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IQ Services Blog
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Originally published March 22, 2011
CEM: Current Buzzword, Old Methods
Do you ever get that feeling of being run over by a new trend or acronym that seems to have come out of nowhere? Welcome to CEM (Customer Experience Management). In the last few months not only has this new buzzword gained ever increasing levels of hype but it is being applied to everything, everyone and all products and services being sold today. So here we are in another hype curve at the moment. This feels a bit like when “CRM” came on in the late 90’s. Anyone remember “360 degree view of the customer” or “Customer Intimacy?” We heard all those promises and visions of turning the contact center into a profit center while simultaneously increasing ROI, reducing churn and delivering customer nirvana.
Do you remember life before and after CRM? Did you get the promised results? If not, what will change with the new buzzword of the decade? CEM holds similar promise as a methodology for increasing customer satisfaction. Promises made by vendors today tout the virtues of tools, metrics, analysis etc. Don’t get me wrong. I agree with the premise. I believe there are lots of good tool sets and methods out there today. I also believe there are tools and technologies inside your company right now that are not being leveraged to the fullest extent.
We are seeing a new set of organizational changes that are addressing the problems. Titles are showing up in companies like Chief Experience Officer, Director of Customer Experience, etc. Yes, the movement has momentum. Companies are realizing there is something to be done to improve customer experience – something they can control. I read in a recent article that “if all your products are the same as your competition, the differentiator has to be service”. How can you disagree with that? The global economy has commoditized all kinds of goods. Is one EBAY purchase significantly different from the next?
So how or should you implement a CEM solution? Earlier in my career, I worked as a practice leader in the CRM/Contact Center field looking at business processes and technologies to improve operations. Things haven’t changed too much. Traditional consultative methods still play nicely in today’s “new” market. Initiatives will start in the requirements definition/gathering phase. We’ll do a current state analysis to better understand our people, processes and technologies. We’ll look at where we need to go (future state) and what we need to do to get there (gap analysis).
Of course, it has always been harder than it sounds. But it is a proven approach to some pretty big problems.
Tony O'Brien
http://www.iq-services.com/
6601 Lyndale Ave South, #330
Minneapolis, MN 55423
Previous Posts
Originally published November 2, 2010
IVR, Agents & Business Rules = Customer Satisfaction
During internal meetings last week, we got side-tracked on the subject of “the customer satisfaction silver bullet.” As we all know, there is no such silver bullet. A lot of folks talk like they have the only answer. But at the end of the day, it takes a great deal of coordination, information and determination to manage and improve the technology, people and processes that influence customer satisfaction.
Originally published July 28‚ 2010
Hosted IVR: Letting Go Is Hard to Do
It seems so logical. IVR and other communications technologies evolve all the time. Each new advancement offers cost savings‚ efficiency and/or end-user benefits that can’t be ignored. And hosted IVR providers allow businesses to take advantage of these advancements without huge upfront investments.
In today's economy‚ if something isn’t part of your company’s core business‚ it is clearly a candidate for outsourcing or hosting – IVR is no exception. With hosted IVR offerings popping up on every corner‚ it can be hard to justify keeping IVR functionality in-house.
Read More...Originally published May 5‚ 2010
You’re Taking It Out of Context
Living with a writer for the last 36 years‚ one of my favorite books has become “Eats‚ Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”
The cover of the book shows two pandas‚ the vegetarian whiting out the comma‚ and the NRA member walking to the right brandishing a handgun.
The point is‚ of course‚ that punctuation matters. Why? Because punctuation establishes a context for words and thereby turns them into a thought & gives them meaning. Of course it’s not just about punctuation – content has to be coherent for there to be identifiable meaning – but context certainly matters.
Read More...
Originally published April 7‚ 2010
Monitoring! Monitoring! Monitoring!
Whenever we start talking about our remote availability and performance monitoring services (HeartBeat™)‚ like I did just a few weeks ago during a monitoring webinar‚ there is invariably a little confusion at the outset about the differences between remote availability and performance monitoring‚ call recording/agent quality monitoring‚ and voice quality monitoring. So I thought it might be helpful and interesting to define these different monitoring methods in a blog post. And I promise to try to do it without talking like an engineer (too much). So here goes…
Read More...
