Why new home builders must be prepared to handle the Help to Buy boom

With the government’s Help to Buy scheme getting off to a scorching start in the first two months since its April launch, new home builders are dealing with a welcomed period of demand.

Despite the uncertainty that’s surrounded the chancellor’s flagship scheme, the first stage of Help to Buy has attracted huge interest from aspiring homeowners, providing a well-timed boost to the industry.

But while home builders are welcoming the influx of prospective buyers with open arms, dealing with the added deluge of interest has proved difficult for some companies. With the UK’s tough economic climate currently showing few signs of respite, it’s absolutely vital that home builders are geared up to adequately deal with the Help to Buy boom.

Why it’s important to prepare for the continued boom

While the Help to Buy scheme’s affect on house prices remains contentious, there can be little doubt of the positive affect that it has had for homebuilders.

The first phase of Help to Buy – which allows buyers to put down a deposit of 5% and take out an equity loan from the government of up to 20% of a property’s value – has seen interest in new homes soar. Just this month, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) described interest in the scheme as “huge.”

Stuart Baseley, chief executive of the HBF, underlined the influx of interested that home builders were having to contend with.

“Four thousand reservations in just two months shows both the consumer demand for the scheme, and developers' commitment to it,” he explained. With figures like that and the second part of the scheme set to start in January, it’s imperative that home builders don’t underestimate the sustained influx of interest.

Why is this potentially a negative for home builders?

The boost in interest for home builders is of course an overwhelming positive, but for those who are struggling to deal with the unprecedented influx of enquiries, the Help to Buy scheme can produce some difficult times.

From sales departments struggling to reply quickly enough to enquiries, to failing to cope with responses over a variety of channels, the added interest means little if your company is unable to cope. Given the consistently competitive nature of the marketplace and the continued difficulties that the financial climate is producing, home builders cannot afford to miss out.

What’s the problem?

Sustaining an optimum level of service from the initial enquiry stage, all the way through to an eventual sale, is vital to keep your business at the top of the trade. Identifying when your sales arm is in need of of some help, possibly from an external source, is key to keeping this level of service the very highest it can possibly be.

But far from simply seeking an extra pair of hands, it’s important to consider the impact of increased interest across the entire sales process. Can you adequately

• Ensure that new enquiries are responded to promptly and assertively?
• Respond to all enquiries across multiple channels? (Email, online, phone, sms etc.)
• Accurately capture data in a dedicated database to seize the moment and help equip your business for potential follow ups and successful marketing campaigns.
• Qualify leads from a whole range of sources so that sales teams can concentrate on the most valuable prospects?

Making the most of the Help to Buy boom is important to all home builders, but with the continuous economic gloom refusing to subside, the incentive to maximise sales has never been greater.

It’s important that home builders can effectively manage enquiries all the way through from the first point of contact, to accurately reusing customer data for future marketing purposes. Maximising your conversions from enquiries to sales is always a key goal for businesses of any size. But given the golden opportunity that homebuilders have been handed through the Help to Buy scheme, now is as good a time as ever to re-evaluate how your company handles its enquiries.

10 Cast Iron Customer Service Tips

Providing great customer service is essential for any business, from the local high street shop all the way up to the largest multinational corporations. Customer service however is not about simply providing countless sales and promotions; it is about building relationships, strengthening your reputation and ultimately achieving a healthy bottom line. But how do you build these relationships? Here are ten practical tips on how you can deliver the service your customers demand.

1. 1. Give your customers a exceptional experience
   Ultimately, your customers want two things. The first is for you to meet a need that they have. The second is to meet this need whilst delivering an exceptional experience.
2. 2. Keep your word and over-deliver
   Only promise what you can deliver and do everything you can to keep that promise. Broken promises breed distrust, so keeping your promises helps to build loyal relationships with your customers.
3. 3. Apologise when a customer complains
   The first step of resolving an issue is to always apologise to your customers if the company has made a mistake. Then try and ask them if they have accepted your apology so that you can go forward and find a solution.
4. 4. Treat customers as individuals
   Every customer wants to feel as if they are being treated like they’re the only customer in the world. Treat your customer as an individual, don’t generalise because of the limitations of your processes, at the front line, personal service is essential.
5. 5. Give them that WOW Factor
   Do something to wow your customers, something out of the ordinary. For example, keeping your contact centre lines open 24/7 so your customers can contact you at the time most convenient to them.
6. 6. Make them feel secure
   If you can prove that you can deal with queries quickly and efficiently, showing that they will always encounter a good helpful member of staff, your customer will feel more secure with keeping their business in your hands.
7. 7. Never ever say No
   Never say No to a customer. Use language wisely, for example you could instead say that the request is outside of your service and that you will try your best to find the right person to fulfil the request.
8. 8. Listen to your customers
   Nobody likes being ignored and customers who do not feel like they are being heard will go elsewhere even if your product or service is best. Subsequently, you can try to take on board their comments and work them into your service, at the very least, make them feel like they are being listened to.
9. 9. Pay attention to the little things
   In the day to day delivery of customer service it is easy to become complacent. For a customer however this is an important interaction meaning they will notice the little things. So pay attention to them and the big things will take care of themselves.
10. 10. Do something extra to create a positive memory
    When you’ve finally resolved your customers complaint, do something extra for them to leave them with a positive impression of you and the brand i.e. give them tips on how they can use the product or service better.

