YOUR BUSINESS: David Sawicki

Corporate America: Are you listening to your customers?

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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About the Author David Sawicki is president of Voice Teleservices in New Gloucester, a call-center outsource provider. To top of story

There is a disturbing disconnect between customers and the companies with whom they do business.

There is a growing sentiment among consumers that companies do not listen to them or even want to speak to them.

Consumers cite their frustration of being forced into a bottomless pit of prompts or being rushed off the phone once they reach a live agent. When I explain to people I work in the customer-service industry, they readily complain about having their calls "outsourced to India."

While offshore representatives may be polite and intelligent, there is still a perceptible communication gap between American consumers and offshore agents. Consumers are smart, they read the papers. They know their calls are being sent overseas to save the company money. Unfortunately, consumers feel shortchanged in the process. Their calls may be answered quickly but their concerns are not. Is anyone in corporate America listening to their customers?

Customer feedback can point an organization in the right direction and produce bottom-line benefits. You need to listen to your customers and then be willing to follow their lead.

The stream of communications managed by outsource vendors holds a potential treasure trove of customer insights.

Every day companies are missing out on hundreds of good ideas as every call that comes into their business is simply processed as a one-way transaction.

Why? First, vendors are typically managed by the client's operations management team and not by the marketing group.

The goals of Operations are quite different from the goals of Marketing. Operations wants cheap, efficient processing. Marketing wants to hit sales targets and grow market share.

Second, led by the goals of Operations, the call center vendor is focused only on operational metrics.

Customer-centricity requires a methodology for soliciting and capturing qualitative customer feedback, opinions and recommendations. Customer-insight-driven strategies can produce significant and lasting hard dollar benefits in at least three ways:

n Reduce inbound call demand by addressing the root causes of call demand. Identify and fix problems upstream that generate calls. Or, redirect calls to self-service options.

n Improve the design of your products and offers based on direct customer feedback. Every call with a customer or prospect is not only a transaction that needs to be processed, it is a focus group of one. Use the live interaction to gather product improvement recommendations from your users.

n Learn about your competitors. Callers will gladly tell you about your competitors' offers. Customer calls can serve as an early warning system that your offers are overpriced or your products inferior in some way.

Tapping into this stream of insight will enable you to quickly identify, respond to competitive threats and avoid customer attrition. Learning what your competitors are up to can help you stay ahead of the competition and grow market share.

Actively listening to the voice of your customers will take a lot of the guesswork out of your next strategic planning session and improve the effectiveness of your marketing offers going forward. Are you listening?

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