Customers have come to expect more from brands as more digital communications and service channels become available for marketing and customer outreach. Today, customers can interact with vendors through their call center, their web site, via chat, via email, and using social media. This puts even more pressure on companies to assess and manage customer experience (CX).

The days of using email surveys as the single feedback channel are over. CX vendors and their customers need to adopt a blend of CX data collection tools including IVR surveys, email surveys, web intercept, and other tools that are better suited to the unique diversity of service channels. In short, single survey mode strategy is dead, accurate CX measurement requires a multi-channel survey strategy.

Accurate CX Feedback Requires the Right Timing and Channel

Customer satisfaction surveys have always been a great tool for gauging brand sentiment, but with customers using so many different communications channels, customer experience tools need to map to the same channels to get a reliable measurement of CX. Customer satisfaction studies need to be refined to accommodate best-of-breed communications channels th

at match the customer’s preferred mode of interaction. In order to be accurate, CX surveys have to be timely and delivered using a channe

l that that encourages response in order to get an accurate net promoter score (NPS).

To capture accurate customer feedback you have to understand the impact of the most recent consumer interaction. Emailing customer surveys days or weeks after an engagement gives you a less than accurate picture since you have no idea what interaction the recipient is responding to. To get an accurate NPS or consumer satisfaction score, you need real-time surveys that relateengagement to the last transaction.

For this reason survey best practices always focus on modes that offer near real-time data collection following the customer journey event.  If they are on web page, an intercept is preferred.  If they are calling into a call center or scheduling field services, a voice survey is best.  Both examples reflect a convenient and timely data experience collection method.  A survey received immediately after a successful purchase, either in-store or online, will be colored by the brand experience where a survey following a customer concern issue will be colored by the service experience. To get an accurate NPS you have to balance the nature of the interaction and the timing of the survey as well as choosing the right channel.

For example, more consumers expect companies to help them find their own answers, and how quickly they find answer to their questions affects brand perception. Fifty percent of consumers believe it is important to solve their own product and service issues, and 70 percent expect the company to have the right answers available online. If a web site search fails to yield the right answers, it adversely affects CX.

The Call Center is Becoming Complaint Central

To make this more complicated, consider that call center volume has dropped 15 percent in the last three years. However, what we are seeing is an escalation of customer service issues being handled by the call center. Lost orders, product issues, service issues, and other problems are being routed to the call center. Closed-loop surveys are likely to be colored by the reason for contacting the call center as much as the quality of the response.

To assure accurate CX feedback you need to consider both the medium and the message; the preferred channels the customers choose as well as the nature of the interaction. To level the playing field and generate more accurate, reliable CX data, choose a response mechanism that suits the channel and generates higher response rates across all channels.

Having consistent benchmarking tools will help generate a more accurate NPS. We have found that companies that use a mix of best-of-breed survey tools for each channel will gain better insight, and that for call centers voice-driven IVR surveys are the best survey tool and yield a higher response rate. Thirty-two percent of consumers have singled out telephone support as the most frustrating way to interact with vendors. Being able to respond quickly with voice-driven IVR surveys can assuage some of that frustration and with real-time transcription tools those responses can be immediately optimized for a more accurate NPS.

CX vendors and brands need to determine the right mix of channels and multi-mode surveys to get valid customer response data. Mixed-mode survey strategies that include email, IVR voice surveys, telephone surveys, and other mechanisms have to be part of the mix for successful closed-loop service recovery as part of today’s multi-channel service strategy.

Call center customer experience (CX) continues to be a critical component for both customer retention and brand advocacy. To improve customer service, call center operations continue to focus on acquiring and analyzing voice data to measure the CX experience, drive agent coaching, and improve call center operations. The customer’s voice has become even more powerful in shaping CX thanks to improvements in ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) technology which is powering IVR voice surveys.

ASR is shaping CX and call center operations, providing immediate speech-to-text auto-transcriptions from IVR voice surveys that are more accurate than ever before. Using today’s ASR technology, we can collect and process data from IVR voice surveys with a base accuracy between 84 and 90 percent using an untuned model, and even greater accuracy with a tuned model. And with ASR technology, voice transcriptions are delivered in near real time, as opposed to multiple days, and the cost of auto-transcription is a fraction of manual transcription.

Consider the possibilities of having a real-time call transcript at your fingertips. Integrating auto-transcription with text analytics gives you a new layer of qualitative data that can be mined in various ways.

For example, real-time text analytics allow you to code and analyze voice data enabling post call review and closed loop escalation of call data and open-ends to respond to critical customer needs. You also have new potential applications for improving call center operations, including auto-transcribing call survey open-ends and the auto-transcription of agent customer call center recordings for training and coaching. Accurate call transcripts powered by the latest ASR platform provides a rich store of qualitative data for agent coaching and case management response review, as well as CX analytics.

It’s clear that speech-to-text has become an essential tool for every progressive call center.

The goal of every company is to improve CX, and for many customers call center interactions are the most influential experience, a defining experience within their journey. Using voice data and transcribed text together provides call center operations and CX practitioners with a new and powerful set of tools to drive innovation and improve CX.

Want to learn more about how speech-to-text technology can improve your call center operations? We recently completed a study assessing the effectiveness of voice-to-text for qualitative analysis and will be happy to discuss our results. I look forward to our discussion, contact me

When evaluating  customer experience you need to Integrate and assess both operational data (O-data) and experiential data (X-data). While many organizations are rich in operational data, few have sufficiently acquired and utilized experiential data, yet this X-data is critical to enabling today’s companies to be disproportionately rewarded for delivering great customer service. To get a true understanding of customer service and customer satisfaction, you need to insure the organization is careful collecting and report both operational and experiential data findings to see whether your operation has happy customers and you are truly competitive.