Originally published March 29‚ 2010
Poll Results & Filling the Gap between Internal Metrics & Customer Experience
Last week I had the opportunity to present a webinar called “Internal Monitoring Isn’t Enough.” It was an opportunity for me to educate attendees about a critical gap many companies haven’t bridged between internal performance stats and the true picture of how their contact center and communications solutions are performing – in other words‚ the customer experience. The simple method (or in our case‚ the cost-effective service) we discussed for filling this gap is Remote Availability & Performance Monitoring (RAPM)*. As you all know‚ polls in webinars are good‚ so we included several in our webinar to get a sense of the make-up and experiences of our audience. Not surprisingly‚ more than 60% of the attendees identified themselves as IT or service providers.
Originally published March 12‚ 2010
You Are Here
Last week‚ we were talking with a few people from a well-known research institute. We were just introducing ourselves and one of the women started talking about quality and service assurance issues for the contact center. She talked about the value of bottoms up and top down metrics for the contact center. But she also talked about a lingering gap that still remains when it comes to the ability to associate this plethora of great information with what is really happening to customers at a given moment. How do you effectively and simply put all that info into context? There are so many cures out there like speech analytics and surveys. And yet the cures sometimes come with more obstacles to overcome like: high costs‚ information overload‚ disassociation from actual transactions‚ lack of real time data and the possibility that the cure could itself impact the customer experience (e.g.‚ a survey).
Originally published March 5‚ 2010
Communication Mishaps
We all know business is about generating revenue. In today’s era of social media‚ instant gratification and self-service‚ customer communications have a dramatic impact on revenue (just ask Toyota). Arguably‚ communication is the key to happy customers and a thriving business. And communication mishaps can ruin customer relationships!
Originally published February 18‚ 2010
What’s on Your Roadmap this Week?
Just for fun‚ I thought it might be interesting to talk about some of the exciting trends we’re seeing in the industry. If you work for a company that owns‚ supports‚ services or sells to contact centers‚ you no doubt have a similar list of your own. You’ve probably got a roadmap that identifies the trends appropriate to your market and how you can best leverage and evolve your product or service to meet tomorrow’s customer requirements.
Originally published Februar 5‚ 2010
Being a Small Business: Part 3
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
A couple of weeks ago‚ Gregg Williams kicked off a blog series about “Being a Small Business.” He wrote about a question that many small businesses hear from their prospects.
"Why should I do business with a small business?”
Gregg talked about some of the advantages of working with small businesses and posed the very interesting and amusing question “Given all the great stuff small businesses can do‚ why would you want to do business with one of those bigger guys?”
Originally published February 3‚ 2010
Being a Small Business: Part 2
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
One of the great things about being a small business is that you are never too far from your customers.
When we started our company‚ we committed ourselves to delivering the best possible customer service. Sounds like many small companies‚ doesn’t it? We knew we could make it by always focusing on the customer’s need. For IQ Services‚ it was the customer’s need to have confidence in the end-to-end performance of their contact center and communications business solutions. It seemed to come easy for us because of our collective experience in implementing telecommunications‚ contact center and IVR solution. We were naturally sympathetic to our customers. We’d walked in their shoes. We instinctively understood the need for a highly adaptable testing platform and related methods to meet very unique architectures‚ applications and business requirements.
Originally published January 18‚ 2010
Being a Small Business: Part 1
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The other day‚ an Account Executive and I were talking with a prospect about testing their voice systems. The customer asked an interesting question. Why should my company do business with a small company like IQ Services? Of course‚ we’ve heard this question before and we have a response (which we’ll share in an upcoming blog post) that usually allays any concerns our prospects might have. But what I find most interesting about this question is that we – IQ Services employees and management alike – don’t think of ourselves as a small company. Yes‚ we fit the definition in terms of employee count and in terms of the many hats you get to wear when you work for a small company. But it doesn’t feel that way. It got me thinking about why.
Originally published January 5‚ 2010
Test at the top of the stack™
Remember trays of Hollerith punchcards & clunk clunk clunk clunk card readers? Fortran?
