Trust Flutters

Trust Flutters: What Price Is Trust?

Declining trust among consumers and citizens for many private and public organisations is a key trend as the economic and political situation changes. What is more, the ‘hardball’ cost cutting strategies of some organisations are likely to increase the challenge just at the time when relationships need re-building.

Organisations can achieve the best relationships with their customers by taking advantage of opportunities to adopt a collaborative, open culture, with the appropriate corporate language and the right communication strategies in place. That's the outcome of work we completed for Procter.

Changing customer behaviours

Over 75% of the organisations say that the power balance between themselves and their customers is changing

Customers have higher expectations than ever before. They are more demanding and have greater choices. People want to deal with organisations that recognise their individual needs and make life easy for them. Multichannel communication choices are highly valued – however, an honest, open, adult, professional, two-way dialogue with service providers is valued even more.

Most organisations think the media has caused unnecessary panic among consumers and citizens. Fluctuating levels of consumer trust have resulted in higher call volumes and (if available) branch visits for nearly all the financial services organisations. Managers recognise the role of trust in customer loyalty, cross-selling and word of mouth recommendations. In the public sector, citizen trust has remained more stable and is now a key performance measure for civil servants, the police and professionals in the health service.

Our research shows that organisations self-rate themselves to perform worse on public trust compared with 4 other key criteria (sales performance, customer service, low costs of operation and employee satisfaction)

Organisations are aware that the power base is changing. Their customers want increasing reassurance, are more willing to challenge organisations’ decisions, and want to negotiate with them more.

Lean service and ‘back to basics’ strategies are on the day-to-day agenda for many organisations. The recession is forcing management to focus more and more on short-term cost-cutting. Of the organisations we interviewed, 9 out of 10 were implementing efficiency and cost-cutting measures. When tough strategic decisions are made about costs, there can be dangers. Our research found some success stories as a result of improving processes and reassigning workforces. But some organisations expressed concerns that the messages and impact of cost-cutting are damaging front-line customer relationships. Others raised concerns about the impact of cost savings on critical management practices. Some thought the cost-saving techniques were negatively affecting the trust and culture in their organisations – just when it needs to be rebuilt.

Recommendations for rebuilding trust through service delivery

Our research highlights that most of the measures adopted by organisations are not addressing the unstable and costly mistrust that customers are feeling. The report identifies how organisations can improve profits by maximising internal capability and culture to improve the ‘trust' aspect of the relationship with consumers and citizens.

Our research found that during these uncertain times, a ‘Trust Flutter’ exists – trust is unstable. There is an implied lack of trust due to inconsistent messages, standards and performances. Organisations have been fast to cut costs responding to explicit financial uncertainty but are slower to address the lack of trust contained in the customer relationship. The lack of trust is not going away, and denying it exists is only going to increase the impact on the bottom line.

Top ten tips for re-building trust through Service Delivery

1	Get your house in order
2	Build capability through connecting and committing with your people
3	Keep your eye on the management ball
4	Build open, collaborative organisations
5	Develop your people to have open and professional conversations
6	Listen to your colleagues and work cross together to deliver better value
7	Delete corporate speak – get real
8	Communicate more and do it even better
9	Be honest with your people before you aim to re-build trust with your customers
10	Remember – cost-cutting can be done positively

Generation Y, Generation Now

The Emerging Buyer

Our research for Cisco and JamIP suggests that Generation Y (19-25-year-olds) have experience of buying from most industry sectors; they have quickly become experienced consumers. Even the younger Now Generation (13-18-year-olds) have a surprising amount of experience, dealing with the travel, telecoms, entertainment, retail and banking sectors.

Brand On Hold

We asked these young consumers to rate the importance of price, brand, product quality and customer service for a range of products and services. They were alert to advertisements - “You buy into the advertising” – but their top criteria were price and good service: “Price and value for money – also lasting power.” One young person explained how they buy the “…cheapest best thing for the spec. I don’t follow the brands.” Both generations shop around and want ‘transactional relationships’. They tend to be less loyal to brands and are transitory customers.

TOP CRITERIA: PRICE AND VALUE FOR MONEY- ALSO LASTING POWER

Implications For Customer Contact

1. Personal service demanded: “Talking to someone” – person-to-person contact – is important

These young generations share with others the social need to talk to people. Contrary to some beliefs, which view them as ‘silent’ or solely screen-based, they want to talk to someone for customer service. They value immediacy and simplicity: talking face-to-face and by phone works best for them.

2. Visual culture emerges: Video will go mainstream for customer contact and communication

TV and YouTube are heavily used by these generations, who show a preference for visual entertainment and information. Using video and camera functions on mobile devices and sharing photos and videos on social networking sites is a major past time. In the future, visual technologies will play a part in building much-needed customer trust with contact centre agents and customer service teams.

