MarketTools Blog

This week MarketTools participated in the 7th Customer Experience Management Conference here in San Francisco – and customer experience, customer satisfaction, and customer retention executives from far and wide took part in interactive sessions presented by Voice of the Customer (VOC) leaders concerning the measurement and improvement of the customer experience. 

Since MarketTools was a Platinum Sponsor of the event, I had the privilege of serving as the Conference Chairperson for the opening day of the event. The sessions examined a variety of topics important to the audience, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights:

• Jeff Radecki, Customer Experience Design Manager at Best Buy, explained that his contact centers handled more than 2 billion customer “touches” last year, and they’ve simplified their phone tree and handle most of the calls in the U.S. to improve customer satisfaction.  In the highly competitive consumer electronics retail industry, Best Buy believes that the customer experience, both in store and after purchase, is a major differentiator for them. As a result, Best Buy makes sure to train their contact center agents so well, they don’t need scripts!
• Simon Leech, Senior Vice President of Insurance Services at American General Life Companies (and a MarketTools CustomerSat customer), discussed how his team put the Voice of the Customer into action at this major insurance company.  Through customer feedback, they’ve learned that the best way to improve the customer experience isn’t always the most obvious.  For example, the company had initially planned out an initiative to expedite the process for paying death benefits, thinking that receiving payout checks faster would improve customer satisfaction.  What they learned from their customers, however, was that it was far more important to them to deal with an empathetic agent who would take the time to thoroughly explain the process.  By investing in an agent training program instead of re-engineering the payout process, American General saw a significant increase in customer satisfaction scores with much less investment.
• Kelly Harper, Director, Brand & Customer Experience for the BMO Financial Group in Canada, works hard to ensure that her employees understand how the customer experience they deliver helps to support the company’s brand attributes.  Kelly’s focus is to make sure that staff is given the right tools to deliver a great customer experience – and they devote a lot of time and resources to capturing employee feedback to help make that happen.
• Jeff Stevenson, Community Manager with Intuit’s Turbo Tax division, created the @TeamTurboTax Twitter handle to engage with customers where they are – online using social media.  They have an in-house team of 11 people who triage tweets about Turbo Tax and direct them to the in-house “experts” from various parts of the company, including customer care, product and PR, who can handle the question/issue.  During tax season, the company now helps more customers via Twitter in a single week than they did during the entire tax season a few years ago.  The ultimate benefit: customers helped through Twitter were 70% more likely to recommend TurboTax!

At the end of the first day, MarketTools hosted the conference attendees at a networking cocktail event at the event venue near Fisherman’s Wharf – and out-of-towners were lucky to enjoy some gorgeous weather as they watched the sailboats on the bay. 

Conference season is in full swing, and we’re looking forward to hearing more from VOC leaders and discussing new directions for customer experience management and enterprise feedback management technologies.  Next up: IQPC Customer Insights Week September 26 to September 29 in Chicago – we hope to see you there!