are now beginning to realise that this is not enough and in an attempt to maintain their high street footfall, are developing new and improved stores to try and boost in store customer experience. I’ll also add a quick disclaimer that we are by no means stating that a different in store experience would have necessarily saved those businesses named at the beginning of this post.

These new enhanced outlets aim to provide us with a more interactive and engaging retail experience. They also allow us to immerse ourselves not only in the product, but also the brand and what it stands for. Furthermore, those that have launched these new stores successfully have found that the right balance of traditional and digital tools is all important. In essence, today’s high street have to work hard to persuade us that leaving our home to shop is important, rather than completing all shopping online.

Here are a couple of examples of stores I think, are offering an additional level of customer experience (and we’ll avoid the obvious example of Apple):

The Abercrombie and Fitch Group of stores certainly provide an experience for their intended audience. The stores stand out in the shopping centres as they are fashioned to look like a house from the outside, or showing a live stream from a surfing beach. Once inside, the shops are dark and filled with music, with lit house furniture showing off the products. They are also renowned for having models parading the stores.

Burberry World: Burberry has developed its flagship store to reflect its website (a really good example of multi-channel consistency) – the space is divided into rooms that reflect the different sections of its website (a great example of multi-channel consistency). When trying on something in the changing room, the mirrors will change to show the item on the catwalk or on film so the customer can appreciate how it will work in real-life. There is also a large screen and stage on which Burberry will show live catwalk shows. It’s about creating an atmosphere too – customers are under the weatherman of Burberry – digital thunderstorms can be created.

Virgin Money: But it’s not just clothing stores which have looked for a different approach. Virgin Money is developing an entire network of stores which aim to bring a “fresh approach” to banking. They include access to different technology products which giving access to Virgin Money products, free Wi-Fi and a no hard sell policy adopted by all staff. They also give customers a place to have a rest and get a cup of tea.

These stores are more than just a shop, they allow you to touch and feel the entire brand and be part of the experience.

NICE Fizzback is helping its customers to better understand the experience customers have in store. If many high street retailers are to survive it is imperative that businesses create an environment in which customers feel relaxed, comfortable and valued; and in order to do this it is important to understand customer expectations and perceptions. Finally this experience must be consistent across every channel – retail viewed as a single standalone channel will struggle to survive and maintain its place on the high street.

Natasha Holroyde

For more info NICE Fizzback please click here.

Quota Management – the unsung hero of Voice of the Customer Performance Management

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 12:43:00 +0000

In my role helping leading global organizations to craft and operationalize Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions, one of the most commonly established and desired use cases is the ability to performance manage the organizational hierarchy on the perceptions and ratings of the customers they serve.

In Forrester’s 2012 book Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of your Business, two of their six key practices to customer centricity – Governance & Culture - have their roots in this sphere; utilizing technology and services to be able to confidently performance manage employees by the Voice of the Customer. A robust end-to-end technology solution and surrounding program provides the VoC governance which, in turn, establishes a platform for the taking the longer-term view to customer-centric cultural change within an organization. The theory is sound.

When we talk about VoC Performance Management, we’re quick to talk about the basic requirements - sufficient quantity and quality of Voice of the Customer input. Quantity – this ensures that we are able to say with statistical confidence that individual A is outperforming individual B in the eyes of the customer. This requires that we meet certain volume thresholds.

With regards to quality, we’re able to balance a number of metrics and incorporate metadata from unstructured verbatim comments to add flavor to the numbers. Easy. But what of stability? Robust VoC Performance Management cannot be achieved with mere quantity and quality of VoC. There has to be stability and this is the role of quota management – also known in the industry as capping and smoothing. Quota management is the ugly sister of advanced analytics and adaptive surveying – it’s not as sexy a concept, but boy is it an important cog.

Effective quota management ensures a steady and dependable flow of VoC with which to make robust like-for-like comparisons between peers, teams and timeframes. In essence, it is the ability to reach a requisite amount of volume per unit in a given timeframe and have the intelligence to push down and pull back on the polling throttle when the correct time arises.

There are a multitude of factors governing its success including contact capture rates, survey response rates, total customer base and net customer acquisition and churn. It is the result of so many moving parts that the only way to succeed is by applying industry best practice during the implementation & engage in an ongoing refinement exercise to ensure that volumes are kept at an optimum level.

Without quota management, VoC volumes have a tendency to fluctuate in a cyclical fashion around a given survey’s de-dupe rules for avoiding survey fatigue. This drives period-by-period uncertainty and undermines the governance element of the Voice of the Customer within an organization.

Whilst it’s not a concept to win a VoC sales pitch or transform an organization in silo – the role of quota management in establishing a robust and valuable VoC Performance Management cannot be underestimated. And it’s importance will only increase as the depth and breadth of VoC solutions continues to spread across the enterprise.

Andrew Robson

For more info on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Give your Airline Loyalty Programme the Competitive Advantage

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:29:00 +0000

This is not an industry we cover regularly in the NICE Fizzback blog, but this week we mean to make amends. Many airlines operate extensive and hugely expensive loyalty programmes to secure bookings from the occasional to the frequent flyer. But how do you know if the scheme is working?

Requesting customer feedback is common practice however, traditional paper-surveys, emails, focus groups and anecdotal feedback all have serious drawbacks that impact the accuracy of the results. One of the biggest problems is the time lag between the experience and the feedback request, as this delay lessens not only the ability to respond, but also the quality and level of response. Asking questions as close to the experience as possible produces a more accurate response, as the memory is still fresh in the mind. As a result many airline loyalty program managers are moving away from the traditional methods in favour of Voice of the Customer (VoC) solutions.

