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Key findings from Calabrio's State of the Contact Center 2022 Report with Customer Service and Experience Expert Shep Hyken.
In this series we will discuss Contact Center industry trends and best practices, as well as sharing success stories and pain points with some of the most innovative professionals in the industry. Join us as we learn and grow together in order to provide world class customer service to each and every one of our clients.
Part 2- State of the Contact Center 2022 with Shep Hyken
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[00:00:00] Dave Hoekstra: Hey everybody, it's Dave. We had such a great conversation with Shep. We decided to split the episode into two, so we're gonna pick up right where we left off last week and really kind of continue our discussion between Dave and Shep Hyken on the state of the Contact Center 2022 report. So without further ado, here we go.
[00:00:17] Dave Hoekstra: We're gonna pick right back up where we left off. Why does the NPS focus work for American Express, but not for other organizations? Right. What are the other organizations doing
[00:00:28] Shep Hyken: that? Yeah. Net Promoter score, by the way. For some reason, if somebody listening doesn't know what that is It's a measurement.
[00:00:37] Shep Hyken: It's a question you ask. On a scale of zero to 10, what's the likelihood that you'd recommend. The company to a friend, colleague, whatever family member. And nines and tens are promoters. And that's what you strive for, to be that good. And then of course, but it doesn't matter if it's CSAT or something else.
[00:00:52] Shep Hyken: Here's the thing, people are starting to say, you know, and I've been reading this and I don't understand why they're like, shunning the NPS score. NPS is just a measure, that's all it is. It's a piece of data and it's good data. Every piece of data you get is history, and it's a lesson that you can learn from that will make you better for the next time.
[00:01:12] Shep Hyken: All right, so whether it's CSAT, NPS, or any other, you know, friction scores, any other measurement, you wanna have good scores. And when you're not getting the good scores, you wanna find out why and then put processes, changes, etc. In place to mitigate or eliminate the problems that you have.
[00:01:30] Shep Hyken: The, I find the issue is many companies are collecting data and they're not properly executing on what they learn or
[00:01:36] Dave Hoekstra: they're manipulating it. In a way to say, Well, it's, I mean, yeah, we're a 6.2, but gosh, we had this and we had this. Right. So was Apple. Right, Right, right.
[00:01:45] Dave Hoekstra: Exactly.
[00:01:45] Shep Hyken: There are some brands and some companies that if they're not getting, you know, nines and tens almost every time, I don't, you know, like they should be getting at 80% of the time, which means their NPS score should be really high.
[00:01:59] Shep Hyken: And unfortunately you know, they're not there and they need to get, they need these companies. It's easy. It should be a high score. By the way I will add, you know, as long as we're talking about, you know, looking at measurement and data you, you do need to use the data to make the changes that are necessary.
[00:02:14] Shep Hyken: But remember, data is a history lesson. We learn from history. History repeats itself. It does bad stuff and good stuff. Right now, if it were me, I would be looking at this data as well as watching customer behavior, and I love if there's ways and there are ways to track individual customers. And what channels they're using.
[00:02:35] Shep Hyken: But if we do a really good job and our customer calls us the first time and they ask us a question that could be easily found on you know, doing it digitally, doing it self-service, it's incumbent upon us to teach the customer the better way. Think about the last time you took a trip, you picked up the phone and called reservations for the American Airlines or Delta Airlines.
[00:02:57] Shep Hyken: No. You went online and you booked it yourself. Why? It's a better experience actually. You don't have to wait on hold. It's very intuitive and easy to do. So. By the way, those airlines, they taught their passengers to use that system. They gave 'em a little incentive. Few extra miles have you tried it out, but they really made a system that was better.
[00:03:18] Shep Hyken: So if we can teach our customers to use, Our digital systems, our different channels, other than calling on the phone, it frees up our people on the phone to deal with higher level problems and issues that probably can't be taken care of digitally.