These are just ten of the considerations you can make if you want to deliver great customer service. Ultimately, if you make your customers feel special, deliver on your promises and listen to them when they comment you are setting the foundations of a solid relationship that over time will achieve repeat custom and positive word of mouth.

How Volunteer Games Makers Revealed the True Meaning of Customer Service

Amidst the accolades being given to the athletes at the recent Olympics it is fair to say that the volunteer Games Makers deserve just as much recognition. Before the Games started many people did not realise how pivotal these volunteers would be to the overall success of the event. But with their enthusiasm, commitment and outstanding service they not only pulled off what has been considered a major accomplishment for the nation, but gave visitors and competitors alike a world class customer experience.

Lessons can certainly be gained from the success of the Games Makers. Just as the athletes trained to ensure peak performance, the volunteers underwent training and development programmes. These programmes gave them the tools of communication, empathy and problem solving so key to achieving great customer service.

But while the technical abilities of the volunteers to solve customer issues were demonstrably important, the culture of enthusiasm and motivation created by the organisers also played a vital role. This culture was at the heart of everything the volunteers did, and it clearly shone through in their dealings with members of the public.

So what lessons can be learned for businesses?

If the volunteer Games Maker programme has taught us anything it is that making people feel part of something special is crucial in achieving a first class service culture. When staff have a sense of pride and are enthusiastic about their role, it will be evident during their engagements with customer, leading to fantastic service.

It also shows us that putting customers at the heart of everything and radiating a positive attitude around the working environment are both fundamental in motivating employees and injecting enthusiasm into the way they deliver customer services and go that extra mile. Such a customer centric approach transcends industries, sectors, products and services; it is relevant for all businesses.

The Games Makers were aptly named; for many they made the Games. They showed the rest of the world that Great Britain can deliver a first class customer service culture and that we have the people, skills and motivation to do it. The next step is for businesses to take up the torch, set up effective training programmes and create company cultures that put customers at the core of every activity, motivating staff to provide outstanding customer service in every interaction.

7 Reasons to Integrate Your Marketing and Customer Service Teams

Consumers have always had opinions on the products and services they buy (and the service they receive), but the growth of social media has made voicing these opinions easy to do and therefore more visible than ever.  As a direct result, how your customer services handle these opinions is now in the spotlight. As marketing operates in the same channels, bad customer experiences can have a seriously detrimental effect on your marketing activities. The result is that marketing and customer services can no longer operate in isolation and here are 7 reasons why collaboration between the two departments is essential.

1. Improving Customer Service on Social MediaYour social media manager is unlikely to be the most qualified person to handle customer service on social media channels. To improve effectiveness, bringing members of your customer service team into the equation means they can deploy their expertise and participate in the handling of enquiries or complaints.
2. Creating Engaging ContentYour customer service team understand the needs, wants and problems of your customers. As such they are a source of valuable and engaging content. Using their experience in the creation of content benefits your marketers’ efforts with information that contains true insight.
3. Understanding Purchasing BehaviourThe basis of effective marketing campaigns is understanding your customers. As the personnel on the front line, your customer service team is likely to be the most valuable resource at your disposal in discovering the triggers and reasons that drive your customers purchasing decisions.
4. Managing Customer Expectations The offers made during marketing campaigns unfortunately may not always deliver what they promise. In such instances the customer service team are ideally placed to help marketers understand which elements were misleading and how campaigns can be improved in the future.
5. Unifying Your Messaging and GoalsFor many customers the first port of call with a question about a campaign goes through the customer service team. As a result it is imperative that the team know which marketing activities are being carried out, so they are adequately equipped to handle any issues or questions. Briefing sessions or documents are a painless way to implement this unified approach.
6. Identifying and Promoting Customer SuccessesCustomer services don’t just handle negativity and equally, positive experiences feature. Having your customer service team pass these positive customer experiences onto marketing is a fantastic source of marketing collateral. The feedback can be used in case studies and testimonials for PR or customer-centric marketing campaigns.
7. Realising the True Worth of Your OfferingMarketers base much of their work on the supposed benefits of a product or service. But these benefits, often developed internally may not actually align with the real world advantages of your offering which can be sourced from customer services, helping to make marketing more effective.

The increasingly joined up world in which marketing, sales and customer services operate has made these departments indivisible. Inter-departmental communication, combined with collaboratively developing strategies and plans is the best way to achieve successful campaigns that are perfectly aligned with the needs of your customers and the objectives of your business.

