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vol. 32 • No. 9 • September 2019
The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations
Defining customer personas ❱ 8 ❱ 7 The recipe for success ❱ 10 Transforming marketing strategy ❱ 14 Creating a cult brand
// 3 On the cover Customer Personas ❯❯ 8
Vol. 32 | No. 9 | September 2019 EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca
Defining personas
PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Vala Afshar Corey Kotlarz Nicole Andani Chris Kneeland Sangeeta Bhatnagar Nancy Porte Richard Boire Jonathan Porter Sara Clodman Stephen Shaw Debbi Gillotti Atif Siddiqi Jim Green LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:
302-137 Main Street North Markham ON L3P 1Y2 Phone: 905.201.6600
Excellent Execution
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Letter from Canada Post Customer Centricity Navigating outsourcing
home@dmn.ca www.dmn.ca
Direct Response ❯❯7
The recipe for success Features
DM Magazine is an independently-produced publication not affiliated in any way with any association or organized group nor with any publication produced either in Canada or the United States. Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. However unused manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by sufficient postage. Occasionally DM Magazine provides its subscriber mailing list to other companies whose product or service may be of value to readers. If you do not want to receive information this way simply send your subscriber mailing label with this notice to: Lloydmedia Inc. 302-137 Main Street North Markham ON L3P 1Y2 Canada.
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Please send all address changes and return all undeliverable copies to: Lloydmedia Inc. 302-137 Main Street North Markham ON L3P 1Y2 Canada
❯❯ 2 Changing strategies
❯❯ 3 Harnessing the hybrid workforce
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The benefits of employee retention
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Creating a cult brand
Twitter: @DMNewsCanada
EVENTS
❯❯25 Calendar September 2019
Contact Management
Transforming marketing strategy The keys to multicultural audiences
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❯❯ 4 ❯❯ 5 Staying powered…and safe
❯❯ 7 Rewriting the customer experience
❯❯ 8 Agent automation technology that works! DMN.ca ❰
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Letter to Editor
The Future of Mail Marketing
Letter from the president Dear Brendan, Thank you for publishing the “Letters to the President of Canada Post” [June 2019 DM Magazine] from Patrick Bartlett, Executive Director of the National Association of Major Mail Users; Steve Falk, President of Prime Data; and Debbie Major, President, Data Direct. I thanked each of them personally for welcoming me to my new role and for sharing their views with a healthy candour. I would now like to share three related thoughts with you and your readers. First, there is no question that sustaining direct marketing mail is of crucial importance to Canada Post, and to the marketing industry, but it is also important as a driver of results and success for the Canadian businesses, charities and institutions that rely on it.
Doug Ettinger, president and CEO of Canada Post Corporation.
By Brendan Read
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he June issue of DM Magazine published an article, “Letters to the president”, to Canada Post Corporation president and CEO Doug Ettinger. It was a compilation of open letters written by Patrick Bartlett, executive director, National Association of Major Mail Users (NAMMU), Steve Falk, president, Prime Data and Debbie Major, president, Data Direct. The letters touched on issues including rising costs, labour relations and the changes, growing complexity of and the need to sell mail marketing. Here is a letter that we received from Doug Ettinger that continues the dialogue between Canada Post and its industry customers.
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Second, that is why we are working on a mix of investments, product enhancements and continued market leadership to make things easier for our customers and partners, and to support direct marketing mail’s value proposition in the market. As we do this, we will also work closely with valued partners like NAMMU and Steve and Debbie. Third, I hear and understand the concern around the impact of last year’s labour situation on our customers and partners. I want your readers to know that I am personally invested in building a more collaborative and constructive path forward with our unions. We and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have found common ground on some important issues, and we are both working with the government appointed arbitrator to resolve the remaining ones. I believe in the power of marketing mail to drive results, and in our ability to tackle our challenges—both at Canada Post and by working with our industry partners. Yours sincerely,
Doug Ettinger President and Chief Executive Officer Canada Post
September 2019
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Word Bank D
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• Consumer Sales Leads • Geographic Data • Email Marketing • Email Verify • List Hygiene • Mailing Software • Melissa Direct
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Customer Centricity
Navigating outsourcing T
Corey Kotlarz is a 25-year call centre
outsourcing veteran and the president and founder at Outsource Consultants, a call centre advisory firm that helps companies select the right partners. He can be reached via e-mail at ckotlarz@outsource-consultants.com.
hink about your last handful of interactions with a customer support representative. You probably think you know which of those conversations featured a company employee working out of a corporate office. You’re probably wrong. In reality, more and more companies are adopting and expanding call centre outsourcing as a vital component of their customer support and sales teams, with no detectable decline in performance. As operating budgets fail to grow as quickly as the expenses they need to cover, companies are looking for lower cost alternatives in all aspects of their business. In many cases, moving certain responsibilities to an outside team can reduce overhead without sacrificing output and quality. A common misconception is that outsourcing is a strategy reserved for enormous international companies serving millions of customers. But in reality, companies of all sizes can benefit. Advances in cloud-based technology platforms and a cost-effective workforce have lowered the bar to entry considerably, often making an outsourced customer support team a superior option to an internal one. In particular, customer support and lead generation are ideally positioned for outsourcing. The stereotype of the inept, unintelligible call centre agent is laughably inaccurate in the current outsourcing market. Today’s agents are highly skilled professionals who are fluent in the languages they are supporting, backed by cutting edge technology and extensive training. And, in most cases, their services come at a considerable cost savings compared to employing agents in-house. Call centre outsourcing is a global enterprise, with different regions offering distinct strengths and advantages. Here is a look at them. Onshore outsourcing Onshore outsourcing, or domestic outsourcing, refers to the utilization of call centres within your geographic region, specifically the Canada and the U.S. While typically the most expensive option, going onshore is the next best thing to employing agents in-house. Canada is positioned to provide an exceptional value both to Canadian businesses and to American companies. In addition to a workforce skilled in several languages, current exchange rates greatly favour Canadian call centres over their neighbours to the south. As a result, the Canadian industry has seen significant investment and growth over the last several years. Domestic outsourcing is ideal for your most valuable call types, including priority customer service and escalated technical support. Offshore outsourcing Offshore outsourcing refers to call centres located in a geographic region that is relatively distant. The bulk of offshore outsourcing work is performed in the AsiaPacific region, with India and the Philippines handling the lion’s share. The call centre industry in India has largely plateaued over the past decade, making way for the Philippines
❱ DMN.ca
to exponentially expand its offerings and become the top destination for offshore outsourcing. Outsourced services are a dominant force in the Philippine economy, employing over a million residents. By far the least expensive option, offshore outsourcing provides an exceptional value for nonvoice assistance like chat or e-mail support, in addition to English-speaking voice services. Nearshore outsourcing Undoubtedly, the most exciting outsourcing region today is the nearshore: Central and South America. Nearshore outsourcing has exploded in popularity in the past five years and for good reason. ❯❯ Geography. North American companies’ staff can easily travel back and forth to their nearshore call centres without sacrificing a day and a half to doubledigit flight times, tedious layovers and exhausting time zone changes; ❯❯ Talent. In the nearshore, call centre work is viewed as a reliable and honourable career. Both governments and private enterprises have invested in training programmes and telecom infrastructure that provide a solid foundation for the industry. Perhaps most appealing, many of the agents have lived in Canada or the U.S. where they honed their English skills and became immersed in the cultures. In short, the nearshore workforce is experienced, fluent in English and highly driven; and ❯❯ Cost. North American companies that outsource their call centre efforts to a nearshore provider can see a cost savings of up to 50%. This savings is a result of a lower cost of living and moderate unemployment rates, not reduction in quality. Nearshore outsourcing is an excellent option for any type of call or service. The highly skilled agents can handle everything from outbound telemarketing to essential inbound customer support with ease. In fact, nearshore call centres frequently outperform their domestic and even in-house counterparts in performance metrics like customer satisfaction and first call resolution. Selecting the right strategy The explosion of the outsourcing industry has created countless benefits and opportunities for businesses, but it has also created complexity. A successful outsourcing strategy must carefully consider several variables including cost, performance, quality, location, services and logistics. While often reduced to three buckets—onshore, nearshore and offshore—the outsourcing industry is a collection of individual providers, each with unique benefits and shortcomings. Understanding each region’s strengths is an excellent foundation as you begin to narrow your options. Above all, know that you do not have to settle for mediocrity. Regardless of the region, there are highquality outsourced providers poised to delight your customers and provide the support and service they expect and deserve. September 2019
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Direct response
The recipe for success By Nicole Andani
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any North Americans still watch over three hours of television daily. But that amount has been declining1. More importantly, the manner in which consumers watch has dramatically changed. Traditional TV watching has now changed to “personalized content on the go”. Programming is being streamed or PVR’d and viewers are absorbing media through multiple channels beyond TV alone, such as smartphones, mobile apps, tablets, social media and Apple watches. The “yell and sell” infomercials of years gone past do not work in this day and age. The 28:30-minute product demonstration doesn’t check all the boxes for today’s consumer in terms of interaction, engagement and viewing on multimedia devices called the “second screens”. The ending of linear buying Our industry went from infomercials and short form spots and scarcity to retail domination, followed by online as independent sales platforms on their own. With many known retailers going under or shrinking, combined with Amazon being a disruptor and in many cases a competitor, it is wellknown that consumers are going online to learn about a product, service and access reviews before making a purchase. Just look at how each of us shops these days. Moreover, the order itself may
September 2019
not even be placed on Amazon and its ilk. Instead it may be made on the landing pages or sites of retailers advertising deals or to special rewards programmes and points sites.