[00:03:33] Dave Hoekstra: Well, and you know, one of it's funny, the that one of the key insights here that we kind of came up with that plays along with that point right there, basically with what you said.
[00:03:44] Dave Hoekstra: We're finding that self-service is having a, you know, overwhelmingly positive. You know, effect, that's the word I was looking for, positive effect on the brand experience. But what happens too is that it means only the difficult interactions are making it to the agent. And what we're finding is that's putting an inordinate amount of stress.
[00:04:05] Dave Hoekstra: On the agent, right? So one of the things that one of the things that was kind of a key finding in the State of the Contact Center report is kind of a no-brainer, but agent stress really kind of has an effect on that overall brain experience. And we talk a lot about that here at Calabrio. I'm curious with with you and conversations you have with organizations, what are you seeing out there? How organizations are maybe addressing agent stress and you know, what are some of the things that they might be doing to help mitigate it.
[00:04:34] Shep Hyken: Well, it's interesting that your reason for the agent being stressed is they're only dealing with the highest level problems, and what we're finding is that what really stresses agents out and frustrates them is having to answer the same simple questions again and again.
[00:04:50] Shep Hyken: Keeping them from dealing with the customer's much larger problems. Now, there is a difference between larger problems from really angry customers. Who are then, you know, creating stress on the agent because of their attitude and anger toward the company. And the agent needs to be taught, Hey I am just here to help you.
[00:05:10] Shep Hyken: I am not the company. I'm not the reason you're here. And upset. I am the reason we're gonna get you to not be upset anymore. And I think there's also somethingelse that is really interesting to me is there are people out there that just love getting yelled at and turning it around. They love to get that angry customer and when they're finished making that customer feel like we've got a new best friend,
[00:05:33] Shep Hyken: Yeah. And so they live for that. We need to be hiring those people. If you put the wrong person in the wrong job, I don't care if it's customer support account. Whatever it is, they're gonna implode. So make sure you do some type of behavioral style assessment to understand that your agents' behavioral style and personality fits with the activity they're going to be engaged in.
[00:05:53] Dave Hoekstra: Absolutely.
[00:05:54] Dave Hoekstra: And you said something earlier that really made me kind of tie back to one of the, one of the other key insights in the report. You mentioned how you know CEOs and executives should be coming down and really, you know, taking calls to, to be honest, if we're gonna go to the deepest base level of this but what we're truly seeing is how organizations are only just now starting to figure out that the contact center is a real key driver of statistics and information that can help the whole organization as opposed to just the contact center. Right. I grew up in a world where we could only really access
[00:06:31] Dave Hoekstra: things like average speed of answer and service level and you know, the time to abandon, those are the stats we had to drive. And now with a lot of the analytics information out there, we're seeing a lot of these data silos get that are getting broken down. But what we're not seeing.
[00:06:47] Dave Hoekstra: So let's take a look at some of the statistics that, that that come across from this, right? But 80% of contact center managers say that there are barriers between the contact center and the rest of the organization. Why do you think that is? What's happening there?
[00:06:59] Shep Hyken: What is the deal with that?
[00:07:01] Shep Hyken: You know, we're gonna go back to the antique term, the antiquated term silos. Okay. This data needs to be shared the relevant data. If the contact center manager is frustrated by not getting all the right information, but the information's there, they need to be going to whoever it is that has the capability of filtering this information over to them.
[00:07:20] Shep Hyken: So I'm gonna put the onus on the contact center manager first saying, This is what I need. Knowing it's there need to get to the right people and make the case for why they should have it.
[00:07:30] Dave Hoekstra: Well, just like you said The airlines have taught their customers how to do this. The contact center managers need to be teaching the rest of the organization.
[00:07:39] Dave Hoekstra: How to do this and I know that's not always the easiest thing. We, the contact center manager doesn't always get invited to the big boardroom meetings, right? Those are not the places. And so what we've been working on is teaching these contact center managers how to recognize and embrace this
[00:07:54] Dave Hoekstra: data and provide it. Right? What kind of information does the marketing department need? What kind of information does the sales department need? And here's what's killing me about this particular statistic is that we ask the question, how many of you, the, you being the contact center managers have the analytical tools they need?
