In today’s highly competitive environment, businesses are faced with a difficult dilemma: they need to provide exceptional customer service: a critical differentiator that improves customer loyalty, whilst delivering a Return on Investment that satisfies the stakeholders. This paper takes you on a journey that presents the strategy we deployed in the Australian market in order to create an outstanding customer experience that drives new revenues and greater profitability.

1. Driving Customer Loyalty
In today’s highly competitive environment, businesses are faced with a difficult dilemma: they need to
provide exceptional customer service: a critical differentiator that improves customer loyalty, whilst
delivering a Return on Investment that satisfies the stakeholders.
This paper takes you on a journey that presents the strategy we deployed in the Australian market in
order to create an outstanding customer experience that drives new revenues and greater profitability.
Step 1: Data Analytics to identify Trigger Points
The first step always involves a deep dive analysis of customer satisfaction
results in order to identify the factors associated with improving end customer
satisfaction. In this example, analysis of previous customer satisfaction
survey returns showed that the primary cause of dissatisfaction was the
length of time it took to resolve customer issues, with a strong secondary
factor of the frequency of contacting the customer with updates relating to
their issue. The data demonstrated that satisfaction was negatively affected
by long resolution times and high satisfaction was achieved by the centre
instigating regular contact with the customer.
Step 2: Intervention Strategy (Roadmap)
Using the data gathered from the deep dive, we then implemented a number of systemic checks to
ensure that we were able to identify customers who were in danger of becoming dissatisfied with the
service they had received. It was important to ensure that such cases were identified before any
negative satisfaction impact was realised and this was done by the creation of an “Intervention
Strategy”. Using time as the primary factor, the Intervention Strategy identifies customer cases that are
approaching that trigger point and promotes those cases for review. When a case reaches the trigger
point, it is logged, reviewed by a senior staff member and classified in one of four categories that we
have identified. These categories reflect the departments whose input is required to resolve the issues.
Once the case has been reviewed and categorised, the case is then escalated to the appropriate
channel and tracked until resolution.
Step 3: Delivering on what you commit
The strong secondary factor that was identified was regular contact with the customer, combined with
delivering upon what we commit to. Every customer is provided a date and time when they should
expect a call from the centre and we ensure that our promises are kept. If the case has not progressed
as far as we would have anticipated, a call will still be made to the customer where we will provide an
update on where the case is at and give reassurances on when the next stages will happen.

2. Customer Comments Step 4: Surprise and Delight
The analytical phase we also identified that a
“Nothing, because they did all they could.
They were very helpful and contacted me courtesy follow up call made 7-10 days after the
when they advised they would.” issue had been resolved provided customers with
“Everything went smoothly and my concern service that they deemed above and beyond their
was dealt with very well.”
expectations. A follow up call in isolation will not
“Was excellent, she kept me informed and
magically transform an unhappy customer into a
followed me up”
very satisfied one, it can however change a
customer from being very dissatisfied to ambivalent, or from somewhat satisfied to extremely satisfied.
Using this approach, we have converted customers who may otherwise have been neither detractors
nor promoters of the brand into powerful advocates for the brand’s customer service and likewise
changing the mindset of strong critics of the brand to ambivalence. Improving satisfaction with vocal
detractors of the brand is an extremely important and often overlooked aspect of customer satisfaction.
Primary Quality Metric
Throughout the course of our work, we have ensured that the entire company is focussed on one thing
– delivering the best possible customer service. This involved a change of mindset away from the
“traditional” call centre metrics of answering times and abandonment rates to focus exclusively on the
things that improve customer satisfaction. A customer does not care whether a centre answers a call
within an “acceptable” time, but does care about the service they receive once they make contact.
Whilst service levels are an indicator of the “health” of a centre, they in themselves have no relation to
customer satisfaction. For example, take two centres, one of which achieves a result of 100% of calls
answered within their goal, versus one that answers 50% of their calls within the same target. The
centre that achieves 100% does NOT create twice as many satisfied customers as the one that only
answered 50%. This was demonstrated during this project where we have achieved our strongest ever
customer satisfaction results at the same time as distinctly average service level measurements. In
short, it is not how quickly you answer the phone; it’s what happens afterwards that is important.
Summary
Using the approach above, the centre recorded a sustained increase in customer satisfaction using Net
Promoter Scores (NPS), culminating in recent NPS results of +43.1%. This great result was driven by
the key approach of focussing on increasing every customer’s satisfaction, regardless of the outcome
of their issue. This has meant that our most recent results show that over 60% of customers who
contacted the centre rated the service that they were provided as either 9/10 or 10/10. This factor
combined with the improvements in the detractor score down to 17% (1-4/10) has delivered what we
consider to be Best In Class customer satisfaction results.
If you would like to talk to us about how we can help improve the satisfaction of your customers, please
call +61 3 8627 6100 or email enquiries@percepta.com.au. We would love to hear from you!
First published: July 2009