Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, How to Measure the Customer Experience Metrics, Contact Center Cactus Chat

Episode Date: April 29, 2023

Eric Mulvin, How to Measure the Customer Experience Metrics, Contact Center Cactus Chat. Eric and Jake are back to conclude their 8th Anniversary Series with an amazing topic that is sure to bring your service company to where it should be.  

welcome back to another episode and uh we are continuing our eight-year anniversary series here with this lovely backdrop put together by our culture department and uh got the last episode here that i'm filming directly with jake i think the next time you'll see us together we'll be i'll be back in phoenix and you'll be out here. So welcome again. Yeah, thank you. And we're going to be talking about how to measure the customer experience metrics. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting topic and you would learn a lot.

I know there are so many companies, small companies, who have neglected the importance of the customer experience and experiences and yeah, this is the topic for you. Yeah, and not just experiences but measuring it. It's like they know it needs to happen. They know that they should be doing it but maybe you don't have the resources. The person that should be managing it is busy training new people, hiring new people, and then doing that all over again. And they can't get out of that cycle. And so this kind of stuff falls behind because you're constantly training.

You're constantly adding new people. And so, yeah, we're going to be talking about that today. So what you should get today from this episode is some ideas around how you could measure your customer experience or what are some metrics that you could be measuring in your call center. And, you know, by the end, if you feel overwhelmed and you're like, I need that, but I don't know how I'm going to do that. I don't have the resources. Maybe you should talk to a company like Packers. But before then, let's see if maybe this is something that you could help for your business or if you're outsourcing with another call center, then these are some things that you should be doing and measuring.

So if not, it's time to start that conversation with that outsource company. And if it's something you're looking to add on, maybe to outsource so that you can start bringing it in, then I think either way you're gonna get something out of this episode. Yeah definitely. So let's start with how do we define customer experience? Great question. Customer experience, the way we look at it is you know what is the

customer journey from the first time they're interacting with your company all the way to the very end of that transaction? And so that could be that they're visiting the website. Maybe they're making a purchase. Jake and I were talking before we hit the record button here that I think we've all experienced a really bad customer experience shopping online. You add your stuff to the cart. You spend all this time finding the right products, and then it asks you to make an account. Sorry, I'll go make an account. And then your account's made, and now your cart's empty.

You're like, I've got to go add that back in. Someone didn't code that properly, and that led to poor customer experience, because that shouldn't happen. So it could be as simple as that all the way to the checkout process to when you receive the item or if it's taxi, like what are some of the things that, what are parts of the customer experience for a taxi customer? You know, interacting with the person that they're talking to to order a cab, you know, they can sense the confidence of the person that they're talking to order a cab um you know they can sense if uh the confidence of the

person that they're talking to if they're experienced enough to know and um to get the details correctly and uh just make sure that it's not gonna mess up the the appointments that they're going to and you know being picked up on time being picked up in the right place, and making sure that the taxi driver would not miss their location and the time. So those are the things that we would consider that would impact the customer experience. Yeah. And those are the parts you could outsource that we could help with. And then there's the parts that you can't.

You have the drivers. So when they do pick up the customer, what is that experience like in the taxi? All the way to the payment. What if the credit card machine is broken? Oh, I'm sorry. My credit card's broken. Can you pay cash? We've all heard that in the back of a taxi. That's not a great experience. You're a corporate traveler and you need to use your business card and now you can't because the machine is broken. You know, that's like a red flag for me. And all the way to after the trip's over, maybe you get a text message and it asks me, how was your ride? And you fill out some service. That whole journey from beginning to end, every time that you're interacting with that business, that's part of the customer experience. So how do we measure that?

How do we, how do we, because, you cannot improve what you don't measure. And so how can you start measuring? Some of these feel really intangible. So give me some examples. Yeah, of course. You know, to start with, you know, by dialing your number, that's the number of your company. That means that somebody would want to work with

you, to do business with you. Trying to spend money with. So that's already something. So why not from that moment, the person who will answer the call would really welcome them by the sound of the voice, being you know, being excited to talk to the person, to talk to the customers. So those are small points that, you know, the customers would really, you know, put an impact on their experience.

