Author Archive for Nick Ezzo

Maximize customer satisfaction AND maximize automation

Published
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Nick Ezzo
on October 16, 2008
in callcenter automation and caller experience
. 0 Comments

Nick Ezzo

I’ve written at great length about how you can have the “best of both worlds” — cost-saving automation AND high caller satisfaction.

I’ll concede that there are millions of ways to implement automation poorly and there are relatively few ways to do it right.  It’s a challenge, to be sure.

So I was happy to read an article at Next Generation Power and Energy that talked about exactly that.

“We’ve seen customer preferences shift in accepting technology over the years. Customer feedback now clearly shows that in many cases, customers prefer using technology for some transactions when it’s designed well.” says Tucker Mann, Vice President Customer and Market Services, Progress Energy.

It’s refreshing to see a public utility out in front of this issue.  Utilities have gotten a bad rap for their customer service, and now it seems companies like Progress Energy are leading the charge.

Kudos, Progress Energy!

Time Customer Service Earns Fifth Consecutive Speech Award for TuVox

Published
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Nick Ezzo
on October 6, 2008
in awards and callcenter automation
. 0 Comments

Nick Ezzo You may have seen the press release or the article mentioning the Speech Technology Award won by Time Customer Service.

Time Customer Service is the global customer service, information systems, marketing services, and subscription fulfillment operation of Time, one of the world’s largest publishing companies, with a stable of titles that includes Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Money, Health, Entertainment Weekly, Essence, National Geographic, and Southern Living.

Time Customer Service has been able to automate 51 percent of all name and address change calls and 71 percent of all cancellation calls, equating to roughly 2 million calls previously handled exclusively by live agents. That has led to a 40 percent reduction in costs and increased call center capacity.

This award marks the fifth consecutive Speech Technology win for TuVox, following the “2007 Implementation Award” for Telecom New Zealand, the “2006 Most Innovative Solution” award for the TuVox Perfect Router deployment at Canon USA, the “Best Speech Application Award” in 2005 and the Speech Solutions CHALLENGE II Usability victory in 2004.

“Recipients of the Speech Technology magazine’s Speech Industry Awards are recognized for accomplishments that stand out from the crowd,” says David Myron, editorial director of Speech Technology magazine. “They have distinguished themselves through their individual accomplishments, service to the industry and the implementation of truly innovative new applications using speech technology.”

The World’s Worst Cross-sell

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on May 22, 2008
in caller experience
. 0 Comments

Nick EzzoI recently experienced an Internet service outage with Comcast, so I called their customer service line at 1-800-COMCAST to report the issue.

I entered my phone number and pressed [1] for English.

I pressed [1] for service issues, then [2] for Internet issues, then I pressed [3] for service issues (again).

Then the most amazing message came on:

Did you know you can switch your home telephone service to Comcast? Just ask your customer service representative…

I have no idea what came after, because I actually stopped listening at that point.

“They can’t be serious,” I thought. “They know my Internet connection is down, right?”

So I finally spoke to a friendly call center agent, who told me that Comcast was aware of the outage and were working to restore service.

Then the agent said, “While I’ve got you on the phone…”

I remember thinking, “there’s no way he’s going to bust out the old switching-the-home-telephone-service cross-sell.”

But alas, I was wrong.

Did you know you can switch your home telephone service to Comcast?

“Hang on a second, Dude. I’m not trying to be rude or sarcastic. But if I had my home telephone service on Comcast, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You realize that, right?”

“Well, we have battery backup,” he retorted.

“So you’re telling me that a battery backup would have prevented the outage I’m experiencing?”

“No it wouldn’t have prevented that.”

So, to end my story, I told him “thanks but no thanks” and I’ll keep my old-fashioned land line service from PacBell, I mean SBC, I mean AT&T, or new name next year.

AT&T — Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’ve had more name changes than service outages in the last few years.

Comcast — winner of The World’s Worst Cross-sell Award.

Read more about Comcast Customer Service at:

Did We “Get Human” Yet?

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on April 3, 2008
in VUI, callcenter automation, caller experience and podcast
. 0 Comments
 
icon for podpress  Did We "Get Human" Yet? [1:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Nick EzzoThe recent issue of Business Week (3/3/2008) has an update on the “Get Human” initiative started by Paul English in 2005.

