Can You Hear Me Now? Top Five Voice of Customer Pitfalls

Many years ago, I used to be a Symantec [1] customer. I really liked the Norton antivirus product—simple, effective and priced right. But then Symantec started making more complicated security bundles that were hard to install and use. The software did such a good job protecting me it just ground my PC to a halt. So I switched.

But recently I bought a new laptop for my son Matthew, after he learned that dousing the old one with milk doesn't make it work any better. The new computer came with Symantec pre-installed, so I decided to give it a try. And what do you know, it was a much improved product.

Apparently I wasn't the only one that had issues with Symantec software. Desirree Madison-Biggs, the firm's Director of Customer Experience, told me that despite "customer-driven" being a core value, many customers felt that Symantec was more technology-focused. So, four years ago she was charged to implement a VoC program for this huge company with 55 million paying consumers and tens of thousands of enterprise customers.

With the help of Satmetrix [2], an Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) vendor, they developed a method to systematically find and communicate customer issues in a common language that everyone could understand. Especially the CEO. A Net Promoter Score (NPS), based on the "Would you recommend us?" question, was used as a kind of "north star to reflect how we're doing from a customer point of view," says Madison-Biggs. They also asked other questions and analyzed comments to figure out what needed fixing.

The impact of the VoC program has been impressive, because Symantec actually did something with the feedback! With the recent Norton products, installation failure rates decreased from 11 percent to .3 percent; installation time reduced 500 percent to just 43 seconds; and performance improved substantially.

Still, when I asked Madison-Biggs to sum up four years of hard work with her best words of advice, she didn't talk about scoring methodologies or technology. Instead, her advice is to make sure that top executives "believe with heart and soul in the importance of a VoC program and then drive real cultural change." At Symantec, executive support starts at the very top with John Thompson, the CEO.

Pitfall No. 2: Garbage in, garbage out

Computer geeks know that if you put bad data into a perfectly designed computer program, you get perfectly useless results. That's known as "garbage in, garbage out." Of course, you also get garbage out if the data is good but the program has logic designed to tell you "1 + 1 = 3."

Instead of blindly using a metric you read about in a book, work with firms that can help you not only collect feedback data, but also build a valid VoC model.

With VoC programs, you're collecting customer feedback (input) so you can get insights you can act on (output). If you ask customers the wrong questions, that's just garbage in. If your VoC program is built on faulty logic about what really impacts customer loyalty, you'll waste time and money making changes that don't matter, or actually make things worse. (For more on this topic, read my article Find the "Ultimate" Loyalty Metric to Grow Your Business [3].)

Consider Chilis [4], a casual dining restaurant chain owned by Brinker International [5]. Employees serve more than one million guests every day in four restaurant brands with more that 1,700 restaurants around the world.

Mark Williamson, Senior Director of Guest Experience and Hospitality, has the charter to measure the guest experience and provide direction on how to "create passion" for each brand. What that boils down to, he says, is a combination of emotional engagement plus the dining experience. At Chilis, Williamson found that while good food is essential, the key differentiator was in fact the "hospitality" of team members.

With the help of Empathica [6], an EFM provider that provide both technology and research services, they found a "very clear linkage" between employee behavior and the guest experience, which was in turn was related to increased restaurant traffic. So, Chilis' management works hard to hire people with that all-important "hospitality gene" and ensure they deliver a great dining experience.

Instead of blindly using a metric you read about in a book, work with firms that can help you not only collect feedback data, but also build a valid VoC model. As Williamson says, "don't be so arrogant as to assume you know what customers want."

Pitfall No. 3: Employees aren't motivated to be customer-focused

Employees are people and tend to do things in their own self interests. Surely you know that, it just seems so obvious.

Why is it then, despite all of your VoC activities, that some of your service reps rush me to get me off the phone when I call for help? One time, a call center agent apologized, explaining that her bonus was tied to having the lowest "average handle time."

Are you really saving money with these shorter calls? Let me tell you a little secret—after I hang up on a call that didn't solve my problem, I just call back or use some other support channel. Or worse, I take my business elsewhere and tell my friends about my lousy experience. Stick that in your ROI spreadsheet!