And that's, you know, that goes with how experienced the person who's answering the calls or, you know or how experienced they are and um yeah are they trained are they knowledgeable about the products that are being sold or the you know the city that you're calling in for a ride in you know if you're calling in and you're like i need to be picked up at this hotel and they have no idea what it is and they're like what's the address and like you look it up. That's your job. You should know where this hotel is.

I'm in downtown. I'm like, how do you not know where this hotel is? I see your taxi out front. You guys drop me off. That is all part of the experience. The sound alone of the person that they're talking to would also make an impact, like the confidence. And, you know, if you're planning to go out the next day and

you wanted to make sure that would be picked up and um especially when you're going to the airport and you have this flight uh that scheduled at that time and um why would you call somebody who sounded like uh they don't know what they're doing. And you would question right after you drop the phone, like, oh, is that really going to, am I going to be picked up tomorrow at that time? You know, stuff like that. So that's, you know, getting the confidence of the company would, you know, it would require something, some experience. So that experience would be, you can get that from call centers by outsourcing.

So the things that we take care of are the things that we have been doing for eight years. True. A little more. Eight years in a couple days and um yeah those are the things that you're you're gonna get when you're on source um but how do you measure that so like how do you measure confidence on the phone how do you measure that knowledgeable you know and i think there's a couple of ways you could do that. There's some really basic things you could be looking at, such as how long are the calls? If your average handle time is two minutes per call and you have this one agent that's doing five minute calls, like there's, there's a problem there because the customer is used to two minute

calls and now they're calling in and it's spending five minutes six minutes those extra three minutes and four minutes those are painful you know you're sitting there like this shouldn't take this long who is this person on the phone and it doesn't give confidence like you said like that scenario i've traveled a lot for this business and i i would i'd be concerned that that taxi is not going to pick me up if they didn't give me the confidence that they know what they're doing. And so handle time is one way, but what are some of the other ways that you could measure that confidence? Because we want to give these guys some ideas on how to do that.

You know, their interaction, the call taker would talk to the customers and get that confidence and being accurate and asking back the right questions just to finish up and getting the booking done. So that's the experience that everything should be right in order for the customer to get the customer experience. So, yeah, that's the call taker side. And, you know, aside from that, there are so many factors that would be considered to get that customer experience.

Like, you know, right after the call ends, like if they're going to call back, you know, doing some little changes, you know, they have to have the consistency that the person who will be answering the call would have the same level of, you know, confidence. And, yeah, we, you you know going back to the experience it will lead back to you know how experienced the person was answering the call and yeah and the same as the words that they're using like you know if if they are waiting there they're they can't guarantee all the time that you know when they call for you know when going to the taxi business, when you call for a cab, cab will be there right away. It just says that there will be delays.

How are they doing while they're waiting? So if there are calls in between that are being made by call takers, just to make sure that they're updated. I mean, how close is the taxiing? Where is it? What's causing the delay? Those stuff. Those are, you know, there are delays.

Let's, you know, that's already given. There's always more people that need transportation than there are vehicles available and drivers, especially during, like, not when it's busy, but there's peak times, like New Year's Eve. How many people want a taxi or an Uber or a Lyft after the bars get up, like on New Year's Eve, or just any weekend, really, after a sporting event, or just during rush hour? People are needing to get home. They're needing to travel around.

