Great Customer Experience is all about Consistency

On the flight from Istanbul to Copenhagen I had the pleasure to have a very meaningful conversation with Lalit Soi. Lalit  established and operated his highly successful manufacturing company under one mantra. "Provide good customer service". With that principle he managed to create a monopoly in manufacturing.

Looking at today's world there is one company that stands out in providing a good customer service. Apple. If you look the phones, they don't have the best devices, not the best screens not even the latest technologies available. And to that end they only have a single model,  iPhone in various versions, the hottest selling iPhone is not even the latest version. Having said that Apple has a huge following and very loyal customer base for the first quarter of 2013 they posted revenue of  43.6B$ with profit of 9.5B$ and pays investor 11B$ in dividends every year.

 

Compared to Samsung's profit of 6.5B$ from various product groups it is easy to see that Apple is much more profitable. Product by Product Apple by far generates the most revenue and best profit.

Looking at phones Apple shipped 37M iPhones while Samsung shipped 71M phones during the same quarter, however profitability is where Apple differentiates itself from the competition.

So why is Apple so profitable? Why do their customer base pay for more expensive iPhones compared to brilliant Samsung Android phones?

One of the most glaring example I can find in my own little world is CUSTOMER SERVICE. I have visited Apple stores and Samsung shops in various countries and was amazed by how Apple in shop experience is much better than Samsung. This might be bias since in an Apple store there is huge focus on the iPhone while on Samsung shops your attention are directed towards Televisions with their monstrous screens. In an Apple store the customer experience is the same anywhere in the world you go, well at least in cities where I have been (excluding Australia, its pretty much the entire planet). The worse Apple store I have been to is at the city where I live, however that is more of a reflection of Swedish non-service and not a reflection of Apple store service. Another glaring example is how consistent the experience is from an older iPhone to the newest one, a reminiscent of the old Nokia Feature phones where the experience is consistent across the various devices…. If this consistent customer experience is worth 44B$ per quarter then Apple must be doing something right….

How can contact or call centers improve customer experiences and make our world a bit better?

In our lifetime, most of have been or will be in touch with a customer care agent, whether that is to complain about a problem, buy a new product or service or casual interview about our experiences and perceptions. Having said that  everyone can relate on unpleasant experiences when dealing with customer care agents especially over the phone or even face to face on a shop floor.

Over the phone we tend to get lost to the myriad of choices on the IVR, which probably takes 2 to 5 minutes just to navigate to the correct selection. After getting to the right IVR menu we are prompted another 15 minutes or more of waiting on  a queue, then finally once we find a customer care agent it take another 15 minutes of explaining to the the customer care agent the issue or problem we are having with a product or service. So as sane humans there goes 30 minutes of our life in a 24 hour day wasted waiting. If we know this can be improve then we realized how much better our life can be… just imagine spending that 30 minutes in something you truly like or love, that will make this word a much better place….

Looking at the other side, just imagine the amount of money saved by the company we called if they can shorten that time even by just 15 seconds. If they have 10000 calls a day, then that is 150,000 seconds saved, that is a 40 hour saving, an entire week. As a person what would you do if you are given a week off and can do anything you want? For a company that is 1 man week off saved in a day and if consider that 1 minute of call is costing a dollar, just imagine saving 600,000$ per year out of 15 seconds….

Now the question is how do we make our customers happier by shortening their waiting time, or even eliminating it if possible. In most contact centers we often talk about two main metrics First Call Resolution (FCR) and Average Call Holding Time (ACHT). On the analogy above we established that improving ACHT can improve bottom line dramatically. What most of us failed to understand that FCR and ACHT is very much related and can be improved at the same time. How?  Its actually very simple… but very difficult to get the implementation right.

If we can provide the customer a faster way of reaching customer service, then the waiting time for them becomes tolerable. Today we deploy self care, but that still has some waiting time… especially if the customer wants to talk to a live agent. So why not provide a direct customer care portal from the customer's device where he presses a button then viola straight to an agent! Or better yet instead of the customer calling, why not let the agent cal the customer as soon as a problem is submitted….

If we then equip the agent with all information about the customer and their experience without having to go to a battery of questions, then that is 5 minutes save. And at the same time provide the agent the capability to immediately isolate the issue and provide immediate feedback, another five minute save and the customer issue solved immediately during the first call…. How about that for better FCR and ACHT?

The question that would come to mind then is how do you that? The answer is actually as simple as the concept. Ensure all information needed are captured and process before even the agent pick up the phone… by this meaning a system that can handle huge amount of data and produce the necessary results in a matter of a few seconds… If I am the customer 2 seconds will be my perfect waiting time, thank you.

