IQPC’s Customer Self Service Conference was held in Miami this week and, as usual when customer advocates get together, discussions were lively and valuable! Participants included service management from Best Buy, Lenovo (Think Pad), Rogers Communication, Verizon Wireless, Limited Brands, AIG and many others. Not surprisingly, discussions swarmed around metrics, justifying ROI and the “organizational immune systems” that resist change. Perhaps James Damian, Sr Vice President of Enterprise Design, Best Buy summed the drive for change most participants crave up best, “I do not understand why people are frightened of new ideas, I am frightened of the old ones.”
Of course it’s always great to get together with like-minded souls to ponder strategies to overcome powerful IT organizations tied to legacy backend databases impeding innovation in service. The rapid growth many of our organizations have experienced created similar organizational and technological silos and it was great to hear how other enterprises are working through “silo” issues that, if not addressed, can be quite destructive over time.
World class customer service requires robust collaboration between all these “silos” and, as customer service, we sit between everyone in the enterprise and the customer. Fortunately, a comprehensive CRM strategy facilitates the often elusive transparency and accountability between departments in a neutral and non-threatening way. The data is vital to success and, when it’s well maintained, it never lies.
At iRobot, we do our best to facilitate collaboration between departments by leveraging our RightNow system, customer data, and some pretty simple communication processes. To systematically keep everyone in the loop around what our customers are saying, we have established a monthly “Voice of the Customer” meeting with our management team. Translating our top customer issues into dollars allows us to get everyone’s attention around the critical issues and prioritize changes effectively. To further our efforts to bring management and the customer closer together, each Voice of the Customer participant leaves with a CD of actual customer calls, both good and bad, which reminds each of us of our responsibility to the customer.
Customer self service initiatives are required basic elements of a modern service organization. Offering multiple channels of communication is expected and reporting on all these channels requires an integrated architecture which RightNow provides. As communication channels continue to evolve, it will be exciting to lean into the wind and embrace innovation. Besides, I really like the idea of texting my drink order from the poolside lounge chair. Now that’s service!
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