Allegiance Blog

Working in an industry that has flat or declining growth is like enjoying your time on the deck of a sinking ship. My years at Allegiance have been the opposite; they have been marked with positive vibes and filled with excitement as a new industry finds its foothold and begins to grow. These job-growth charts from Indeed.com showcase the growth of our industry:

Both Forrester Research and Gartner have predicted continued annual growth of between 15-20% for the customer experience and voice of customer industries. At Allegiance, we certainly see this growth happening. But what kind of changes will occur as more corporate boards, c-suites and leadership teams add savvy VOC pros? How will business change as a result of the insight that comes from these experienced people adding their voice to the mix, and sharing the data they produce?

The future of business will change dramatically with executives from the VOC world helping to shape decisions. An organization with greater actionable data is fundamentally different, and better. More actionable insight in the hands of the right people means a business is better able to act quickly. Of course, more money is likely to be made, which is usually the primary goal of business. But even better (I think) is that employees will feel more empowered, see the value of data in action and feel the joy of making smart decisions. And customers love a business that listens and then responds.

 So 2012 will bring a lot of opportunity to the VOC/CX industry. Business will improve as a result. And, I hope that each of you realize the value you bring to your company. When everything is exposed in a business, it’s really people and processes that make things happen. With better VOC, people can be more effective and processes improve.

Far from a sinking ship, our industry is healthy and growing for many reasons. Thanks to all of you for helping to make that happen. Here’s my challenge to you: Think Big. You can change your organization for the better by bringing together business data, feedback and survey data, and creating more actionable insights.  

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. www.wiley.com  from “The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Grow Your Business Through Existing Customers” by Becky Carroll (c) 2011

Your customers are comparing experiences as they deal with top-notch customer-focused organizations. It is important to determine how your organization’s customer experience stacks up against other experiences your customers are having on both the business and the consumer sides. The following three steps will help  you begin to plan the best experience for your customers:

Step 1: Look to your customers. By this, I mean find out what your customers expect from  you and from other companies. What do they consider to be great customer service? What sets one experience apart from another in their minds? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, ask! Your customers will tell you which companies they believe provide stellar (and not-so-stellar) customer experiences.
Read More »

As a light snow fell in Park City, Utah, hundreds of Voice of Customer (VOC) professionals and customer intelligence experts gathered for day two of the Allegiance Engage Summit. Attendees enjoyed great speakers and hands-on workshops that focused on how to uncover and apply insights from customer feedback to achieve positive business outcomes. 

Here are some highlights from Tuesday’s speakers: 

Guy Kawasaki, Author and Former Apple Chief Evangelist  

Guy Kawasaki at Engage Summit

• Business should focus on becoming more likeable and trustworthy while engaging customers to win more business.
• Companies should “remove the speed bumps” and make it easier for customers to do business with them.
• Default to Yes – always be thinking “How can I help this person.”
• Keep your message simple and tell a story to get the message across.
• Plant many seeds, engage with many and enchant all the influencers. 

Read More »

A sold out attendance of more than 250 Voice of Customer (VOC) professionals and Customer Intelligence experts gathered Monday at the Allegiance Engage Summit to share experiences and discover new ways to leverage customer insights to drive business growth.

Here are some highlights from today’s speakers:

Adam Edmunds, President and CEO of Allegiance

• Enterprises are spending $80 billion on market research each year to understand customers, but only 10% of the data is being used.
• Business Intelligence, CRM, VOC, CE, EFM and Social Media are all part of managing and improving customer interactions. The ultimate goal is customer intelligence.
• Voice of Customer data combined with operational data is the best way to uncover true insights that can be turned into actions that impact revenue and sales. 

Arkadi Kuhlmann, Chairman and CEO of ING DIRECT USA 

• ING DIRECT recognized customer frustrations with banks and set about to simplify financial products.
• It is important to not only engage with customers, but to engage with the right customers. Not everybody is the right customer for your business.
• Create an emotional connection with customers. Start simply by answering the phone, responding to email, and make a good impression.
• Define your principles and open up a conversation within the company. Create a culture of service. 