[00:08:13] Dave Hoekstra: 83% said they have it, but then 80% of them turned around and said there are barriers between them and the rest of the organization. So we have the tools. We clearly don't have the communication methods to get this information. We have some tools. We have some tools, right? And so, you know, whether we're talking about improving agent performance or improving customer satisfaction, the tools exist.
[00:08:35] Dave Hoekstra: The tools that. Didn't exist maybe even five or six years ago. Right? Those are readily becoming available now for these organizations and I really feel like this is one of those drivers that, this is to me, the future of the contact center. This is where the contact center is going is kind of breaking out of our shell, out of our dark corner in the back and really becoming a key driver to the organization and how it does business.
[00:09:01] Shep Hyken: So what drives me crazy is when somebody says, there's an old quote out there that customer service happens when customer experience fails, which basically says the customer service is a department that handles complaints. No customer support is the department. Customer service is a philosophy that should run through the entire organization where people serve one another internally
[00:09:27] Shep Hyken: They're internal customers in order to create a better experience externally for the outside customer. Right. But it frustrates me when you know, this department sits out there. So one of the intriguing findings from this report is that as you look at the power, of the contact center, it's no longer for just complaints and problem solving or to answer questions.
[00:09:51] Shep Hyken: This is the department that makes you money, that saves your customers, that makes your customers say, I'll be back, and we can't. We should be doing everything we can to support our people on the front line, to not just answer questions, but empower them to make suggestions to cross sell and ethically upsell
[00:10:11] Shep Hyken: to other products. Granted, it's a big training, you know, you've gotta train the people properly, so let's get 'em started by getting 'em into the contact center where they actually do answer questions and support customers. And we take our best of the best and we train them on how to do more than just respond to customers' needs.
[00:10:29] Shep Hyken: We should as a contact. When our customers talking to us, we should have their entire profile in front of us. Yes. And that profile should say how long they've been a customer, what they've been buying, how often they buy, how often they call, what the last questions they had, so that we get a good idea of who this customers and how we can talk to them and they can get a personalized experience.
[00:10:51] Shep Hyken: And furthermore, if we're a big enough company, we should have analytics that compares this customer to other customers, because if we do that the right way, there might be 2000 other customers that are identical to this customer and we know whether the customer knows it or not, what they're gonna buy next, The next question they're gonna have, the next reason they're gonna call us for support.
[00:11:13] Shep Hyken: Why? Because they're exactly the same. Is 2000 or 10,000 or more other customers? By the way, if you can't tell, I'm getting excited about this. I
[00:11:21] Dave Hoekstra: know. Shep's coming in hot guys. Dude ready for that. I I love it. And just to put the cherry on top of that, especially in today's business world where so many things are subscription model.
[00:11:32] Dave Hoekstra: It's not about getting them to buy the next one or to tell a friend, it's about getting them to pay for the next month or the next year of things. Right. And that's where there's, there used to be just, you would sell a widget and you would support the widget, and the whole goal was to get the person who bought the widget to tell somebody else to go by the widget.
[00:11:52] Dave Hoekstra: And that still is the goal. But now we have the new added problem. How do we convince them to keep paying for this widget for the next 3, 5, 10 years? And you know, it's so interesting to see the subscription model become a driver in a these organizations. So customer retention is now equally as important as a customer acquisition.
[00:12:15] Dave Hoekstra: Right. And that's a fun, yeah, fun part of this.
[00:12:19] Shep Hyken: So a few thoughts there. Number one every person interacting with a customer needs to be thinking about what I call the loyalty question, where loyalty is not about a lifetime, it's simply about the next time. And eventually, if it's the next time, every time, it becomes a lifetime.
