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Case Study

Customer experience management at ResponseTek

By means of CEM, a company can incorporate the voice of its customers into its business strategies and operations. The aim is the development of trust and loyalty that will lead to the ultimate goal of advocacy. According to ResponseTek, it is not sufficient simply to monitor the impact of advocacy and satisfaction of one’s customers. Instead, it is necessary to take customer advocacy and satisfaction to a higher level of understanding by enabling a company to understand the root cause of customer satisfaction and advocacy. Once such root causes are identified, effective, well-focused actions can be implemented to increase satisfaction, advocacy and profitability. ResponseTek claims that its core suite is the only software platform that delivers a complete set of Customer Experience Management capabilities, comprising:

● Multi-channel experience collection

● Analysis

● Reporting

● Workflow management

● Closed-loop feedback.

The CEM methodology is based upon three core elements, namely:

1. Involve: capture the customer’s experience whenever and wherever it occurs. This means continuously gathering customer insights – whether customer, company or event-initiated – from any channel, such as the call-centre, web or in-store point of sale, when they want, and when their opinions are formed at the moment of delight or disappointment.

2. Integrate: integrate the customer’s voice into processes and employee activities. Staff, partners and executives need to be able to make informed decisions based on real-time customer-experience information. The right information needs to be filtered to the right person at the right time, from the executive level down to frontline employees. Users should be able to communicate improvements or comments back to the customer.

3. Improve: continuously turn customer experience insight into actionable improvements. The ability to facilitate enterprise-wide communication and change based on customer experience information is another critical aspect in achieving the greatest customer experience management benefits. Actionable, closed-loop communication capabilities enable companies to align business strategies with customer insights, and in the process create customer advocates.

Figure 17.3 shows how ResponseTek seeks to integrate all aspects of CEM into a unified conceptual framework described as the customer-driven enterprise.

Aon Reed Stenhouse (ARS) is one of a number of financial services organizations using ResponseTek’s system. ARS is the Canadian division of AON, a global provider of risk management and insurance broking services. Faced with increasing competition and limited understanding of its customers, ASR was looking for an efficient solution to improve retention, improve understanding of customers and, through that better understanding, improve the customer experience, this allowing ASR to set itself aside from the competition. ResponseTek implemented a system of ASR which provided regular monitoring of real-time customer experiences, a ‘dashboard’ system to provide senior management with daily summaries of the customer experience by segment and by region, and an early warning system for ‘at risk’ customers (potential defectors) on a daily basis.
David Cliche, marketing manager for ASR summarized the benefits of implementing CEM:

We had to respond to the changing competitive landscape of the Insurance industry and look for alternative ways to make better informed business decisions. ResponseTek helped us to accomplish this by integrating the voice of the customer into our business processes … We now know a lot more about

our customers than we did before. Rather than one touchpoint, we are now able to understand our interactions with customers throughout their lifecycle. Knowing what our customers want and the complementary products and services they need is invaluable information.

 
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Case Study

Satisfaction surveys at Nationwide Building Society

Nationwide Building Society has been conducting an employee opinion survey called ViewPoint since 1993. The catalyst for its introduction was the merger of Nationwide and Anglia Building Societies – two organizations with different cultures, processes and business systems. A number of years after this merger had taken place, an increasing unease and uncertainty amongst employees about its success was perceived. In addition, the UK PFS business climate was becoming increasingly competitive, with deregulation allowing banks and insurance companies to compete with building societies for mortgage and savings business, leading to further uncertainty.
The objective was (and still is) to give employees a platform from which they can have their say about various aspects of their work, working environment and the manner in which they are led, managed and developed. In summary, where they think Nationwide is doing well and what they believe the Society could do better. Asking for opinions, however, is one thing but it is vital that in addition to listening, companies act (and are seen to be acting) on the issues raised in the survey. Failure to do so will lead to cynicism and apathy towards the surveying process.
Nationwide’s ViewPoint survey is conducted annually in April by ORC International, an external consultancy. Using ORCI enables Nationwide to remain impartial and the data confidential. The survey was paper-based until 2004, when it was made available via the Society’s intranet with a paper-based option retained. Time is allocated during the working day for completion.

The survey comprises three parts:

1. Employee demographics, including job type, location, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

2. A variety of work-based questions (104 in all) based on a five-point Likert scale

3. A small number of open questions about working at Nationwide, with a free-form response box to allow comments to be made by employees.

In 2005, 91 per cent of employees (approx 14 000) completed the survey.

The 104 work-based questions are grouped into a number of different themes or indices, including employee satisfaction, pay and benefits, leadership and group image, training and development, and employee and customer commitment.
The results are collated by ORCI and reports are produced at Group, divisional, departmental and team levels for distribution to managers across the business. To retain anonymity and confidentiality, no reports are issued with less than six responses. The reports include peer and external benchmarking data, and a comparison to the previous year’s results.
On receipt of the reports, local managers will normally organize team meetings to disseminate the results and form action plans to look into poor scoring themes or themes showing a decline in results.
At a company level, the results are made available through different media, including an intranet site and an in-house magazine. Some of the 2005 results were as follows.

Using ORCI enables external benchmarking on a number of questions with other financial services providers and other industries. Generally, Nationwide benchmarks very favourably. When compared with other financial services organizations, out of the 41 benchmarked questions Nationwide came top – 11 question scores were the highest, 13 were second, and six were third.
The survey itself has changed very little over the last 3 years, and there are a large number of questions that have been there from the beginning. This gives the survey great power as over time trends can be established in the data that allow progress or regression to be seen. Similarly, it enables the impact of certain initiatives to be seen.
Nationwide take the results of the survey one step further than most and links the data to their customer and business performance data. This research (Project Genome) has led to the model shown in Figure 16.1.
The links between committed employees, committed customers and better business performance have been established. The data for satisfaction with pay, coaching, values and committed people all come from ViewPoint.
Through the model we can say that a 3 per cent shift in employees ‘values’ results in customer commitment increasing by 1 per cent, bringing in an increased net present value of £6.5 million in mortgage sales. The model allows line-of-sight from employee behaviours through customer behaviours to the bottom line. Consequently, the employee opinion survey can be used as an early warning system to future business performance.