driving that brand-related search. It’s nothing new that SEO and TV ads must work well together. One trick we’ve learned is to boost your search bids on Google Ads a few minutes after an ad or PR
Consumers want content— and ads—customized and personalized to them and their interests. That linear purchase we became so accustomed to (1-800# or web site URL for the win) is therefore no longer. Customers are increasingly going online for brands that align with their lifestyles, ethical or political standpoints and then taken on a journey to comparison shop amongst multiple platforms. SEO working with TV The higher the price point, where the investment is greater, the more engaged the consumer wants to be with the actual brand in question and those that have already purchased it. Therefore, search engine optimization (SEO), namely the Google Ads or keywords searched, are more important than ever to be found. And TV ads, including PR, are a huge part of
segment is aired or to move online ads to the top of the search engine. Media agencies are definitely challenged to seek ways to incorporate TV (DR short and long form) with multi-channel outlets like Facebook, Instagram, mobile apps and programmatic advertising in ways to attract the demographic, convert the sale and retain the customer by re-marketing to them. But the “Spray and Pray” model still widely being used by many running TV campaigns, whether traditional or DR related is no longer working. Consumers want content—and ads—customized and personalized to them and their interests. However, with new analytics available, that old philosophy will be abandoned by marketers to adopt more specific
tools about optimizing ads to get the best return on investment (ROI). The new recipe Direct Response TV (DRTV) was once a powerful platform on its own. But it cannot exist now in 2019 without affecting, driving or cross-selling to newer platforms: it’s all about the integrated campaign. DRTV works well with digital mediums and serves as a connection between “old media” and new media. We can see that TV needs digital and digital needs TV to create a better brand experience for the customer’s journey. Guthy Renker has done it best with PROACTIV in terms of acquiring the “lifetime value of the customer”. So, it boils down to the convergence of online and offline mediums, between DR + DA (digital advertising). This recipe allows the opportunity for a brand to be seen, to build, to gain exposure and generate consumer confidence and ultimate brand engagement. At that point, it’s about having a good product that tells a good story and invites the customer back again to rinse and repeat. Nicole Andani is vice president, international
sales and marketing, Northern Response (International) Ltd. (www.linkedin.com/in/ nicoleali). Nicole is a global marketing and brand consultant, writer, speaker and mentor. 1 Catherine Martellini, “Internet: Four Global Trends to Watch Out For”, CMF Trends, July 26, 2019.
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Customer Personas
Defining personas By Richard Boire
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reating customer personas is one of the core deliverables of marketing analytics. The assumption is often made that with a defined customer persona, “I can then use this information to target customers”. This is misleading and does not provide the real value of customer personas within the marketing analytics discipline. But before delving into this topic, it is important to understand from an overall perspective why analytics is used within the marketing discipline. The “why” can simply be answered by understanding its benefits, which is either incremental revenue or reduced ❱ DMN.ca
costs. But how is this achieved? If we think of the 4Ps of marketing (place, price, promotion and product), which I learned during my early academic career, marketing analytics has an impact on all of them. But in this article, I am going to emphasize two of those Ps, which are place and promotion. The first element of place essentially deals with the notion of targeting, which all experienced marketers understand as delivering the most impact in deriving either incremental revenue and/or reduced costs. Advanced analytics is now the norm as most organizations now leverage the use of data and information in the creation of sophisticated predictive models that can target customers on a
number of marketing behaviours, such as likelihood to defect, buy, etc. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is just another enabler within the marketing analytics toolkit. Direct and database marketers were early adopters of advanced analytics as they recognized the tremendous business value in using more sophisticated targeting tools. Digital marketing and the Internet simply accentuated this need for more targeting due to access to more data as well as its velocity, which speaks to the increasing real-time nature of digital data. Data is now a cornerstone in all company strategies as more organizations now recognize the need for a data strategy. Besides the old traditional media of direct
mail, telemarketing, outdoor advertising, TV/radio and print, we now have e-mails, text messages and programmatic advertising on various web platforms. Given all these channels, the need for targeting (and in particular more advanced targeting) is even more pronounced. Within the digital ecosphere, the leading tech companies now have teams of data scientists steeped with advanced degrees in computer science and engineering in their quest for the holy grail of customer marketing: which is offering the right product to the right customer at the right time. The personas dilemma But although organizations may be developing more sophisticated September 2019
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Customer Personas
Potential Communication Strategy
Communication Segments Cluster 1 ❯ ❯ ❯ ❯
Target Group ❯ ❯
High Value High Risk Defectors
Age 60+ Unengaged digitally Family is important High wealth
Cluster 2 ❯ ❯ ❯ ❯
Age 35-55 Time stressed Trying to save Household income >$100K+
Cluster 1 ❯ ❯ ❯ ❯ ❯
approaches in obtaining the ideal target customer, marketers still need to have insights or a persona of this customer on how to communicate to them: which is the second P of marketing analytics or promotion. The best way to understand this customer persona dilemma is with an example. One of my very early models with one of the Big Five banks was trying to target customers to upgrade their regular credit cards to a gold credit card model. A very top line summary of what a responder to this campaign looked like (i.e. customer persona) was that they were very heavily engaged in many different ways with the bank. The only demographic information pertained to the fact that were less likely to live in the Prairie Provinces. With the model, the bank definitely had their target customer; results of just targeting the right customers yielded over $100,000 with just one campaign. But think of how these results could have further improved if we had better insights—or in effect, a September 2019
Age 25-34 Professional Single Everything digital Income $45K-70K better customer persona—on what to say to the target customer? Yet can the bank develop effective communication strategies and tactics based only on the facts that the persona of this target market is “heavily engaged with the bank and does not live in the Prairie Provinces”? The answer is “not really” as the bank would want better information to create a more comprehensive communication strategy. So where might that information come from? If we think about the meaning of more “useful” information—that which can convey the mindset of the individual—we are looking for their demographics, psychographics and attitudes. Technology limitations The tech companies will argue that the use of AI to analyze all the previous digital text submissions of the individual can be used for better communication. And we are seeing this with our devices as the more sophisticated chat boxes can base their conversations on what we have said in the past by
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Offer products to customer that can help younger members of family Shift of insurance portfolio to other older age insurancerelated products Offer products to customer that provide job loss protection insurance Offer products that present higher investment return
Offer price-sensitive products that provide basic life insurance protection Quotes and offers should be done all online with customer
using AI. But the limitation of this technology is that it is transactionbased. In other words, it cannot really “get inside the head of the consumer”: notwithstanding its ever-increasing capability to have relevant conversations based on previous interactions. Let’s think of an example. I may have ordered a new service from a telco and the telco may use its chat box to communicate with me. If the telco had a sophisticated application the solution would uncover my satisfaction level and the specific features that led to it. But the telco’s chat application does not address the “why”. For example, why might I feel the need to pay for a premium channel that perhaps offers more biographical histories? This “why” is not likely to be fully captured, as the chat box simply knows that I am interested in this service based on previous communication interactions. Role of market research As with many things in life, something “old” begins to have more relevance. Enter the discipline of market research.
