Service
industries can benefit by breaking down frontline transactions and rebuilding
them with behavioral and experiential principles. This can achieve rapid,
measurable improvements in customer satisfaction.
Companies connect to many - even millions – of encounters with customers through web sites
and call centers - and are concerned about the quality of these encounters those
encounters. And yet, the behavioral science is scarcely used in service operations.
·
In telecom business it was found
that, by giving customers some control over their service encounters by
allowing them to schedule field service visits at specific times could make
them more satisfied, even when they had to wait a week or longer.
·
Banks often disturb the customer
experience by altering the menus on ATMs or the interactive-voice-response
(IVR) systems in call centers and fail to recognize the psychological
discomfort customers experience when faced with unexpected changes.
·
Some restaurants recognize the
psychological impact of ending a service encounter on a positive note and serve
complementary desserts when the bill is being made.
·
This can be followed by call centers
but they do not. In fact many call centers place so much emphasis on “average
handling times” that they inadvertently encourage agents to end a call once its
main business is complete, leaving customers with memories of brusque
treatment.
Research has been done regarding how people form opinions
about their experiences and the principles for designing customer encounters
are :
1. Get
bad experiences over early, bring positive elements later when they are
remembered
2. Break
up pleasure but combine pain for your customers, so that the pleasant parts of
the encounter form a stronger part of their recollections.
3. Finish
strong, as the final elements of the encounter will stick in the customers’
memory.
4. Give
them choice, so they feel more in control of the encounter.
5. Let
them stick to their habits – unexpected change brings discomfort and
disorientation
A systematic approach is
needed to counteract the natural tendency of service operations to focus on the
needs of IT systems and work flows, not to mention the preferences of
employees, managers, and service providers, largely ignoring the way customers
perceive their service encounters. If companies in a broad range of service
industries—including banking, telecommunications, and retailing—applied a
rigorous approach, they would reap significant economic benefits, ranging from
reduced churn to greater cross-selling to additional customer referrals.
Case study
An
American Health Insurance company wanted
its insured lives with serious long term illnesses to manage their treatment and
lifestyles properly. They did this by making pre-scheduled regular calls from a
team of nurses who used checklist to sequence discussions with the customers. This
helped compliance and helped the company too as it reduced the overall cost of
treatment. The company then decided to
make following changes
Get bad experiences over with
early
The
team identified difficult issues—for example, the forthcoming lapse of certain
insurance benefits or the need to transfer from one facility to another and
moved them to the start of the call. It also set up a later phase built around
constructive coaching from the nurses on how to deal with the issues raised
earlier. In addition, general questions that were likely to make patients
uncomfortable (about current pain levels, smoking habits, eating patterns, and
alcohol consumption, for instance) were moved from the end of the call to the
beginning.
Break up pleasure and combine
pain
By
combining the most challenging elements of a call in its first phase, the
health-management team could focus on positive aspects during the rest of it.
The team found that patients responded very positively to coaching by nurses,
so there was an effort to ensure that coaching on multiple topics was an
explicit part of every phase of the call. A nurse might, for example, discuss
the next treatment steps, how the patient could take advantage of all covered
benefits, and ways of minimizing out-of-pocket expenses. There was also an
effort to resolve all possible issues within a call and to transfer it to other
groups only as a last resort.
Finish strongly
The
conclusion of the health-management calls was scripted to finish on a positive
note by emphasizing the tangible insurance benefits available to patients and,
where medically appropriate, the likelihood of a successful outcome to the agreed-upon
action plan. At the end of a program lasting several months, with calls taking
place every month or so, patients received a final call from their
health-management nurse. This call ended by celebrating their progress,
reviewing the goals they had met, and summarizing the positive steps they had
taken to achieve those goals.
Give customers choice
The
company made an effort to give customers explicit choice on three critical
elements: the type of treatment plan, which facilities to visit and which doctors
to see, and the timing of future calls. In each area, the nurse was guided to
tell the customer, “You have a choice; let me give you some options.” Customers
explicitly had the right to make the ultimate decision, though the outcome may
have been limited or strongly suggested—for example, “Hospital A is closest to
your home, but B is only 15 minutes further away, and it has a specialist unit
with a great track record at treating your condition.”
Let customers stick to their
habits
In
many situations, it was important for patients to change their lifestyles—say,
by eating different foods, consuming less alcohol, or exercising. To encourage
patients to make these changes while minimizing the discomfort they generated,
nurses introduced them gradually over a series of calls. Dietary changes might
be discussed initially, for instance, followed by encouragement to begin
exercise. The nurses also tried to reframe the patients’ perceptions of the
severity of the changes by comparing them with more unfavorable alternatives:
for example, “instead of eliminating your favorite foods altogether, why not
just try picking low-fat varieties next time you are in the store.” The team also worked to ensure that
the calls themselves became a positive habit for the patients. This approach
gave them the option of having the same nurse on follow-up and promoted a
consistent approach for every call, so that they became used to the encounters.
Results
The effect of the changes was significant. Patients in the
test group reported an average satisfaction level seven percentage points
higher than that of patients in the control group—for calls with the same basic
content. These patients’ satisfaction levels with the company was on average
eight percentage points higher than that of the control group. More important,
patients in the test group were on average five percentage points more likely
to say that the calls had motivated them to make positive changes in their
behavior.
Notably,
the program didn’t significantly affect the company’s costs or change key
operational metrics, such as the length of a call or the number of calls a day.
Moreover, test group nurses reported an average level of job satisfaction
higher than that of the control group nurses. Finally, the impact was rapid.
Most of the increase in the satisfaction levels of the test group patients
happened within two weeks.
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