12 Top Tips for Contact Centre Management

Last year we saw many people take to mobile smart phones and social networking sites to communicate with brands, clearly marking an evolution in customer engagement. According to a recent Econsultancy report on the 30th November 2011 however, the customer contact centre remains at the forefront of customer experience and can often be the only ‘human’ interaction a customer has with a brand.

This is quite possibly the reason why so many still prefer a phone call to a tweet or a Facebook message, so the demand for exceptional customer service is as relevant today as it always has been.

Despite this, contact centres are not always received well by customers. Understandable when the myriad reports surrounding contact centre performance, especially abroad are considered. Whilst some practitioners are certainly getting it wrong though, there are many that are providing exceptional customer service.  

So how can a contact centre make sure that they are exceeding their clients’ and customers’ expectations?  The following 12 tips are key to running an efficient contact centre that drives revenues, maintains service levels and increases the customer base.

•       Quick response – Having a team of agents trained to react quickly to incoming calls and outbound calls is vital. Ultimately, all calls should be answered at all times.  
•       Eliminating repeat calls – Focusing on eliminating repeat calls to save time and ensuring enough staff are covering the lines is something which should embedded in the running of every contact centre.
•        Accurate data capture – This is a crucial element to contact centre management and helps achieve greater customer insight. Bespoke data management systems can be adopted to make sure that the correct data is captured accurately and consistently.
  
•      Become an expert– In-depth information about the client’s products and services should be learnt by the agents and management. The more knowledge an agent has, the more professional they will be in their dealings with customers. 
•      Do not script – Building rapport with a customer is a vital constituent of customer service and sounding robotic through the use of a script is unhelpful. Empowering customer service agents is something that should always be the main focus.  Why not read this blog to see why scripting should be avoided? 
•      Treat customers fairly – Putting customers at the heart of each and every operation, whilst treating them fairly and ensuring that agents are able to work around their needs are the foundations of excellent customer service management 
•      Follow up – Exceeding customer expectations by making a brief phone call to customers, even after an enquiry or query has been resolved, shows the customer that the business has taken their problem on board and is seeking to avoid similar situations in the future. 
•      Take ownership of the problem – There is nothing worse than being passed from pillar to post when you are trying to solve a problem. This is why it is so important for customer service agents to stop the cycle and take ownership of the problem themselves, subsequently limiting the damage to the company’s reputation. 
•      Communicate the overall goal – Making sure that the overall message and objectives are clearly defined and measured by management is imperative. Creating guidelines and goals for staff to work towards are both key in fostering a company culture of achieving and exceeding targets. 
•      Real-time statistics – Team leaders and supervisors should have the insight into their individual and departmental statistics in real-time, as it has an immediate impact on behaviour and performance. 
•      Managing peak time calls –Being fully prepared for the busy periods of calls and ensuring that right staffing levels are utilised will improve overall performance. To achieve this it is vital to forecast future staffing requirements and to implement a flexible shift model which adapts to call volumes, as these can vary day to day causing overstaffing /understaffing. 
•      Call-handling staff performance – Key performance statistics/ indicators (KPIs) should be applied as this will help keep track of staff performance and can indicate the quality of service delivered by individuals. KPIs could include the number of answered calls per person and average call duration. 

These 12 tips can form the basis for an effective and successful contact centre that has the capability to deliver exceptional levels of customer service and ensures that enquiries are dealt with professionally, rapidly and positively.

 

Frontline Service Employees Building Rapport – To script or not to script?

Within the consumer services industry a great deal of emphasis is placed upon the ability of operatives to build rapport with consumers. Rapport is a vital constituent of consumer service and building relationships, although equally important is to ensure consistency of communications and messaging for brand reasons. This often results in arguments both for and against the use of scripts in consumer interactions.

It is my belief that consistent and positive consumer experiences are what make a successful contact centre. I also believe that scripted conversations are unhelpful and that empowering consumer service agents to conduct operations without scripts is a priority if positive consumer experiences are to be delivered. Put simply, the robotic conversations that result from scripts should be avoided; instead natural interactions should be the mainstay of consumer communication.

Achieving this however can be a challenge. Rapport is easy enough to build in a face to face situation, over the phone it is a much more difficult proposition. Fortunately there are some techniques that can be employed to help contact centre agents to build rapport through natural conversation, not by using scripts:

• Even over the phone a smile has a huge impact upon the way we interact. It may be an old adage that “smile and the whole world smiles with you” but in consumer service this is advice worth heeding. Smiling helps to subconsciously promote friendly, approachable and familiar conversation and should be encouraged.

• Any operative worth their salt understands the importance of listening to their caller and recognising their emotional drivers. Your operatives should be tapping into their callers’ mindset, asking “Why are they calling?” “What problem can I help them solve?” to ensure helpful and productive discourse.

