When it comes to aligning the executive suite with the customer service organization, there is a significant gap between what C-level executives promise and what customer service organizations see, according to the results of a comprehensive worldwide survey. Titled "The Executive Disconnect: The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service," the survey takes an in-depth look at businesses across key regions worldwide, with detailed data for major markets in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific.
The research, which covers 47 countries and 927 participating companies, was commissioned by Genesys to better understand the challenges in strategically aligning customer service with the business goals of the company. The survey found a significant gap between C-level perceptions and the reality experienced by most of their customers. Here are a few highlights:
Strategic vs. Operational Role — Customer care professionals and executives overwhelmingly agree that customer service impacts the company's brand identity, yet very few think their customer service acts mainly as a strategic function.
Only 20% of CEO-level executives and 20% of customer care professionals say their contact centers are very strategic.
Both groups agree that customer service is key to brand identity — with 92% of C-level executives and 85% of customer-centric employees agreeing.
But C-level executives (73%) overestimate the effort in their companies to measure customer lifetime value, compared to a smaller number of customer-level employees (60%).
Measuring Revenue and Customer Experience vs. Speed and Efficiency — Most C-level executives underestimate the emphasis their organization places on efficiency, and overestimate how easy their organization makes it for customers to purchase during interactions:
For example, 55% of C-level executives believe their operations use average speed to answer as a critical metric, compared to 70% of customer service professionals. On a worldwide basis 67% of all organizations considered this a key metric.
Among C-level executives, 41% think they measure the experience in self-service by quality rather than just cost savings, but only 35% of customer service professionals think so.
At the same time, 36% of C-level executives think their customer service is measured on revenue per call, when in reality only 28% of customer service professionals validate that notion. Among global respondents 30% say they measure revenue per call.
Capturing Customer Feedback — There is a major (16%) gap between C-level execs who believe they are capturing important customer feedback, and the views of customer service professionals
While 78% of C-level execs think their company is doing a good job of collecting information on customer and market needs and passing it on to sales, only 62% of customer service professionals agree.
Interestingly, on a regional basis, Germany is the leader, as 75% of companies have processes for systematically passing on customer feedback, followed by Asia, France and Spain at 74%.
Finding a Cure — On a positive note many companies have already implemented or plan to initiate priority projects over next 18 months, to address misalignment:
More than 28% of the companies surveyed have or will add "click for a call back" capability, and in Germany a surprising 54% of companies say they will or do support it.
To support proactive business management, nearly 30% of those surveyed plan to enable information consoles to provide real-time views that leverage customer data across the entire enterprise.
And 36% of companies worldwide plan to improve visibility into customer processes by identifying the root causes behind customer interactions and behaviors through analytics.
Leveraging the Entire Organization — There are two significant areas of investment that are helping companies become more dynamic — extending customer service to branch offices and virtualization.
Over 28% of the companies surveyed are already moving to incorporate branch offices to expand the pool of resources available during high volume periods.
Regionally, the UK is the leader, where 39% of companies are doing so followed by Spain at 38%.
Nearly 40% of contact centers worldwide are currently virtualizing by operating multiple contact centers as a single entity, or plan to do so.
Asia Pacific and the UK are the leaders in this, with 49% and 50% of companies respectively virtualizing.
More information on Customer Service and Support can be found at www.Supportindustry.com
No comments:
Post a Comment