Remember hearing (and saying) “…but I only changed one blessed card!?!”
Remember the lesson that came from that exercise?
You have to test the whole thing together‚ not just the pieces by themselves... that if the whole thing doesn’t work together‚ it doesn’t matter that the pieces individually are works of art.
Originally published December 16‚ 2009
Twitter is like howling at the moon
So you probably tweet‚ right? I’ve got a couple of accounts so I can be myself (@bznbdad) & then also put forth the corporate persona (@mfrburke). But I’m a geezer and it’s just weird‚ that’s all there is to it. I’ve lived most of my life trying to fly under the radar‚ and now I’m supposed to let my peops know every time I buy a Powerball ticket‚ enjoy a walk in the sunshine or sip a Summit EPA? Blogging’s bad enough. Coming up with a stream of consciousness post on a topic never seems that hard when I write the first sentence or have that flash of brilliance & jot down a phrase or topic on the corner of a napkin and jam it in my pocket. But telling the world that I just had the most awesome cup of coffee at Caribou or was grimaced at by the butcher when I asked how long to cook a well-done steak – does anyone really care?
Originally published December 9‚ 2009
So what if IT won!
So what if IT won…it still has to work‚ right?
Remember Datamation’s voice & data are like oil & water cover from Spring of ‘86? What a difference a quarter of a century makes. Just ask Nortel or AT&T or even Cisco! Where am I going with this? Technological schizophrenia.
Originally published December 1‚ 2009
Customer/Partner Team
A few weeks ago‚ I blogged about the “canoe approach” to serving customers. When it gets down to it‚ the crux of the canoe approach is as simple (and complex) as taking a team approach to working with customers. We’re fortunate at IQ Services because we really get to think of ourselves as a member of the customer team. Because our services fit a niche and many of our customers do not have anyone on staff to do what we do‚ we become their testing expert.
Originally published Novemeber 24‚ 2009
Thanksgiving Day
It may be a bit cliché‚ but we can't help ourselves. It is Thanksgiving week. And despite everything we all seem to be worrying about these days‚ there is still so much to be thankful for. As you've probably heard one of us say before‚ everyone at IQ Services is thankful for our great customers and for the company environment that encourages us to do the best job we can for those customers. But we thought it would be fun to ask our colleagues what they are personally thankful for this year. Here's what we heard:
Originally published Novemeber 18‚ 2009
Groundhog Day
For me‚ one of the more interesting aspects of a typical performance and load testing engagement is how much bad news we deliver and how often we hear in response “OMG – that was horrible. Thank you! When can we do it again?”
As I think of it‚ the “can we do it again” sentiment describes the big picture when it comes to performance and load testing of a new contact center or communications solution. Proactive performance testing shouldn’t be thought of as a one-off activity. When most effectively applied it’s a process that allows you to try things out until you get them right. Kind of like Groundhog Day‚ but with you playing Phil Connor.
Originally published Novemeber 3‚ 2009
So What Do You Learn?
In my last blog‚ I talked about test setup and the value of collaborating during the early stages of test planning – even when you’re just talking about who needs to do what and when.
Clearly the setup process has a lot to do with success. But the next question – the one I actually seem to get asked the most – is “So what am I going to learn? Why should we put ourselves through this when we’ve managed the living daylights out of the project‚ held everyone’s feet to the fire‚ and the budget’s already tight – running out of time & money (and patience) due to bumps in the road along the way? What’s in it for me? And don’t be vague & give me more of that value prop stuff‚ give me some real examples!”
Originally published October 27‚ 2009
The Unexpected Benefits of Contact Center Load Testing Setup
Launching a new contact center? Preparing to load test it to make sure it works? It isn’t just about throwing 100 or 1‚000 or even 10‚000 calls at a solution to see what happens. That’s taking the “let’s see if this breaks it!” approach‚ and like I’ve mentioned before‚ that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Originally published October 20‚ 2009
The Canoe Approach…Priceless
Over the past four decades‚ I’ve worked with customers who purchase products and services from communication companies. One of the most important things I’ve learned from working with these companies and customers is what I call the “canoe approach” to customer service. It isn’t just a cute saying. It is a solid approach that takes the customer relationship to a deeper level. It works well when followed by a single employee. But the real value of this approach hits home when any entire company lives by it. The canoe approach gives everyone in the vendor company – even sales and marketing – a way to put some muscle behind the hype. It presumes that to have a really good customer relationship‚ your customers need to know you’re there with them when they’re working on tough problems and trying to resolve their company issues. You are really in the canoe with them.Originally published October 13‚ 2009
The hidden value of customer service – a project perspective.