• Conversation goes much deeper than simply the words we use, instead interactions (particularly telephone interactions) are based upon the tone, pace, volume and inflections used. By considering, understanding and using these conversational traits effectively it is possible to show the consumer a caring, supporting and warm side that helps to build rapport.

• Rapport can also be built using ‘clean language,’ the process of using the same words as the caller during conversations. By communicating using the caller’s language it is easier to build understanding and empathy, which in turn can rapidly result in positive rapport.

Whilst I am not arguing that scripts should be done away with completely (scripts can be extremely helpful for agents when guiding callers through a step by step process) these techniques work best when operatives are freed from the constraints of scripted responses. This greater flexibility fosters conversations that flow through and around subjects, creating more natural dialogue in turn.

Understandably inbound and outbound callers have different objectives and as such the techniques may be adapted to suit these different objectives. The principles of building rapport however will remain, for example if a caller phones with a specific technical issue, an agent would follow the procedures but use language such as “let’s try and get to the bottom of this for you” appealing to the caller’s emotional driver whilst encouraging natural conversation through unscripted and positive language.

Ultimately, building rapport with consumers is essential at every interaction, whether it is inbound or outbound and whatever the subject. Key to achieving this is to choose the right language but importantly, to approach in the correct manner using tone, volume and inflection to create a bond and foster productive relationships. If this approach is maintained it is possible to have consistent and effective consumer services based upon honest, organic and amenable discourse, not a predefined script.

Managing Consumer Feedback – Listen, Understand, React

Recently I filled out a consumer survey for a company that I shop with regularly. The company in question will remain nameless; suffice to say that with my consumer hat on, I found myself getting fairly frustrated with the way in which the survey was structured and delivered.

As is frequently the case, this led me to put my professional hat back on and started me thinking why, with consumer feedback and insight being more important than ever in the current climate, would a company rollout such a substandard survey? Surely collecting and analyzing consumer feelings and opinions is critical in determining how your business is doing and how you can improve services?

Having a feedback programme is an extremely valuable asset, although embracing it and using it to its largest potential is equally important. My recent experience has shown me that having a feedback programme is not enough on its own; there must be a culture within the business that embraces it. As a consumer it is easy to spot when a company is simply paying lip service to consumer feedback, it is also clear when a company cares for the data gained from their programme and understands their consumers purchasing behaviours and attitudes.

A commitment to consumer feedback should be evident in different channels, not purely with consumer surveys. For example, social media is an excellent resource of honest consumer feedback as are face to face interviews, as long as you are aware that different channels will produce different sorts of results (typically responses gained through social are far more likely to be honest than those gained in person).

Somewhere in the middle of this scale is not responding to a disgruntled person effectively, which on Twitter is in some ways worse than not responding at all. Given the immediacy of the format, any interactions deemed to below standard can quickly proliferate around the Twitterverse, particularly if the user is well connected with a large following. Embracing feedback and being committed however is wholly different from being obsessed. Listening and reacting to feedback is appreciated by consumers, whereas a contiguous barrage of surveys is likely to be a nuisance. On a practical level, survey questions should be kept relevant and the surveys generally should be kept as short as possible or your consumers will be left as frustrated as I was during my recent surveying experience.

But where do you start? If you want to gain valuable consumer feedback and use it to improve your business, you can follow these best practises below:

1. Implement a feedback programme and commit yourself to building a culture of understanding the important of consumer feedback to the direction of your business in the future.

2. Make sure your employees are encouraging consumer feedback although they should also appreciate that their approach and manner is critical if they are to avoid annoying consumers.

3. Manage and analyze consumer feedback with systems to gain valuable insight into consumers’ needs and wants as well as buying patterns.

4. Take action with the consumer feedback information. Use your insight to correct any issues or concerns and let your consumers know when they have been corrected in order to build rapport. Never ignore your consumers’ feedback; this is will have a negative effect on your consumer loyalty.

5. Learn to share the feedback with the whole company and don’t leave valuable insight sitting in one department; the entire business should be aware of consumer service data.

6. Act promptly with all feedback however it is gained, if a consumer has a poor experience with one of your products or services and defects to a competitor there is little point in contacting that consumer 2 months later or even a month later. The opportunity has been missed and the chance of retaining that consumer has gone.

7. Decide your communication methods and the mixture of channels in order for your consumers to feedback using the medium they feel most appropriate and comfortable with i.e. Twitter, email or telephone.

The ultimate objective of consumer feedback is to create new ideas from recommendations, resolve problems and improve consumer service. The increased engagement with consumers can help form tighter purchasing relationships and build significant brand value. In turn, it will also help your business make better informed decisions based on your consumer’s behaviours, attitudes and experiences; decisions that will be more profitable in the long term.

Customer Service on Twitter– Handling Negativity

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and follow a whole host of different people both from a personal interest point of view and for more professional, work related reasons. It’s an amazing source of information and a highly effective means of sharing thoughts with like-minded people.

