Lessons from the Best: How Discover, Bath & Body Works Achieve Call Center Excellence
No matter how many times award winners incorrectly use the word “humbling” to describe the experience, such peer adulation provides an irrefutable ego boost. It sends the irrefutable message that winners are to be admired, respected and, in many cases, copied.
One would be lying if he argued that the same was not true of the Call Center Excellence Awards, which occur in annual conjunction with Call Center IQ’s Call Center Week.
But in recognizing “superior thinking, creativity and execution across the full spectrum of call center functions,” the Excellence Awards do more than simply establish a customer management elite. They also provide a blueprint for success. They provide evidence that no matter how inclined leaders are to blame budgetary and stigmatic limitations for unsatisfactory customer experiences, those truly committed to a customer-centric mindset can achieve lofty goals in their contact centers.
In crowning the winners at the 14th Call Center Week in June—and then exploring their applications at the Best of Call Center Week event this week – Call Center IQ identified the philosophical and strategic centerpieces that drive success. It is these mindsets that provide immunity from organizational limitation, and it is echoes of these mindsets that will help other organizations achieve similar success.
In the hopes of creating those echoes, we have outlined some of the noteworthy forces behind the world’s best contact centers:
Experian (Best-in-Class Call Center, 200+ Seats) – E3
For Experian, the success of the overall customer care function can be attributed to E3. Not a testimonial for the video game expo, Experian’s use of E3 is for its motto: “Exceptional Experience Everytime.”
In pursuing E3, Experian adheres to certain principles:
Deliver with warm and positivity
Be friendly, warm, caring and conversational
Be fast, efficient and correct the first time
Match product benefits to customer needs
Build high customer advocacy and reaffirm customer decisions to buy
As a result of E3’s approach, its customer care function has become profitable, exceeding operating costs and direct-to-consumer costs by considerable margins. Its NPS score greatly exceeds industry average, while its agent attrition greatly trails that of its peers.
Bath & Body Works (Best-in-Class Call Center, Under 200 Seats) – Serve to Retain
Because Bath & Body Works does not advertise, it relies on reputation and word-of-mouth to build market share. Its “marketing strategy,” therefore, is to assure it builds customer loyalty and advocacy.
Its customer service/contact center function is integral to that effort. Perceived not as a “complaint center” but a retention center, B&BW works to “keep our customers loyal by caring, connecting and celebrating with [them] on every call.”
Believing that customer service begins and ends with a drive to satisfy all of its customers’ needs and desires, Bath & Body Works has achieved demonstrable success. Those who engaged in the contact center return to stores more frequently, which only further contributes to their customer loyalty (and grows revenue in the process).
Committed to surprising and delighting its customers, Bath & Body Works gives its agents measurable leeway to wow customers. By empowering agents in such a manner, the organization is in a unique position to satisfy customers—and enjoy the revenue that comes with that satisfaction.
Discover (Best Performance Acting on the Voice of the Customer and Voice of the Social Customer)
With comprehensive processes, training strategies and monitoring methods predicated on unlocking the voice of the customer, it is no surprise Discover excels at understanding its audience.
As social continues to gain footing, Discover is applying that same spirited passion to customer management’s most trendworthy new channel.
By comprehensively training a fleet of direct social customer service respondents, Discover has overcome the responsiveness issue that plagues so many supposedly-social organizations. Trained specifically in online customer communication, these respondents enable Discover to accurately answer customer inquiries within fifteen minutes.
Though a fifteen minute response time pales in comparison to the typical call center standard, when held against the reality that many major businesses never respond—let alone within an hour—Discover’s approach stands very tall.
Beyond responding with rapidity, Discover also makes it a priority to listen. Discover listens to 100% of user-generated social posts, assuring itself a wealth of insights about its customers. For an organization that wants to act on the voice of the customer, such feedback monitoring is essential.
“We encourage customers to provide their honest feedback via our social media channels. We then pass along all feedback to the appropriate business units within Discover for their review. Often times, the voice of the social customer helps DFS business units make meaningful business program and product decisions. “
Discover can trace the roots of specific product and experiential decisions to the voice of its social customers.
Protection 1 (Greatest Job Creating a Culture That Inspires World-Class Excellence)
From the get-go, Protection 1 makes it clear that its customers—and therefore agents—are the top priority.
It maintains an open-door policy for employee feedback and ideas. It commits itself to providing agents with the tools they need to wow customer. Its CEO, who regularly visits the call center, will take calls to get a sense of Protection 1’s customers and the connection his brand is making with them.
“By mentoring and challenging Protection 1 agents on the floor, we help them strive for excellence. We promote accountability as not something to be afraid of but to take pride in. Employees want to showcase their performance stats because they understand how they ladder up to the overall picture, overall customer experience and the ultimate service we sell in the marketplace.”
Protection 1 thinks like a customer, and as a result, its management and agents are aligned around a core of customer-centricity. Agents know they are trusted to do right by the customer, and more importantly, they know the operational structure has that objective at heart. By establishing such trust, Protection 1 is able to achieve buy-in for its metrics and assure agents are committed to improving performance.
The effort shows. Protection 1 is able to achieve a “perfect day” – all calls are answered in less than 1 minute, ASA is less than 10 seconds, transfer rate is less than 10% and productivity exceeds 85% – more than 95% of the time.