Wanna know more? How about coming to Customer Experience Management Asia and listen to the experiences of those who have implemented this kind of solutions….

Why SAS is losing customers and bleeding money?

Flying with SAS to Washington is such a bad experience. Considering that the airline is in a brink of collapse it seems that they have not found that golden chalice that can save it. For a company like SAS to survive it should not try to compete with the budget carriers, however it should provide a good experience instead.

Flying with SAS on domestic and short European flights is OK. However flying with them for any flight more than 4 hours, its a regrettable experience. First is the price. SAS is never cheap compared to the budget carriers. Second is inflight the service. I don't know where they train their staff, but they can surely learn from Asian and Middle Easter carriers. The inflight service is so bad that on an 8 hour flight on economy you are forced to pay for inflight meals that taste like it came straight from the freezer after being stored for years. I mean how had can it be to integrate a 5$ deal on the ticket sales instead of trying to profit from it by charging double and selling in while on the air? 5$ is nothing when combined with a ticket costing 2000$ or more. Other than the looking down at the melting glaciers, ice and snow over Greenland there is really nothing good about in flight services with SAS. Thirdly is the plane. They fly really old planes with seats are are falling apart and very uncomfortable that my back, and shoulders were hurting badly during and after the flight. Lastly is the entertainment system. Even in Asian regional carriers you get a personalized screen in economy, on SAS you only get the tiny over head display with very bad resolution that you can not actually see the picture unless you are Superman with laser vision.

Its a pity because the ground experience at Scandinavian airports are so good with their efficient self-service kiosk (eliminating waiting time). The inflight experience is a such a let down that I told my self given the choice I will never fly with SAS long haul again unless they fix the bad experience they serve to their customers. If I look at a Thai flight I took from Bangkok to Copenhagen, there's a lot of things SAS can learn, even considering that that flight is very full (all seats taken) , you still come out with a very good experience that you would want to keep flying with the airline. Which brings me to the point that on the same day I flew from Bangkok to Copenhagen I was given the option to fly with Thai or SAS and was told that Thai was overbooked while SAS is almost empty, at that time me and a hundred other passengers made the right choice. So why does SAS keep losing customers and bleeding money? Well their executives should take this long haul flights in economy and compare how they do against airlines such as Singapore Air or Emirates or Virgin…. Experience is everything, even on airlines.

Problem is of course airline executives never fly in their own economy cabins….

Is Customer Experience in Demise?

With Apple's stock value going down to its lowest level in years (half of its highest value) , the question comes to mind whether the value of customer experience is going down. Considering that Apple is the epitome of great customer experiences, do the falling stock price means that investors no longer value great customer experience. Or is  the competition coping up with the Apple fever. One of the obvious reason we see is that Samsung is catching up with good features on its phone and great experience in using them, however they are not yet on par wit the apple retail store.

Not even the news of Apple getting an upper hand on its patent battle with Motorola was able to change investors minds or confidence on Apple.


One of the issues investor see in Apple is its hoard of cash for some reason in America this is not a good thing even if you have 156B US$ in the bank. In Asia, having a lot cash is a gold mine. This of course have to do with culture, the American culture is built on spending while the Asian culture is built on savings. Or perhaps a ploy by some investors to drive down Apple's value, buy a lot of shares from panic sellers then obtain more dividends. The question is will Apple vow to the pressure of giving away most of its cash at hand? Apple of course being an American company with mostly American investors went for the easy solution. Give everyone more money.

In my on little world, for companies like Apple perhaps the fix is not about the money… OK Steve Jobs is gone, but there are still a lot of great people. The main culprit here is the absence of new and exciting products that can create more sales or open more market segments. Hopefully Apple will not end up as BlackBerry which lost its edge in innovation after it become the defacto Smartphone of full phone key-board generation. For a moment here the future might not be in Apple but in cars  when your entire car becomes your phone or the other way around your phone becomes your car. How smart is that?

Back to Customer Experience. I think great Customer Experience is still on a roll, ultimately it is the customer who can make the difference between a company doing well or not. If customers keep buying Apple products although Apple shares keep going down (not logical) at the end of the day Apple will still have revenues that dwarf everyone (42B$ in 2012) and is very profitable. Perhaps what Apple need is another Steve Jobs.

One of the dark cloud here is HP rated to have a very good customer experience but not able to capitalize on it in terms of success comparable to Apple. The  HP financial development is something we should watch and how will they improve financially after they managed to fix their customer experience woes of the past.