Watching me, watching you, the online brand discussions

Brands today know that people are talking about them online. We know this at Teleperformance because some of the biggest companies in the world trust us to monitor the online environment. Not to snoop on anyone, it’s mainly so consumer brands can react to what their customers are saying even if the customer is not speaking to an official customer service channel.

Great examples of this are when brands jump into a Twitter conversation about their product and try to help out – especially if the conversation was negative and complaining about the product.

But we also monitor what people are saying about Teleperformance online too. We are really active on social media these days with many of our managers using Twitter and blogging too. Many people send messages to our team on social networks and we always try to engage, debate, and answer questions as they arrive.

And we rarely delete or censor anything. Our Facebook page is full of people praising the company, sharing great videos, and lots of other positive content. But now and then someone is offensive. Mostly we leave the offensive comments there because the community looks after them. That’s right, other users will often correct the offensive person themselves – we don’t always need to edit or censor our online presence.

But we do keep watching. We know what people are saying about our brand and if you are operating in any industry today that kind of information is essential for your success. How can you succeed if you don’t know what your customers really think about you? And they are out there saying it right now on the social networks.

 

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EOA Awards: Teleperformance wins 2013 CSR award!

One of the really important differences about Teleperformance compared to many other companies I have worked at is a genuine focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR).

CSR is a topic that is often managed like a marketing programme – a nice added extra, but not very critical. In Teleperformance we take a different approach. If we are going to operate successfully in 270 locations in 46 countries then we need to be an integral part of those communities – and that means more than just offering jobs.

Last week the European Outsourcing Association gave us their annual award for corporate social responsibility. We are really proud to win this award because the EOA is seen as one of the most independent trade bodies around – nobody pays to enter these awards and we were up against some giants in the service industry so this is a great award for the team.

Our Citizen of the Planet and Citizen of the World (COTW) programmes along with support for schemes such as the UN Global Compact define the way we do business. Our COTW programme has directly helped over 11.5m people since we started it in 2006 – that’s a lot of people helped by the efforts of the Teleperformance team.

It’s great to be recognised for what we are doing in the area of CSR, but this doesn’t change our strategy. We will remain focused on helping the communities and the environment in which we do business. If that means our team wins awards for their efforts above and beyond the business then thank you!

 

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The omnichannel is becoming essential for all companies

A recent IDC blog by Leslie Hand explores some of the problems faced at retailer JCP in the US. Without going into detail on the problems this company faced or the recent departure of their CEO I was excited to note that IDC considers the omnichannel to now be a fundamental part of business strategy for any customer-facing brand.

Take a look at what the IDC blog says about what they feel JCP should be doing next to resolve their present issues:

“JCP should have executed a bit more like Macy’s, competing strongly year over year, always very cognizant of meeting market expectations while fully embracing omnichannel, and making very deliberate moves towards higher levels of omnichannel engagement. Macy’s, moving very visibly towards omnichannel, started with reorganizing the business around the omnichannel customer experience and building the supporting infrastructure.”

That’s four mentions of the omnichannel in the first couple of sentences!

I have been talking extensively about the omnichannel on my blog recently because I believe that 2013 will be the tipping point for this strategy as a part of a unified plan for customer service in all organizations. IDC has been publishing research on the omnichannel for five years now – as I mentioned in my last blog.

Five years ago was probably too early as it predates the flood of social media into the customer service space. The past couple of years have seen not only seen social customer service become normal and now the omnichannel is becoming a critical part of corporate strategy – not just something for the customer service team to worry about. The omnichannel has arrived.

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Hfs: The latest for outsourcing in 2013

Hfs Research is a great place to look for pragmatic analysis of the global sourcing market and their latest annual ‘state of the outsourcing industry’ survey for 2013 has just been published.

The key findings of the new research include:

• Close to a third of high-end enterprises view Global Business Services as mission-critical
• Enterprises still very focused on achieving operational results when they outsourcing
• High-end enterprises focused on cost, mid-market focused on provider solutions
• Outsourcing performance meeting the table-stakes, but falling short in strategic areas
• ITO results are are functionally effective, but light on innovation
• Mid-market clients having the most success transforming processes and achieving innovation with ITO
• 90% of BPO initiatives highly effective at meeting operation targets; BPO outperforms ITO for cost reduction effectiveness and process standardization
• Large enterprises getting better performance from BPO than mid-sized enterprises
• Outsourcing adoption still very nascent for business processes
• Service Providers main goal is to shift enterprise focus away from cost and towards value
• Buyers don’t expect innovation from suppliers, they want stability, industry understanding and delivery excellence

My thoughts are that we are seeing a maturing of the outsourcing market. As mentioned, many companies now see global business services as a mission-critical part of what they do – it’s not some services bolted on at the lowest possible price.

The big difference between procurement and outsourcing is the ongoing relationship, the fact that an outsourced service becomes a part of your value chain and is therefore mission-critical – you are not just finding the lowest possible cost supplier for an order of 10,000 post-it note blocks.