Bonny Simi, Director of Customer Experience & Analysis, JetBlue Airways 

• JetBlue focuses on bringing humanity back to travel. The company says it doesn’t know what is right, only its customers know what is right.
• The four elements of the JetBlue VOC program are: Listen across multiple channels, measure Net Promoter Score, apply robust analytics and create actionable insights.
• JetBlue combines solicited survey responses with unsolicited feedback from email and social media to create actionable insights that make a difference in the customer experience. 

Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner, Temkin Group 

• Traditional market research is obsolete. Data provides no value unless it leads to action.
• Deep analysis is not required, one data point can lead to a positive change in customer experience.
• Customer experience directly relates to customer loyalty.
• Six out of 10 companies surveyed say they want to be the leader in their industry in customer experience. 

Jim Bampos, Vice President of Customer Quality, EMC Corporation 

• In setting up a VOC program, know who your stakeholders are and what is important to them.
• Customer metrics are as important as financial and operational metrics in measuring the success of a business.
• Don’t try to produce data to meet everyone’s needs. Instead focus on what is most impactful to customers and turn data into actions.
• Learn what your customer loyalty drivers are and measure your success against competitors in your industry.
• Create a forum for stakeholders to provide feedback, including the executive and operational levels.

Thanks to all the great speakers and attendees for making this event a success. Next year’s event promises to be bigger and better than ever. Hope you can join us in 2012 in Las Vegas for VOCFusion at the Cosmopolitan Hotel.

I say “to-may-to,” you say “to-mah-to.” I say “customer interaction map,” you say “customer journey map” – or customer corridor or service blueprint or … well, you get the idea. Whatever you call it, it plays a crucial part in defining your overall VOC initiative.

So, where do we begin? Let’s go back to a blog I wrote a couple of months ago about the brand promise. Recall that the brand promise is the expectation that you set about your brand with your customers. Each of your touchpoints reinforces and fulfills the brand’s promise. Creating a customer interaction map forces you to think about the customer lifecycle and to consider or visualize the experience at each touchpoint – and ultimately, it identifies where the brand promise is broken.

During this process, it is important to remember that the customer should always be at the heart of any decisions made or actions taken by your company.  The experience cannot be designed without giving the customer a seat at the table.

Before you begin to create your interaction map, you must first identify who your customers are. Do you segment your customers? Do you cater differently to different types of customers? Do different customer types have different interactions or touchpoints with your organization? Will the map look different for different customers?

Next, identify the touchpoints along your customer lifecycle. Start not with the purchase, but long before that – when you’re just a thought in the customer’s mind, part of the consideration set. End with the customer’s exit or cancellation; remember that, even when a customer cancels your services or terminates usage of your product, it is an important interaction to do well.

Finally, identify the following for each individual touchpoint. Lay out the map in such a way that you identify which of these are customer-facing and which are behind-the-scenes.

• which specific interactions occur at that touchpoint
• which processes support that touchpoint
• which people support those processes
• who owns the touchpoint and its related interactions and processes
• who the customer interacts with what the specific outcome for that touchpoint should be
• which tools are used during the interaction at the touchpoint
• what customer data are gathered at the touchpoint
• which metrics are tracked at the touchpoint
• which pain points you’re aware of, and
• what the ideal customer experience ought to be

From a practitioner’s viewpoint, this map clearly helps you understand when, where, and with whom interactions occur; it’s important to do prior to designing surveys (both customer and employee) for each touchpoint. It also helps you to identify other customer and operational data that you’ll want to pull into the initiative in order to make your surveys, analysis, and action planning more relevant, personalized, and actionable. It might also identify other customer feedback inputs besides surveys (e.g., online communities, tech support forums, support calls, etc.) that should be tied back to the survey data for that touchpoint.