The ability to design surveys and questions that address the demographics, psychographics and attitudes of individuals has always been one of its core deliverables. The more advanced marketers recognize this fact and now combine the fields of data science and market research that provide the requisite executional tactics for their upcoming initiatives. Companies such as Environics Analytics offer a plethora of external variables related to market research information and which speak to the demographics, psychographics and attitudes of the individual based on where that customer lives. The list is comprehensive with over 22,000 variables at a postal code level and is unparalleled in its ability to gather consumer “mind” type information. So how might a marketer within the insurance sector use the information? Let’s take an example of a retention campaign that might be used by such a company. Here the marketer uses a model to target high risk defectors who are high value. They have identified the “who” or its target market. The marketer now uses external data, as mentioned above, and through analytics (i.e. cluster segmentation) they determine that there are three distinct segments, or customer personas, within this target group. See the above diagram: From the diagram, we can observe that each customer persona requires unique messages and offers. Although this is an example, it clearly demonstrates the notion that one messaging strategy to this target group is a sub-optimal process. The conclusion? Defining unique customer personas is the key in achieving success in this second P of marketing or promotion. Clearly, a strategy that uses analytics to both integrate the targeting (Place) and communication strategy (Promotion) is the real competitive advantage for organizations today. Richard Boire is president of Boire Analytics,
an organization that is a leader in data analytics with over 30 years in applied analytics solutions across virtually all industry disciplines. He can be reached at boire@boireanalytics.com or for more information, go to: www.boireanalytics.com. DMN.ca ❰
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Features
Transforming marketing strategy Niraj Dawar is a professor emeritus, marketing, at Ivey Business School, University of Western Ontario, which is one of the premier business schools in the world. He is the author of the book Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers.
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Stephen Shaw is the chief strategy officer
of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in delivering more unified customer experiences. He is also the host of a monthly podcast called Customer First Thinking. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca.
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ost marketing leaders say that driving business growth is their top priority. Judgement of their performance ultimately comes down to one measure: the year-over-year increase in brand sales. And as much as marketers acknowledge that customer experience has become the main brand differentiator, they are still mainly driven to sell more stuff to more people. Which is why marketers remain consumed with brand messaging. Today, marketers are forced to spread their ad dollars across an ever-expanding mix of media, hoping to catch customers at exactly the right moment. But audience attention is scarce, measured in seconds, not minutes. So how do marketers get off the media merry-go-round? What should their true role be? And how, in fact, do they become more customer-centric when businesses are still organized around brands and products? In his book Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers, Professor Dawar argues that “marketing, as a discipline, has been in a funk since the demise of mass marketing clipped its ability to move large numbers of customers to buy”. He sees today’s marketers as technicians “who understand data but not strategy”. He argues that product innovation is not enough; it only results in incessant leapfrogging. His advice: marketing must go from asking, “How much more of this stuff can we sell?” Niraj Dawar is a professor emeritus, to “What else do our marketing, at Ivey Business School, customers need?” University of Western Ontario. Marketing’s new role, Professor Dawar suggests, should be to “take charge of the entire customer relationship”. Marketing needs to give up its channel-based strategic planning processes in favour of delivering value at every stage of the relationship. Instead of “playing a game of R&D roulette”, as he puts it, marketers need to figure out which customer problems their brands are best positioned to solve.
Q:
You make the case in your book that competitive advantage today primarily comes from what you call “downstream” activities versus “upstream”. What do you mean? Upstream activities include sourcing of raw materials, operating the factory, production and distribution and product design and development. Downstream activities include anything related to customer relationship management.
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What accounts for this shift you describe, from upstream to downstream? There are actually three shifts. The first is related to costs. Companies used to have huge investments in their factories. The imperative was to drive as much volume as possible. But today companies can outsource production to third parties, where fixed costs become variable costs, and they pay only for what they actually purchase. Or they can automate production to minimize operational costs. The second big shift is that consumers don’t mind paying for value. They are willing to pay a premium for value-added benefits. The third is the shift in competitive advantage. It used to be that large-scale production, or patents or new product features were the key to sustainable advantage. Today, the sources of competitive advantage are in the downstream. If tomorrow Coca-Cola’s factories, its machinery and its fleet of trucks were all to go up in flames, Coca-Cola could probably obtain financing to start operations again tomorrow.
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Just on the strength of its brand.
And that brand equity only resides in the minds of consumers. It’s a downstream asset. For Coca-Cola, that asset was built over decades. Yet most businesses remain structured around the upstream.
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Product marketing still rules the enterprise.
Absolutely. Everything is product- and volumedriven. So, if we organize ourselves around the customer, the first question we need to ask is, why do our customers buy from us rather than from our competitors? Why are they coming to us? And the answers tend to be things like reputation, trust and ease of doing business.
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The inverse might be equally interesting to explore: why aren’t they buying from us? Yes. And why are they buying from our competitors? And the answers are the same: trust, ease of doing business and reputation. But our managers are still managing for the upstream. The result is a disconnect, where managers remain focused on volume measures, such as market share, in order to define success, rather than looking at things like share of wallet with customers, depth of engagement or loyalty. Customer centricity involves understanding customer needs and making sure that September 2019
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FEATURES the customer remains the focus of activities that add value and provide competitive advantage. How to put customers first
Q:
Traditionally, marketing has been fixated on measures of attention more than anything. They still have a media mindset. Putting customers first means challenging the very organizational structure and purpose of the enterprise. How does marketing make that pivot? Let’s consider an example: a construction chemical manufacturer called MasterBuilders [now owned by BASF]. They sell to construction companies which might operate hundreds of construction sites at a given time. The chemical products they sell are a commodity, and therefore price sensitive. Their products are also an additive chemical, rather than a principal chemical. They account for less than 3% of the concrete mix made at the construction site. So they are treated as an afterthought in the purchase process. However, if those chemicals are missing from that concrete mix, the entire mixer must stop. And if the mixer stops, then the construction site comes to a halt. And if that happens, it can cost up to $250,000 a day. The result is that there’s a high risk associated with not the product—not the usage of the product—but with the inventory of the product.
A:
Q: A:
In the timely supply of that product. Yes, in delivering the product to the construction sites. What MasterBuilders does is it constructs storage silos at every single construction site. It monitors those silos to make sure that the inventory levels are always full, and it makes sure it provides a guarantee to customers that they will always have the additives when they need them. So they will never run out, they will never have to stop the mixers and they will never have to stop the construction sites because of a lack of additives. And now MasterBuilders September 2019
can plan the delivery routes to minimize the cost of delivery. Whereas before construction site managers were calling MasterBuilders, saying, “Look, we need these additives on an emergency basis. We forgot to order because they were an afterthought”. The result was you had half-load trucks being shipped out at a very high cost and the shipping costs sometimes exceeded the price charged for the chemicals. Now you have planned routes, you have automatic monitoring of inventory and you can guarantee the construction site managers that they’ll never run out. It reduces the risk, it reduces stress and it provides value to the customer that you can’t necessarily provide by selling a better chemical. The overall lesson from the story: don’t just look at what you sell. Look at how customers buy and use your product.
What’s most important is to own the customer relationship.
Q: A:
Look at what customers need after the sale is
made. Exactly right. And what that does is it suddenly turns a commodity into a highly differentiated product that the customer is willing to pay for. What’s most important is to own the customer relationship. And then you ask, what else does this customer need? It doesn’t matter whether you make what the customer needs. It doesn’t matter whether you have a factory producing that product. All of that is secondary to the fact that you own the relationship with that customer. What the products must do, however, is fit into the customer’s perception of you as a supplier. In other words, the reputation you have with the
customer should be consistent with the products you’re selling them. I guess a good example is probably Amazon, which started out as a bookseller, but is now an infinity aisle for people: a one-stop source of every imaginable product you can buy. Amazon is a great example of that. And I think it’s important to remember that when Amazon started, they weren’t just selling better books: they were selling books better. The ability to sell things better is transferable across product categories. The common element is a reduction in the customer’s costs and risks of buying.
Q: A:
Which drives which?
Q:
Given the importance of brand trust and reputation, does the brand today drive the direction of a business? Or does the direction of the business drive the brand? That’s a great question. In the upstream world, your product range was determined by what your machines could make. And so, you might ask, “What else can we make, given our infrastructure, given our factories?” Today, the customer may expect not just a physical product, but financing options, insurance and all sorts of ancillary products and services which you don’t necessarily make, but you can supply as add-ons. And so the question of product range is now very much downstream driven. Once the brand has that relationship with the customer, the logical question is what else does this customer need and what will this customer accept from our brand?