[00:12:34] Shep Hyken: But what am I doing right now? What conversation am I having? What interaction am I having? Am I doing something for that customer that's going? Next time they need whatever it is that I sell or do make sure they come to me instead of wanting to leave to go to a competitor. So that's number one.
[00:12:51] Shep Hyken: Recognize that each interaction is an opportunity to get somebody back the next time and only focus on the next time, which will eventually become a lifetime. All right, so if you do it right, number two on this is to realize that we've got great insights is to what our customers want and expect, and we need to provide that for them.
[00:13:11] Shep Hyken: And if we're not providing it for 'em, they're gonna go find it from somewhere else. We've got tremendous amounts of data on different customers, why they buy and what keeps them buying. So let's make sure we have that information. We train our people to operate and create that experience that makes that customer keep coming back.
[00:13:30] Shep Hyken: So that I think is important. It's not just the interaction, but understanding the customer's needs. And we go from there.
[00:13:38] Dave Hoekstra: Okay. It's good to see you've calmed down a little bit, Shep. It's we've restored the blood pressure back to a normal level. That's good. But so it's almost like you would call it the what Calabrio calls the concept of a brand guardian, Right?
[00:13:49] Dave Hoekstra: What is everyone in your organization defending that brand that you've worked so hard to establish. And that's really the kind of key goal of what a contact center really can be.
[00:14:01] Shep Hyken: So that one person, by the way that I, that brand guardian, I refer to that today, I'm calling that the CEO of the moment.
[00:14:08] Shep Hyken: Okay. They get to act. They're, they are the company at that moment, right? It and here's what customers say. I love doing business with them. They're so friendly. They're so helpful. They're so knowledgeable, and it's not a they in, although some people identify as a, they, collectively, most people are saying they referring to the company
[00:14:27] Shep Hyken: when it was a single person who was taking care of them. That person has an awesome responsibility. To your point, Dave. And hence, I call it the CEO of the moment. And I just love it when I hear people say, Oh, I just got off the phone with them. And it's like, okay, in today's world, we go, is them referring to a single person or right.
[00:14:46] Shep Hyken: Or collective group of people. And most of the time it's still collective group, but still, you get the idea of what I'm talking about. It's
[00:14:53] Dave Hoekstra: absolutely, yeah. The singular. They and it's it's, you're right. It's, but it's almost like shocks us a little bit. And that's the, that, that's what I think is the beauty of it, is that there's so much opportunity out there for organizations to, to take advantage of this.
[00:15:07] Dave Hoekstra: All right. So we have gone really long here and it's great. I want to give you the floor here. Was there any other key insights from this report that really leap out at you that you want to chat?
[00:15:19] Shep Hyken: Well, I think that we should talk about the channels that most influence a customer's perception of a brand.
[00:15:25] Shep Hyken: And I think the number one channel that customers want to use is the phone. Yes, our research says that I think your research is saying the same thing. I'll give you what the exact stat is. It's 57% felt the phone had the best opportunity to influence the perception. The customer's perception of the brand.
[00:15:44] Shep Hyken: Only 39% of customers felt the phone had that kind of influence, right? Once again, a big gap. Almost 20%. That's too much. But even though the difference between 57 and 39% is almost 20%, it's really a bigger it. Such a, the gap, you have to take a look at it mathematically to understand it, but it's not 20%, it's bigger
[00:16:08] Dave Hoekstra: than, Well, if you also look at the gap it's not just that gap, right?
[00:16:11] Dave Hoekstra: That the gap between that individual stat, but if you look at the answer that managers gave, the highest it was social media. 44%. I imagine that, yeah, 44% of managers thought that social media is the most important, but only 26% of consumers thought that was the most influential. And it's interesting because I think I tend to look at social media.
[00:16:34] Dave Hoekstra: It. It is really more of a microcosm of kind of what's going on. I can filter through the individual messages and say, Oh, I kind of know what's going on there. I know what's going on there. And not only that, but most social media is so sanitized coming from the company these days that you know, managers.