The customer interaction map is important to introduce as you roll out your program to the larger organization. It can help the various departments and business units understand the customer lifecycle while helping to break down silos and pull the organization together to work toward one common goal: a superior customer experience.

It’s simple. Start with the brand promise, identify touchpoints and determine which are most important/influential (not all touchpoints are created equal); outline the optimal experience (from the customer’s perspective) at each; and rally the organization to deliver it!

My Facebook status today reads, “I’m hoping this morning’s travels will inspire another interesting blog post.” Right after I posted that, a thought popped into my head:  it’s not my travels today as much as my destination that has inspired me. I’m on my way to our headquarters in Utah to meet with my team for our Quarterly Business Review. This got me thinking about how our clients might review their businesses…especially as it pertains to their Voice of the Customer (VOC) initiatives.

Gathering feedback from your customers helps you understand what you’re doing well and not so well for them. However, if that’s all you do, it’s like living in a bubble. It’s important to put all of your scores and feedback into the broader context – how well do you do stack up against your competitors? This is applies not only to financial/operational metrics, but also with your VOC data.

I’m talking about benchmarking, which means making comparisons to help you understand the perception of your business relative to the competition in the minds of your customers.

1. Competitive Benchmarking helps you determine your performance relative to a primary competitor or a set of key competitors. Competitive Benchmarking data can be obtained in several different ways.

          Third-Party Surveys:  Engage with a third party to conduct a blind competitive survey. This is the cleanest survey approach, but it’s also the most expensive.

          Your Surveys:  Add some questions to the end of your relationship survey that ask your customers to rate one or two of your competitors with which they’ve done business. This approach is a little less clean and perhaps even a bit biased because you’re asking these questions only of your customers. As long as you view the responses in that light, you can still get a decent benchmark.

          External Metrics:  Get access to syndicated results for ACSI, JDPA indexes, NPS, Forrester CxPi Customer Experience Index, etc. that are relevant for your industry, product, etc. Ask a comparable question or set of questions in your own survey(s) to benchmark.

2. World Class Benchmarking is a slightly different approach where you’re not necessarily interested in benchmarking question to question or score to score. In World Class Benchmarking, you ask your customers to tell you about a “world class experience” they had with another company – any company, regardless of industry. What you’re looking for is a way to identify who your customers look up to when it comes to service, products, literature, training, etc.  You then study that company inside and out – you might even partner with them or find a mentor in that organization, depending on who it is – to identify best practices that you can put to work in your own company.

My final thought about how clients review their businesses brings me to Internal Benchmarking, which entails taking the feedback you’ve gathered and comparing scores, ratings, or indexes internally – within your own business, i.e., benchmark business units, locations, sites, etc. against each other. Identify your stars and your dogs, compare practices, and have your stars mentor your dogs.

Ok, it’s time to go update my Facebook status to “another one’s in the can.”

I’m a little late working on this blog post because of a family emergency, but it seems fitting that I write it this morning – and on this very topic – as I fly from Long Beach to Salt Lake City, using both this airport and JetBlue for the first time. After driving 40 miles to the airport, I’m hoping for a smooth experience as I make my way through these “firsts.”

As JetBlue is well known for its brand promise of bringing humanity to air travel, I am looking forward to the “JetBlue experience,” to find out what it’s all about. The company touts more legroom, free DIRECTV and XM Satellite Radio, and free-flowing snacks at no charge. (What? No WiFi?) It also has a Customer Bill of Rights, should we be delayed and stuck on the tarmac for some reason. (I hope we don’t have to experience that portion of the promise.)

So what’s all the hubbub about a brand promise? A brand promise is the expectations you set with your customers.  It’s a combination of the brand purpose and the reality of what the brand can deliver. It defines the benefits a customer can expect to receive when experiencing your brand – at every touchpoint. It must be delivered consistently at every touchpoint so as to create predictability. Customers will select your brand because they know that, every time they choose your brand, they will have the same experience. This doesn’t happen on the first interaction – it takes many interactions for customers to begin to trust your brand.