What I have noticed with increasing regularity though is the pack mentality that seems to proliferate on Twitter around contentious or divisive issues. Whilst often the tweets posted by the Twitter community can be humorous, occasionally they can become a little “close to the mark” with users seemingly attempting to outdo each other with more and more witty or scathing comments.

It occurred to me that the relative anonymity of Twitter may be somewhat responsible for this phenomenon and perhaps users feel able to say things that they almost certainly wouldn’t in a face to face, real world scenario.

I have to be honest and admit that I have been guilty of the odd ranting tweet, especially when I first started using Twitter. One or two were directed at a brand with whom I’d had a poor interaction and others where simply because I felt able to sound-off with impunity. The difference being with the former is I expected some form of a response from the brand in question in order to address the issue I had raised. What surprised me were the differing levels of engagement I experienced. One in particular responded quickly and managed my issue through to resolution very efficiently, whereas at the opposite end of the scale, I was simply ignored.

Somewhere in the middle of this scale is not responding to a disgruntled person effectively, which on Twitter is in some ways worse than not responding at all. Given the immediacy of the format, any interactions deemed to below standard can quickly proliferate around the Twitterverse, particularly if the user is well connected with a large following.

Avoiding the envelopment of negative press requires effective management of company Twitter accounts. From what I have viewed and experienced in both a personal and professional context, effectiveness can be achieved primarily by providing an adequate response that diffuses the situation quickly.

Responding to negative press often requires tact and judgment. It is as fine balancing act with humour and empathy on one hand and the corporate identity on the other. Understandably ensuring your tweets are in line with brand communications is a constant for any company hoping to establish a consistent online/offline presence.

Of course there is always a significant chance that finding resolution through Twitter will be impossible. In these instances it is important to recognise when to take the matter offline, using a one to one method of communication such as email, the phone or even a face to face meeting to resolve the issue away from the public world of Twitter.

Twitter isn’t simply about playing a combative role however; equally important is promoting and engaging with those customers that have had a positive experience with your brand. Re-tweeting positive comments (particularly after resolving a customer issue) is an excellent method, although it is crucial to make any positive promotion look and feel organic and never forced.

For better or worse, Twitter has provided us all with the means vocalise our opinions. Whilst some users may go too far, using Twitter to voice concerns about a company is wholly legitimate and responding to these concerns swiftly and effectively is now a responsibility for customer service professionals.

Should an agency be judged on more than just their results?

New business at a marketing agency can be a funny business sometimes. Part of my pitch always focuses on results as that’s primarily what any business that employs an agency like ours is looking for. But in order to get results, a good working partnership needs to be established. A great client/agency relationship leads to better insight, understanding and most importantly trust.

A call from the senior salesperson at the online marketing agency we use (and that’s quite a unique relationship, an agency using an agency) prompted this particular blog. The salesperson in question asked me to act as a reference site for a new prospect. “It’s all about conversions” he told me. “If you can focus in on that, it should clinch the deal for us”. Now I had no problem at all acting as a reference site or indeed talking to his prospective client about the excellent results they have delivered for us but personally, I rank the relationship I have with our agency as highly as I do the results.

Which led me to the question, if I didn’t get on as well with the staff who work on our account and if they didn’t have a really good understanding of our business, would we still see the results we do?

Well of course the answer is no (I’d be contradicting myself a little if it was yes!) But that led to another question… If we were getting results but they were a pain to work with, would I be looking elsewhere for another agency? And the answer to that question is probably yes. No one wants to work with an agency or indeed an individual with whom they don’t have a good relationship.

If though, the results are good and you feel you get value for money then small misdemeanours can be over-looked sometimes. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time but in my experience, it’s how you go about fixing those mistakes that really counts. If done well there is no need for a relationship to suffer and often it can become stronger as a result.

So next time you’re on the hunt for a new agency or a new business manager (like me!) is pitching to you, take a second to look beyond all the ROI metrics and ask yourself the question – “do I like this person and can I work with them?” Hopefully, if it is me in front of you, the answer will be yes!

As always, what do you think? Is it all about getting bangs for your bucks or should a good working relationship be as, if not more, important?

Are Your Messages Getting Through?

Successful relationships are surely the key to life – whether they are family; friends; business or social they are, essentially, what can separate us from the animal kingdom… Our ability to communicate across multi channel media with any of ‘our circle’ enables us to engage appropriately at any time.

We recognise and differentiate the channels depending on the message and the recipient – whether we are texting our kids; phoning our parents; writing to the bank; or emailing a friend; we often subconsciously select the right channel for the best and most certain response… But, do we do the same in business or does cost and ‘efficiency’ override our inherent knowledge that what’s right and appropriate for one recipient is inappropriate for another?