A:
The marketing funk
Q:
In your book you state that marketing as a discipline is in a funk. If businesses have to make this shift to the downstream model you’re describing, how do you see marketing evolving? When marketers think of innovation, they think of better products. They think of better features. They rarely
A:
think in terms of better customer interactions. And so we don’t have customer-related metrics or incentives. Let me give you an example. If you’re selling automobiles, and a car buyer comes in and makes a purchase, you’ll know exactly what the margin on that car is. Yet we know relatively little about the value of the person who purchased the car. How profitable is their household? How many other people in that household could we sell to? How many more cars are they likely to buy over their lifetimes? VAs as new intermediaries
Q:
On the subject of selling, in your Harvard Business Review article, “Marketing in the Age of Alexa”, you make the compelling case that voice assistant (VA) platforms could be the ultimate adjudicator over consumer choice, particularly low-risk replenishment decisions: “Alexa, what’s the best cold remedy I should use?” Where does that leave brand-building? If you remember at the dawn of the Internet era, the promise was disintermediation. And here we are, 25 years later, and the most powerful players on the Internet are, in fact, intermediaries. Those intermediaries control access to consumers. And as the Internet becomes the primary interface for consumers, those interfaces are going to become very dominant, Alexa being one of them. And that will happen because the consumer gets two things out of Alexa. The first is to automate everything that is routine. Consumers purchase about 300 products on a regular basis: shampoo, dishwashing liquid, pet food, cat litter, that sort of thing. Those products are timeconsuming to purchase. Imagine if Alexa learns the regularity at which you purchase and use those products, and then delivers them to your doorstep, just as you currently get electricity and water on a subscription basis? The second is to cut through the complexity of the marketplace. Take the example of a phone plan:
A:
DMN.ca ❰
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FEATURES with so many options and features to consider, are you really sure you have the right one? Those are complex decisions that are not easy to make for most consumers. Machines like Alexa can help consumers simplify the decision process. And there won’t be more than two artificial intelligence (AI) interfaces in the market because they’re very expensive to build and maintain. [Also] once the consumer gets used to a particular AI platform, they’re unlikely to switch because a lot of the convenience depends on how much data the platform has about them, their past purchases and so on. Future for brands
Q:
Is the future for brands to own a niche segment of the population? This goes right back to what you were talking about at the beginning: know the customer so intimately you can compete against Amazon, using its scale against it.
the consumer. So, they can offer a 20% discount on the private label relative to a branded product at exactly the moment of truth. Brands won’t have that advantage.
with customers based on social value? Yes. But in today’s world, where it’s very difficult to get to the end-consumer without going through the intermediaries, it’s necessary to maintain that emotional connection over time. It is tricky because it requires brands to be very, very tuned in to social values. Otherwise it can very easily backfire.
Q:
Q:
A:
A:
The customer quest for convenience trumps all.
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Like specialized platforms do. For example, Expedia for travel or Uber for transportation and delivery versus general platforms such as Google Home or Alexa, which saves customers time and money. Again, I believe the customer quest for convenience trumps all. I believe the customer will opt for the general platform, and that it’ll be very difficult for specialized platforms to compete.
Q: A:
In that case, brands will be at the mercy of just a few intermediaries. Yes, brands will have to find a way to pay for access to customers. But brands face yet another threat: these same intermediaries have developed their own private labels. And that gives them preferential access to
Which explains the interest of brands in developing their own first-party data. On the subject of data, you also wrote an article in HBR on big data where you argued that marketers are failing to use it for customer insight. And to create customer value. Right now, marketers are primarily using big data to target customers.
Q:
Do you think the strategic play for marketers going forward is to establish an emotional brand connection
A:
The accelerating rate of change over the next few years is going to be convulsive. Five years from now, when you’re teaching your course, what are you going to be teaching? Because all the old marketing textbooks will be irrelevant. Remember, the customer remains at the centre. You always come back to that. You begin with the customer. How does the customer define value? How does customer value creation turn into sustainable competitive advantage?
Do you make decisions about your marketing operations? Are you responsible for customer acquisition, retention or loyalty? Is your department in charge of fulfilling orders or customer service?
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❱ DMN.ca
September 2019
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FEATURES
The keys to multicultural audiences By Jim Green
J
atinder Rai gets very concerned when clients think a multicultural community is homogenous. Language, values and beliefs can vary significantly within communities and neighbourhoods, explained the founder and president of Response Advertising Inc. Marketers targeting a multicultural audience need to take the time to learn about the nuances within these communities and then use those insights to inform their media, creative and marketing strategies. Rai built Response Advertising to address this challenge head-on. With offices in Toronto, Ont. and Vancouver, B.C. it steers marketers through the complex multicultural landscape of North America. “You have to make sure that you are using the right language to connect with your biggest prospective audience,” said Rai. “Building targeted ads written in traditional Chinese offers little value when the population you want to reach speaks Mandarin.”
to use data and analytics to understand the major ethnic populations in detail. With these insights, the agency believed it could help its clients engage their target audiences, regardless of whether they plan to use direct mail, digital or out-of-home ads. With help from Environics Analytics, they developed a customized acculturation tool capable of segmenting the major ethnic communities at the postal code level based on the level of cultural integration. The key to Response Advertising’s success was its knowledge that using data that classified households by immigration status, period of immigration, mother tongue and the language most often spoken at home, were imperative to understanding these communities. It developed three segments within the acculturation tool—Traditionalists, Fusion and Acculturated—for the major visible minority groups: Chinese, South Asian, West Asian, Arab, Latin, Black, Filipino, Korean, Southeast Asian and Japanese.
Understanding differences Some companies try to get around the language barrier by relying on English language media channels. While this approach may reach second and third generation Canadians, it may not produce the desired results since they sometimes speak a language other than English at home. As Rai explained, consumers are more likely to respond to messages delivered in their mother tongue. Even if the English language media reaches some of this audience, marketers targeting ethnic segments should consider connecting with first generation Canadians in their mother languages, because they represent the bulk of the population in these communities. Response Advertising needed
Strong ROI This level of separation enables Response Advertising’s to guide its clients to the right media as well as help craft messaging to engage the desired consumer groups. “The value we saw was for our clients to identify the right target market and match it to media, creative and marketing structures,” said Rai. A decade ago, identifying acculturation levels within a community with any degree of precision would not have been practical. “We are creating better efficiencies to boost ROI [return on investment],” added Rai. “It helps us as an agency, and it helps our clients.” Companies across several industries, including telecommunication, consumer packaged goods, financial,
September 2019
Jatinder Rai, founder and president of Response Advertising Inc.
Adopting a targeted approach to multicultural marketing will become even more important in the coming years. education, entertainment and auto sectors, are increasingly factoring in acculturation levels into their marketing decisions. One national brand using Response Advertising’s customized acculturation tool was able to achieve double digit growth in its multicultural base utilizing this approach, explained Rai. With the success in the Chinese and South Asian populations, Response Advertising is now turning its attention to the rapidly expanding Arabic community, which already represents about a million people in Canada. “It’s a growing opportunity,” said Rai. “Especially in a group as dynamic as theirs.” Adopting a targeted approach to multicultural marketing is important today and will become
even more important to marketers in the coming years as the population becomes more diverse. According to data from Environics Analytics, visible minorities already represent approximately 25% of the Canadian population and are projected to reach 28% by 2029. “The best way to reach them is to speak their language and appreciate their unique cultural experience and their lifestyle,” said Rai. “With the Environics Analytics’ acculturation tool, it makes what we do every day more efficient and more precise.” Jim Green is a leader in the media, agency
and telecom practice at Environics Analytics. Jatinder Rai is the founder and president of Response Advertising Inc. (jatinder@responseadvertising.ca). DMN.ca ❰
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Features
Creating a cult brand By Chris Kneeland
T
he world’s most significant businesses— known affectionately as “cult brands” given their irrational levels of fan adoration and customer affinity—typically display five key attributes. These companies: 1. Enjoy above-average brand attachment, which is a specific metric measuring audience engagement, more so than awareness or likelihood to refer. People don’t just like cult brands, they love them. 2. Benefit from above-average word of mouth. Their businesses thrive from enviable levels of advocacy and earned media. 3. Spend less on traditional advertising. They don’t rely heavily upon paid media campaigns to stimulate demand. 4. Preserve margin by discounting less. Most of their customers are willing to pay full price (and oftentimes a premium). 5. Benefit from heightened internal engagement, resulting in increased employee productivity from staff who are willing to do more with less. Why aren’t more cult-like? With such desirable benefits, why don’t more brands achieve a cult-like status? In our experience, the answer revolves around three common characteristics.
1
Executives don’t truly understand what good looks like. Too many business leaders are content with modest year-over-year sales growth or believe their job is to satisfy Wall Street’s expectations more so than their customers’. Many leaders also lack good professional role models, and as a result they incorrectly assume their peers handle similar challenges in similar ways. More leaders must be exposed to how cult brand leaders think and operate. That is the purpose behind The Gathering (www.cultgathering. com). Every year, one thousand brand leaders convene in Banff, Alta. to learn firsthand what proper ❱ DMN.ca
audience engagement looks like. They leave realizing that cult brands believe different things, and behave differently, in order to achieve remarkable results. For example, Tim Hortons became an iconic cult brand by doing more than selling coffee and donuts. It aligned itself to local communities and became a symbol for Canadian values. Lululemon reached a billion dollars in revenue while spending next to nothing on traditional media and rarely going on sale. Instead it behaved more like community organizers than corporate marketers. And the Saskatchewan Roughriders became one of the most admired sports organizations in North America by worrying as much about the fan experiences as they do about winning games. Leaders from cult brands like these happily share their stories at The Gathering and attendees are encouraged to apply the lessons learned.
