"Leading Practices in Customer Experience – Virtual World Tour" gathered speakers from all corners of the globe, bringing a range of customer experience, know how and some new thinking that we can apply in Australia. We heard about things that are working across the world, from those making change happen across four continents. Australia is well positioned in the customer experience debate however, we still have much to learn.Case Study Synopses
How do we deal with an ageing customer base and an ageing workforce – Toby Detter (Sweden)
Toby Detter described the emergence of the New Older Consumer segment, their influence on society, what triggers them and how you can make them try new things. He also shared his experience achieving change with an older workforce.
Making Outsourcing Work/Getting the Outsourcer you Deserve – Bill Price (USA)
While at Amazon.com, Bill Price outsourced email support (to India, and then to Northern Ireland) for the first time in the company’s history. The outsourcer relationship was so successful that the outsourcers outperformed internal service units on many key metrics. Bill helped a number of major companies turn around their outsourced relationships and explained what to look for and how to turn around any sales or service outsourced or off shored relationship.
Making offshoring of back office in India work: two cases contrasting success and failure – MD Ramaswami (India)
Julie, new VP, Technical Support finds that a 100% of her operation has been outsourced and is plagued with an alarming number of customer complaints about the offshored operation in India. Jim runs a litigation backoffice operation using over 50 home based agents and is getting beaten by inexpensive players from India and Philippines. Jim ventures out to setup a backoffice operation in India. MD described the lessons learned from the real experiences of Julie and Jim – how Julie discovered that her predecessor’s offshoring strategy was completely broken and how Jim set up a highly successful operation in India and was able to scale it to over 600 people in no time.
Customer Managed Relationships - the Next Wave – Peter Massey (UK)
The infamous Web 2.0 has connected customers in ways that we had not imagined. Customers know where the cheapest offer is and find solutions to your product issues before you know they exist. They even know how to navigate your IVR to an operator. Pete took us through this new world paradigm explaining how Customers now help each other, break new products in days, connect to more customers and avoid manned sales channels.
Team Based Support at American Express – Bill Price (USA)
AmEx’s Travel Services group either had individual (“relationship”) support or any-agent (“universal”) support, neither deemed customer-satisfying. Bill explained the exciting new "Black" Amex concept of a team based model? This alternative operating model had a facinitating take on service provision to teh Fortune 500.
2008 UK Research of What Makes Companies Fast and Simple – Peter Massey and David Naylor (UK)
Pete and David took us through this piping hot research conducted this year (and for the last three years) across 71 major UK companies. Peter and David draw out the key themes and some of the best practices they see when judging some of the UK’s leading customer service awards.
How do you put metrics into context and understand the secret measures of industry leaders so you pick the right ones to work with? – Peter Massey (UK)
The quest for the right metrics is perhaps the Holy Grail of many businesses and seems as hard find. It would be lovely to find a single measure that answered every question and guided all action. A few leading companies demonstrate core principles in measurement that all organisations can learn from. Pete described the metric Southwest Airlines created that led to their amazing success in achieving extraordinary growth, profitability and reputation for extremely good customer service.
WE Energies : Part 2 Customer Focused Transformation at a Utility – Bill Price (USA)
At the last meeting Bill shared how We Energies, a Wisconsin Statebased regulated gas & electric utility, had started on a customer-focused transformation. At that time they were “work in progress” so the discussion group asked him to report back on progress and share their learnings along the way.
Top picks for technology: Which applications will deliver the promised benefits for both the customer and the business? – David Naylor (UK) with content input from Frédéric Jurain (France)
Suppliers would have you believe their technology will always deliver these benefits in bucketfuls. While benefits might seem clear in the “brochureware”, we see many disappointments in reality. If the business is not capable of exploiting the technology then success is far from guaranteed. In these case studies Frederic Jurain and David Naylor gave their top picks for technologies you shouldn’t ignore as well as some that you should. How companies approached implementation of technology defined the successes and failures they achieved.
