Sizzler Ties Increase in Sales to Increase of Customer Satisfaction
Posted: October 18, 2011 by Jon Sanderson - VP of Marketing
The Importance of Employee Loyalty
Posted: October 14, 2011 by Summer Wilson - HR Director
We all know that employee loyalty is important but often times we forget how beneficial it can be for the entire business.
“Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees. Employee satisfaction, in turn, results primarily from high-quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers.” (Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work, Harvard Business Review, 1994)
There is a strong relationship between productivity, loyalty, employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, and profitability. So, what is the secret to fostering employee loyalty? Leadership.
Leaders who genuinely care about their people, who are “plugged in” to their organizations, and listen to their employees for suggestions to improve, will develop corporate cultures that naturally support the concept of the Service-Profit Chain. By no surprise, employees who trust and respect the leadership of an organization often feel more empowered and motivated to do their best.
This synergy also results in reduced employee turnover, which is a driving factor that impacts all service levels.
Conversely, the costs associated with high employee turnover are not only substantial in terms of monetary value but also costly in terms of quality and service, which has a direct impact on customer retention and loyalty.
Unfortunately the dynamic between many employees and employers has changed significantly with employee loyalty now at a 3-year low (MetLife, 2011). For some employees, the grind of a daily 9 to 5 job is now simply a means to an end; the end being a paycheck every two weeks or the distant possibility of retirement. As employers look to cut costs through lay-offs, wage reductions and elimination of benefits, employees are being asked to absorb heavier workloads, work longer hours and meet unrealistic expectations (American Psychological Association, 2011).
Given the considerable changes between employees and employers in recent years, it’s more important than ever for leaders to embrace and implement changes that result in employee loyalty. Here at Mindshare Technologies, we’ve been very fortunate to weather the recent economic conditions with strong financial and employee growth. This has given us the flexibility to reinvest in new technologies for our clients – built on ideas generated by our employees.
We’re tremendously proud to have employees who are engaged, passionate about their work, creative, and committed to providing the highest quality of internal and external service. At the heart of our company is a phenomenal leadership team that has created a culture with people who work hard, care about each other, are innovative, and fun to be around.
By constantly improving from our employee feedback, captured using the Mindshare Platform, we were recently awarded the Top 50 Most Engaged Workplaces in the United States.
Click here to learn more about improving employee satisfaction through capturing customer feedback.
Mindshare’s 2011 Outstanding Service Awards
Posted: October 12, 2011 by Chad Hortin - VP of Account Management
We are pleased to announce the winners of our 2011 Outstanding Service Awards™. Winners of this prestigious award include: Bridgestone Retail Operations, IHOP, Asurion, Hertz, Comcast, Arby’s, Panera Bread, Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake Pizza, Aaron’s, Inc., Sizzler, Bob Evans, Lifetouch Portrait Studios, and more. This year’s recipients are recognized for their excellence in applying customer and employee feedback to improve their customers’ experience.
These awards were presented at our annual Best Practices Conference at the Canyons Resort in Park City, on September 22, 2011.
Customer Satisfaction Award for:
-
Most Consistent Rating Across the Enterprise
-
Aaron’s Inc.
-
Greatest Improvement Using Customer Feedback
-
Sizzler USA
-
Bridgestone Retail Operations
Enterprise Feedback Management Award for:
-
Best Incorporation Of Enterprise Feedback Management Principles
-
Asurion
-
Comcast
-
Most Engaged in the Enterprise Feedback Managment Program: Executive Level
-
Arby’s
-
Bob Evan’s
-
Most Engaged in the Enterprise Feedback Managment Program: Store/Unit/Team Level
-
Panera Bread
-
Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake Pizza
-
Best Integratoin of Feedback in Training
-
Shari’s
Employee Satisfaction Award for:
-
Most Engaged In Employee Satisfaction
-
Hertz
-
Lifetouch Portrait Studios
-
Rookie of the Year Awards:
-
IHOP
-
Peter Piper Pizza
Leverage Your VOC Program to the Fullest Potential
Posted: October 12, 2011 by Erich Dietz - Sr. Director, Contact Center Solutions
If I were a betting man, and Steve Wynn’s newest car indicates that I am, I would bet your organization is not extracting as much value as it could from your Voice of the Customer (VOC) program.
Too often businesses maintain an extremely narrow focus with their VOC efforts and utilize it purely for front-line performance management. While I would be the first to acquiesce that performance management should be a core tenet of VOC, I would also state that the program should be used for much more.
To give you a flavor of what I am talking about, ask yourself the following questions:
Does Your VOC Program Assist in Testing New Products?
Typical VOC programs only ask about how a business did today and omit the opportunity to gain insight into new products and services they could offer tomorrow. As a business leader, you should constantly be striving to learn and understand how your business could be adding more value to the lives of your customers. An easy way to begin this process is to simply ask your current customers a few different questions, such as:
- “How could (insert your company name) be adding more value?”
- “You currently use/have used our Product X. Are there any additional products or services we could offer to help you get more value out of Product X?”