So that happens. But another way to get home. They're needing to travel around. So that happens. But another way to look at it too, because we're talking about these intangibles, like how do you measure the confidence? How do you measure the knowledge? And another way to do it, which is a huge part of what we do here at PACT is QA. Because now you've got to standardize things. is QA because now you got to standardize things like you know the call center agents need to be consistent you need to be like McDonald's and Starbucks on the phone right so like Starbucks I can go to any Starbucks in the world and I expect that coffee to taste pretty much the same no matter what if I want to ice latte in phoenix and then i get an ice latte here in the philippines because they had even starbucks here in dumaguete believe it or not they should taste the same uh mcdonald's you get a a big mac in phoenix and then you drive across

country on a road trip and you keep getting big macs at other places and fries they should be consistent and if not if they tasted way different in one place than another place, then you're not going to keep going to McDonald's because you don't know what you're going to get. Man, it was really good in that one spot, but over here, that was trash. If that keeps happening to your Starbucks, to your McDonald's, you're not going to keep going back. That's where the opportunities lie for business owners like you guys listening because you can do better that like they cannot get the best they can get consistent you cannot be consistent and also amazing like really really tasty coffee and really really

tasty burgers that's hard to do all of those. So you have to pick which one you want to do. So QA is going back to that. So QA, that consistency, that's how you do it. It's because they're listening. We have people here, our QA department.

How many people do we have in our QA department? We have five. Yeah. So they're listening to calls. They're monitoring emails. They're looking at what are the agents doing? Are they being consistent? So you have to have a script. The agents have to say the same thing every time. And so if you don't have the script, put that in place. But then now, all right, how are they doing on that script? Are they following the script? Are they being friendly? Are they being rude? Did they make mistakes on the call? You know, if you're doing an online order and you need to review the order before submitting it for purchase, like, okay, let me repeat, these are the items you're looking to buy. Because if you skip that step and maybe there's a product

they wanted that didn't get included, well, maybe there's a product they didn't want that got included but again it goes down to consistency you got to follow the same thing every time but how do you know that's happening if you're not listening to the calls if you're not following standards and uh and so are you guys feeling overwhelmed a little bit yeah is that if they're not doing that in your business you're like this is a lot of stuff to put in place but But that's how you start measuring customer, like some of the metrics around what impacts the customer experience. And that's something that we also offer. So BackBase has that for our QA team. And yeah, I would say that we're very confident that this you know PACPIS has been here for a while and QA has been also been established and they and so as

the the call takers and they and the agents so yeah we we have built something we have built a standard of you know quality you know If you don't hear a PAPIS yet, we've known for good quality of service. So that's one thing that we can get when you're at source. And aside from, we talked back about how to measure the metrics. It's all been covered by the know the qa if anything that that there you feel like there's the you want to be added to uh how we do the qa um yeah we can definitely do that for you and other companies are also they have different type of you know running their businesses like you know reduce qa a little bit like you know they want to uh fast-paced uh you know, running their businesses, like, you know, reduce QA a little bit. Like, you know, they want to fast-paced, you know, taking those bookings and orders and,

you know, stuff like that. So we can do adjustments and yeah, but it's tailored to your business. You know, when you outsource, it shouldn't be, because if you guys are listening and you're thinking about outsourcing, then it's not like a one-size-fits-all. Like, here's our QA. We're going to plug this in for every business. Even within taxi, even within e-commerce, even within virtual assisting, what we offer here, every client is different. Like, what matters to one business doesn't mean it's going to matter to another business you know for like we're we just are working with a new client that's coming in from new york

and his his uh his objective is speed you know and he doesn't even have like his script is where do you need to be picked up where do you need to be dropped off okay thanks bye like that that's his script i'm like well this is a little different. Like, but that's, what's important to him. And so like for us, it's one of the things, it's one of the phrases we say, and I repeat it to, we had a company meeting this morning with all the staff and, you know, we focus on what matters most to your business and we deliver. So if it's really, you know, we need to move through those calls faster.

Now there's a certain level where you want so fast that we can't be providing good experience. We might not be a good fit, but there may be another. So if the business needs to be focused on speed, we might not be the best fit, you know, because we're more of a customer, experienced customer. Like, we want to make it a positive experience at the end, by the end of that call. And, you know.

