Executing a CEM Strategy

Hughes is director of Total Member Care at PSCU Financial Services, a credit union service organization (CUSO) that serves more than 1,500 financial institutions nationwide. As a non-profit cooperative, the company is owned by more than 600 member credit unions representing more than 14 million accounts and 1 million online bill payment subscribers. Its contact centers handle more than 17.4 million inquiries a year.

PSCU Financial Services regularly analyzes behavioral data for frontline performance issues that impact the customer experience. For instance, if a contact center manager identifies a representative who has a higher call transfer rate than his peers, it is an indication that he is having difficulty taking control of the call, he says. Another is longer hold times, which can indicate navigation issues or insufficient training.

The CEM strategy has to come from the top. You need someone who can take a step back from the day-to-day management to drive that process.

Patrick Hughes

Each member service rep’s performance is calibrated against his or her peers, similar to the traditional “grading by the curve” method, Hughes explains. Each of PSCU Financial Services’ clients have different processes so KPIs like aver-age hold time tend to vary. Grading by the curve allows the contact center leaders to identify the reps who are performing in the lowest and highest percentile for each KPI for either additional coaching or recognition.

A CEM Strategy Requires a Dedicated Leader

One challenge in implementing a CEM strategy is that the customer experience touches and crosses so many different parts of an organization. Since each department has its own performance objectives, aligning a common focus across the various groups requires an executive-level leader to drive the vision.

It has to come from the top, Hughes says. “The managers who are in the trenches are so busy focusing on the center’s occupancy rates or hitting a service level, they may lose track of the overall vision,” he says. “You need someone who can take a step back from the day-to-day management to drive that process.”

Three-quarters of the respondents in the Vovici study said that they did not have a leader who was responsible for customer experience or a chief customer officer, which may be one reason why so many organizations are finding it difficult to execute a CEM strategy, Henning says. “There are a lot of challenges associated with silos in organizations,” he says.“Every department tends to do what’s best for the department rather than what’s best for the customer overall. That’s where you need a leader who can stand above it all.”

One organization that has recognized the need for an independent leader to focus on CEM is Hartford Life, a subsidiary of The Hartford Financial Services Group. Donna Denehy is director of customer experience management for Hartford Life, where she is responsible for the implementation of the CEM strategy across the organization’s operations. At Hartford Life, the Denehy and her team set the strategy, and the operations execute on the strategy. “Having the role centralized allows us to objectively focus on customer experience, rather than expecting the people in the operation, who are dedicated to other responsibilities, to focus on it,” she says.

Create a Closed-Loop Continuous Improvement Process

At Hartford Life, the CEM strategy is “a closed loop” in which customer interactions are regularly measured and feedback is provided to the frontline employees. The process includes measurement, coaching, employee engagement and continuous improvement.

Measurement is a fundamental part of the CEM strategy, Denehy stresses.“We firmly believe that you can’t improve what you don’t measure. It is an overarching theme in everything that we do. If we roll out a new process, we need to measure it.”