We’d like to think that every week is Customer Service Week for our company. But it is great to have that special annual reminder to take time to focus and recognize customers‚ employees and partners alike.
In fact‚ it got me to thinking about the roots of our company’s customer-centric approach to the market (again). After over 40 years of working with customers -- a large chunk as a manager of operations and project implementation -- one of the most important lessons learned was how critical our vendors were to helping manage technical‚ schedule‚ and financial risk. Completing projects on time and within budget is challenging work. The challenge is increased when projects involve the integration of multiple vendor products and activities.
Originally published October 7‚ 2009
It is Customer Service Week!
So IQ Services would like to take a moment to honor and thank our clients who care as much about their customers as we care about ours. As experts in the contact center and communications solutions industries‚ customer service is at the very core of our clients' businesses and careers. It may sound sappy‚ but their efforts to improve the business practices‚ technologies‚ methodologies and services surrounding customer communications make the world a little better every day.
Originally published September 28‚ 2009
Would you deliberately redline a Porsche?
It’s easy to break stuff. Just ask the parent of any 3-year old and they’ll confirm it for you. Fortunately‚ a child’s toys are relatively inexpensive compared to‚ say‚ a Porsche. The hottest fastest cars in the world have a redline on the tachometer. It’s there for a reason. It says “Sure‚ you can act like a 3-year old & wind this baby up. But if you overdo it‚ you’ll have junk on your hands.”
Originally published September 18‚ 2009
HeartBeat™ by the numbers
I was fortunate enough to have an idea for a webinar accepted by the Contact Center Performance Forum (CCPF) a couple of months ago & the event came off without a hitch on August 6th. The topic was “Great Customer Experiences Start with Consistently High Performing Technology‚” the expected audience call center managers – the people managers‚ not the IT wonks. I’m used to talking more about the performance of the machines in the contact center than the impact on the agents‚ but the hook for this webinar was you’re not going to have even half a chance at a positive experience if the technology required to handle & deliver the calls to agents falls down on the job. When callers finally do get through they’ve already been preconditioned with a lousy experience‚ and who will they take it out on? The CSRs of course! The moderator worked me over a bit and kept saying “Mike‚ you’ve got to make this real for people. Give us some real numbers. And don’t forget‚ agents are people too!”
Originally published September 2‚ 2009
Positive customer experiences
One of the things that’s really cool about working for IQ Services is the customer experience we get.
Because we test systems remotely – from the outside in‚ just like your customers use them – we very rarely go on-site. Not that we haven’t. But the vast majority of the time we just don’t do it because we don’t have to. The upside to this methodology is our customers don’t have to do anything to their systems for us to be able to test or monitor. They don’t have to get us security credentials to be onsite. And because travel & shipping aren’t required‚ it’s all very cost-effective.
Originally published August 18‚ 2009
Where does customer experience start and end?
The folks here at IQ Services live in a world of contact centers‚ communications technologies and business solutions. When we think about customer experience‚ our brains jump to images of the good but harried people who install contact center solutions and our desire to make them more successful. Visions of IVR performance spreadsheets‚ speech analytics dashboards‚ agent training programs and more dance in our heads. We don't often think about marketing. It isn't natural for this Midwest company to think that anything beyond hard work and good customer service matters much. Many of us were raised to believe that you don't talk about your good work...you just do it...you just make the customer happy. We forget or don't recognize that good customer service and good customer experiences start with the trust a company's brand holds. We forget that a brand is a promise and that a good customer experience means our customers liked the promise and we delivered on it.
