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Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
As the marketplace is moving from a service economy to an experience economy, contact centers are being vaulted from the position of being considered a back-office operation that has little strategic impact to the competitive differentiator that can be a weapon in a commoditize marketplace. With this shift and the realization that the contact center has access to more customer contacts and intelligence than any other part of the enterprise, measuring and enhancing the customer experience is in high demand and is highly visible within organizations.
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Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
By Dr. Jodie Monger
As the marketplace is moving from a service economy to an experience economy, contact centers are
being vaulted from the position of being considered a back-office operation that has little strategic
impact to the competitive differentiator that can be a weapon in a commoditize marketplace. With this
shift and the realization that the contact center has access to more customer contacts and intelligence
than any other part of the enterprise, measuring and enhancing the customer experience is in high
demand and is highly visible within organizations. Throughout history, when we have seen demand
dramatically rise, more organizations offer products and services to take advantage of the new market
opportunity. Contact center surveying is now experiencing this effect.
As the inventors of real-time surveying in 1993, we have now collected over 5 million real-time post-
call surveys. This experience has served to identify four main characteristics of survey programs that
yield the greatest returns on the research investment. To assist with your program, we have summarized
our experience.
Four Keys to Maximum ROI
for Contact Center Surveying
Quality Control before Reporting Real-time is recommended
•Survey scale errors corrected •Allows for immediate alerts from
•Agent assignment errors corrected dissatisfied callers
•Vulgar comments censored •Allows for immediate alerts from
•Comments and scores validated First Contact Resolution breakdowns
•Needed to pass t he "is this fair" test •Eliminates errors inherent in delayed
1 2
•Remove errors to remove legal liability surveys
•Realize Science and Law require QC •Supported by Scientific Studies
To the Agent level Robust Survey Instrument
•Individuals as a group move center •Collect scores and comments
quality •Measure multiple concepts
•Agent level maximizes ROI •First Contact Resolution battery
•Combine with call Monitoring for •Immediate alerts from dissatisfied
360° view customers
•Customers com3 ments on individuals 4•Immediate alerts from FCR failures
have more meaning •Branching for detail
First, it is important to note that anytime you ask customers to complete surveys, a portion will make
mistakes. Some response errors are intentional and sometimes they are not. In either case, errors must
be corrected to accurately use the results from your program to properly analyze the data and hold the
right people accountable for the results. By collecting comments (explanations for scores) in your
survey and by analyzing them with the score, errors can be corrected. We explain this in greater detail
in our paper "When Customer and Agents make 'Noise' from Surveying and How to Fix It" which can be
found on our website.
Page 1
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.Agent Customer Feedback and Staying out of Court
Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
Second, linking customer feedback to a specific Agent will allow you to focus on specific performance
issues for the individual. As each front-line person can speak to as many as 60,000 customers each year,
our goal is to insure personal performance at the highest level. Much like your internal quality
monitoring program focuses on the individual, so must your survey program. Quality assurance is an
effort at the grass roots level - agent by agent, day by day, call by call.
Third, allowing customers to evaluate service immediately is the best methodology to utilize for several
reasons. When customers are asked to recall events that occurred in the past, even the recent past, it is
difficult for them to remember the specific agent attributes that created an exceptional, or not so
exceptional, service experience. This issue with recalling past events causes scores to be inaccurate and
therefore makes agent accountabilities from a delayed measurement an unfair assessment of individual
performance. Metrics' article "The Research Proves It…" sites academic references supporting this
issue and highlights the benefits of real-time surveying in contact centers.
Another critically important benefit of real-time surveying is the ability to be alerted when a customer
has experienced a dissatisfying interaction. In today's marketplace and the wide spread access to the
Internet, dissatisfied customers can communicate dissatisfaction with your company to tens of thousands
in an instant. So being alerted in real-time allows you to prevent this from occurring and is likely to
result in retaining the customer. Service failure is forgiveable if addressed properly (and with a sense of
immediacy). Real-time feedback also allows you to address and correct specific agent performance
issues to avoid perpetuating poor service attributes and to identify and propogate best practices (as
defined by the callers).
