Infinity CCS

Understanding the link between contact and customer behaviour or why conversations can tell you everything

By Duncan White, Managing Director of horizon2

Why do 80% of people who answer customer satisfaction surveys as satisfied or very satisfied then go on to churn? And if that is the case, why do we continue to measure customer satisfaction when it appears to be of little or no value? Is this a classic case of counting what can be counted rather than counting what really counts (to paraphrase Albert Einstein)?

One thing this does tell us is that customer satisfaction is not a particularly good predictor of subsequent behaviour and isn?t that what you really want to know - how customers behave, why they behave in this way and what you can do to influence them to behave in a more mutually positive way?

At the most simplistic level, there are only three ways in which a customer can create value for your organisation

1. They can buy more, pay a higher price and remain a customer for longer ? maximise their lifetime customer value
2. They can save you money by either not contacting you, contacting you less through improved first contact resolution for example, using less costly contact channels or by self serving
3. They can become advocates ? word of mouth has been shown to be the most powerful influencer of decisions

That?s it. Only three: more turnover, less cost, more customers, simple really, and the key to understanding why some people do more of these good things and some don?t lies, amongst other things, in their perception your organisation.

Behavioural psychology tells us that perception and belief are the key drivers of behaviour and the single biggest effect on a customer?s perception is the experience they have when they contact you. Given that in most organisations, 70% of contact is still via the telephone, it will come as no surprise that you need to take conversations seriously.

Analysing the link between customer contact and subsequent customer behaviour should be the key metric to analyse in order to design a successful customer contact strategy.

Analysis is the critical starting point of strategic thinking. Faced with problems, trends, or events ?..the strategic thinker dissects them into their constituent parts. Then, having discovered the significance of these constituents, he reassembles them in a way calculated to maximise his advantage. - Kenichi Ohmae, The Mind of the Strategist (1982)

The principle is simple: analyse the link between customer contact and subsequent behaviour. What happens in conversations when people buy compared to those where they don?t or where a customer leaves an agent positive feedback compared to where they don?t? Understand, dissect and reassemble and then design all your supporting processes to promote the right outcomes ? that?s the key to a fundamental, sustainable business improvement.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, why aren?t all a company?s systems, processes and procedures founded on what drives positive customer behaviour rather than what?s easier for the company? Talking to a checkout operator at a large supermarket chain recently, apparently they are now being measured on their ?scan rate? ? i.e. how quickly they scan a customers purchases and shove them down the conveyor to mount up as the hapless customer tries to pack their bags. What?s the likely effect on the customer?s perception of that store and what sort of behaviour do you think that would that drive? Is measuring AHT in a call centre really that much different?

Developing profitable relationships with your customers and building their confidence and advocacy over time, is what leads to real defendable competitive advantage now and into the future. The conversations your contact centre agents are having with your customers are the biggest single predictor of customer behaviour that you can measure ? so why aren?t you?

Duncan White is Managing Director of horizon2 - an independent analytics based customer management consultancy. Duncan has extensive commercial experience at board level in a number of industries and prior to founding horizon2 was Head of Analytics at Verint Consulting/CM Insight Ltd. Contact:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it