The biggest appeal of VoC is the real-time speed at which feedback can be requested from a passenger, collated and shared with the airline personnel who can make the difference, such as the cabin crew, check-in staff, the person running the website etc. It works by simply sending every passenger a message (through their preferred channel), inviting them to rate their experience from the performance of the cabin crew, quality of the in-flight entertainment, cleanliness of the facilities, the safety demonstration, food and beverages, products for sale etc.

In turn these insights can be fed back in real-time for example to the cabin crew manager, in the form of a post flight report, enabling them to continuously refine and improve their in-flight service. Additionally, managers can interact with the system to generate reports to score and monitor the quality and performance of particular routes and flights, calculate satisfaction, identity potential issues, opportunities and trends, and act on them. For example, if a customer provides feedback on a particular issue they had on their outbound flight, the cabin crew can use this real-time information to take corrective action and ensure the passenger does not experience a repeat on their inbound journey.

Other transportation organisations such as the high-speed rail operator, Eurostar, are using VoC to collect, collate, assess and transform customer feedback into actionable insight and recommendations and in turn improving the customer experience. The final word goes to the Business Analysis Manager at Eurostar, Chris Haynes, who offers his experience of using VoC: “It empowers us to engage with individuals and we are able to pick up on the little things that might otherwise elude our grasp, and promote greater loyalty from our customers.”

Craig Pumfrey

For more information on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Making VoC Text Analytics Count: From Directional to Diagnostic

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:12:00 +0000

For a number of years in the Customer Experience Management (CEM) space, we’ve relied on text analytics to make the first steps in turning unstructured, but highly rich customer verbatim comments into measurable packets of insight that organizations can use to gain never-before-seen insights into the expectations and perceptions of their customer base.

Back when I first set out in this industry and the VoC market was a little less mature, it was sufficient to be able to leverage text analytics to categorize customer comments into pre-defined buckets to understand what a customer is referring to. Example – customer says “The agent was great but your price plans suck” – analytics engine says Staff Conduct & Pricing. Taking this use case and extrapolating across hundreds of thousands, even millions of pieces of feedback every year and you’re left with a very credible barometer as to what’s on your customers’ minds. Tactically you can reward and recognize staff, recover customers based on the analytics output and strategically aggregate to assess underlying trends and spikes. That is how it was.

Yet from conversations I have with customers every day there is no doubt that the market is maturing rapidly. Organizations across verticals and geographies are taking a more comprehensive, enterprise-wide view of Voice of the Customer (VoC) – a response to the growing importance of customer centricity on the executive’s priority list. Consequently, the required analytics to manage this shift are fundamentally different. We’re no longer just talking about analyzing direct customer verbatims, we’re talking about mining and operationalizing social feeds and incorporating indirect voice, email and chat channels into the VoC hub, to name just two.

This plethora of direct, indirect and inferred VoC feeds requires analytics to be both scalable and comprehensive. With regards to scalability, as the ongoing collection and analysis of VoC feeds moves towards big data proportions, we need to have the infrastructure to be able to maintain the speed and slickness of real-time analytics. At NICE, this is a given. More interestingly, the role of text analytics is moving from the purely directional analytics of yesteryear to the diagnostic analytics required for next generation Voice of the Customer solutions. It is no longer enough to be able to direct business functions as to where there might be an issue uncovered by VoC – we need to be able to leverage powerful analytics to drill down to the second and third level of detail to hit that holy grail – root cause.

Herein lies the shift from directional to diagnostic; the ability to not just identify what issues are most commonly referenced, but the ability to generate automatic clusters to track common themes within those categories and sub-categories. With the ongoing integration of NICE Fizzback’s pioneering Natural Language Processing engine with NICE’s leading ‘hot topics’ and ‘root cause’ analytics – we can begin to appreciate the power and potential of VoC analytics in helping organizations leverage the Voice of the Customer to successfully transform their business.

Andrew Robson

For more info on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Have three strikes become one?

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:35:00 +0000

Mistakes happen, people understand. The evolution is that human error, faulty technology and acts of god have progressed beyond common parlance and are no longer trusted explanations. The focus is on how you identify and resolve customer dissatisfaction and adapt your processes to address these occurrences so that they match customer expectation levels and result in recommendations and repeat business.

The commercial reality is that whilst companies of all sizes invest in brand awareness in the pursuit of organic referrals and to win the badge of 'deliver right, first time service' it is just as important to know what happens when the process flow is interrupted and understanding how tolerant your customer base really is. To offer some proactive advice I will highlight the two key customer splits that I experience on a daily basis:

Customers with contracts: They have predefined expectations, in some cases would have undertaken extensive due diligence based on their own research but most importantly are willing to recommend based on only a 'good' service. Typically they will experience at least one issue over the length of their contract so using customer feedback to analyse the impact of known issues will help you focus and prioritise repeat known faults and how the resolution impacted their Likelihood to Recommend. An ideal example is an ISP with an offshore technical support call centre.

High value one time customers: If you have sold a superior service that is exactly what your customers will expect, leaving you just one shot at delivering it. They will typically only recommend based on an 'excellent' experience and any real time feedback and the resultant insight and analysis must be implemented as a priority to avoid additional dissatisfaction. An example would be an estate agent presiding over the purchase of a property, the individual agent is given a lot of scope but it is the badge that he is working for that will be impacted by a bumpy journey. The outcome may be satisfactory to the business, in this case a sold property, but any chance of achieving referrals is reduced remarkably.

The stark reality is that the better you are at containing and dealing with issues and is something that you are recognised for, the more tolerant your customers will naturally become. If you assume that you only have one strike then it will help you strive for excellence however, having the data and insight to tell you the size of the ball and the person pitching it cannot be underestimated.

Liz Turrell

For more info on the NICE Fizzback solution please click here.