Lastly, survey construction requires knowledge, skill, and expertise. Asking too few or too many
questions or poorly constructing the questions diminishes the value of the survey program and may even
be harmful. In addition to collecting specific agent information, gathering brand and company image
questions are important and can be used to prove your contact center vital contribution to your
company's success. First contact resolution is another important concept and when included in your
survey can assist in maximizing customer satisfaction as well as contributing to cost control. To
properly measure your resolution metrics, more than one question is required. Separating problem
versus non-problem calls is key to effectively gathering the intelligence you need. Metrics' article
"First Call Resolution-It's Measurement and Impact" discusses this key metric in greater detail.
Your survey scale is also important. Many organizations use a 1-5 scale for their contact center survey,
however we do not recommend or use this scale to measure contact center performance. Research in
customer loyalty (Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, and Schlesinger) states that organizations must
perform above an 85% level (customer delight) in order to create satisfaction at a level that equates to
loyalty. When using a 1-5 scale, you may only count customers rating you a 5 (a 4 is under 85%
performance) as your delighted customers. There is supporting research that states, no matter what
survey scale you use some people will never give you a top box score. Using the 1-5 scale limits the
variability in responses available to your customers and also limits the type of analysis that can be
conducted.
Another benefit in using a larger scale like a 1-9, is that customers can easily take the survey with their
telephone keypad. Most importantly, more robust analytics can be used to fully leverage your
measurement program. Analytics will allow you to focus on the key drivers to maximize customer
experiences. When provided with key driver analysis, focus can be directed toward the attributes that
will drive delight. Without analytics, or the application of analytics incorrectly, the use of your survey
data is limited, will prevent ROI maximization and may even cause harm. This is covered in greater
Page 2
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.Agent Customer Feedback and Staying out of Court
Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
detail in our paper "Reeling in Big ROI with Analytics…"
By implementing these four key concepts into your measurement program, your research efforts will be fully
leveraged. When others have failed to include all of these keys into their measurement program, the result
has been lower performance gains by limiting their ability to implement positive change in their contact
centers thereby never reaching the status of being a strategic weapon.
Dr. Jodie Monger, is the President of Customer Relationship Metrics ( www.Metrics.net),
and the inventor of real-time surveying in contact centers. Prior to creating Metrics she
was the founding Associate Director of Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven
Quality. Her expertise is working with organizations to help capture and analyze the
Voice of their Customer.
**For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Monger, please contact Jim Rembach at
336-288-8226 or Jim.Rembach@metrics.net.
Page 3
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.
By Dr. Jodie Monger
As the marketplace is moving from a service economy to an experience economy, contact centers are
being vaulted from the position of being considered a back-office operation that has little strategic
impact to the competitive differentiator that can be a weapon in a commoditize marketplace. With this
shift and the realization that the contact center has access to more customer contacts and intelligence
than any other part of the enterprise, measuring and enhancing the customer experience is in high
demand and is highly visible within organizations. Throughout history, when we have seen demand
dramatically rise, more organizations offer products and services to take advantage of the new market
opportunity. Contact center surveying is now experiencing this effect.
As the inventors of real-time surveying in 1993, we have now collected over 5 million real-time post-
call surveys. This experience has served to identify four main characteristics of survey programs that
yield the greatest returns on the research investment. To assist with your program, we have summarized
our experience.
Four Keys to Maximum ROI
for Contact Center Surveying
Quality Control before Reporting Real-time is recommended
•Survey scale errors corrected •Allows for immediate alerts from
•Agent assignment errors corrected dissatisfied callers
•Vulgar comments censored •Allows for immediate alerts from
•Comments and scores validated First Contact Resolution breakdowns
•Needed to pass t he "is this fair" test •Eliminates errors inherent in delayed
1 2
•Remove errors to remove legal liability surveys
•Realize Science and Law require QC •Supported by Scientific Studies
To the Agent level Robust Survey Instrument
•Individuals as a group move center •Collect scores and comments
quality •Measure multiple concepts
•Agent level maximizes ROI •First Contact Resolution battery
•Combine with call Monitoring for •Immediate alerts from dissatisfied
360° view customers
•Customers com3 ments on individuals 4•Immediate alerts from FCR failures
have more meaning •Branching for detail
First, it is important to note that anytime you ask customers to complete surveys, a portion will make
mistakes. Some response errors are intentional and sometimes they are not. In either case, errors must
be corrected to accurately use the results from your program to properly analyze the data and hold the
right people accountable for the results. By collecting comments (explanations for scores) in your
survey and by analyzing them with the score, errors can be corrected. We explain this in greater detail
in our paper "When Customer and Agents make 'Noise' from Surveying and How to Fix It" which can be
found on our website.