Nowhere in the organization is the need for operational and experiential data to converge than in the call center operations. Within the call center you have a plethora of operational information – number of consumer calls, wait time, abandoned calls, call resolution, length of the call, etc. However, access to experiential data is non-existent or extremely limited and often difficult to analyze. Experiential data tradition is collected through post-call surveys utilizing both open-end and closed-end data. Additionally many call centers record agent conversations, however this qualitative data asset has been extremely underutilized for CX purposes.  

X + O = More Complete Customer Picture

In most organizations, the operational and experiential data are silo’d. Call center operational data is typically used for agent training and to assess call center efficiency to improve performance. This operational data is giving insight on the past operational performance, looking backwards. Experiential data is used to assess customer experience as a means to better understand the interaction with agents and the company’s policies and products and their impact on customer loyalty and sentiment. Experiential data is the best indicator or future brand performance, thus its a forward performance indicator.  If you don’t integrate operational and experiential data in your CX assessment you are only getting part of the customer picture. As Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, explains it, the operational data tells you what happened but the experiential data tells you why it happened.

Customers have come to expect real-time response from brand interaction, and integration of operational and experiential data has to be delivered in real time to keep pace. Operational data represents the past, what transpired, but experiential data represents the behavior and sentiment of the consumer which is an indicator of future behavior. In short, how to provide the service and product experience that motivates the customers to love your brand.

Shorten Time to Customer Action

With real-time CX surveys and analytics you can bring together operational and experiential data to shorten time to customer insight and action. We are finding that voice-driven IVRs and real-time speech-to-text transcription are essential components of customer experience solutions that combine real time data collection and integration delivering immediate insight into customer experience. For example, conversations captured and analyzed in real time during call center interactions can be quickly transcribed and analyzed to gather immediate experiential data. When you add in voice-driven surveys delivered immediately following a call center transaction, you gather a complete picture of CX with actionable insight that lets you respond to issues in near real time.

As brands continue to look for ways to differentiate themselves by enhancing their customers brand experience, the marriage of operational and experiential data is going to become essential to get a true portrait of customer experience. Those brands that can integrate that data in real-time will be the winners in the race for better CX. As customer expectation grow, winning brands will have integrated data and analysis not only to understand what has happened, but to predict what their customers attitudes and needs will be to insure continued customer delight.

The term best of breed has been overused, but the concept of finding the best solution for the problem never goes out of style. When it comes to customer experience (CX) surveying, some call centers ignore the best option available and use whatever survey solution is bundled with their call contact center platforms. When you consider the potential value of reliable call center CX surveys, you want to make sure you have the best and most versatile customer survey tools available that can deliver actionable data in real time.

We are seeing a growing trend in call centers to integrate CX data collection and data processing as part of an overall enterprise customer CX management strategy. In an era of increased specialization, it’s becoming more challenging for call center vendors to deliver end-to-end solutions since call centers can no longer be siloed from other enterprise platforms. Adding CX data collection to call centers means managing every touchpoint, including assessment after the call. No vendor can excel at every aspect of customer contact, so using and end-to-end solution provider means you may be missing data collection and analysis opportunities along the way.

Call Center CX Perception is Far from Reality

There has always been a disconnect between the quality of service that call centers think they provide and what the customers true experience. According to a study by Clarabridge, 62 percent of organizations take pride in their call centers as a competitive differentiator, and 80 percent believe they offer “superior” customer service. However, 90 percent of customers say they are dissatisfied with customer service and only 8 percent characterize their call center experience as “superior.” The only way to correct this disconnect is with better CX data.

The importance of call centers as contributors to CX also continues to grow. DMG Consulting expects that the number of call center seats will increase 24 percent by 2020. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 20 percent of companies will dedicate employees to monitor and guide neural networks to augment intelligence for analytics. Many of these neural networks are being created specifically to deal with customer service and call center concerns.

Clearly, call center CX data collection, data mining, and data analytics are playing a more important role in shaping customer experience, so to gain the best results requires the best call center CX survey and data gathering tools.

Call Center Platforms Are Not Geared to CX Research

This is where adopting best-of-breed call center CX surveys and data collection tools makes a real difference. Most of the call center technology providers such as Genesys, Verint, Nice, and InContact include survey data collection as part of their overall offering, but their data collection tools and data processing are not versatile and are hard to adapt to modern CX solutions. For example, some of the most common survey shortfalls in call center platforms include:

• Inflexible solutions that don’t adapt well to custom requirements;
• Single-mode email programs regardless of the service channel medium;
• Very slow implementation;
• Lack of integration between survey data and call center operational data;
• Lack of real-time reporting and transcription for faster response;
• Costly implementation of API to enhance data integration and real-time sample management; and
• Lack of CX survey best practice consulting.

Creating and managing customer surveys in the call center is a specialized discipline that requires specific expertise and customizable tools.

Voice-driven IVRs are Ideal for Call Center CX Surveys

As experts in CX research for the call center, we continue to see the voice-driven IVR proving itself to be a versatile CX measurement tool:

• It represents the preferred survey mode for call center consumers of any age or demographic.
• It is user friendly with voice response rather than menu choices.
• It provides 100% representative of a call center consumer.
• It delivers the largest volume of open ended, qualitative data.
• It is immediately actionable – using real-time transcription, automated systems can flag concerns that need immediate call center attention.

Most importantly, using voice-driven IVR surveys gives the customer a voice they feel will be heard at the same time it provides the call center with real-time, actionable CX intelligence.

In the age of specialization, it pays to employ best-of-breed tools to measure CX in the call center. Call center CX surveys should not be an afterthought. You need to adopt a best-of-breed IVR survey strategy to get the best results.