2
Too many leaders act out of fear, rather than passionate ambition. Founders are usually very clear about the guiding purpose behind why their companies were created. Yet, as their businesses grow, new C-suite executives join, and eventually become several generations removed from the original founders. But these new leaders are usually more worried about defending the status quo instead of disrupting it. Cult brand leaders find ways to rally people around the brand’s original ideal. Doing so converts employees into evangelists and customers into cult followers. The best organizations don’t try to get more people to buy: they try to get more people to buy in. Whether a brand’s true purpose is to save the planet, like Lush, or to help people live their best lives, such as GoodLife Fitness or to improve marketing productivity, such as Hootsuite, cult brands understand people care more about what they stand for than what they sell. It’s always easier to settle for average than strive for excellence. But in this age of hyper-
commoditization, leaders must dare to do things that are bold enough to be noticed and pursue a brand purpose differentiated enough to matter.
3
Many leaders simply don’t know how to become cult-like. Creating advertising is a very different skillset than creating advocates. And most executives over the age of 40 have an unholy fixation on mass media and markdowns because they were taught a false paradigm called the purchase funnel. Invented in 1898, the purchase funnel remains a guiding framework informing marketing budget allocations and marketing priorities. Since Awareness and Familiarity are the first two tiers, and comprise over 60% of the funnel’s mass, many businesses prioritize those activities and spend more than half of their time and money to achieve them. But cult brands embrace a different reality. In 2010, researchers from Harvard University and McKinsey & Company discovered nothing about the purchase funnel remains true. They concluded only four buying decision moments matter and the concept of a tapering funnel is false. These four buying decision touchpoints are a circular process: get their brand into the initial consideration set, elevate the evaluation criteria, maximize the moment of purchase and engender loyalty through postpurchase actions. Perhaps most notable in the researchers’ new model is the importance of the post-purchase experience, which is missing from the original funnel. However, post-purchase activities have been core to cult-brand marketing for more than a century. For example, Cult Collective’s first client was Harley Davidson Canada. Already a beloved cult brand, it retained our firm to help it appeal to new audience segments, such as female riders and immigrants. We were pleasantly surprised to learn its global chief marketing officer
championed spending only 15% of his marketing budget on awareness and acquisition-based activities. The lion’s share (85%) was spent on getting existing customers to buy more product, more often, as well as getting riders to refer others to the brand. Attracting new riders is far easier if a current rider recommends it, rather than relying on a commercial. If you want to achieve the kind of results Harley Davidson has achieved, why not do the same type of marketing? It starts by rethinking your marketing paradigm. Next moves As audience engagement experts, Cult Collective—headquartered in Calgary, Alta. and with offices in Vancouver, B.C., Toronto, Ont. and Las Vegas, Nevada—helps brands forge more meaningful connections with key audiences. These brands understand that today’s consumers face too many choices and have too little time. Only brand leaders using all the resources at their disposal to improve consumer engagement will succeed. Rather than overinvest in mass media or markdowns, enlightened brand leaders exploit cult-brand principles and steward all aspects of the customer journey. That also includes non-marketing-related tasks like product development, service delivery, in-store and online shopping experiences, strategic alliances, corporate culture and customer care. Those who get it right will inherit the earth. The rest will drift into irrelevance. Chris Kneeland is the CEO of Cult Collective
(http://cultideas.com) His overriding professional passion involves helping brands reimagine new ways of engaging consumers. In particular, he’s committed to helping clients embrace six marketing principles he’s discovered while working with and studying the most iconic, “cult-like” brands on the planet. Chris has held marketing positions at John Deere and The Home Depot. He was also head of retail marketing at RAPP in Dallas, Texas. He has consulted extensively for brands like Harley Davidson, Canadian Tire, Zappos, Best Buy, SuperValu and Michaels. September 2019
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 3 • 2019
The
People
Issue
❯❯ Changing strategies ❯❯ Harnessing the hybrid workforce ❯❯ The benefits of employee retention ❯❯ Staying powered…and safe ❯❯ Rewriting the customer experience ❯❯ Agent automation technology that works!
People
Changing strategies By Sangeeta Bhatnagar
C
ustomer needs, technology and the evolving marketplace are changing contact centre recruitment and retention strategies for companies globally. With a strong economy and a demand for top-tiered employees to train and deliver the best customer experience, companies are expanding the pool of talent from which they draw from in order to create a fully diversified and flexible workforce. Consequently, the contact centre of today has increased diversity across age, culture, gender, learning style and location (onsite or at-home). Many new hires are now either second career or mature workers over 40 years of age. This is excellent as it provides a balance to the Gen Y (Millennials) and the Gen Z employees (those born after 1996). Some companies use a cost-per-call method with the at-home agents in order to increase efficiencies and to tap the part of the workforce who is looking for increased flexibility.
Working with technology With the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) it is important to acknowledge the positive impact to the customer and contact centre agent experience. AI and chatbots are commonly used for various simpler, repetitive functions in many companies, like account balance and reporting payments, thereby allowing the agents to focus on the more complex tasks delivering better customer experiences. In order to maximize the benefits of AI, agents need the tools and the desire to learn how to utilize technology to enhance the customer experience and solve customer issues on the first call. When searching for top talent, that desire to learn, being coachable and willingness to solve problems must be identified. Industry leader Nygel Weishar, who is director, NLP (natural language processing) & Social Media Strategy, Contact Centre Transformation, CIBC felt “there will be some subtle changes in what we look for and train to with the introduction of AI/chatbots”. “At the core, the role is relatively the same: using your available systems to gather the right information in order to provide awesome client experiences,” he told me. “What changes is the higher degree of technology interaction [and] the pace of change increases. Overall [agents] need to feel comfortable working in the AI space. Ultimately, they [AI tools] are meant to make the roles easier [and] more efficient, but the biggest consideration point for agents is the 2 | Contact management
amount of learning they need to do”. In terms of recruitment and identifying the right fit, “If an agent is very stuck in their ways, not open to working with technology and/or are not comfortable with the concept of AI would all be red flags for me,” said Weishar. “Otherwise, keep that north star of ‘motivation, intelligence and integrity’ in what you’re looking for and it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Recruitment/training impacts Contact centres no longer need to look for skills such as “listen, talk, type”. Instead, they need to also look for “listen, empathize, problem solve, type, communicate”, along with the desire to learn and willingness to adapt to work with technology. That includes being able to be trained on how to educate customers to work with the new technology in place, i.e. completing address changes or reporting a bill payment online or on automated systems. Training for our diverse workforce must also be diverse. The training must be less theoretical, and more application-based to ensure that all new hires can learn all that is required. Trainers must be cognizant that different generations learn at different paces. Here are several other key points to keep in mind. 1. Talk times will be longer as complex inquiries take longer. Agents are now handling more complex tasks. 2. Frontline agents are expected to have great skills and knowledge. Since consumers are being empowered to utilize technology and self-serve options more, they are also more educated on products and services. Consequently, they
have higher expectations prior to their interaction with an agent. 3. Different skills for different channels. Since customers have the ability to communicate across multiple channels in the contact centre, companies need to hire agents that are adaptable enough to communicate well across any channel. The best hire would be someone that can adapt to the needs of the customer and work with technology to deliver the best service. 4. Ensuring that mature workers are accepted. When training and onboarding mature workers, it is important to make them feel like they belong and that being an agent is not just for the young. The role of an agent is so critical that a company is lucky to have a professional, articulate mature individual representing them. It is important to also be aware of the mature workers learning style may be very different from a Gen Y or Gen Z as those generations grasp technology very quickly as the bulk of them are digital natives. Done right the introduction of AI and the benefits of a diverse workforce can lead to a dynamic contact centre providing great employee and customer experiences. Your organization will profit as a result. Sangeeta Bhatnagar is the founder of SB Global, Human Capital Solutions (www.sbglobal.ca), a boutique firm specializing in the talent acquisition and development of top contact centre talent. You can reach Sangeeta @sbhatnagar212.
Issue 3 • 2019
People
Harnessing the hybrid workforce By Nancy Porte
T
he concept of the 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. day is a thing of the past; if consumers have a question or a problem, they want it dealt with now. And, if this does not happen, they are more than happy to switch to the nearest competitor. These demands are having a huge impact on how organizations support the customer experience and implement workplace technology. After all, employees are also consumers, and the omnipresence of technology in our personal lives is also driving expectations of technology in the workplace. While preferences and customer journeys vary greatly, the results are clear. The demand for always-on service is very real. But are companies delivering it? According to a recent survey by Verint, in collaboration with Opinium Research, loyalty and customer retention continue to decline globally, as just 44% of consumers say they have been with their service providers for three years or more: a 39% drop since a similar benchmark survey in 2015. So, what do companies need to consider in this age of “always on” where businesses are battling for loyalty with every transaction?
