When companies approach a relationship marketing company like Direxions and ask for a template for a CRM program, very often the first question that we ask them is, are you listening to your customers? With automation entering every aspect of a company's sales process, the customer interaction touchpoints are increasing by the day. A customer checking out without a loyalty card swipe at the cash counter is talking as much as a customer who is checking out giving his loyalty card to swipe. A customer contacting the call centre and screaming at the call centre executive is leaving as much noise footprint as the customer who is disconnecting on hearing the IVR menu. While companies are happy to invest large sums of money to get the best automation software, IVR equipment, training front end executives who interact with the customer and even advertising the "call to action" numbers, they sadly do not spend enough time, especially at the decision making levels in listening to the feedback which customers leave at the various touch points - both said and unsaid.
Recently one of our colleagues received an SMS from a General Insurance company asking him send an SMS to a number if he needed Home Insurance. Since he genuinely was looking for this service, he SMSed back as per the process defined. It is more than a month since the interaction happened and our colleague is still waiting for someone to call back. Another FMCG company put up huge hoardings across cities asking people to SMS them for a free sample. A couple of colleagues who wanted to take up the offer, sent the SMS and while one of them was contacted after three weeks and received the sample two weeks later, the other colleague is still waiting. We can keep listing similar instances across categories.
The point is that while modern technology can enable you to capture customer feedback or interest cost effectively, there has to be systems and human intervention in place to listen to the feedback and act upon it. Even before companies can build elaborate and differentiated loyaltly and CRM programmes, companies need to invest in the art of listening to their customers effectively and act upon relevant aspects of what the customers are saying.
A few simple tips to achieve dramatic improvement in your customer satisfaction:
- While automated e-mails can be used for acknowledging an e-mail received from a customer, ideally the reply to the customer query needs to be customized and the person sending the reply needs to understand and emapathize with what the customer is saying.
- While IVR is a good route to guide a customer where there are many products that are being offered, there are many categories of customers in India for whom IVR is a strict no-no. The call centre process needs to be tailored basis a deep understanding of your customer profile. The number of call drops once an IVR starts is also sending a message and needs to be listened to.
- In a recent case when we were monitoring the response to a high decibel campaign of a beverage company in the social media, the customer blogs or postings across various social media sites were critical of the campaign saying that when they tried to contact the 10 digit mobile number to which they were sending in the SMS responses, they could not get any updates on the prize winners as they were not able to get through to anybody. Providing a contact centre support, even one seat, for many of the campaigns can enhance the customer equity substantially.
- A qualitative analysis of the pattern of the nature of complaints and feedback which customers are giving will help identify pain points for customers - ideally an executive reading through atleast a representative sample of the customer complaints in detail and categorizing it and not just through the categorization of complaints captured in the CRM software.
For as many successful companies have discovered, a thorough and empathetic analysis of customer feedback and response can not only improve customer delight but could also lead you to your next blockbuster product.