Page 1
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.Agent Customer Feedback and Staying out of Court
Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
Second, linking customer feedback to a specific Agent will allow you to focus on specific performance
issues for the individual. As each front-line person can speak to as many as 60,000 customers each year,
our goal is to insure personal performance at the highest level. Much like your internal quality
monitoring program focuses on the individual, so must your survey program. Quality assurance is an
effort at the grass roots level - agent by agent, day by day, call by call.
Third, allowing customers to evaluate service immediately is the best methodology to utilize for several
reasons. When customers are asked to recall events that occurred in the past, even the recent past, it is
difficult for them to remember the specific agent attributes that created an exceptional, or not so
exceptional, service experience. This issue with recalling past events causes scores to be inaccurate and
therefore makes agent accountabilities from a delayed measurement an unfair assessment of individual
performance. Metrics' article "The Research Proves It…" sites academic references supporting this
issue and highlights the benefits of real-time surveying in contact centers.
Another critically important benefit of real-time surveying is the ability to be alerted when a customer
has experienced a dissatisfying interaction. In today's marketplace and the wide spread access to the
Internet, dissatisfied customers can communicate dissatisfaction with your company to tens of thousands
in an instant. So being alerted in real-time allows you to prevent this from occurring and is likely to
result in retaining the customer. Service failure is forgiveable if addressed properly (and with a sense of
immediacy). Real-time feedback also allows you to address and correct specific agent performance
issues to avoid perpetuating poor service attributes and to identify and propogate best practices (as
defined by the callers).
Lastly, survey construction requires knowledge, skill, and expertise. Asking too few or too many
questions or poorly constructing the questions diminishes the value of the survey program and may even
be harmful. In addition to collecting specific agent information, gathering brand and company image
questions are important and can be used to prove your contact center vital contribution to your
company's success. First contact resolution is another important concept and when included in your
survey can assist in maximizing customer satisfaction as well as contributing to cost control. To
properly measure your resolution metrics, more than one question is required. Separating problem
versus non-problem calls is key to effectively gathering the intelligence you need. Metrics' article
"First Call Resolution-It's Measurement and Impact" discusses this key metric in greater detail.
Your survey scale is also important. Many organizations use a 1-5 scale for their contact center survey,
however we do not recommend or use this scale to measure contact center performance. Research in
customer loyalty (Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, and Schlesinger) states that organizations must
perform above an 85% level (customer delight) in order to create satisfaction at a level that equates to
loyalty. When using a 1-5 scale, you may only count customers rating you a 5 (a 4 is under 85%
performance) as your delighted customers. There is supporting research that states, no matter what
survey scale you use some people will never give you a top box score. Using the 1-5 scale limits the
variability in responses available to your customers and also limits the type of analysis that can be
conducted.
Another benefit in using a larger scale like a 1-9, is that customers can easily take the survey with their
telephone keypad. Most importantly, more robust analytics can be used to fully leverage your
measurement program. Analytics will allow you to focus on the key drivers to maximize customer
experiences. When provided with key driver analysis, focus can be directed toward the attributes that
will drive delight. Without analytics, or the application of analytics incorrectly, the use of your survey
data is limited, will prevent ROI maximization and may even cause harm. This is covered in greater
Page 2
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.Agent Customer Feedback and Staying out of Court
Maximize your ROI on Contact Center Surveying
detail in our paper "Reeling in Big ROI with Analytics…"
By implementing these four key concepts into your measurement program, your research efforts will be fully
leveraged. When others have failed to include all of these keys into their measurement program, the result
has been lower performance gains by limiting their ability to implement positive change in their contact
centers thereby never reaching the status of being a strategic weapon.
Dr. Jodie Monger, is the President of Customer Relationship Metrics ( www.Metrics.net),
and the inventor of real-time surveying in contact centers. Prior to creating Metrics she
was the founding Associate Director of Purdue University's Center for Customer-Driven
Quality. Her expertise is working with organizations to help capture and analyze the
Voice of their Customer.
**For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Monger, please contact Jim Rembach at
336-288-8226 or Jim.Rembach@metrics.net.
Page 3
Copyright © 2005 Customer Relationship Metrics, L.C.