Employee Engagement: An Undervalued Source of Voice of the Customer Business Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:28:00 +0000

If you spend half an hour Googling ‘Voice of the Customer business impact’, you’ll no doubt stumble across the much discussed link between customer advocacy (often referenced in terms of Net Promoter Score™) & bottom-line revenue. Regardless of whose study you read, you’ll get an impressive, and perhaps surprising looking figure. If you consider Forrester’s differentiation between the stock market returns of customer experience ‘leaders’ and ‘laggards’ – it becomes very difficult to dispute the headline relationship between customer centricity and downstream business success.

We also talk regularly about customer retention – using VoC to be able to save & recover the ongoing spend of a significant bucket of customers who would have otherwise churned. We can also secure operational efficiencies, minimize spend on legacy market research initiatives & fix broken processes – all common sources of Voice of the Customer ROI.

One element that I feel is often overlooked, however, is employee engagement. Deploying the right kind of Voice of the Customer program has the potential to galvanize & transform how many customer-facing employees look at their role and their contribution to the organization. It is essential from an early stage to break down pre-existing barriers surrounding measuring VoC – most commonly that the solution becomes a complaints tool to beat employees up with. On the contrary, across the NICE Fizzback client base, between 70 and 80% of all customer feedback received is positive – and a large proportion of that is employee-centric. What we’re left with is a huge body of rich, motivational material for an employee base – with the power to make them feel valued & their efforts appreciated.

Take the following example – this NICE Fizzback retail client tracks employee engagement on a quarterly basis. A quick comparison of engagement scores pre and post VoC implementation offers a telling story. Across the landscape of VoC performance, engagement improved following the implementation of a VoC program. Furthermore, we see a stronger uplift in employee engagement in those retail stores securing the biggest NPS™ gains across the first 6 months of the program. What we see here is a beneficial and mutually reinforcing relationship between employee engagement & customer advocacy – and deploying the correct blend of technology and supporting services to ensure a best practice VoC solution is helping our clients to transform both the customer experience as well as the employee experience.

Andy Robson

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.fizzback.com

Building a Brand on the Coattails of a Dynasty: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0000

In case you missed last week's Building a Brand on the Coattails of a Dynasty: Part 1 you can find it by clicking here. For those who did you can find Part 2 below, kicking off with the second example of an individual involved in recent social media stories!

Katherine Webb, a former Miss Alabama, an aspiring model and girlfriend of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, gained instant fame on television during the BCS National Championship game. As a result her Twitter following grew, within a week, from 2,200 to over 250,000...that’s 100,000 more than her superstar boyfriend. Miss Webb’s Kred Influence rose to 914 (a good score is 700). Comparing social mentions for Miss Webb one day after the game to Johnny Manziel one day after winning the Heisman Trophy finds her with nearly 60% of Manziel’s volume and on day three the two were nearly even. As a result of the publicity, Miss Webb landed a job with “Inside Edition” and numerous modeling offers, serving as a great example to last week's statement on our ability to influence people we don’t even know through the use of social media.

In today’s environment 95% of businesses market online and 65% use Twitter, so just being there offers no competitive advantage. In late 2012, I attended the Forrester Customer Experience Forum, where I listened to one expert say “relationships” are the foundation to online success, as one seeks to rally their strongest relationships at an intense level and leverage them through online communities to develop the larger base of weak relationships.

Now, let’s take a business look at Katherine Webb’s modeling career. For now Miss Webb appears to be focused more on her new job and less with social outreach, but there may come a time when her brand targets the “connected” customer. When that time comes, she’ll need to thoroughly think through her approach to establish, build and maintain relationships through social networks and communities without overextending. In the book “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't”, the author (Jim Collins) makes a great point about technology…use it as an accelerator, but “never use technology as the primary means of igniting a transformation”.

For those of us in more traditional lines of work, building online communities to grow weaker relationships and foster active participation amongst our fan base is a building block to higher levels of engagement and advocacy. Another is user groups focused directly on those who want to have a deeper relationship with the brand, or a particular product offering.

Finally, leverage social networks for real-time engagement with customers, prospects and influencers. Maintaining a presence across every social network is next to impossible, therefore, master a few social networks that are relevant to your business and look to a software platform providing real-time listening, insight and engagement across all networks. NICE Social Media Analytics not only provides real-time monitoring and analysis of brand, products, industry topics, top sites and authors, but it can provide filtering of relevant social mentions and real-time engagement with opinion leaders and influencers.

Steven T. Strickland, PMP

For more info on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Building a Brand on the Coattails of a Dynasty: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 17:24:00 +0000

The college American Football season provided dozens of exciting games, the first freshman Heisman Trophy winner, continued dominance for the South Eastern Conference, a dynasty in Alabama and plenty of story lines off the field. When we think back on the highs and lows of college football, as the leaves fell and seasons changed, it is interesting to reflect on the real-time impact Social Media had on our ability to communicate with friends, express our emotions in written form, capture information about topics of interest and, believe it or not, influence people we don’t even know.

Traditionally word of mouth would spread to a limited audience and reasonably slowly. So now at a macro level, consider how rapidly “word” can spread thanks to mobile and social technologies…8.6 trillion texts annually, 163 billion tweets annually, approximately 1 billion active Facebook users and hundreds of other channels.

The day following the BCS National Championship resulted in a 50% split in online buzz between Alabama and Notre Dame (the two competing teams), however, negative sentiment toward Notre Dame (the losers) outweighed positive. Surprisingly, a look across the last 10 days finds Notre Dame with 63% of the share and sentiment still trending negative due to off the field issues with Manti Te’o (if you haven’t heard about these I’ll elaborate below) and rumors of their head coach leaving. Mentions about Alabama may have fallen sharply, but their dynasty is intact.

Now, let’s take a deeper look at 2 individuals intertwined with storied football programs:

Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame star with an inspired story centered on the death of his girlfriend and stellar play on the football field. Recently we learned her death was a hoax and now Te’o is faced with mounting negative publicity and mockery across social networks (see #teoing). Only time will tell how this impacts his NFL marketability, but in the meantime there will be plenty to tweet about. Common topics tied to Te’o following the news include “hoax”, “fake”, “fictional” and “imaginary”.