Surely we cannot dispense with years of learning to jump onto the next comm’s bandwagon? As I write today – social networking is the fad. I am old enough to remember direct mail, and then the telephone, before email became all the rage. At each stage of communication evolution we leapt fully into the new world and dispensed with the old. What happened? In the main – very little! Lots of money was invested in making calls and sending emails to attract new business – sometimes with calculable evidence of a required ROI; however, rarely was the leaky bucket of customer attrition addressed and so real growth was not achieved.

Understanding customers, developing relationships and building loyalty will; surely remain the key to successful business and growth. Partnering with the right specialists can help reduce investment, and - will most certainly add value - as you benefit from a range of experience and not just your own.

So before embarking on Twitter and Facebook; before you purchase another batch of data to fire off some more emails; why not stop and take stock…?

• What can your current customer data tell you?
• How can it help inform your future strategy?
• Where does your profit come from rather than just your revenue?
• Which customers are more likely to lapse and which should you endeavour to keep?
• How and why do they like to be communicated with?

In summary - the right partner can help with these questions and make your business grow healthily and less expensively because they use the knowledge locked within your data to expose the communication opportunities of the future. Sometimes the answers are right under your nose!

What are the factors behind a good client/agency relationship?

What are the main elements that go to making a good, long term client/agency relationship? Tough question isn’t it? Cultural match, ROI, outstanding creativity, awards even perhaps… all have their place but sometimes it can be a little more intangible than that.

I was presenting to a prospective new client recently and was asked how long on average our clients had been with us. In our case it’s around 5 or 6 years which I think is pretty darn good for a CRM agency such as ourselves (we currently have clients that have been with us for as long as 15 years). But the question got me thinking, why do our clients remain so loyal to us and why have we been successful in developing their accounts? Well I’m not about to reveal our secrets or bore you to death with a diatribe on our approach to Account Management. What I will do though, is tell you what factors I believe make a good client/agency relationship and some of the things to look for if you are searching for a new partner.

Trust – The foundation upon which any good relationship is built and by far the most important factor in forming a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership. If there is no trust between a client and their marketing agency every project, idea, suggestion or piece of work will be second guessed or viewed with suspicion. A client has to believe and trust that their agency has their best interests (and those of their brand) at heart in order to produce the best results.

Cultural Match – Without exception, every business has a distinct identity, a culture and a work ethic. If the relationship is to be successful it’s important that the business finds an agency whose culture mirrors or complements their own. That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be differences as often the best work or campaign can be produced when ideas and the established status quo are challenged by both parties.

Personalities – Never underestimate the importance of matching account management staff with the client, if the two get on both on a professional and personal level then the relationship will undoubtedly flourish. Get it wrong and the exact opposite will happen, trust won’t be established and creativity will be stifled.

Honesty – We all get things wrong from time to time but if your agency is honest enough to own up to mistakes and they go the extra mile to put them right, then that can only be a good thing. Honesty is also important when it comes to communication and feedback which leads me to my next point…

Communication – Open and honest communication, particularly feedback is essential in the client/agency relationship. As a CRM agency, feedback whether positive or constructive (no one likes negative!) is invaluable if we are to continue to innovate and drive the client’s communication strategy forward. We do our upmost to ensure that the key stakeholders on any project are talking all the time and that any little ripples are ironed out along the way.

Value for Money – A topic that can be highly subjective to say the least! An agency and their client may well disagree on what constitutes value for money but what can’t be disputed is the more accurate measurement of Return on Investment (ROI). As an agency, ROI is all important and if we’re to retain our clients then we must be able to accurately measure and demonstrate ROI. That is why each programme we implement has metrics built in whether it’s establishing control groups to measure the impact of an eCRM campaign or KPIs for contact centre performance.

And finally…

Shared Objectives – We’re all in business to make money (well most of us are anyway). If we’re honest about this and don’t try to screw every little last piece of discount or margin from each and every deal then the trust and relationship that we worked so hard to establish won’t be affected. By all means challenge your agency to justify their charges (and hopefully they’ll be honest about them) but don’t be surprised if the quality of work begins to slide if you’ve beaten them down to a rock-bottom price. Likewise from an agency perspective, if a client gets even the slightest whiff that they’re being taken for a ride, they won’t be a client for much longer.

In Summary

So there we have it, what I believe to be seven important elements that go together in making the foundation of a solid client agency relationship. Clearly the list is not exhaustive and there are many other less fundamental factors which cumulatively can have a dramatic effect. But what do you think - are there any other major factors I have missed, would you like to challenge any of the statements I have made? All feedback (well most!) will be gratefully received.

Contact Centre vs Communication Centre vs Call Centre – But Which One is Right?

Think of these 3 phrases:

• Contact Centre
• Communication Centre
• Call Centre

What images do they conjure up? Rooms full of people in small cubicles chattering away on headsets? 2,000 seat off-shore facilities filled with people reading from call scripts? Or small teams of dedicated individuals dealing with enquiries received across a variety of channels?