But the HFS observation on innovation is interesting. Innovation is an oxymoron in most outsourcing contracts. Suppliers talk of how innovative they can be, yet the service buyer usually wants reliable, repeatable services that don’t change.

Where I do think innovation is important for suppliers is in the areas where they can see their business headed, but no customers have yet asked for those services yet. In customer services, the use of social media is a great example. At TP we started focusing a lot of effort on using these tools several years ago, when customers were not really using social media as a customer service tool. Now, all of them are asking how they can use these channels and we have deep experience of blogs, Twitter, and running a Facebook community.

Some time ago, Hfs Research asked whether the industry should drop the term outsourcing. I think we all probably should. Saying that buyers and suppliers are partners in service delivery might sound like a sales cliché, but it is a lot closer to the truth than to persist in the old adage that the buyer has the cash and is powerful and the supplier is subservient and does only as asked.

Supply chains are far more complex today and some of the old terminology just doesn’t do justice to the industry.

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The majority of Australian brands are now using social media

At TP we have been advocating the use of social media as a customer support channel for several years now. In fact, one of our major research themes for this year is the development of the omnichannel, where customers can reach out to brands across any channel with equal success and satisfaction.

It was therefore interesting to read this ComputerWorld article about a disconnect between how companies expect consumers to contact them and how consumers really are behaving.

This research suggests that over 70 per cent of Australian companies are now offering a customer service option via a social media channel. This sounds impressive, but the same research shows that only 31 per cent of consumers had used a social media support channel in the past three months.

The research suggests that end consumers prefer tools such as Facebook yet companies are favouring Twitter and blogs – leading to a disconnect between the social channel companies are offering and how customers actually want to use these channels to get real support.

Which brings me back to my point about the omnichannel. If a company offers social support, but then expects the consumer to have an account on a social media platform and to go and seek out a specific page or website then it is not far different from the days when they would publish a customer service email address.

The whole point of what we are seeing with the development of the omnichannel is that companies need to be agnostic. They need to find where the customers are and what they are saying – they cannot dictate which tools customers should use… remember the omnichannel should be about making it easy to reach the brand regardless of how that contact is initiated.

It is impressive to see almost three quarters of Australian companies offering social media support, but I hope they take notice of the way people are behaving. Customer service teams now need to find and engage the customer rather than just wait for a complaint to arrive.

Who created the Omnichannel?

I have been talking a lot about how 2013 is going to be the year of the omnichannel. Just take a look back at my last few blog entries – I have probably mentioned it on almost every post this year.

I think that it is important to reinforce this message because, at TP, we are always trying to stay one step ahead of the daily reality for most companies. We correctly predicted the growth in social media as a channel for reaching brands and I feel certain that this blending of channels is where things will go next.

But I was talking about the omnichannel on Twitter this week and IDC analyst Christine Bardwell said that she had used the term and written about this back in 2008! Well that is five years ago now so she really was ahead of the curve, but then I guess that is why people buy research from companies like IDC!

However, I believe that attitudes to the omnichannel have changed considerably in the past five years. If you approached major consumer brands five years ago and asked about their social customer service strategy then perhaps a few thought leaders would have considered it, but the vast majority would have just asked what you meant.

The adoption of social customer support has entirely happened within the past five years and the acceptance of this as normal has been even more recent. No major brand today would ignore social media as a way of engaging with customers.

But the omnichannel is bigger than just bolting social media support on to your existing channels. When the customer can engage with a brand using any channel and getting an equal level of support across all of them then the omnichannel will have truly arrived.

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The omni-channel demands equal service for all customer service

Back in the day when writing a letter of complaint to a customer service centre was still the best way to get a response, how quickly did you expect to get a reply from the company you reached out to? A reply within 28 days might have been considered acceptable.

But what about when you send an email? It is still quite normal to send an email to a customer service channel and to receive and automated reply thanking you for the message and suggesting that the brand will get back to you ‘within a few days’.

But is this now acceptable in a world where instant help is expected? Customer expectations are changing because of the way various channels to help are all blending into a single omni-channel.

Consider the difference between calling a helpline and tweeting a brand for some help. If a call is placed, answered immediately, and then the caller is on hold waiting for an agent for 5 or 6 minutes before the problem is dealt with in another 5 minutes then the total time to resolve the issue is about 10 minutes.

If a customer tweets the same issue it takes just a few seconds of their time even if the response does not come back for another hour – the time to respond is not seen by the customer as waiting time because they are not sitting on the telephone listening to muzak.

But this expectation that queries will be responded to in minutes and hours, rather than days, has shifted from social media enquiries to email. Email is not analogous to writing a letter any longer – customers expect a response with an answer within an hour.

The very concept of the omni-channel – all service channels blending into one – is that customers must get the same service across all channels that they might expect if they had called for help. And that means brands can no longer consider that a 24-hour response time is good enough.

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