But now for this week I'll call a wrap and I'm afraid you'll have to wait for next week for my second example and remainder of this post!

To be continued....

Steven Strickland

For more info on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Don’t Call Us, We Will Call You: When Customer Care Does Not Call Back

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:50:00 +0000

It has happened to everyone: Someone promises to return your call or email. While waiting in vain for them to get back to you, you get the sinking feeling that maybe this is not as important to them as it is to you. NICE Fizzback commonly sees comments about failed call backs and broken promises in VOC feedback from Customer Care touchpoints.

While call back-related complaints may appear on the surface to be less important than the initial problem, they often prove to be more of a threat to the business-customer relationship. Whatever the reason to contact customer care in the first place, most of us realise that things happen and if they can be resolved without expending too much time and energy, everything will be fine.

This is where the human factor comes in. Technical problems and unfavourable company policies can be excused but insufficient (or lacking) agent effort cannot. Having to call customer care again, which can be expensive, only compounds a customer’s unhappiness. Comments such as, “Lady said she would definitely call back in 1 hour to fix the issue and its now 28 hours later and still she hasnt called !” (sic) are often followed by “Terrible service that makes me want to leave X”.

So why does this happen? The reasons can be split into Employee and Operational constraints.

Individual reasons are under the agent’s control and include:

• A reluctance to deal with an annoyed customer or complicated issue – customers tend to assume this is the reason for all such cases.
• Forget about calling back – this has been known to happen even if there is a system that logs issues that need following up.
• Unable to reach the customer on the first attempt and give up.

Operational reasons are out of the agent’s hands and include:

• Lack of bandwidth – having too many incoming calls to field, which leaves no time to return to earlier issues.
• Escalation process – agents may not have the authority or expertise to make a decision or take action. Escalating to a manager or a more experienced colleague carries the risk of the issue slipping through the cracks and nobody dealing with it.
• The call comes in at the end of shift – this one may fall under either type. Where an agent cannot call back, a process should be in place to ensure someone else will.

It may be the case that call centre personnel don’t realise the importance of following up diligently. Therefore, it is important that follow up processes are clear, agents are well-trained and their performance monitored to guarantee customer care is seen by the customer base as a company’s asset, not a liability.

Momchil Metodiev

For more information on NICE Fizzback please click here.

Non-Invasive Voice of the Customer

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 17:00:00 +0000

Don Peppers, co-founder of the Peppers & Rogers Group recently blogged on LinkedIn about Non-Invasive Voice-of-Customer Feedback, in which he voiced concerns over how surveying customers directly can contaminate results. He makes the point (adding a number of good examples) that gaining true VoC insights requires non-invasive methods. Don gave the anecdote of speaking to taxi drivers to discover the kind of service a hotel provided. The logic here is that customers of the hotel are far more likely to be truthful to taxi drivers about their experiences compared to speaking to hotel staff or managers.

Yet whilst I can imagine some customers feeling intimidated or pressured at a face to face confrontation with staff about service that didn’t live up to expectations - I struggle to believe customers wouldn’t be honest in a non-incentivised direct customer feedback survey. Are customers so truly connected to their brands that they would directly lie about a service experience in a survey yet pour their heart out to a taxi driver or on a social media site?

I think that the emphasis here is also on the negative impact of VoC rather than the positive effect it can have; if a customer has had a great experience with the brand why would they then keep this from the business rather than sharing it, either by praising staff face to face or giving positive feedback while being asked about the service.

I am not for one moment suggesting that Voice of the Customer programs should set out to be invasive, and there is a valid point here about over-surveying customers, but there is real value to be missed in only trying to capture VoC insights through tapping into conversations customers have about the service outside of the organization customer relationship.

Non-invasive feedback or Voice of the Customer is incredibly important, and should be non-invasive in the way that we engage with customers. For example enabling customers to feedback by their preferred channel, keeping the survey short and ensuring it is completed in a conversational manner. In addition the business can then tap into other VoC channels such as capturing and analysing interactions the customers has, and listen to what they are saying outside of the relationship in spaces such as social media.

As Voice of the Customer matures we need to be smarter about how insights are captured and analysed, but to improve the service provided we need to empower and trust our customers to help improve the experiences and interactions they have.

Tom Lynam

For more info on the NICE Fizzback Voice of the Customer Solution please visit our main website.

The Evolution of Voice of the Customer into 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 17:07:00 +0000

Having been part of the customer experience space for a number of years I have noticed a huge change in its perception and how it is impacting businesses. The book published by Forrester last year titled Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business delivers perhaps the clearest guidelines on how organizations should hold customer experience close to their future plans to thrive as a business.

One of the key themes of the book is for organizations to take an outside in approach to viewing the experience they provide to customers. To achieve this I believe that organizations need the tools to gain an unrivaled view of what their customers are saying and thinking, to quickly act on and drive the business in the best direction.

Traditionally organizations may have taken a simple EFM approach, using irregular surveys to sample their customer base, sending out mystery shoppers or organizing focus groups. But does this really offer an accurate and clear external view of what customers’ experience? Is it enough information to drive the business by, and capture everything that is important to customers?

Voice of the Customer solutions have already passed the above in the past couple of years - for some to include: operationalizing feedback within the business, enabling individual employee performance improvement, and actively identifying and recovering customers in danger of leaving the business.

So where are VoC solutions headed now? What’s in store for 2013? Here are a couple of my thoughts…

1. Further overcoming big data challenges: while technology has come on leaps and bounds to tackle the challenges that come with big data, the amount of data we have is still increasing. VoC solutions must include more information on customers and their numerous interactions with the business in a quick and manageable format to be able to effectively utilize the insights gained.