Yeah. That would depend on how the business works. Like, if, you know, the cost in their area, different areas, they have different cultures. different areas they have different cultures like people in their area probably don't care about the experience as long as they get the job the picking though from uh from point a to point b that's uh that's the main goal so and they're not after they're not after where the you know some you know customers that much like they know that customers are really a lot uh so yeah they they would we we they would we would adjust to that but their companies are not really keen with um you know i really came with taking care of customers and getting them giving them the best customer service

or customer experience um yeah that's uh yeah that those are the type of companies that would really want to talk to the customers with the use of QAs and all these things to make it better. So yeah, there are different types of companies. And yeah, we accept what kind of company you run. And yeah, we can make adjustments and we're here to. So again, we're talking about how can we measure this customer experience? And so we need metrics around it. And I think there's a couple other areas that we can give our listeners some ideas about on measuring and putting in place. And one might be, you know, some companies will make this even an acronym fr

fcr first call resolution now uh we have some clients that they actually do measure that they look at that and others that uh don't uh because maybe their business doesn't have a lot of people calling back so again it really depends on what matters to that business and how are we delivering but yeah like what what tell me about your experience with first call resolution what does that mean especially if these guys if you're listening and you've never heard of first call resolution um first of all first call call resolution is um is really ideal for you know for customers like i would call her for your business and uh you know get everything resolved with just one call but you know doing um i would i would like to put an example with the taxi business like people would do callbacks and you know where they're in when they are not

picked up on time and um you know it went or you know, there are things that they want to make, to do adjustments. And there's stuff, but most commonly, we don't want them to call back because they're not being picked up on what we said that they're going to be picked up, like a few minutes being there for five minutes, 10 minutes or 15 minutes um yes stuff like that so they they make a call back at the check so those are the things that we would want to avoid you know another thing that this uh one color solution would uh would really you know help is that you know it wouldn't when that customer is not gonna call back you get to entertain the other customer yeah that's a good point it takes time to talk to you know to especially when they're

calling back because that means it's not the normal um you know talk with you know about booking but it's about uh their concerns and it's it's gonna take a little longer than the usual call so yeah that's those are the things. So we need to have those right people who are really trained to be really precise and accurate with the details and getting the information, getting the right information as well. Like, you know, if they can see how long will it take, you know, giving that to the customer with the correct time.

Like, if the customer is expecting the driver to be there in 10 minutes, but, you know, the person they talked to didn't really check properly that, you know, the truth is 20 minutes. So those are making problems. So, you know, this things um the you know customer experience and uh and that's the customers yeah you know it does yeah uh an example that i could not get out of my head because i spent i won't name the company but it's a certain internet service provider the leading one in the Phoenix, that wouldn't, like they charged me extra for eight months. And I stopped calling for a while because I was so frustrated. But what happens when your issue isn't solved? You're going to call back and you're going to call back. I probably took up

like 15 hours of over eight months of trying to resolve this issue because every time I had to explain it the call got longer because I had more issues to explain they kept every the more I talked to them the more mistakes they kept making and you know it got to the point where actually I had to involve the attorney general's office and that's what finally got it resolved but like it shouldn't get to that and again we talk about small businesses versus giant companies the people listening here you guys are the small businesses you're you exist to out compete these big giant companies and so measure your first call resolution how many times does that customer have to call back to get their issues solved because if they're calling

back a bunch they're eating up resources. And like you said, those calls get longer and longer and longer. And now you got frustrated staff because now they got this person on the phone whose issue they can't solve. So they also is you have to empower your frontline staff and your customer service staff to actually solve the issues. If they don't have the ability to solve those issues, then they're going to keep calling back

and you're not going to be able to get rid of them because in my case, they owed me $800. I'm not going to let that go. I got my assistant calling them every day. Like, what's going on? How are we going to get this fixed? So that takes up a lot of resources. Imagine if I really did take 15 hours of time

between my assistant calling and me calling every week and it took an hour for months, then that's a lot of money. Yeah, and that's how you choose the company that you outsource with. There's a different level of your companies there you know then you can go with the cheaper ones when you know it's it's not really essential to you know to partner with those when if you want to grow your business like how would you represent your company if you're not

those people that you work with are not doing well? So those are also, yeah, you would consider those things. And yeah, make sure that you're very careful in choosing the right company that you want to partner with when you outsource. And measure those first call resolutions. You know, if they're repeat customers over and over and over again, something's wrong. And that could be another metric. And over and over again, something's wrong. And that could be another metric. And maybe you start out and it's higher. All right, let's focus on shrinking this down. But until you start measuring it, you're not going to be able to shrink it. And there could be an issue going on in the call center. You have no idea.