For anyone living under a rock during 2005-2006 when Paul was making the rounds of NPR and MSNBC, here’s what GetHuman is — you go to his website (www.GetHuman.com) and it lists a few hundred companies’ customer service numbers and tells you what to press or say to speak to a living, breathing person on the other end of the phone. Eureka!

After the initial novelty wore off, Get Human morphed into a proposed “standard”, with the half-hearted and opportunistic support of Nuance and Microsoft.

So here’s my take on this thing. When I read the Business Week article, I got the sense that the author (Jena McGregor) started out with a premise — Get Human is dead! – and pretty much wrote a page to support that preconceived notion.

If you actually go to GetHuman.com, you’ll see that a transformation has taken place since 2006.

Although the idea of a standard never took hold, the site now has a new focus. In addition to the IVR cheat sheet, there is a new “Consumer Rating” column, kind of like a Web 2.0 vigilante version of the Better Business Bureau.

And (hilariously), there is a column of affiliate web ads on the far right, implying that Get Human is paying its web hosting bills by driving traffic to the very companies they are exposing. Genius!

Angel.com’s Blog has an interesting take on the momentum loss of the Get Human movement. Ahmed Bouzid makes some very valid points about how the IVR/ACD vendors need to carry the flag to re-energize the campaign.

While that’s probably a sound approach, I prefer a market-driven strategy. In certain situations, people will always want to talk to a real person. Companies understand that. In other cases, the IVR is so unbelievably bad, people bail out because of sheer frustration.

Eventually, killer automation apps like the American Airlines IVR will prevail, and the lumbering old touch-tone dinosaurs will eventually die out.

And on that day, we might not need to “get human” any more.

Your Call Is Important — Not.

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on February 26, 2008
in caller experience and podcast
. 1 Comment
 
icon for podpress  Your Call Is Important -- Not. [2:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Nick EzzoSince last summer when we launched TuVox Speech Central, people have been sending me stories about really bad IVR and ACD systems that they call into.

I’ve been keeping a running list of some of the most offensive (and untrue) statements ever uttered by these abominations of automation. Here are a few worth noting:

  1. Your call is important to us. Really? If it was truly important to you, I think you’d staff adequately, or at least give me an automated system to use.
  2. For quality purposes, your call may be monitored or recorded. I’ve been hearing this little gem for years, and I’m still waiting for the quality to show up. A better way to word this might be “We record. Don’t sue us.”
  3. Please listen closely, as your options have changed. No, they haven’t, and please take this annoying little message off its permanent place at the front of your menu. It’s delaying me from actually listening closely to the options, which I repeat, are exactly the same as they were the last time I called.
  4. Did you know we have a website? No kidding. Welcome to 1995. Let me guess: its www, then your company name, then dot-com. Note to ACD administrator: please delete this non-informative announcement as soon as you read this.
  5. Your call will be handled by the next available representative. Absolutely not true. The next available representative will handle the guy that has been waiting longest. Think about it.
  6. Due to unexpected call volume… You can use this excuse probably once a year. Why, then, do I hear this message every time I call your call center?

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. Please let me know if I forgot any. And if you are responsible for an ACD or IVR, I would suggest killing some or all of these useless clichés of modern life.

I will pay you cash money.

Giving the Jailhouse Keys to the Caller

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on January 11, 2008
in caller experience
. 0 Comments

Nick EzzoA colleague recently sent me an article by Donna Fluss at CRMXchange. In her article, she highlights the new American Airlines self-service application called Remember Me.

I like Donna’s take on it:

American Airlines’ recently announced initiative changes the dynamics slightly and shifts some of the responsibility for service enhancement to customers.

It establishes that even in large retail environments, like airlines, enterprises can “partner” with their customers and ask for their help in providing better service. This type of service also empowers customers, albeit in a very small way, to take an action that allows them to receive better service.

What Donna is referring to is the issue of “control” that frustrates callers that are forced into unpleasant situations (like some IVRs).

It would reduce some customer frustration resulting from being totally at the mercy of an enterprise, giving some “control” back to the customer.

It seems that giving the caller the key to his own jail cell is a good thing.

Breaking Up Is(nt) Hard To Do

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on October 3, 2007
in caller experience
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NickIn my Blog entry Knee Jerk Customer Service on August 7th, I described how I dumped my wireless carrier after 5 years of cell phone bliss.

Apparently, some wireless carriers are also breaking up with their customers — if they call too often.