2. Capture the unknown: currently most organizations capture VoC insights from customers who have actively engaged with the business. But what of those customers who bought the product or service and then the next interaction was for them to leave? There is significant potential in listening and understanding the experience of customers who don’t interact with you, to ensure the experience they have with your business is consistently good.

3. Reporting at an individual customer level: the ability to map, view and act on a customer’s lifecycle to understand the whole journey they have had with your brand. By putting this information in the hands of front line staff they are able to offer a significantly better and more tailored experience for the customer.

4. Getting a holistic picture: combining direct customer feedback, indirect interaction analytics and social media analytics with inferred VoC across the whole enterprise will enable your organization to gain an unparalleled view of the customer experience and capture exactly what every customer thinks about the experience and where you can improve.

So before I sign off I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year, and all the best for 2013!

Tom Lynam

For more info on the NICE Fizzback Voice of the Customer Solution please visit our main website.

Social Media Analytics vs. Direct Feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:51:00 +0000

Common thinking would suggest that many organizations should flock towards social media analytics tools in something akin to the great gold rushes of the 19th century across America. While this is not an unwise choice I would like to play devil’s advocate for just one moment; do we need to track what customers are saying online if we get the original experience spot on?

Many organizations are scared by the looming colossus that is the internet and the many stories about share prices being slashed overnight after a viral YouTube video has taken off. But if the experience wasn’t broken in the first place, or you have already engaged a customer about the experience is this something you should be worried about? There is some logic to the argument that by surveying every customer after an interaction, you have given them the portal in which to praise or criticise the experience they have had, without heading online. Indeed this type of feedback is in a far more closed and controlled environment, and as an organization you are in a position to leverage those insights whether it be through customer recovery or employee praise.

But is this simplifying the issue? Ultimately some customers will not respond to surveys, they will not want to engage with you about a negative experience and will want to damage the company as much as possible. This is regardless of how good an experience you can offer, in organizations with thousands and millions of customer not every interaction will be as the company wants/hope. This is perhaps why social media analytics still have a part to play.

I would also go one step further and say that social media analytics need not be seen just as a damage limitation tool, to quickly highlight the next Dave Carroll. Social analytics should be seen as a solution to promote success within the business, leverage positive word of mouth and a solution to highlight sales opportunities. With advanced analytics engines organizations can highlight all of these, and utilize social media to really enhance both customer experience and employee engagement.

So, to answer the question posed in the title, social media analytics or direct feedback? Well the answer lies with both, both have their place within Voice of the Customer solutions, and neither can be ignored. To really understand the customer experience, and operationalize VoC within your organization, no business should be without either.

Tom Lynam

For more info on the NICE Fizzback Voice of the Customer Solution please visit our main website.

Blending Sentiment with VOC: taking an intelligent approach

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:50:00 +0000

Back in July, I blogged a potted history of text analytics and its growing role in the business world as the champion of helping large organisations make sense of the vast amounts of text that makes up, depending who you listen to, 80 to 85% of all enterprise data.

With a plethora of potential use cases and sources of value, the stability, reliability & flexibility of the underlying technology is progressing rapidly. The race is very much on for vendors like NICE to maintain our position at the forefront of innovation in successfully utilizing and productizing this hugely exciting technology.

In my role in NICE Fizzback’s Transformation department, I’m lucky enough to advise some leading companies on how they can successfully operationalize the Voice of the Customer throughout their organisations.

And one hugely exciting source of VoC operationalisation that I’ve looked at recently has its roots in text analytics – more specifically in sentiment analysis. This is the ability to assess customer verbatim comments for their underlying tone, assigning each comment a sentiment score. When sentiment is blended with additional VOC data (satisfaction & likelihood to recommend metrics, topics & categories for example) – the operational value is significant – and here is an example:

The bars in this graph represent a Customer Value Index – a metric that looks at how often a customer transacts and the amount a customer spends in the retail arena. We can see in the central three bars that we see the relationship we’d expect – NPS Promoters have a higher propensity to transact more frequently and/or spend more with the organisation in question compared to NPS Detractors and NPS Neutrals.

What showcases an operational use case for sentiment analysis here are the bars to the extreme right and left. When we only consider classic NPS promoters who have given a very positive verbatim comment, we see another layer of complexity – experience thus far suggests a 23% differential in customer behaviour between plain NPS Promoters and “Super Promoters” giving high scores and a highly positive comment. The inverse relationship holds true for “Super Detractors” – opening up the possibility of prioritizing customer recovery efforts towards those customers most at-risk.

This provides just one example of how sentiment analysis can add another layer of depth and value to VOC analysis. The creation & manipulation of this new metadata across millions of pieces of feedback received every year opens up real possibilities for a more intelligent approach to leveraging high-value customers and recovering unhappy ones.

Andrew Robson

For more info on NICE Fizzback, please visit www.nice.com

The Value of VoC Across the Enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 11:12:00 +0000

Customer experience has seen a rapid increase in prevalence and importance within organisations over the last couple of years. This rise has been easy to track by only observing the increasing number of job titles which include either phrases “Customer Experience” or “Voice of the Customer”.

Traditionally VoC programs have been siloed in different areas across the enterprise, a marketing department perhaps using an EFM solution to gain insight on their latest ad campaign, or the contact centre operationalizing a direct customer survey within their structure to drive employee performance.

Our solution enables our customers to listen to the direct, indirect and inferred Voice of the Customer across the whole enterprise. Experience has shown us that great value lies in listening, capturing and analysing the Voice of the Customer and operationalizing this voice across the enterprise.

Below are some examples of how our customers are gaining value across the enterprise.