And that introduces another concept related to the brand promise – trust.  The brand promise sets expectations, and expectations are aligned with trust. Predictability begets trust, and trust begets loyalty. Over time, I expect that I will trust JetBlue to deliver the same excellent experience every time.

Expectations are an integral part of your customers’ satisfaction levels. As a matter of fact:

Expectations – Performance = Satisfaction

Let’s think about that for a second. Customers try your brand with a set of expectations (your brand promise) in mind. How you perform against those expectations leads to some level of satisfaction. If performance meets or exceeds expectations, then customers have a higher level of satisfaction and/or loyalty. If performance is less than expectations, then the brand promise has been broken – no explanation needed on what that means for your company. One sidebar to note here: consumers have higher expectations of iconic brands.

A critical and required component of delivering on the brand promise consistently is to socialize it with your employees. We have all heard that engaged employees drive engaged customers.  In order for employees to hold up their end of that deal, they must first know and understand the brand promise. It needs to be communicated to employees (starting with the employee onboarding or orientation program), and it must be reinforced regularly.

JetBlue’s brand promise is to bring humanity to air travel.  I read that the company defines humanity as friendliness, flexibility, and caring.  JetBlue’s founder and former CEO David Neeleman was quoted as saying, “The JetBlue brand promise dictates how employees execute at the various stages of the customer experience, from the time customers check-in at the gate to the time they land and claim their luggage. And consistency in the experience is key, or else the brand suffers.”

Has JetBlue lived up to its brand promise for me? Well, as I said earlier, it takes time and several interactions before you feel that brand predictability. It’s too early to tell. The flight attendants are friendly, but their service hasn’t really been unique relative to other airlines I’ve flown recently (including Southwest, Continental, Delta, and American). As I write this, about half way into the flight, the DIRECTV system is still not working…stay tuned!

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a real trend, and the chief evidence of this is the rapid adoption rate of Chief Customer Officer and Chief Customer Experience Officer.

Companies today recognize the importance of creating a positive customer experience, from the moment the customer comes into contact with the company and is undecided to when the customer reaches a fork in the road and is considering leaving. Companies can no longer buy customer loyalty and assume customers will stay. It is easy for customers to “click away” and buy from another vendor.

CEM is now a formal program that involves multiple processes and departments. It requires the mapping of customer touchpoints, and combines operational and CRM data with customer service and marketing information.

Organizations that have a great CEM program have been able to increase sales and revenue from repeat sales, customer rescue, cross sells and up sells.. They discover better operational efficiencies and revenue from happy customers. However, if companies go about CEM on a superficial level, they can create a branding train wreck. Customers are savvy and quickly see through hollow statements about customer satisfaction.

Any organization can benefit from CEM, but the prime candidates include companies that have a large customer base and one that can easily switch to another supplier. Also, companies that sell direct to customers rather than through channels are better candidates.

CEM in today’s business world is just as important as measuring customer satisfaction was 20 years ago. CEM has become more formalized, and customer satisfaction is only a small component of CEM. In addition, CEM can now be measured the same as accounting and financial metrics.

In fact, there is a movement to watch companies that are doing it right.  Stock analysts and traders are tracking companies with good CEM and finding that their stock performs better than others. This posting from Bruce Temkin’s Customer Experience blog provides some insights on this.

CEM is a trend that is here to stay. Smart companies are using technology to monitor and improve the customer experience, which translates to increased revenues and profits.

Today’s theme at the Allegiance Engage Summit was analyzing patterns in data to find insights that can improve your operations. For those who were unable to attend, here are a few of the highlights from today’s keynote speakers.