Well to be fair you’d be right in all of these cases as fundamentally they mean the same thing - or rather they are variances on a theme. The main differences would be in the type of work and projects they undertake.

The contact management industry includes a vast array of operations of all shapes and sizes serving just about every sector and marketplace you can think of. Some businesses operate in-house contact centre departments whilst others prefer to outsource to experienced professionals.

When outsourcing any contact management operation the question is how do you find the right partner – do you need a call centre, a contact centre or a communication centre?

Well this comes down to a number of factors some of which may include:

•Through which channels do your customers want to talk with you?
It’s important to think of it in these terms rather than through which channels do I want to allow my customers to talk to me. If you’re not engaging with them on their terms you risk alienating a significant portion.

•How many calls/contacts/enquiries do you receive and how long does it take to deal with each of them?

•What experience do you want your customers to have?
For example, a high volume, quick and easy, churn through calls may not be what you want to expose your customers to…

•What level of knowledge and expertise do the enquiry handlers need – about product; service; sales; etc.

All customer contact operations can be successfully outsourced, but your selection of the right partner is crucial. Get it wrong and you may not have too many customers to worry about anyway!

More channels than ever, but have we forgotten how to talk to our customers?

I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that technology is taking over my life.

Until recently I was just another happy go lucky guy, ignorant to the likes of Twitter, iPhones, Kindle’s, streaming media, HD TV and all the other multitude of “must have” gadgets (a phrase which I despise by the way… the “must have” part somehow insinuates that our lives are not complete without these things!).

Then I turned the corner and life hasn’t been the same since.

I’ve had a Facebook account for sometime but I decided to see what all the fuss was about with Twitter. All of a sudden I’m immersed in a world of tweets, access to a whole new universe of exciting information, a new way of communicating with like minded people – people I’ve never met with interesting ideas and comments on the industry I work in as well as life in general.

Next came the iPhone. And oh my God the apps… the wonderful, life enhancing, “must have” apps (they really are in this case). This opened up a new way to stay up to date with my email, my Twitter account, Facebook, text messages, world news, sporting events, to measure my exercise, to find my way, etc. etc. etc…

This then led to streaming media and content to my TV. Normal TV is boring. Sky+ has allowed me to watch the programmes I like when I want to watch them but that’s not enough; I want online content as well. A spot of online shopping and a few pounds later (don’t tell the girlfriend) and now I can get my favourite extreme sports’ videos streamed to my TV, not just on my PC.

There are of course a number of consequences to all of this media buzzing around my life. I suddenly have accounts all over the place, things I need to check just in case I’ve been sent a message or someone has posted a life changing piece of information, a tweet that I need to share with the rest of my followers, an event being organised on Facebook by an old acquaintance. And this takes time, but time well spent I reassure myself. After all, the direct message sent to me on Twitter could be from a prospect I’ve been following with a question about our services.

And that’s what I mean by technology taking over my life. Back in the good old days, if you wanted to talk to someone or share an idea, you called them or sent an email. Now we have a plethora of channels through which to share our ideas, suggestions, offers and to promote our services. An ever-growing cornucopia of ways in which to connect to the world and absorb information.

This presents a challenge for marketeers like me and businesses in general. Through which medium and what channel do you communicate with your customers and prospects? An integrated campaign now needs to be truly integrated and that goes for the response channels as well.

There are ways to identify the channel preference of your customers – simply asking them is always a good place to start. But your data will tell a story too, different customer profiles will interact with your business in different ways, they’ll respond to different campaigns and calls to action and if you can analyse this, you’ll begin to build a picture of what your customers’ preferences are.

We use one word to describe this concept: Relevance. Put simply, every campaign should take into consideration relevance of channel, relevance of timing and relevance of content to the recipient. You know so much about your customers from the data you hold; when they buy, what they buy (and have bought previously) how they pay for it, and to what communications they respond - so why not use it?

Bringing this information and the three ‘relevancies’ into a communication programme, whether it’s an outbound campaign or an inbound response channel will have a dramatic effect and improve relationships with your customers.

So what are you waiting for… stop Tweeting, step away from the iPhone and discover how your customers really want to talk to you.

The winning formulae for a successful contact centre

We would like to think all our contact centres are successful. It’s about having that winning formula that EWA uses and tailoring it around the client’s specific product and again the use of appropriate language, using clear and concise messages.

It’s also about holding a conversation with customers so they don’t feel you are following a script. It’s also about taking responsibility and ownership of the customer’s problem, and delivering at the right pace with clear consistent messaging.

Some of our successful contact centres included the Department of Health, where the contact centre can have very difficult calls to handle. Its messages need to be delivered with empathy rather than sympathy, which is where EWA can provide expertise.

Getting the right people for a successful contact centre to run like clock work is also part of the winning formula. We can give basic phone training, a lot of product training, but we also have to give people the freedom to convey their personality during the communication to the customer. An individual also needs to be confident in dealing with calls in the contact centre. It’s about product matching too. If you work in our adidas contact centre for example you have to have an interest in sport or it’s never going to work for the caller because you are not going to be able to talk knowledgeably and confidently about the products.