Marketing: Carphone Warehouse have utilised feedback collected by the NICE Fizzback solution in a recent radio advertising campaign which highlighted the satisfaction of smartphone users from their retail stores. They are able to leverage promoters to show potential new customers the excellent in store experience.
Customer Retention: Information collected through VoC enables the mapping of a typical customer journey. The points where a customer is more likely to leave the business can then be identified and the experience can be improved accordingly.
Customer Recovery: Customers who give negative feedback and are acting in a manner in which they may leave the business are identified and can then be proactively reached out to, to ensure that they are recovered. This not only results in retained business and revenue, but could in turn mean they are transformed into an advocate of the company.
Human Resources: Employee surveys can empower your staff giving them a voice to improve their working experience. Ultimately happier staff results in happier customers and a better experience.

Above I have covered just a small number of examples where value can be brought to the business. This is without mentioning the touchpoints that VoC can impact (the contact centre, retail (direct and indirect), online, field services etc.). By imbedding VoC within your organisation across the whole enterprise you can positively impact the whole customer experience. You can’t manage what you can’t measure!

Natasha Holroyde

For more info on the NICE Fizzback solution visit www.nice.com/fizzback

The Golden Age of Complaining

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:35:00 +0000

70% of defecting customers say that poor service prompted their decision to leave. The ability to identify at-risk customers – both those who actually complain and those who don’t – is becoming an increasingly important mandate for companies competing in a global environment where individual consumers have never had more information, choice and power.

There are numerous sources of information online detailing consumer rights and describing how to go about submitting a complaint. And for those less excited about the prospect of form-filling, there are specialist claims-management companies to take over the tedious processes. This means that the volume of complaints can become unmanageable for even the largest organisations. Take the infamous Payment Protection scandal - according to the FSA, the number of complaints to banks and building societies increased by 67% in the first half of 2012, with the total number nearing 3 million.

So how do you come to terms with large complaint volumes? A rather radical approach, described in an article from The Economist would be to introduce an upfront complaint fee, which would be returned at a later stage, but only to those whose reasons are valid. This would put off the people who complain for the sake of it and opportunists that hope to slip through the system.

While the ‘pay as you complain’ idea is highly controversial and could drastically affect brand perception, it does address a key business challenge, which is becoming smarter at handling customer complaints. Addressing and pre-empting the drivers of formal complaints through an operational customer feedback solution is something that companies can do today. To help with that, the NICE Fizzback solution generates alerts for negative customer feedback based on a bespoke and flexible set of criteria. By doing this, it is then possible to segment dissatisfied customers by important parameters, such as customer value, proximity to contract end, or number of complaints submitted to make it easier to successfully prioritise and strategize a company’s customer recovery efforts.

Identifying and resolving the needs of customers in distress before formal complaints both reduces the volume and complexity of costly formalities and generates positive closed-loop customer experiences. Successful issue resolution can even create bigger advocates of a company than those with no cause for frustration. Effective customer recovery and its impact on complaints is a classic example of a proactive over a reactive strategy – and our clients have been able to realise millions of pounds or dollars in saved revenue from its effective application.

Elena Belkina

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

Customer Feedback - Back to basics

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Last week NICE Fizzback took part in a Webinar hosted by Call Centre Helper on the Voice of the Customer and more specifically customer feedback. Also taking part on the day was Scott Morrison from BT, sharing their success story of utilising the NICE Fizzback solution within their contact centres.

Those who were watching from their computers were treated to an extremely interactive session, discussing many topics spanning best practices for gathering feedback to gaining support of agents and managers in your VoC program. Yet one of the most interesting topics for me was taking a step back, and looking into the basic principles of gathering feedback, driving actionable response rates and building a solution which suits your customers.

During the session I noted down a couple of key points which I believe are critical to any direct customer feedback program:

Who to survey: typically a sampling approach will skew results and make it extremely difficult to operationalise feedback within the organisation. By surveying up to 95% of your customer base you empower your customers, gain meaningful volumes of feedback to an individual staff member level and create a positive impression on your customers.
When to survey: real-time is a current industry buzz word and for good reason, but when it comes to feedback it is not just about getting the results to the right people fast. It is about surveying customers as close as possible to the point of interaction, so that the memory is still fresh and the feedback request is relevant.
What to ask: surveys need to enable the customer to say what is important to them, not necessarily what is important for the business. Although ultimately KPI's must be tracked, keep surveys short, conversational and open ended from the customer perspective.
How to survey: typically a multi-channel approach will always win out, our recent infographic, The Value of VoC, noted that organisations that use more than one channel to survey customers have higher advocacy scores by 22%. Simply put: let your customers give feedback in a channel which is best for them.

In an age where customers are increasingly empowered through channels such as social media, it has become ever more important to ensure that traditional feedback channels do not get left behind. I hope this brief blog has given you a short snapshot into the ways that the NICE Fizzback solution is helping our customers to maximise the potential of their Voice of the Customer Program.

Tom Lynam

For more info on the NICE Fizzback solution, please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

iPhone 5 Announcement! Leveraging Customer Feedback during a Product Release

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 10:12:00 +0000

On September 12, Apple made the announcement heard around the world – the iPhone 5 was on its way. Not only that, but Apple planned this to be their fastest product launch from announcement-to-availability ever. “Hooray!” shouted millions of potential customers of this great new technology. “Hooray?” shouted Apple’s wireless carrier partners, who had about the same amount of notice as the general public and were immediately handling customer inquiries about the just-announced product release.

This sort of commando release has unintended consequences to the customer experience. It seems ideal to have a fast and well-coordinated product launch to show it can be done. However, consider that Apple’s Steve Jobs was a notorious planner and very careful about every aspect of a product’s impact on the customer. He famously took weeks to decide on the right color for Mac computer’s shell and obsessed with the original iPhone’s packaging. A shorted product release timeline combined with covert product features would definitely put the wireless carriers in a difficult position.