Originally published July 16‚ 2009
Telecom is in my blood
When it comes to telecom‚ I’m more than a little abnormal – it’s in my blood. My dad retired from AT&T Long Lines after 42 years (he had one of those “Ma Bell is a Cheap Mother!” shirts during one of the CWA strikes)‚ and my mother was one of those ladies on roller skates working the cordboards back in the 40s. My first real job was Co-Op Engineer for GTE AE Labs in beautiful Northlake IL – when I told my dad he said something like “Haven’t you been paying attention? All the nights & weekends I had to work? Knowing how to answer the phone at night? I thought you were smarter than that – and not only do you go to work for a phone company‚ you go to work for THAT phone company!?!?!?!”
Originally published July 8‚ 2009
Adios my friends...
Forgot to mention…I attended INNUA - the annual Nortel User Group meeting in Pittsburgh last month. Bad enough Nortel’s on the edge of mortality‚ but then you throw in the economy in general and it got really weird. We were exhibiting‚ and it was amazing how happy and grateful they were to have us there. Thank you from the committee! Thank you from Nortel! Thank you from Pittsburgh!
Originally published June 29‚ 2009
Telephony vs. Cacophony
In my last post‚ I wrote about overhearing some folks talking about how voice telecom has become passé. Their basic point…why bother to dial someone in your company when you can IM them? So I started thinking about how much of a pain in the neck IM and SMS really are when I have contacts scattered about on Yahoo‚ Skype‚ AIM‚ Windows Live‚ etc. I run IM IDs on my box almost all the time to accommodate my friends‚ colleagues and customers. I’ve managed to keep some of them the same across networks‚ and Trillian certainly helps. But we have “standards” at work and I have a “persona” I maintain outside the office. So in the heat of the moment and the rush of the day‚ things can get very interesting when you accidentally click on the wrong contact‚ type something a little too quickly or that email auto-fills the incorrect address. And who isn’t thrilled to get that IM or Tweet to remind you to check a recently deposited voicemail or email?
Originally published June 19‚ 2009
Dial tone came from God…
Heard at an InAAU session in Orlando a couple of weeks ago (that’s the Avaya User Group meeting)…
An Avaya distributor was talking about a client he’d been courting for a few years – a big one – 4‚500 to 5‚000 desktops. They’d done the Y2K thing last round‚ so they’re ripe for a new switch‚ right? All that new technology out there‚ IP’s mature now‚ lots of new features‚ UC‚ OCS‚ etc. Guess again! What they heard was “Why bother? No one calls anyone internally anymore. We’re all IM now & we’ve got what we need. That old box will be fine.”
Originally published June 9‚ 2009
Starbucks and Network Security
You’re in your local coffee shop‚ and they are nice enough to provide free WiFi for the use of their patrons. You fire up the laptop and see that there are multiple access points available there. You pick one and connect. You just connected to a poisoned hotspot being run from a parked car. You’ve got network access through their cell provider‚ and they are sniffing every packet. Just because an access point says it is Joe’s Coffee Shop doesn’t mean that it really is.
Originally published April 3‚ 2009
Red River keeps on rolling...
There’s a lot going on around the world this week – wars‚ tourists in space‚ North Korean rockets‚ Bear Market bounces‚ greed grief‚ and‚ of course‚ weather.
But here in the Upper Midwest there’s really only one story – the Red River of the North.
Originally published March 23‚ 2009
What you don't know WILL hurt you!
Why do contact center managers test their systems?
- So they don’t get fired when it all goes sideways 23 minutes into peak busy hour?
- So their customers won’t be inconvenienced when they use that new self-service‚ speech reco- enabled‚ web services-fed hosted IP voice portal
- So their customers won’t be frustrated when they opt-out and get CTI-MPLS-transferred to Krissy in Bangalore or dropped?
- Maybe all of the above?…
Originally published March 23‚ 2009
The Experience Matters
Don't you love it when something that seems like it should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer turns out to be right on the money? Literally?
13 years ago‚ IQ Services was started by a couple of guys that had a really cool idea - if you could only figure out how good the user experience was going to be before you put a new contact center into production you could tune it before it went into production instead of 3 days later after it dropped to its knees the first time it was hit with full load.
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