If all you're looking at is average handle time, how many calls are being handled, you're not going to see that. that wow like why the 10% of our customers repeat calling over and over again that could be 10% less staff needed to answer the phones which that becomes a big cost oh yes so first call resolution and the other one I want to talk about is post customer surveys so it it could be NPS on net promoter, or it could be just a SurveyMonkey link that goes out. But tell me, how important is that survey? And also, from your experience, how many of our clients are actually doing that?

Yeah, we have a lot because you know how important it is. Because sometimes customers will just say they're not going to do anything they're not going to send um you know feedbacks they're just you know you know walk away i'm not going to call you i'm not going to call the company again true but if you have that text message or you know checking on them how they uh how are their experiences while they're they're services? They have the chance to let you know. And if you know that somebody's not feeling good about how they were treated, you will be able to correct that and save that white customer.

So white customer is a lot. Yeah. One of the things that I've learned over time is what's the lifetime value of that customer? How many times is that person going to use your business over the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months and beyond? And is it worth it to let that go because you didn't make sure that that experience was positive? Or if you don't know that that customer was experiencing, you know, bad experience, you don't get the opportunity to fix it. Yeah.

So it's really important to ask them, like, you know, right after the service is done, you know, surveys like text messages or, you know, just send them an email just to ask them, how was your experience and what do you think should be approved and you know because in between those the whole entire process there could be some part of it that's you know messed up like you wouldn't know and you know but you know by asking them getting the survey out you would you would know what's going on and know what to correct. Yeah, absolutely. So I think we covered a lot of ideas for you guys here on ways that you could measure customer experience. So we talked about QA. We talked about first call resolution. We talked about looking at your call times. We

talked about post-call surveys or post-interaction. Maybe all they're doing is just shopping online. So after they purchase, survey goes out. Not everyone's going to fill that out, but you're going to get a percent and it's going to give you an idea on how you're doing. And then do something about it. Don't just send out the surveys and never look at the data because then what you can't take action, you can't fix problems and i i see that a lot too so start measuring those start looking at that and you know if you need a partner to help you out with that for your business if you're like i need that but it's a lot then look at outsourcing pack this is an option a lot of other options out there but think about those options think about

those metrics and again you know there could be people listening that you're just managing a call center. And so think about how you could, with the call center you're currently working with, ask about these things. Hey, what is our first call resolution? What is the, you know, how can we get a survey out to the customers after that transaction? That's what I would challenge you guys to do. So there's some homework for our listeners. And if you guys have any feedback on this episode, send us an email. Actually, email me eric at pacbiz.com, or you can put some comments on YouTube or TikTok or wherever you're listening or watching this. And let us know, because we want to be giving you guys some good

information and ways that you can improve your customer experience for your business or the call center relationship. And if we're not giving you information like that, let us know because I'm going to make this valuable for you here. Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, I hope you learned a lot with that talk and that topic. We can provide information about what's

going to happen when you do this and do that with your business. So we can talk to you about how would be outsourcing help to grow. All right. Well, Jake, again, it's always a pleasure.

Next time I will see you virtually i'll be back in phoenix so uh until then make sure that if you like what you hear today if you're listening for the first time make sure to subscribe uh you could also catch if you're listening to us on podcasts and you actually want to see our faces and talk uh us talking you could also find uh pacbiz uh outs. Look for our channel on YouTube and you could watch us as well. But until then, good luck with all that homework you have now and we'll catch you on the next episode.