 Bill Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics

Billy Beane shook up the world of baseball when he hired a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and starting using data to run a sports team. He looked at statistics that others in the business had ignored or under-valued to find new insights and gain advantage. Some of the key points of his talk can apply to any business:

• Don’t accept the status quo; take a fresh look at data from new angles and perspectives
• Use data to look for inefficiencies throughout the service delivery process
• Analyze data to determine the value of specific actions on your ultimate goal
• Base your decisions on analysis of statistics, not on emotion or subjective reasoning

The bottom line: Do you know what data drives your business? Analyzing data in new ways can give you an edge on your competition.

 Vicky Stennes, VP of In-Flight Experience, Jet Blue

Jet Blue set out to “bring humanity back to air travel.” The company’s values and culture define the brand. Here are some key points you may find useful:

•  Analyze how actions or product decisions relate to the corporate culture For example, charging customers for checking the first bag would negatively impact Jet Blue’s customer-focused culture.
• Identify what is getting in the way of providing first rate service
• Use NPS as one metric of customer satisfaction, but rely on market research to understand how to impact results
• Practice “visible leadership” in which managers spend more time in the field with employees and customers
• Having supported, informed and engaged employees are key to customer loyalty

 Bruce Temkin, Temkin Group

According to Bruce, most companies are not using customer feedback, which makes Voice of the Customer (VOC) an untapped asset. He presented some best practices for implementing a closed loop VOC program. These include:

•  Analyze both structured and unstructured VOC data, including freeform comments, to get a full view of customer feedback
• Deliver insights, not just data, and be clear on specific actions that need to be taken
• Make VOC data available widely throughout the organization and its partners
• Use VOC data to take action both in immediate problem solving and in long term operational planning
• Don’t obsess about a single score, but put data in context; Interpret results separately for different customer segments or regions.

We thank all of our presenters and look forward to another exciting day on Tuesday.

My last business trip resulted in no less than four feedback opportunities: the airline, the hotel, the rental car company and the travel agency.  Each of these organizations sought my feedback to help improve my customer experience.  Marvelous!

It seems every time I buy a product or service, the provider offers the opportunity to give them some feedback through a customer survey. Although the feedback opportunities are wonderful, my service providers are mired in the details of asking about the logistics of their service. Executing flawlessly merely provides them feedback that they delivered what I expected. This is useful information, yet often empty. In fact, we call these feedback surveys “happy charts,” meaning that an extremely high percentage, as high as 90%, of customers, are “happy” with the experience they just had unless a significant service failure occurred or an expectation went unmet.

In the early stages of truly understanding what drives loyalty and advocacy, many of my clients focus on the details of executing a process without failure. Basic service/product quality is really the metric being captured. Yet meeting basic quality expectations isn’t enough today to enchant customers.

Voice of the Customer programs fall behind by focusing primarily on the quality of an experience. Knowing if a customer was greeted properly, if reservations were in order, and if the rental car had fuel are measures of basic service quality, core expectations of value for money. Today’s leaders take the next step and tease out what drives customers to extol the virtues of the experience.

Last year a colleague stayed at a hotel that was very close to the airport and provided a pickup service. He arrived and contacted the hotel for pickup, but they never arrived. Being tired and hungry, he jumped in a taxi. While he was checking into the hotel, the desk clerk asked if he was the gentleman that had requested pick-up. Finding out that he was, the clerk reimbursed his taxi fare. Wow! More than six months later, he still talks about how delighted he was with the hotel and recommends it constantly.

Does your organization know what customers love about you?

The whole love thing sounds a little squishy doesn’t it? That’s the challenge. Gaining the emotional connection with customers is truly the goal of any business. Emotional connection drives loyalty and advocacy. The Walt Disney Company knows what guests love about their experience; Apple knows what users love about their products. Do you?

The next time you review customer feedback results, see if you have the answer to these questions:

1. What did your customers love about their experience with you today?
2. Is there anything that they’ll tell their friends not to miss about their experience with you?
3. If customers could change one single thing about their experience, what would that be?

Look beyond the basic quality of the process to discover the heart of the experience. This will help you build an experience that truly enchants your customers.