If you were really listening to me and other customers, you'd know that in most cases we just want to get our problem solved with one call. So why don't you measure employees on "first contact resolution" (FCR) and reward them accordingly?

In other words, take a tip from Zappos, a popular retailer founded 10 years ago as an online shoe shore. Since then it has expanded to sell handbags, clothing and electronics to a very loyal customer base. What's different about Zappos is the attitude of employees towards customers. In the Zappos call center, "customer loyalty representatives" are measured on FCR and rewarded for the quality of conversations, not speed.

Another great example is Mountain America Credit Union [7] (MACU), the second largest credit union in Utah with over 300,000 members. According to a recent Bancography study, MACU is the strongest large credit union brand in the country. Why? Because management works hard to create a positive work environment for employees, and engaged employees lead to engaged customers, according to Senior VP Brent Lawrence.

Research revealed that the key factors in employee engagements were worker's pride, relationships and recognition, work/life balance and a supportive culture. Using employee and customer feedback collected with Allegiance [8], the credit union monitors trends in engagement scores and takes action when needed. In one case, they resolved a member attrition problem at a branch office by fixing the root cause: declining employee morale.

If your employees are happy and motivated to do the right things for me, there's a better chance I'll do the right things for you. Like spend more money.

Pitfall No. 4: Listening with only one ear

While it's easy to analyze quantitative feedback generated by asking me to score things on a numerical scale, that's like listening to customers with only "ear." The other ear should be used to understand customers through the unstructured feedback they provide.

Use text analytics to listen to customers on their terms, so you can act on emerging issues long before you could field a conventional survey.

Comments on surveys are a natural place to start, but customers also send in text feedback via web site forms, email messages and chat messages. Call center agent logs, transcripts from recorded phone calls and posts on blogs or discussion forums are also good sources for customer feedback, if you'll take the time to read.

Yes, reading comments is time consuming. But hey, maybe if you read more customer feedback, you'd have a better idea of which problems to fix, which would free up some call center staff time. Just a thought.

JetBlue [9] gets 45,000 comments per month, says Bryan Jeppsen, the airline's customer feedback analyst. Until recently, they made business decisions based on "reading as many comments as possible"—about 300 per day per analyst.

Automation was introduced as a result of the infamous New York ice storm of 2007, when JetBlue was overwhelmed with 15,000 emails in just two days. Attensity [10], a text mining vendor, stepped in to help analyze the messages. Customers were upset about the delays and cancellations, and disappointed that JetBlue didn't have a backup plan. On a more positive note, however, some customers wrote to compliment airport staff and in-flight crews on their handling of a difficult situation.

Since that crisis, JetBlue has worked on a pilot project with Attensity which Jeppsen says helps mine customer sentiment, as well as providing "tangible data around how to augment JetBlue services." By tying feedback data to a specific aircraft or even a seat number, they can find and fix problems that have a direct impact on the customer experience.

If your customers are suffering from survey fatigue like me, shorten the surveys and provide more opportunities to provide comments. Expand other options to provide comments, via your web site, chat sessions, etc. Then use text analytics to listen to customers on their terms [11], so you can act on emerging issues long before you could field a conventional survey.

Pitfall No. 5: Ignoring social voices

As you may have heard, consumer usage of social media has exploded in recent years, including blogs, review sites, Facebook and more recently, Twitter. Lots of options to rave about great experiences or vent about bad ones.

Now, I fully appreciate that social media is a chaotic and noisy world. Hard to "separate the wheat from the chaff," as they say. And besides, how do you know if the complainers are really your customers?

Despite these challenges, can you really afford to turn a deaf ear to social voices? JetBlue is already using Twitter to listen to customers [13] and respond to service issues. In the future, the company plans to use Attensity's MarketVoice solution to more systematically mine all sorts of consumer-generated content.

Stephan Sigaud, a noted expert in the field of loyalty research, agrees that "social media is an emerging feedback channel that companies cannot afford to ignore." I think it's the wave of the future, because, frankly, it's a lot easier for me to post something on Facebook or Twitter. Have you tried to navigate your company's web site lately?