Companies strive for best-in-class service because they understand the direct relationship that exists between improved customer service, loyalty scores, and greater profitability. Customer Experience is deeply embedded in both the culture and brand of best-in-class organizations. While striving for the best, even companies with terrific customer experience scores will get customer complaints from time to time. Although no company wants to get a complaint call, it is critical to handle the interaction successfully and to leverage the insights for future action. This direct customer feedback has a wealth of business value when mined in such a way to evaluate trends, identify root causes and target specific action plans to drive improved customer experience, reduce non-value costs and proactively mitigate risks.
A customer experience program that achieves proactivity based on key indicators will require the capture and categorization of customer complaints as a critical element to the success of the program. These categorizations will help to identify trends that can be addressed and provide agents with ways to proactively prevent future complaints. Voice of Customer feedback should be trended and reviewed quarterly to include insights on customer dissatisfaction with products, offerings, business processes or agent performance opportunities. Organizations may also leverage Speech Analytics for automated call type reporting and call queuing for targeted listening and analysis.
A best-in-class complaint management process should contain the following:
- Frontline teams that understand the importance of effectively managing both customer experience and business risk
- Escalation process to handle high-risk issues
- A dedicated team that analyzes, trends and manages drivers of risk (reporting, trending, actions)
- Closed loop process to clearly and accurately identify risks
- In-depth root cause analysis that includes quality call monitoring
- Clear ownership for root cause analysis, issue resolution, and action planning
- End-to-end analysis of all key data and indicators including compliance with key regulations
While reactive complaint management will never go away, the most successful organizations are focusing more and more on proactive customer experience management.