[00:16:50] Dave Hoekstra: I think managers really like it because if someone has a specific complaint, it's very easy for us to kind of pinpoint that. But if the customer's perception is all coming from the phone calls. Should that be, should that be where we still spend a lot of our time and energy is the actual human interaction between voice.
[00:17:09] Shep Hyken: Well, you need to look at what the most popular channels are for customer support. The phone is number one, by the way. Baby boomers lead the charge in that the older generation to like, our research says 87% of the boomers like to use the phone as a first resolution versus just 60% of Gen Z. However, 71% of customers are willing to use digital channels.
[00:17:33] Shep Hyken: But when we look at what the most popular channels are, it goes from phone to email. Bottom of the list is social media. As we dig deeper into it, you'll find that the reason customers go to social media first isn't their, or well actually strike that. The reason customers go to social media at all isn't because that's their first place they went.
[00:17:54] Shep Hyken: It's because they couldn't get their answer resolved in the other channels. So they're going there kind of as a last ditch effort to maybe be heard. Now, if somebody's going to you and DMing you, direct messaging you through a social. That's different. Yeah. But if you see a public complaint or a problem being aired, it's probably the second or third choice that customer had to go to.
[00:18:17] Shep Hyken: They're seeking like I said, the last ditch effort and many times they're seeking revenge. Yes. They didn't answer it right.
[00:18:22] Dave Hoekstra: The first thing or shame, it's the revenge
[00:18:24] Dave Hoekstra: post. Right? They're looking for revenge or to publicly shame that company because they're so frustrated at that point.
[00:18:30] Dave Hoekstra: And I think that probably helps explain why managers think it's very influe. Because it's a lot of dirty laundry, it's a lot of airing a grievances. But in reality we wanna look at it from a positive spin. That phone call still has the best possible chance of influencing the brand as far as that goes.
[00:18:49] Dave Hoekstra: So it's all great stuff. And you know, I know Shep, you and I could spend. Probably another six hours. We'll do a 32 part podcast on contact centers as a brain guardian. But it's been so much fun. I'll kind of leave you with any last words. I know you're always ready to espouse some wisdom for our listeners.
[00:19:07] Shep Hyken: Wow. Well, one of my favorite lines is that customer service is not a department. It's a philosophy. It needs to be embraced by everybody. We do have a frontline. We do have tools, systems, processes, and channels in place to manage the customer experience, but recognize it's a team sport. There's a lot of people involved, not just the people on the front lines.
[00:19:27] Shep Hyken: So everybody needs to be in alignment heading the same direction, and that's the direction of taking care of our customers.
[00:19:35] Dave Hoekstra: Well said. And I don't think we need to add anything else to that. Well, as always, it's been a huge pleasure for you and I to sit together and chat sometimes. I always appreciate your wisdom and your knowledge.
[00:19:45] Dave Hoekstra: You're always ready with, Such a great quote and I really appreciate that. Thanks so much for joining us on the Working Smarter Podcast here. We're going to get this episode, maybe even split it into two. Not sure yet we'll talk about that. But thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate you you being a part of this.
[00:20:01] Dave Hoekstra: Well, I'm honored to be here, Dave. Thanks for having
[00:20:03] Dave Hoekstra: me. Absolutely. So to our listeners, thank you guys so much for giving us some time. It always makes me feel great to know that anyone wants to listen, let alone multiple of you. We here at the Working Smarter Podcast really appreciate the time and energy.
[00:20:15] Dave Hoekstra: Thanks again to Shep Hyken for joining us from his insight and from the Working Smarter Team. My name is Dave Hoekstra. I appreciate you guys joining us, and look forward to joining us on the next episode. For more information, you can always go to Calabrio.com. Which the State of the Contact Center report is available for download there if you want more insights.
[00:20:34] Dave Hoekstra: A lot of really great stuff there, so we do appreciate it. Again, thank you, Shep. Thank you to the rest of the team, and we'll talk to you on the next episode of Working Smarter from Calabrio. Thanks everybody.