It is valuable to exercise a degree of caution regarding employee opinion surveys as they measure employee’s perceptions. These perceptions may be well-rooted or transient, and may depend on what side of the bed the employee got out of that morning. The timing of the survey is also very important, as conducting one during a redundancy period, for example, is highly likely to skew results. One other point to consider is the ‘say–do’ paradox. Employees will not necessarily take the course of action they say they will in the survey. A high response rate and data over time will overcome most of these potential problem areas.
problem areas. To have been named as the Sunday Times ‘Best Big Company to Work For’ in 2005, voted for by employees, is a pretty good indication that Nationwide has come a long way since the unease of the early 1990s. Listening to and acting on employees’ feedback has been critical to that success.

 
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Case Study

National Savings & Investments

Background

National Savings & Investments is the UK’s third largest retail savings and investment provider, with an 8 per cent market share and accounting for some £70bn of invested assets. It has more than 26 million customers who between them generate something like 60 million transactions each year via the telephone, Internet, post office and mail. In 1999, NS&I outsourced 90 per cent of its functions (operations, processing and infrastructure development) in the UK’s largest Public Private Partnership (PPP). The relationship has evolved through several stages, beyond that of client/supplier to one of co-dependent partnership.

People and processes

The outsourced call-centre and NS&I’s client management teams enjoy close relationships. Most call-centre staff are recruited from back-office roles, so new staff have a working knowledge of the business which helps to smooth the process when customers are changing channels. The Training Team assesses telephony aptitudes, customer orientation, communication and attention to detail, and an interview process focuses on business awareness, cooperation and commitment. Sales and Service Delivery Managers share personal objectives to maximize effectiveness. This approach to partnership development is summarized in Figure 17.1.

The partnership’s commitment to staff is evidenced by upper quartile employment terms, including Employee Bonus and Recognizing Excellence Schemes; Defined Benefit Pensions; and opportunities to influence working environment and processes. Training is co-ordinated and delivered in-house by a specialist team. Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) complete a 30-week modular programme covering 9 key call elements. Employee Opinion Survey outputs are analysed, and plans put in place to address improvements.

Distribution

The rapid expansion and development of NS&I’s telephony channel has been a key business aim with achieved growth as follows:

● Capacity has increased from 160 to 285 seats (120 to 250 FTEs) in the last year

● From a standing start annual telephone sales have risen over eight-fold, from £188m in 2000/2001 to £1399m in 2004/2005

● Call volumes have increased from 811 000 to 2 993 000 over the same period, all handled by a person – not by IVR (interactive voice recognition)

● Telephone and Internet sales now make up 30 per cent of all sales but, as the overall target has also increased significantly, we still receive the same value of sales from the post office.

Customer management and research

The drive for direct sales growth to support the modernization of the business was not at the expense of the loyal existing customer base. These results were achieved by a combination of building awareness of the telephone service plus building capability by making NS&I’s products available for sale by telephone rather than just by post. Overall satisfaction levels have improved from an already high 90 per cent to 93 per cent.
Market research identified key customer segments which were developed to grow sales and move lower-cost channels to market – e.g. telephony – without alienating customers whose preferred channel of choice was postal or branch (see Table 17.1).
Research and feedback tools are used to understand and anticipate customer needs, support NS&I’s strategies to exceed customer expectations, complete the channel and become best-in-class. With 51 per cent of customers matching groups High AB to C and willing to transact business by telephone or the Internet, NS&I developed its telephony mobilization initiative closely followed by the Internet. The project aims to make the customer experience one that they would wish to repeat, with further enhancements.
Building on research, NS&I will enhance its customer experience to build customer advocacy as a competitive advantage. The targets going forward are for 50 per cent of sales to be delivered by telephone and Internet. The following feedback tools are employed: focus groups and customer panels, frequently asked questions, whereby customer views are assessed for recurring themes, issues and

improvement areas, and mystery shopper surveys. Additionally, a monthly customer telephone survey is conducted by MORI in which recent service users are interviewed for comments on what they consider important, their experience, and how NS&I compares with other financial service providers.

The customer experience

Independent research is used to evaluate the customer experience (see Figure 17.2). Some headline facts are as follows:

● 97 per cent of our calls are answered within 20 seconds

● 99.5 per cent of sales calls and 98 per cent of all calls are answered first time

● Low staff churn (c. 11 per cent) ensures that call-centre staff are experienced; understand products, culture and objectives; and excel at providing customers with high-quality service

● Success in delivering brand values is measured.

 
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EV Dog Pen Exercise

Assume that you are the PM for the Dog Pen project. The goal is to build a four-sided dog pen. Each side is budgeted to cost $100 to complete and require one day of your time. As the project progresses the following results are recorded:

Day 1. Side A completed; spent $100

Day 2. Side B completed; spent $120

Day 3. Side C 50% completed; spent $60

Day 4. Side D not started; spent $0

a. By inspection and without resorting to EV formulae what is the general status of this project? What is cost at completion? What is schedule completion estimate?

b. Calculate the following EV parameters

PV =

EV =

AC =

BAC =

CV =

SV =

EAC =

ETC =

c. Using your knowledge of EV interpret the status of this project.

 
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