The always-on digital service Adoption of digital and automated channels has been driven in equal measure by customer demand and organizations’ desire to differentiate their customer experience while managing costs. But, combined with the broader technology transformation that is taking place, these digital channels have ushered in a new era of convenience. And with it comes higher expectations. 77% percent of consumers said convenience was a major factor in choosing a service provider. Convenience particularly trumps price for over half of those 18-35 years old, with 53% saying they consider ease to engage as more important than cost when selecting service providers. The cost of not being “always-on” could be extremely high. 60% of consumers globally expect to be able to engage with an organization on any channel and at any time. This suggests that if they do not meet this expectation, brands may lose a large swath of their customer base. Yet consumers do not necessarily expect a human at the end of a phone every time they need help. Verint’s survey showed of those who felt more loyal through convenience, 83% were loyal to brands that use digital tools as the primary way to engage with them.
Don’t forget human interaction Digital channels have become a central part of the modern customer experience. But, contrary to expectations, they have not decreased the volume of interactions and calls to contact centres significantly. That’s because the importance of humans to deliver Issue 3 • 2019
personalized service is high. Despite the ever-growing importance of convenience, consumers still value the ability to engage with a person, particularly for high-value interactions. 83% of consumers said that customer experience was a major factor in selecting their service providers. However, only 45% said that digital channels provided the best overall experience. Replacing humans with technology across all channels wouldn’t just be unpopular with consumers. It would likely result in poorer business performance.
The dawn of the hybrid workforce Delivering an always-on experience that meets the high standards customers demand requires new approaches to engagement. But increasing the number of contact centre agents is not economically viable nor particularly scalable. To succeed organizations continue to turn to automated solutions such as chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI)— leveraging a combination of man and machine (the hybrid workforce)—to drive customer engagement and operational efficiencies. For example, robotic process automation (RPA) can automate guidance to agents to ensure they follow proper procedure while enforcing quality. Where agents have to navigate and update multiple applications, RPA can navigate between these applications and update multiple fields more efficiently and error-free. Finally, certain tasks can be fully automated and removed from human process, such as compiling and e-mailing form documents and surveys, which can reduce overall handle times. Employees, like contact centre agents, are increasingly onboard with the hybrid approach. The survey findings show fear and apprehension around technology at work is subsiding and there is an increased
appreciation for automation. Over 70% are in favour of using technology to replace manual, laborious tasks. And 82% percent of workers who reported high base levels of stress said they would welcome technology that would provide the right information at the right time. The majority of those polled want their employers to use more technology. 58% percent said they want their employer to use more automation, such as AI, and 55% have asked their employer for better technology to help them work more effectively. There is, not surprisingly, wide differences between age groups and their receptiveness to technology. Workers aged 35 or younger were 260% more likely to ask for technology to help them work more effectively than those older than 50, and they are 100% more likely to want their employer to leverage advanced tools such as AI. But given the value of older workers, who have had a lifetime of experience with many and varied customer issues, and customers, there needs to be education and training to show how these new tools can help them become more proficient and effective in enhancing the customer experience. By effectively harnessing technology, businesses can gain efficiencies through automating laborious tasks, provide always-on service through the latest digital channels and equip their employees with the right information at the right time. With these innovative tools, the workforce can be empowered and free to provide a more fulfilling engagement. In the always-on era, it’s the hybrid workforce that will be crucial to delivering on consumer expectations in the age of convenience. Nancy Porte is vice president, Global Customer Experience, Verint (www.verint.com).
Contact management | 3
People
The benefits of employee retention By Atif Siddiqi
W
ithin the Canadian workforce, nearly 60% of employees are hourly, according to Statistics Canada1. They span across a number of sectors, most notably service industries like retail, fast food and contact centres. Thanks to a strong economy and consumers’ appetites for services, demand for hourly workers has reached alltime highs, as replacing one hourly employee can cost more than C$3,300. Given the tight labour market and unemployment at record lows, contact centres are ramping up their efforts and the variety of benefits they offer to retain hourly employees: agents and supervisors. While higher pay has been one of the top ways employers have been attracting new employees, not every enterprise can compete just by raising wages or do so immediately. But there are other benefits that employers can offer that don’t necessarily have to lead to excessive costs and that they can implement pretty quickly.
Predictability Unpredictable schedules are a major pain for both employees and employers alike. Employers face the challenge of anticipating and forecasting needs weeks in advance, but they often end up over- and understaffed. Meanwhile, employees are often asked to fill in shifts at the last minute, leading to absenteeism or the same individuals overstretched.
It’s critical that employers retain and grow that talent. Increasing predictability for hourly employees can not only help address a company’s own staffing challenges, but also decrease professional and financial stress. Research has shown that workers who had more than two weeks’ notice of their schedules had a nearly 75% likelihood of experiencing happiness, while workers who had two days’ notice of their schedules or less only had a 65% probability of being happy2. Employers that can maintain more predictable scheduling can reduce turnover rates as high as 15%. They can also decrease income volatility for hourly workers, who often experience some paycheque variance as their schedules shift. Contact centre managers typically make schedules two weeks in advance for their hourly agents, but the variation in call volumes can lead to volatile forecasting after schedules have been set. Whether it’s changes in product releases, product recalls or credit card collections, a range of factors can impact forecast variance. Therefore, find a tool that can take into account the real4 | Contact management
time demand that you can align with employee preferences. Having mobile capabilities is a plus too; Millennials make up the vast majority of hourly employees and are used to managing their lives from their devices. Employees can easily enter their preferences from their own mobile devices while managers can quickly broadcast and fill shifts.
Flexibility Along with predictability, hourly employees often lack flexibility in both their schedules and pay. Employees can also take a hit on their pay if the hours they work fluctuate or an unexpected costly emergency occurs. These one-time occurrences can easily derail their finances. When considering a solution or strategy for making schedules more predictable, make sure that there’s a capability that allows them to increase flexibility too. Consider incorporating technology that can help match real-time demand with employee preferences so that managers can meet staffing needs while providing employees with greater flexibility and control. There are also solutions that can help employees get paid when they want or have unexpected expenses. This flexibility helps decrease employee absenteeism while helping workers meet their daily needs or emergencies. But before implementing any kind of scheduling or financial technology, make sure your provider is compliant within your locations’ regions.
Engagement Employee engagement is a frequently tossed around term and priority, but executing on it is a different story. With a mix of full-time and part-time employees, a variety of departments and higher turnover, engaging hourly employees remains a challenge for most businesses. While Canada does have higher engagement rates than other countries, a recent study from
Aon found that employee engagement in Canada actually declined in the last year3. As the interactions between contact centre agents and customers have evolved, engaged employees can make all the difference in customer service. There’s a plethora of strategies for employee engagement, but a simple way to get started is to create more transparency within the business. Set up a communication channel to keep your employees informed and provide regular company updates. Depending on the size of your company, it can be as simple as bulletin updates in the breakroom, on digital displays or for companies with multiple locations, mobile-based feeds. Developing this sense of community and awareness within the company can help forge stronger connections with employees. And updates don’t necessarily need to be company-centric: recognize a location’s team or individual employee accomplishments. Taking small steps to increase predictability and flexibility can make a major impact in helping employees balance their professional and personal lives. They play pivotal roles across industries—especially contact centres—so it’s critical that employers retain and grow that talent. Having a strategy to retain and foster your hourly workforce can lead to decreased turnover and increased productivity, ultimately boosting the bottom line. Especially as major companies are moving in this direction, incorporating changes now can help you stay ahead. Atif Siddiqi is founder and CEO of Branch (www.branchapp.com), a mobile-first technology helping hourly employees grow financially. 1 Statistics Canada, “Employment, average hourly and weekly earnings (including overtime), and average weekly hours for the industrial aggregate excluding unclassified businesses, monthly, seasonally adjusted”, report, September 13, 2019. 2 Daniel Schneider and Kristen Harknett, “Consequences of Routine Work-Schedule Instability for Worker Health and Well-Being”, American Sociological Review, February 1, 2019. 3 Aon, “Aon survey: falling employee engagement in Canada is a “wake-up call” for employers”, press release, March 13, 2018.
