Link Management Group - Top 10 Customer Management Issues

Top 10 Customer Management Issues

An article on one of these issues will be published in this section every month.

1. How do I decide if outsourcing my contact centre is right for my business? Most outsourcing decisions are driven by the need to reduce operating expenditure, avoid the capital investment of new capacity or where there is a skill shortage. A well structured outsourcing decision and execution strategy will deliver these benefits and protect your brand and customer experience.

2. The cost benefit of moving my customer operation to India seems compelling. What else do I need to consider? The rush to India and other low cost off-shore destinations is creating many customer service and brand reputation challenges to the extent that some companies are coming back on-shore and using UK based operations as a source of competitive advantage. Making the right location decision first time will protect your reputation and enhance your competitiveness.

3. The marketing team are spending a fortune on the brand but the Customer Service team don’t seem to get it. Your brand is the perception your customers have of the experience and value you deliver. In service sectors the interaction with sales and service staff says more about your brand than any amount of imagery and promotion. Understanding how to engage the Customer Service teams and making them brand champions is the key to long term success.

4. We have thousands of calls a week from our customers, how do we get more value from the cost of servicing them? Cost centre or profit centre? Value destroyer or value creator? Setting the right objectives, building the right capabilities and motivating teams to deliver is at the heart turning your service operation into a source of business growth.

5. How does Customer Experience Management enhance the value of my customer base? Customers are as influenced in their buying decisions by how a company operates as much as by what they do. Understanding the customer lifecycle, the touchpoints and what works for customers is at the heart of designing great experiences which improves customer loyalty and profitability.

6. Has the CRM fad now passed or are there still valuable learnings to be adopted? The core principles of understanding your customers and delivering the right propositions at the right time are the basic tenets of successful businesses. Many of the tools and processes spawned over the past 10 years can add immense value as long as they are utilised within a broad ‘Customer Strategy’.

7. How can I use automated customer service channels to support my customers? Making use of the web, IVR, mobile etc can all benefit your business if you are clear about their design and deployment, but most importantly companies need to be clear about the objectives and for whose benefit these technologies are being deployed.

8. We have some great people at the front end of the business but the staff turnover rate is horrendous. How can we increase customer service staff tenure? There is no secret to improving staff retention if companies focus less on the ‘tasks’ they want performed and focus more on involving their people in the performance they want to achieve and creating a strong teamworking culture. Counting ‘how many’ should be left to finance and managers; improving what is done and how it is done should be the focus of your customer facing teams.

9. We want to be more ‘customer centric’ but our organisation just doesn’t work that way and our business planning process positively pushes against it. Putting the customer at the heart of your business is an essential but challenging goal. A holistic approach to capability planning and operational delivery is essential and can be achieved with the help of some purpose built tools and techniques.

10. We are constantly conducting customer satisfaction research but it just ends up as another powerpoint show. How do we use what our customers tell us to improve the business? Knowing what your customers think and feel and knowing what they want you to change is only of value if you can change your business accordingly. Traditional customer satisfaction measurement has some value but improvements in business performance will only happen if the feedback is specific, real time and used in a closed loop improvement programme.