Fortunately, these carriers are listening to the voice of their customers. Prior to the actual release NICE Fizzback proactively analyzed thousands of customer comments on the iPhone 5 helping clients to anticipate common issues and questions to come. Immediately after that, our company provided each client with in depth analysis at the touch point level identifying the key areas that they needed to focus on, and suggesting ideas for action.

As a result, all customer touch points were appropriately staffed for the days of the Apple announcements, as well as around product availability. Product information was rapidly shared to front-line team members via FAQs, Job Aids and rapid training sessions. Upgrade options were available, although they may appear to be punitive (per Apple policy), but still give customers an option to purchase the latest technology. And companies ensured all channels were working in concert to deliver a consistent message on product availability, pricing, and general phone support.

In the end, customers continue as raving fans for yet another Apple product. And this must be true, as have you seen a loyal IBM customer put a logo-sticker on their car?

Brian Powers

For more info on NICE Fizzback VoC Solution visit www.nice.com/fizzback

VoC Forum 2012: A bloggers review from Lord's

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:02:00 +0000

Last week over 100 Voice of the Customer Professionals descended on Lord’s Cricket Ground to take part in the VoC Forum 2012, hosted by NICE Fizzback. Those who were in attendance were treated to a jam packed day full of success stories, thought leading ideas and a sneak peak at the NICE Systems view of the future of Voice of the Customer solutions.

The day was kicked off by Shaun Smith of Smith and Co. Consulting, a leading expert on Customer Experience Management and was quickly followed by presentations from BT Business, Vodafone and Telefónica Ireland. Each customer shared with the audience how the NICE Fizzback solution is helping their business to achieve great success in improving the customer experience by listening to the Voice of the Customer.

But in this blog I want to pull out a couple of the keys themes that I felt came out from the day:

1. Customer Experience is evolving and expanding in new and exciting ways. Customers are changing the way in which they behave, and the increasing influence they have; just one example is the increased prevalence of social media in an average customer’s life, enabling them to voice their comments, concerns and complaints to larger audience than ever before.
2. The number of channels customers use is also on the rise. In a recent NICE study the average number of channels used by a customer with a brand is a staggering six and this brings a whole new series of issues to combat. Organisations need to effectively manage the experience across all these channels, creating one seamless experience regardless of channel or touchpoint.
3. Finally that NICE Systems is uniquely positioned to enable our clients to understand their customers better than ever before. During the day NICE showcased our vision of offering our holistic solution, offering the Direct, Indirect and Inferred Voice of the Customer. By combining insights from all three we enable our clients to see as complete a view of the customer experience as possible.

If you missed this year’s event don’t worry, the VoC Forum will return next year and be even bigger and better than before, featuring more world class brands, thought leadership and innovation.

For all other NICE VoC Solution information, including downloads, latest events and webinars please visit www.listen2yourcustomers.com.

Natasha Holroyde

Multi-channel Calibration

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 10:26:00 +0000

When it comes to gathering feedback through multiple communication channels, every methodology delivers different results. This can lead to several business challenges, such as lack of business direction and poor employee morale (especially when bonuses depend on these results). In order to overcome these hurdles, NICE Fizzback proposes a two-step approach to calibrating multi-channel results:

Step 1: KPI Mapping

Various channels typically have different types and amount of KPIs being measured. SMS surveys, for example, are shorter in the number of questions asked compared to email-to-web surveys, so selection of one or two common KPIs that are most impactful from a business perspective is advised (e.g.: churn reduction and/or revenue growth).

Step 2: KPI Calibration

There are several possible approaches to KPI calibration:

Algorithmic Conversion – developing a method for converting scores to a single system
Weighted Average – a single target considering the importance of each channel
Separate Targets – approaching the solutions as independent entities with different targets

The three approaches represent a trade-off between unity and simplicity.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using each approach, which should be evaluated before making a choice. In some cases, the solution can be not just one approach but a combination. NICE Fizzback helps clients in the decision process based on their strategic goals, processes and culture. The benefits of multi-channel calibration have an enormous impact at the strategic and operational levels, enabling to provide a more consistent customer experience.

Elena Belkina

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

The Best Customer Service Story Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:11:00 +0000

One way or the other, we’ve all come across a company’s customer services department. Some companies give customers the highest priority and are also known to remain committed in perfecting their customers’ experience.

Nowadays, companies are going to great lengths to deliver an amazing customer experience. For instance, a lot employ consulting firms to recommend scenario planning and provide rigorous training to their employees. Furthermore, monitoring calls to improve customer satisfaction is now considered standard practise.

That leads us to instinctively ask, is that enough? The short answer is no. Even when the entire process was seamless and the presentation of the service was perfect, internally some of us always give a score of 99.9%. So what makes up that 0.1% and more importantly why does it matter? That single decimal percentage involves a personal touch, spontaneity and going the extra mile(s), which transform a customer’s experience. These are all forms of investment from customer loyalty and retention to free marketing and referrals. Such priceless investments can only benefit a company, and in fact propel it to new heights.

The Ritz-Carlton is famous for its customer services and here’s a glimpse into how serious they take their customers’ experience. A mother and her two children returned home from a few days at The Ritz-Carlton in Florida to discover that her son’s stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The father, who returned from a business trip, assumed the worst for the giraffe but pacified his son by telling him that Joshie was taking a longer vacation. That same night, The Ritz-Carlton called up saying they found him in the laundry. The father told them about the “longer vacation” and asked if they could take a few pictures. The Ladies and Gentlemen at The Ritz-Carlton not only delivered Joshie in a couple of days but also included some branded goodies and a meticulously documented account of his extended stay at the hotel (including making him an honorary part of their staff).

Another telling story comes from Southwest Airlines. A pilot held a departing plane for 12 minutes by personally waiting at the terminal gate so a delayed grandfather would be able to be with his daughter and see his two and half-year-old grandson before being taken off life support. These unexpected acts of special care and attention are what turn ordinary customers into lifetime members.