Issue 3 • 2019
People
Courtesy NASA
Courtesy AccuWeather
Staying powered …and safe
By Jonathan Porter
W
hen more than 60% of the world’s economy relies on service-oriented organizations1, communication is crucial, especially when severe weather threatens. A myriad of consumerfacing companies from manufacturing to retail, financial services, computer technology and to telecommunications providers now rely on contact centre-provided services to connect and stay in touch with customers. Direct communication between existing and prospective customers must remain seamless, especially when it happens at multiple touchpoints. In fact, a 2018 Serial Switchers report by NewVoiceMedia revealed that 67% of customers are willing to switch brands because of a poor customer experience (CX). Moreover, that same report indicated poor customer service is costing businesses more than $75 billion a year.
Weather risks and warnings But contact volume into contact centres can be affected by severe weather events, particularly for essential and key services such as transportation, utilities and insurance, Issue 3 • 2019
and for calls rerouted from severely impacted centres. With so much on the line with every incoming and outgoing call, e-mail and live chat message, downtime must be avoided at all costs to preserve a company’s reputation. A reputation that can be tarnished with a single misstep, as one global insurance industry software firm’s contact centre found out when employees were allegedly told to continue working despite advanced warnings about an approaching tornado. The tornado came within a mile of the contact centre and put employee lives at risk, which resulted in multiple employees filing a formal complaint against their company for not allowing them to take shelter. Having advanced warnings about approaching severe weather is critical
for making decisions regarding the safety of employees to reduce a company’s liability and ensure business continuity. And relying on generalized regional weather reports or government weather warnings doesn’t present an accurate and hyper-local picture of current or upcoming weather conditions specific to a company’s assets and operations.
Providing power Electrical power is a contact centre’s most serious resource to protect because when the power goes out, calls and contacts are not coming in, customers are not being helped and orders are not being taken. In fact, power outages result in customers being cut off from an organization or business: period. If the power were to go out, how Contact management | 5
People long could operations be sustained and are remote agents in place to seamlessly pick up calls, records and data? When blizzard-like conditions wreak chaos over an area with gusty winds, temperatures below zero and snow piling up, and when ice builds on power lines, it is hard to guarantee any power staying on. Therefore, it is critical to have generators, paired with UPS (uninterruptible power supply) units to cover shorter outages and eliminate equipment-damaging spikes and surges. Also, that the generators and UPS systems are located in safe, secure weather-protected locations. Ensuring that the generators are primed, and the UPS batteries are charged, ready to go and tested in advance when alerted about the potential for power to go out significantly reduces the potential for business disruption. And that if you have home agents to have their systems connecting to affordable UPS systems.
Contact centres need to be ready for anything. Having a site plan Every company needs a comprehensive emergency site plan, and site-specific, customized weather insights should be included in it. This plan helps to ensure that essential business functions and processes remain accessible during and after a power outage or impact from a storm. Without a plan, the impact of disaster recovery is heightened and makes contact centres more susceptible to the disruptive impact, ultimately, putting themselves at risk of losing customers, employees and business. Saving lives and minimizing damage should always be the number one priority during any severe weather incident. When creating your plan, consider features that AccuWeather’s customized solutions can provide, including: • Consultation from expert meteorologists who can help contact centres establish or upgrade emergency plans and/or provide minute-by-minute insights to support an existing plan whenever weather is a factor; • Working with existing employee notification systems (like room or desktop digital displays) to serve as activation points. Help craft the right messages to
6 | Contact management
communicate if the decision is made to quickly enact appropriate safety procedures to shelter employees when threatened by severe weather. Develop means to alert and inform evacuated employees, and those who are at home or in transit to the contact centres; • Helping to formulate necessary actions to ensure business continuity and prepare physical facilities and vital business data in the face of severe weather, such as automatic failover of contacts and data to contact and data centres well outside of the likely impact radii from the at-risk locales; • Determining actual risks and when to execute emergency plans. This avoids needless, costly shutdowns when severe weather is in the area, but will not impact the facility(ies), despite what public, wide-area warnings may indicate; • Anticipating potential power fluctuations and outages from severe weather to protect contact centres and ensure operating uptime; • Insights that can help ensure appropriate staffing levels to enhance the CX and reduce customer wait in stressful situations caused by severe weather. Plan also for automated messages and customer service options on the IVRs, web sites and social media; • Looking into the future via seasonal forecasts and advanced notice of ice, snowstorms, rain and other global weather factors to understand how clients will be impacted; and • Offering custom consultation in times of crisis with expert
meteorologists to explain the nuances of a forecast and to increase the likelihood of accurate decision-making. From severe weather alerts and imminent storm warnings, to historical and seasonal weather data and short-, medium- and long-range forecasts, customized solutions are designed to minimize risk and maximize profits. Each of these weather-driven insights have a measurable operational impact and quantifiable value based on the specific logistical and systemic needs of individual contact centres. As the storm approaches, contact centres need to be ready for anything. Having a trusted advisor such as AccuWeather is critical for contact centres to minimize business interruptions and ensure they have adequate coverage to maintain productivity: even when weather prevents agents from physically being in the office. Jonathan Porter is AccuWeather’s (www.accuweather.com) vice president of business services and general manager of Enterprise Solutions. In this key leadership role, Jon directs all aspects of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions’ continued global expansion across all industries, including retail, transportation, manufacturing, entertainment, financial, energy, emergency management and many others. He is committed to delivering the most accurate, actionable weather data, forecasts and intelligence to help business clients worldwide save lives, protect property, minimize risk and drive revenue. 1 Patricia Buckley and Rumki Majumdar, “The services powerhouse: Increasingly vital to world economic growth”, Deloitte Insights, article, July 12, 2018.
Issue 3 • 2019
People
Rewriting the customer experience By Vala Afshar
Y
ou are caller number 8. Please stay on the line and a customer service agent will be with you shortly.” A few years ago, this message was a standard part of the customer experience. However, today’s customers expect more. They not only expect callback options, but also the ability to open a chat window on your web site or send a text message or a Tweet that will receive an almost instant reply. They want you to already know who they are when they call, and most notably today, they definitely don’t want to wait. This is the new normal for the customer experience today. Customers want more than just the right product at the right price: they’re looking for the complete package. In fact, according to the third edition of Salesforce’s report, State of the Connected Customer, 80% of Canadian customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products and services. Today, providing an exceptional customer experience has become an essential component of staying competitive. Here are some tips to differentiate your experience from the rest.
users to choose from a range of educational courses that will equip them with the skills required for their roles today, and for their future growth.
Revisit impacting processes
Integrate technology and automation
“
Time spent responding to customer inquiries is one of the many processes that directly impact customer service. Others include, as examples, time spent taking orders, delivery times, web site functionality, manufacturing processes, product development, integration issues and the sales process. To help narrow down the priority processes for your customers’ experience, your customers are actually your best resource. They will be able to pinpoint the exact ones that have the biggest, most direct impact on their satisfaction. Once you have that information, brainstorm with your customer service team on ways that can make these processes faster, seamless and more customer focused.
Invest in employee training As with most things, it takes training and experience to know how to effectively provide a positive experience. That same level of training, which includes your company’s mission statement and how you want to handle different situations, should be provided across your employees regardless of their experience levels. The sessions could include lessons on: • Technology and tools; • Understanding and navigating the company web site(s); • Real-life customer service scenarios; and • Phone, Internet and face-to-face. Another best practice is to provide training refresher courses regularly to ensure employees don’t forget your processes. This doesn’t need to be onerous, either. For example, Salesforce’s Trailhead allows businesses and Issue 3 • 2019
Every customer interaction represents an opportunity to deepen the relationship. In today’s business landscape, there are plenty of technology tools that help with everything from improving customer service to automating processes. Companies that have yet to incorporate technology as part of their customer service strategies risk lagging behind their competition. Today’s customers expect 24/7 service, which is why businesses need to leverage artificial intelligence (AI). AI chatbots, for example, can operate 24 hours a day and be taught to respond to basic customer inquiries. This allows your customer service representatives to focus on the issues that require a more significant degree of attention and support. Beyond the service AI tools can facilitate, they can also help mine through massive amounts of data to help detect patterns and trends, enabling you to better predict what customers will need, and when. For example, this data can help you determine your success metrics as it relates to customer service. Some of the most popular metrics include Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES). There are many
more to choose from, so this will come down to what’s common in your industry and what ties back most directly to your business.