Check out Sprint Drops Customers Who Call for Help Too Often on NPR from July 11th:

Day to Day, July 11, 2007 · Cell phone service provider Sprint is dropping some of its customers who frequently called customer service with problems. The company sent letters to about a thousand customers telling them it was time to move on to another provider.

What is also interesting is the shocked and stunned reaction of the dumped customers on the Sprint Users Discussion Board.

Back in August, I posed the question:

Are their systems and business processes just too knotted up to deliver proactive customer service?

Or, do they just take their customers for granted?

I’m starting to think there is a third option: they see their customers as a nuisance.

The Power of Word-of-Mouth

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on September 25, 2007
in caller experience
. 0 Comments

Nick EzzoI just read an interesting article by John I. Todor, Ph.D., on the blog The Perfect Customer Experience.

The entry places some tangible, scientific figures behind what we all intuitively know to be true: whether you provide good or bad customer service, your customers are going to talk about it.

Here are a few interesting nuggets:

  • 70% of word of mouth occurs “face-to-face” and only 8% occurs online.
  • Overwhelmingly, consumers have positive things to say about brands by a margin of more than 6 to 1. This contradicts the common notion people spread negative experiences more than positive.
  • 78% of consumers rank word of mouth as credible at a level of 7 or higher on a 10 point scale.

Why is word-of-mouth marketing powerful?

We trust word of mouth because the person telling us puts the experience in a context that is meaningful to us. Since the peer-to-peer relationship is based on trust, the message is credible.

So, remember the next time you’re stuck waiting on hold, or transferred around, or told to call back because “the system is down”:

Your customers are going to talk about it.

Knee-Jerk Customer Service

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on August 7, 2007
in caller experience
. 0 Comments

Nick EzzoA few years ago, I broke up with my wireless carrier.

We had five fantastic years together.  Oh, the minutes we used spend, just talking!  But like all good things, it had to end sometime.

Due to an extensive travel schedule, I had exceeded my plan minutes two months in a row, and my normal $59.99 plan suddenly became a $280 plan.  Ouch.

So I paid my bill and promptly switched carriers.   And with my new wireless provider, I got more minutes for about the same price.

Do you think my wireless provider even cared that I broke up the relationship?  How about… Nope.

No call.  No card.  Nothing.

Here’s my point: if my provider had proactively reached out to me before I walked out, I would have stayed.  Imagine:

Good morning, Mr. Ezzo, this is ____ wireless calling.  I notice you have exceeded your plan minutes for the last two months, and I’d like to upgrade your account to a plan that better fits you.

The call never came.

But, let me go even further with this delusional fantasy:

And, if you sign up for a two-year contract, I can wipe out those excess charges for the last few months.  Heck, I’ll even send you a Bluetooth headset free.

Hallelujah!  Where do I sign?

The sad part is that my provider missed an excellent opportunity to lock me in for another two years.

Wireless providers don’t seem to care about retaining their customers, and I can’t figure out why.

Are their systems and business processes just too knotted up to deliver proactive customer service?  Or, do they just take their customers for granted?

Either way, it’s a problem that can be fixed, and I would like to see someone do it.

Dear ____ wireless,

Let’s get back together.

I’m waiting for your call.

The Call Center Agents Are Not Hiding From You

Published
by
Nick Ezzo
on June 14, 2007
in caller experience
. 1 Comment

Nick Ezzo

Just this morning, I read an entry on the Customer Service Blog “Customers Are Always” that made a pretty bold claim about having a live customer service answer the phone on the first ring.

Normally, I agree with Maria Palma, and I heartily applaud her for carrying the banner for improving customer service.

However, in this case, I couldn’t disagree more. Here is the quote:

Is it possible to have a live agent answer the call on the first ring? You’re darn right it’s possible!

It is neither possible nor practical to answer every call with a live agent. The reason is simple: Call Volumes.

Just ask 1-800-Flowers.com how many calls they take on February 14th. Or, ask Apple how many iPod calls they receive on the day after Christmas.

In order to have a live agent answer the call on the first ring you would need to have hundreds or thousands of call center agents waiting for calls to come in on that single day. And when no agent is available, what do you get? Music on hold.

If done correctly, automation can (1) handle unpredictable and uneven call volumes and (2) make your existing call center agents more productive. When your customers’ needs are handled quickly and efficiently, they will thank you and they will become repeat customers.