By Daniel Ziv, Vice President, Customer Interaction Analytics
Verint® Witness Actionable SolutionsTM
Here are three new tools that can help your business retain customers.
Recently, my bank called me. I had just transferred money to another bank with more favorable interest rates, and I was sure that I was about to be offered the best deal ever.
The caller noted that I “qualified to participate” in a survey because of my recent transfer of funds. But after a few more questions, I began to get suspicious. Shouldn’t my bank already know what accounts I have with them?
As it turned out, I wasn’t really talking to my bank at all, but to a third-party survey company hired by the bank. The survey taker asked why I had chosen to take some of my business elsewhere. I told him that I was irritated at being asked why I switched when I had told the bank several times their rate was lower than the competition’s. They had recorded my calls, so why were they paying someone else to ask me all this again? They already had the information they needed.
I can’t blame my bank for wanting to find out why they’re losing customers. However, I think their good intentions were undermined by the wrong process and tools.
What my bank was trying to find out is really what every customer-centered enterprise needs to know:
1. How do customers rate their overall experience?
2. Why do customers feel and act the way they do?
3. What’s the impact of customer actions on overall company performance?
To answer the first question, you need to ask your customers. Customer feedback surveys can help you do this—efficiently and cost effectively—by capturing information from customers across the IVR, Web, and email in real time.
Unlike traditional IVR surveys, customer feedback surveys are presented based on business rules after the completion of the call or email/Web contact. Surveys are very short and can yield response rates of 40 percent or higher. Moreover, a good customer feedback survey system can use survey responses to automatically notify people in the organization of circumstances requiring immediate attention, such as potential customer defections. If my bank had used such a system, for example, they might have been able to persuade me to leave my brokerage funds there.
Answering why customers act the way they do can be much harder. My bank tried to do this with the detailed survey, but speech analytics software provides a much better way. Speech analytics solutions process recorded conversations to automatically build an index of words exchanged with customers, and then mine it for insights, such as phrases like “better rate” and “transfer my funds.” A speech analytics solution could have surfaced my concern about the low interest rates —as well as similar concerns of other customers—the very first time we mentioned it to the bank.
How do customer opinions and actions impact business performance? Data analytics solutions can provide the answer. These solutions analyze the structured and unstructured data collected from customer feedback and interactions to help isolate the root cause of contact center performance.
For example, instead of simply measuring a key performance indicator such as average talk time, data analytics solutions can show what drives average talk time (and the related costs). If my bank applied data analytics to its recorded calls, I’ll bet they would discover particular types of call—such as their outbound survey calls—taking a disproportionate amount of time and inflating overall average talk-time metrics.
Analytics tools such as these can provide your business with useful information. However, even with the best insights and a 360-degree view of your customers, there’s no ROI unless you take action. By leveraging the right tools and then acting on the insights they provide, your business can gain a powerful advantage in the ongoing campaign to retain customers.