3. The new world of mobile service: want to access customer contact on the move

Mobile phones are the number one gadget for both generations. Their lifestyle and future work preferences indicate greater mobility, so they want businesses to redesign customer service to be configured for mobile devices: barcode readers, Interactive Video and Voice Response (IVVR), outbound and location-based services. Young consumers want to contact organisations through mobile devices whether by voice, text, email, images, video, location-based services or whatever contemporary technology channels come next.

4. Use all channels: These generations’ ability to use a range of technology means multichannel will be demanded

These two generations make more phone calls, send more texts and use instant messaging than other generations. Teenagers confess to being obsessed by technology; they move from one technology to another on a daily basis and their choice of technology changes as they go through different life stages. Different channels offer different advantages, and organisations need to offer a wide range of contact channels to meet expectations.

5. Proactivity expected: “Do stuff for me, as long as it’s not selling”

More media choices and more competitors make it harder to gain customers attention and engagement. Proactive service engages young customers. They expect that businesses will do things for them, and there is a strong interest in organisations that make life easy for them. Multi-tasking on gadgets gives them a greater ability to process and handle incoming proactive messages.

6. Transactional customers: Price is the biggest factor and both generations shop around. Generation Y are likely to job-hop too

As customers, they do not stay loyal to brands - even ones they like.

As employees, despite the best efforts of Human Resource departments, agent retention of Generation Y is, on average, low. They are not typically long-term, loyal employees. Recession may ease attrition, but it will not solve low motivation. The challenge for employers is in motivating this generation.

7. Credit crunch compromise: Open to new technologies - if they work

Businesses are responding to the credit crunch with better planning, a flexible workforce and more self-service. IVR/Voice self-service is preferred by consumers to off shoring when efficiency is the goal. Generation Y is more open to voice biometrics if it works. Cost-cutting approaches involving new technologies are more likely to succeed with these generations as they are more competent in using this kind of technology than other generations are.

8. Faster service and knowledgeable staff: Speed and knowledge are key

Both generations are impatient and expect immediate gratification. They are not particularly interested in interacting with private companies or public sector organizations, but they want speedy resolutions when they do. Knowledgeable and empowered staff impress these generations. Given them access to knowledgeable employees and tailoring technology, process and training to provide quick service delivery will satisfy these customers.

Voice Self-Service

Voice Self-Service- New Opportunities?

Consumers are making fewer but longer calls to organisations as Internet use rises, quick checks of bank balances are being made on mobile phone, products are being price scanned on to mobiles, outbound SMS messages are being sent to remind consumers of events and people are collaborating on the internet to solve product and service issues. So, what are the implications for customer service?

VSS- OPPORTUNITIES FOR ORGANISATIONS TO BALANCE COST CONTROL WITH THE NEEDS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

There is an accelerating communication channel called Voice Self-Service. This promises opportunities for organisations to balance cost control with the needs of customer service. Research we compeleted for BT Global Services and Nortel shows that Voice Self-Service is much preferred by consumers to the off-shoring of call centres. Rates of dissatisfaction with off-shored call centres are particularly high (78%) among the UK consumers in our sample.

Voice Self-Service is also chosen by the consumers as one of the favoured ways for organisations to reduce costs. Our research found that consumers are able to identify which types of interactions are suited to Voice Self-Service. This was explored across four different sectors with participants responding positively to undertaking tasks such as checking bank balances or getting store opening hours in this way. Another interesting finding is that customers appear happy to accept outbound Voice Self-Service when they consider it to be justifiable, e.g. to confirm the delivery of goods (80%) or to receive information about utility supplies (77%).

But as with all technology implementation the success of VSS will depend on organisations finding interaction applications which are appropriate. Trying to do to much too fast will likely lead to failure and customer frustration.

Fragvergence

Voice Self-Service is part of a wider phenomenon in the emerging world of customer contact: Fragvergence. (A reference to Sam Smith at BBC and others is undoubtedly due here) While organisations may hope they can force customers to use one channel because it is more efficient (like Ryanair), the reality is that more complex channel offerings will be needed to meet the demands of customers who appear to vary their approach according to purpose.

As part of the analysis, we categorized the UK and US online communities according to their attitudes to customer contact. The key findings were that while 30% preferred the phone to e-mail, 27% claimed to be equally at ease with the phone and Internet services. A further 24%, on the other hand, preferred the Internet to the phone. The remaining 19% also indicated a preference for the Internet but felt that ultimately, the method of contacting an organisation should be their choice. Consumers say that over the past 3-5 years, service and price have become more important to them when dealing with organisations while brand is less valued. This poses real challenges for organisations to extend their channel offering but also to maintain limits on costs. Organisations need to adopt a range of techniques to manage the evolving world of Fragvergence.