What are the challenges faced in managing a contact centre?

One of the main challenges when working in a contact centre is relying on inbound traffic and managing the peaks and troughs of those calls. It’s all about finding the right balance between having enough staff to manage the incoming calls but still retaining cost effectiveness for clients.

It’s also about staff motivation. A number of contact centres can be dealing with highly emotive subjects, quite standard and even boring subjects, so staff motivation and retention is key in managing a contact centre. It is also about measuring and monitoring the output and it depends on the individual’s interpretation of customer service.

We can all give examples of bad customer service but may struggle to recall an example of good customer service. A recent study showed that 80% of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience but only 8% of their customers agreed. So whilst a company might think they are doing a great job, you are only as good as that customer remembering the conversation. You do have to go over and above what you believe good customer service is to make a great impression.

Listening and delivering the message is also important. Another of the challenges is that the customer may not really know what to ask you. Perhaps they have a letter which does not make sense to them and they are angry as a result. You really have to listen to them carefully and deliver the correct answer which they may not even want to hear, so it’s important the agent conveys the message in a positive manner.

Call duration brings about its own challenges. A client may measure us on our call duration, and then we have to keep those calls short and deliver a high quality level of customer service which can be something of a contradiction.

Again the bottom line is ensuring that there is consistency in delivering key messages to customers and managing all the challenges that we face.

How much do you REALLY know about your customers?

How much do you REALLY know about your customers?

I recently met a new client who told me that he knows very little about his customers or the reasons they buy one product in preference to another. As shocking as this might sound, I’m almost certain he’s not alone. A great number of businesses we speak to can tell you all about their sales figures, about their average order values or about the number of new customers they have acquired. But when it comes to actually knowing what a customer thinks of them or perhaps more importantly, the business’ perception of themselves compared to that of their customers, then very few have a clear understanding of what makes their customers tick.

Perception mapping

In our experience, a simple solution to this problem can be to conduct a questionnaire to both internal stakeholders and a business’ customers and then analysing the results using perception mapping. Perception mapping uses survey data to provide a visual representation of the perceptions of diverse segments, in particular, highlighting key differences. It is particularly useful when analysing the differences in perceptions from a company and customer point of view in areas such as service levels and product quality. Perception mapping can help prove or disprove the perceptions or assumptions of a business and identify gaps in the service or product offering.

Are customer survey’s a little “old hat”?

People may argue however, that customer surveys are a little “old hat” or that they struggle to get significant enough responses to allow accurate analysis. Again in our experience, if the right questions are asked in a non-intrusive way, using the most appropriate medium and to the right customers (and by that I mean ones who have an existing relationship with the business), then response rates can be surprising. We have seen response rates from online customer surveys as high as 75% and that’s without offering an incentive to respond. Clearly it helps to have a very receptive and loyal customer base in order to see response rates that high but other surveys we have run on behalf of clients regularly get response rates in excess of 25% which gives more than enough accurate data to perform detailed analysis… providing enough questionnaires were sent in the first place obviously!

Questionnaires…a great way of getting customer insight

Questionnaires are also a great tool for cleansing or filling gaps in your customer profile information… without customers feeling as though they are being interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition. Any analyst will tell you that having information like date of birth, occupation or postcode in customer data is invaluable when it comes to accurate profiling and segmentation or building customer insight initiatives such as propensity models. By clearly stating the purpose of the questionnaire (i.e. to improve customer service or help with product development) and asking carefully planned, relevant questions, detailed information on customers can be built-up and incorporated into database profiles.

…And to conclude

So in summary, here are a few points to remember and some advice about the successful use of customer questionnaires and surveys:

• Planning – think about why you want to perform a survey in the first place. Is it to address a specific business objective, to prove or disprove a theory or to gather valuable profiling data?

• Relevance – Make sure the questions reflect the information you want to gather and that they are relevant to the customers purchase behaviour… there is no point in asking a question if no action can result from its answer!

• Objectivity – Try and make your surveys and questionnaire as objective as possible, after all you want your customers to be honest in their responses even if the results make for difficult reading.

• Channel – If all your customer interactions are conducted online or via email, then it’s a good idea (if not an obvious one!) to conduct a survey via the same channels. Online surveys give the added benefit of direction integration into marketing database systems without the need to data capture the results.

• Format – Complicated questions in a poorly designed format will only serve to dissuade customers from responding. Equally, complicated questionnaires with lots of free text will make data

• Analysis – Most companies would say that they analyse the results of the surveys they have conducted but in our experience, very few actually get the most from the data they capture. Using a specialist data analyst or customer insight company can really help unlock intelligence in data and help you get the most from a customer survey.

But what do you think? What response rates have you seen and how successful have your surveys been?