- “Please rate your level of interest in purchasing Service X (a new product) from us.”
The questions above are purely intended to kick start the hamster on your ‘idea wheel’, not specific questions that accomplish what I am suggesting. Additionally, I am not insinuating that adding a few questions to a survey replaces your existing R&D and market research efforts. If you test the waters with your customers and ask them what they want in existing VOC channels, you could potentially spur more rapid innovation and significantly enhance your forward thinking efforts.
Does Your VOX Program Inform Customers of Feedback-inspired Changes?
It boggles my mind when I learn about organizations that make fabulous improvements in their products or service based on customer feedback, and they fail to communicate to their customers that this was based on their feedback. Tell customers when you change something as a result of their feedback!
I frequently get asked, “How can I improve my survey response rates?” A simple way to increase your survey response rates is to demonstrate to customers that you are actively using the data they provide. Too often customers think that their surveys go into the ether, and for most companies, survey results do go into a vacuum. Be bold, be different, and celebrate the hell out of customer feedback and what it is delivering to your business. Customers will respond by giving you more feedback.
- Put a brief prompt in your call center IVR telling customers what you did.
- Put up signage in your stores.
- At least do something!
Does Your VOC Program Understand the Context Behind Feedback?
Most often VOC surveys will contain questions about individual employee or overall experience attributes. Such as:
- “Please rate the knowledge of the individual that assisted you.”
- “Did the associate take ownership of your issue?”
While those questions are good, unless you know the underlying customer perceptions and context of the response, the simple quantitative data they produce may be very tough to coach on. For example, Mindshare met with a fashion retail organizationthat uses a knowledge rating question like the ones above. When we asked the VOC leadership team what ‘knowledge’ in bullet 1 referred to, and how they should coach their store associates on the scores, we received some very different answers. It means “knowledge of fashion trends” or “knowledge of the store’s inventory and product location” or even “knowledge of pricing” etc. All are “right”, but all have very different coaching steps and context associated with them.
If there was no alignment among the 4 people in the room, there was probably a disparity at the field and store management level as well. They needed to quickly get to the bottom of what type of ‘knowledge’ is most important to their customer base, and drive that out into their training programs. To accomplish this, we suggested an insertion of a ‘verbatim’ opportunity, an open-ended response where customers could describe what a ‘knowledgeable sales associate’ was to them. This question was live in their feedback system for a short period of time where Mindshare gathered massive amounts of data which we then utilized our comment analytics technology, and “Voila!” – Instant coaching bliss. They now understand exactly what ‘knowledge’ means to their key customers.
My point here is simple: make sure you understand the customer’s perception of any experiential attributes you are asking about in your VOC programs. Without that underlying understanding, your coaching efforts could be a little off.
In Closing – Continually Innovate on How You Use the Voice of Your Customers.
This is just a sampling of some of the innovative things you can do with your existing VOC programs. If you are only doing basic performance management, we need to talk… or talk to your current VOC Advisor, Evangelist, Guru, or whatever her/his title is… because you are not fully leveraging the power of your feedback program and you are leaving precious information and money on the table.
If implemented properly, these insights can be gained in very simple, tactical ways. You can potentially save your business massive amounts of money and provide the enterprise with phenomenal new data. You can avoid survey toxicity, enhance customer experiences, and we’ll all live happily ever after.
Your Voice Analytics Strategy: Can it Answer the All-Important “Now What?” Test
Posted: August 9, 2011 by Erich Dietz - Sr. Director, Contact Center Solutions
When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important “now what?” text.
Let’s put this test to work against the most typical Voice Analytics solutions in EFM/VoC.
Here are a few common, yet less useful Voice Analytics scenarios:
- “I know the top ten keywords used by my customers in phone survey feedback.” (Now what?)
- “I am told I need to have a word cloud.” (Now what?)
- “My competitors were mentioned 143 times by customers!” (Now what?)
See? It’s that simple. The above scenarios cannot easily and usefully answer the “now what?” question. While they are all very interesting factoids, what practical action steps do they drive? If you cannot take action with your Voice Analytics, why bother with it at all?
Contrast those with the following useful cases:
- “My least satisfied customers complain about long hold times.” (Now what? Hire more contact center agents and/or reduce talk times.)
- “When dissatisfied with order accuracy, my drive-thru customers most often use the phrase ‘missing … toy’.” (Now what? Change the assembly process and train employees to double check that toys are included in every bag.)
These Voice Analytics scenarios easily pass the test because they lead to actions that produce measurable operational improvements. When creating your Voice Analytics strategy, make sure your solution can answer the all-important “now what?” test.
Mindshare’s focus: Insights and Action
If you’re going to collect feedback, you need to act on it. Like Text Analytics, your Voice Analytics results should be actionable and drive decisions that result in operational improvements. All analytics must pass the “now what?” test. When you see Voice Analytics results, ask yourself, “now what?” The answer should be an action that drives measurable results for a Return on Investment (ROI).