Success examples If you’re still unsure of where to start, take a look at other success stories for inspiration. Indochino, a Vancouver, B.C.-based, digital-first menswear business has disrupted an industry by creating a seamless shopping experience that allows customers to order completely custom garments online. Digital service applications, like chatbots and marketing automation, have spurred their success and ability to manage complex orders, while staying in close contact after an order has shipped. Beyond the service tools, Indochino also tracks key metrics like outbound interactions per hour, which has helped boost productivity by 300%. Best Buy Canada, a historically more traditional bricks-andmortar retailer, has also embraced technology to provide a more personalized experience for each of the 280 million visits in-store and online each year. Customer service tools have enabled customer service agents to have visibility into customer interactions across phone, chat and e-mail, resulting in a 10% NPS increase year-over-year since 2017. Impressively, the company’s first call resolution rate has also increased by 16% year-over-year in that same period. Every customer interaction now represents an opportunity to deepen the relationship and build brand advocacy and loyalty. Honing your customer experience is crucial to differentiating your company from your competitors. Use these tips and business examples to find the customer service strategy that’s right for you, evaluate it regularly and finally, pay attention to how the quality of your customer service impacts your sales. Vala Afshar is chief digital evangelist, Salesforce (www.salesforce.com).
Contact management | 7
People
Agent automation technology that works! By Debbi Gillotti
M
any of today’s robotic process automation (RPA) technologies claim a speedy return on investment (ROI), but the reality can be markedly different. It is not uncommon for RPA deployments to require over six months to show any substantial ROI, if at all. Customers are finding RPA technologies cumbersome to implement, difficult to maintain and a poor fit for the agent workflow. Ultimately, this makes it difficult for RPA projects to attain the ROI originally envisioned. There is a better way: agent-driven shortcuts. Agent-driven shortcuts are attended desktop automations focused on the most common tasks that contact centre agents perform each day. Some example tasks that are good candidates for automation are: • Finding and fetching customer information; • Creating and updating customer accounts/profiles; • Navigating to online tools and resources; • Researching processes and procedures; and • Annotating accounts and filling templates and forms.
How to optimize shortcuts Automating just a few of these steps can save significant time, improve compliance and enhance the customer experience. By mapping in the incremental time savings for each automation (see Illustration 1) and factoring in the number of uses by agent, it is easy to drive substantial savings in short order. For example, in a modest 100agent contact centre, implementing shortcuts that save five minutes per contact, assuming 15 contacts handled/day multiplied by 100 agents, one could save 7,500 minutes a day. Over a month that would equate to 3,750 production hours of savings (see Illustration 2).
Here’s how to make those steps.
1. Keep it simple. The key to any successful agent shortcut programme is to keep the automations as simple as possible. Those that span just a few steps are easier for agents to find and manage when actively engaged with customers. Also, by focusing on just of couple of steps in the workflow, these automations can be designed, tested and deployed in a matter of hours (not days or weeks). 2. Agent involvement. Another great positive with shortcuts is end user adoption. We have
Courtesy nVoq
Illustration 1
8 | Contact management
Issue 3 • 2019
People
Courtesy nVoq
Illustration 2
Courtesy nVoq
Illustration 3
seen that agents have much greater ownership and usage of solutions when they are actively involved in their design and creation. Also, we have seen that if the shortcuts are simple to update, adjustments can be made by the operations team making their usage—and stickiness—that much stronger.
Net result: faster ROI The bottom line is that automation simplicity, through Issue 3 • 2019
shortcuts, allows for a much faster ROI (see Illustration 3). Instead of going after a 100-step process that may take six months to design, build and then deploy (only to be used 3x a week), we look to start by automating the most common tasks that the agents perform on every call or contact.
By focusing on these incremental tasks rather than the entire workflow, agents can be up and running with new automations within a week and see tangible ROI within a few weeks. Debbi Gillotti is chief operating officer, nVoq, Inc. (www.nvoq.com).
Contact management | 9
// 24 PBI-DirectMarketMag_Ad_4.32x8_052919.pdf
1
5/29/19
FULL SERVICE OPERATIONS
Date:
July 4, 2013
AD:
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Cleanlist.ca
AM:
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F6
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Print, 4x4.325", 4C
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Carter
Resource Directory
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Data Appends Phone, Email, Demographics, Firmographics & Property
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Events Calendar September September 3-6 Content Marketing World Cleveland, Ohio www.contentmarketingworld.com September 23-25 CX Week Canada 2019 Toronto, Ont. www.customercontactweekdigital.com/ events-cxweekcanada September 24 Retail Secure Mississauga, Ont. http://rcclpconference.ca
October October 7 ACT Canada Forum Toronto, Ont. www.actcda.com/act-canada-forum/
October 16 Retail West 2019 Vancouver, B.C. http://retailwest.ca
November Nov.12-13 Customer Experience for Financial Services Toronto, Ont. www.cxfinancialservices.com November 13-21 National Philanthropy Day Victoria, B.C., Ottawa, Ont., Lethbridge, Alta., Montreal, Que., Hamilton, Ont., Winnipeg, Man., Vancouver, B.C. and Edmonton, Alta. https://afpglobal.org/afp-canada/eventscanada
November 22 CMA Awards Gala Toronto, Ont. www.the-cma.org/education-events/ awards November 25-27 AFP Congress Toronto, Ont. http://afptoronto.org/congress-2019/
December December 2-3 Data & AI Marketing Toronto Conference and Expo Toronto, Ont. https://datamarketing.ca/2019/
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// 26
Excellent Execution
What is “Publicly Available Information”? “P
Sara Clodman is vice president, public affairs
and thought leadership at the Canadian Marketing Association (www.the-cma.org). This article is adapted from a blog prepared by the CMA’s Privacy and Data Committee.
ublicly Available Information” isn’t necessarily what you think it is. We live in a digital and interconnected economy, where consumers want to benefit from increasingly intuitive products and services to match their evolving expectations. So, when individuals publicly share information about their tastes and preferences on a social platform, can Canadian organizations reach out to them with products and services tailored to their interests? Under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act or PIPEDA, Canada’s private-sector privacy law, the answer is a definite “maybe”. PIPEDA definition is limited The Act says that an organization can collect personal information without the knowledge or consent of the individual if the personal information is “publicly available”. Sounds reasonable, don’t you think? After all, the information has been shared openly in the public domain. But PIPEDA’s definition of publicly available information departs from this reasonable assumption by indicating that it only includes traditional publications like “a magazine, book or newspaper, in printed or electronic form, that is available to the public, where the individual has provided the information.” What about all the other content that is publicly available on the Internet? Like the information found on social media? The truth is that the law didn’t reflect how profoundly the world was about to change. When PIPEDA came into effect in 2004, social media platforms were not in common usage. And as individuals, we weren’t conducting ourselves in the way that we are today: consuming our news and shopping online, and publicly engaging in conversations and sharing information about our lives. By not capturing the digital transformation that was about to take place, the definition excludes this type of publicly available information from collection without consent. But PIPEDA provides some flexibility Following PIPEDA guidelines and relying on all forms of valid consent, including implied consent, one could conclude that an organization can use other kinds of publicly available information if it is collected by a third party that can prove it complied with PIPEDA guidelines. Let’s bring this to life through an example. Suppose social media company X allows all its users’ data to be publicly viewable on its site, except for those users who specifically requested that their information be private.
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In company X’s terms of service, it is clear that users’ publicly available data will be used by other parties. These terms ensure company X’s compliance with PIPEDA, including identifying purposes, obtaining consent and more. In this circumstance, company X complies with PIPEDA and can, therefore, sell that publicly available social media data to company Y. Now, for its part, company Y might be able to collect that data from company X if it also complies with PIPEDA, as long as: ❯❯ Company X has been clear about what types of companies may use its content; ❯❯ Company Y has identified purpose for collection, in its customer privacy notice as an example; ❯❯ Company Y has explained it may collect customer information indirectly from other sources, perhaps listing those sources; or ❯❯ Company Y gives the customer the opportunity to opt out of such indirect collection. The only thing company Y can’t do is collect the data from company X without relying on any form of consent. You can see from this example how important it is for companies on both sides of the arrangement to ensure they are compliant with PIPEDA, and to ensure they evaluate the collection and use of public information on a case-by-case basis. Reflecting the times While PIPEDA was written to be technology-neutral and has proved its ability to live up to that vision, even the best-worded regulation begins to age a little after almost two decades of technological transformation. The fact is that “publicly available information” is no longer limited to the phone book. The definition of publicly available information for legitimate business practices needs to be modernized. It is important to remember the protection offered through adherence to PIPEDA’s 10 principles. All organizations are responsible for being transparent about their uses of personal information, while ensuring adequate protections and adherence to fair information practices, no matter if it is publicly available or otherwise. We must retain the strengths of PIPEDA while ensuring it remains relevant for our times. The Canadian Marketing Association is actively engaged in consultations initiated by the federal government to reform PIPEDA. How the consultations proceed will depend on the priorities of the incoming government. When the government does proceed, one of the reforms we expect to see is an updated definition of “publicly available information” to reflect the realities of modern society. In the meantime, we take comfort in the fact that the current framework allows for use of public information with appropriate protection. September 2019
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