These two stories lead us to think that it’s not about shifting paradigms, it’s about redefining them.

At NICE Fizzback, we have the necessary tools for you to reach and understand your customer, to improve your customer experience management but it is up to you to bring the sparkle that can unravel the best customer service stories ever.

Adil Ghafoor

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

VoC Forum 2012: Agenda Announced

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:38:00 +0000

NICE Fizzback is pleased to announce the launch of our next generation voice of the customer solution at the VoC Forum 2012 coming up on September 18th. Below you can see the recently released agenda for the day and I'm sure you'll agree that it looks like a great line-up.

With time running out before the event spaces are unfortunately limited so register now by clicking on this link.

We look forward to seeing you on the 18th for what will be an excellent day, jam packed full of VoC best practices, thought leadership and success stories.

Tom Lynam

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

You Didn’t Just Say That

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 15:32:00 +0000

I’ll admit, I am one of those “Americans” that didn’t even realize Team USA men’s soccer team had failed to qualify for the Olympics until the final days in London (I was probably pre-occupied with the other American successes). I’m also “guilty as charged” for using youth soccer programs as a “recreational activity” to keep my children busy until they’re old enough to strap on an American Football helmet and pads, perhaps a surprising notion to some who see soccer as the No.1 global sport.

Most would agree that soccer is the 5th most popular professional sport in the United States, but may not realize momentum is increasing with the help of Generation Z and recent successes on an International stage. A ESPN-Luker poll recently found soccer as the 2nd most popular U.S. sport for ages 12 to 24 and a US Census study finds solid growth in school-based soccer programs with nearly a 50/50 split between genders. Not to mention, a spike in positive buzz over the past two weeks for Team USA soccer…our girls won gold in London and our guys just ended 75 years of frustration on Mexican turf.

Using NICE Social Media Analytics, I was pleased to see Team USA men’s soccer receive nearly as many mentions across the social sphere in the past 5 days as it had the previous month and a huge sentiment shift from negative to positive. Conversely, NFL and NCAA football kicks off in a few weeks and the soccer universe faces the daunting task of keeping its sport in U.S. headlines; furthermore, people’s uncontrollable urge to take to their favorite social outlet and broadcast their opinion will, in no doubt, impact the popularity and growth of the sport. The iron is hot, will MLS (Major League Soccer) strike before momentum is lost again!

Now, let us step back for a minute and transition from our love of sports to our business livelihood through the customers’ social voice. A recent study by Harvard University researchers concluded that people enjoy self-disclosure and will go as far as losing up to 25% of their earnings to take their thoughts public…I’d say social media provides a much cheaper outlet for this.

Moreover, a Blackberry research project of working adults between 18 and 55 found greater withdrawal symptoms from missing out on Twitter than common addictions, such as the urge to drink. So what does this mean for your business livelihood? Pretty simple, it is mission critical to know overall brand sentiment, gain lightning fast visibility into each negative influencer and engage them in real-time. With NICE Social Media Analytics, customer service and marketing organizations capture buzz and sentiment analysis, competitive insight, key issues and root cause, top sites, opinion leaders, geographical data, alerts and individual mentions through a real-time engagement platform with a robust user interface and customizable dashboards. To take it a step further, a holistic Voice of Customer (VoC) solution can be delivered by integrating with NICE Fizzback and NICE Interaction Analytics.

What are your customers saying?

Steven T. Strickland

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback

#savethesurprise – London 2012 Opening Ceremony

noreply@blogger.com (Tom Lynam) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:01:00 +0000

With the Olympics now finished in London (even if only for a brief couple of weeks until the Paralympics get under way) I took time to reflect upon my experience of the games. Even before they had begun I was lucky enough to attend the dress rehearsal of the Opening Ceremony, a couple of days before the main event. Despite some omissions (the lighting of the flame and the Queen’s cameo to name but two), the nearly 50,000 strong audience were entertained with the staggering set pieces and dazzling show that was viewed by so many on Friday 27th July.

The organisers though had a problem; while they obviously felt a full dress rehearsal with a nearly full stadium was necessary, how were they to keep those 50,000 people from sharing their pictures and tales of the event. As you may have already guessed, the solution was wrapped up in the hashtag “savethesurprise”. The message was played across all the screens in the stadium, and when combined with a personal plea from Danny Boyle (the director of the show) to literally save the surprise, the effect was that information on the performance was kept at a premium. The surprise was saved, as people who were there chose not to divulge information or upload their photos from the evening to Facebook or Twitter.

I too kept quiet, merely telling friends and family to make sure they tuned in to watch the show. Looking back now I can say the main reason I did this, was the sense of empowerment that the organisers had placed upon my (and the other 50,000 guests) shoulders. We had been entrusted to keep the secret and withhold details so that on that Friday in late July everyone would be able to enjoy the show as it was meant to be watched.

And for me this is exactly the same theory that underpins asking your customers about the experience they had. By asking customers about the service they received or of the quality of the products they purchased, it empowers them, making them feel trusted and their thoughts valued.

As we’ve discussed previously on this blog, this is in large part to cognitive dissonance and the Benjamin Franklin Effect. The American Founding Father who in the act of asking a political enemy for a favour turned that enemy into a loyal friend. In the same way the act of asking customers (not that their your enemy!) for their feedback in turn makes them more loyal, regardless of whether they respond or not. This approach favours the NICE Fizzback approach of surveying every customer, or gathering a census view, as opposed to some more tactical surveying techniques seen in the market today. Voice of the Customer solutions are implemented to understand and learn how to improve the customer experience, but the effect of engaging with every customer shouldn’t be underestimated. As #savethesurprise demonstrated, empowered customers who feel valued can be and are extremely loyal to your brand.

Tom Lynam

For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback