People, Processes, Technology, & CX, with Steven Petruk, CGS
Empowering & Enabling Employees to Delivere Great Customer Experiences
Today we’re going to talk about the continued evolution of customer experience, and how people, processes, and technology play critical roles.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome a guest with more than 20 years of experience in IT, infrastructure, and customer service, including prior roles at Toshiba and IBM: Steven Petruk, President of Global Outsourcing at CGS.
The following was transcribed from a recent interview on The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast.
[Greg Kihlström] Today we want to look at customer experience from a few different angles. So let's start with the people aspect of it. So, anyone familiar with customer experience knows just how critical this people component is to ensuring happy customers. How are factors like the Great Resignation, that we're all hearing so much about; how are factors like this affecting customers?
[Steven Petruk, CGS] Interesting question. The Great Resignation has put an enormous strain not just on the business environment and the customer service environment but really on our culture. It's also created an opportunity, and I choose to embrace the opportunity, for service companies like ours to reinvent and refocus on the customer versus the metrics. Companies, I think now I have a much better understanding that, more than ever before, how important loyalty and promoter scores can be to their overall business performance, and they can drive growth even more than focusing on how fast you answer the phone, how long is the customer on hold. Although good key indicators, they're not the end all, be all. We need not look any further than just look at the impact of the latest variant of Covid. These challenges drive more demand out of the consumer. Pre-pandemic, I was a couple hundred thousand mile a year flier. And when I would call, I would get an immediate answer. They knew who I was. And I get on now, I get a message and the whole time's 10 minutes. Does that change my perception of the company or does that change my loyalty to the company? Am I more likely to go elsewhere?
It’s problematic for all of us in the service environment to address these challenges in the year ahead. I think the adoption of self-service and remote customer service solutions, that will increase among the businesses as they tap into a host of technologies like AI, mixed reality, et cetera, using digital twin to empower customers to support their own product and immersive customer interactions, which will improve their user experience and reduce the need for costly and demanding on-site field service solutions when consumers may not want them in their house.
Yeah, and I think we'll return to that concept of self-service in a bit as well. But before that, you know, we talked about the Great Resignation affecting customers. What about the relationship between employee experience and customer experience? How would you explain that relationship and what are some ways that organizations can improve that connection?
With a change from primarily brick-and-mortar solutions to more work-from-home or blended solution work-from-home or work remotely, work from brick-and-mortar. We've had to invest in technologies, and, you know, a big portion of companies today have recruited, hired and trained people that have never been into an office. They maybe have not looked their direct manager in the eye. Their affinity or loyalty to the company may not really be established. And that in itself can profoundly impact the customer experience. You find, especially in our business, that our employees develop an affinity or even get ingrained in their customer that they support in their culture and understand that. And working in this environment has caused some difficulty and could have an impact on the customer experience.
We need to empower employees. And to empower somebody is not enough. You also have to enable. For example, in the field service, ineffective training can be frustrating for an employee if they maybe haven't had the robust training they might have had when they were in a brick-and-mortar, and that's reflected in how they handle the call. It can even put them in an unsafe environment, and it provides less than a quality customer experience when it comes to solutioning those issues. Companies have implemented innovative technology, which I touched on a few minutes ago, that improved the employee experience. In fact, at CGS we've launched an enhanced, augmented reality platform, Teamwork for AR, that allows for enterprise organizations to leverage AR for remote on-boarding and training, remote and guided repair maintenance, employee collaboration and other field services and use cases. And actually, right before this call, I got off a call around artificial intelligence. So we've implemented artificial intelligence for the recruiting and testing and on-boarding employees to align them to the culture that they're going to be supporting. That not only allows us to vet them out; it allows them to vet us. They get to see what a day in the life of a call center agent or support personnel versus, you know, when you're in brick-and-mortar, you walk in; you can see it. When you're working from home, you may not have that opportunity. So they get visibility and access to what their life would be like operating in this environment.
We've talked about the people aspects of customer experience. Now let's talk a little bit about the technology aspect and technology's role in customer experience. So a lot of talk in CX is about how companies can be hands-on and work collaboratively with customers. As you mentioned previously, a lot of customers simply want to get things done quickly and often without having to deal with people. They want that self-service or other options like that. How would you recommend that companies think about this in terms of creating great customer experience, not just quick or easy but great customer experience that involves few if any people?
That's a great question. For immediacy, and supplemental to the human experience, self-service and remote service solutions, they can enable more efficient customer services interaction that benefits the business and the consumer. Businesses can tap into mixed reality. Many of us have shopped in different sites, where you’re going to buy something, you can see what it looks like, you know, in your living room. With our augmented reality, we're able to show things, like on a point of sale, the bill's going through in 3-D, so it's a much interactive and real-life use of digital twinning and other technology for the immersion of the customer interaction. This improves their experience and it reduces the need for that costly investment. And you see field service organizations shrinking today, just because people don't want them in their house. They may not even want them in their store, depending on where we are in the peaks and valleys of Covid. So being creative around the use of self-service or self-guided or agent assistant solutions, that will lighten a load for businesses that are most adversely affected by the pandemic and subsequently the Great Resignation.
The other thing is around consumer adoption, although a bit slower, for practices and recent developments in right to repair. You know, people want to be able, to your point, they want to be able to repair things quickly. Just because you want to doesn't necessarily mean you're technically able to. You know, I'm a Harley rider. The Harley guys tell me, first thing when I bought one, was, if you fix it yourself and it's not fixed right, I'm going to charge you a lot more than if you bring it in to me to begin with, right? And there's a lot of videos; there's a lot of ways to try to do it yourself, but if you don't have the technology, getting somebody using technology like augmented reality or mixed reality, agent assist, all of those things will enhance and improve the chances of being able to fix it yourself.
You referred to some of the work that CGS is doing in AR and VR in relation to customer service and delivery, as well as other things. What is so compelling about these technologies, and how can they really enhance the customer experience?
So one of the ways that we're using it that's more consumer-facing is, on our side, around consumer-facing companies, is connecting them and supporting their customers through augmented reality, where the expert guides the user. So let me back up. The customer calls in, has a problem. We can send them a link via text. They can access it via URL. And we can see what they see, right? So we see there what's like virtually being in the room with them. We can guide them; we can point screwdrivers to screws. We can show USB Ports. We can walk them through that solution and help them more quickly and efficiently fix their problem. From a manufacture perspective, it's a benefit because their cost to service is less. And with a major consumer appliance company that we're working with, that we've implemented this, it's creating creating an “I'm in the room with you” type guide through how to “How do I,” where you turn, replace, et cetera, on experience for the consumer. And the approach has driven a 25 percent decrease to product replacement costs. And more importantly, and I do mean more importantly, it's increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, net the customer increased product availability versus downtime, and the product and their experience and loyalty to the manufacturer is going to be far greater.
Last year we researched consumer sentiment related to self-service repairs and assembly of household items, around appliances, technologies, in-home media devices, et cetera. And we found that 71 percent of consumers were fixing items on their own, partly resulting from the pandemic but also because of the inconvenience of returning an item for repair and long wait times, calling in; you know, if you were looking for remote support, it could be problematic at times, depending when it was. Many felt that they could handle the fixes on their own, like me and my Harley, and the 30 percent said that they were aware and in favor of a right to repair the legislation. Also, 43 percent of those surveyed responding stated that they would be interested in using technology where an expert guided them through the steps, gave them a sense of comfort that they were doing it correctly, and either do it via URL or through their smartphone or tablet.
So let’s switch gears a little bit to social media. You know, it's been around nearly 20 years now. It's funny to think that. But its relationship to business seems to continue to evolve. How is social media's role evolving in relationship to the customer experience?
So this is the great net challenge. Social media’s a great thing. It can help you or it can harm you, right? All it takes is one tweet or post or something about a company that can really erode that company's opportunity to grow. Consumers are more and more turning to social media. It is the fastest growing service channel amongst our customers. And it's an interesting dynamic that they're building in communities where, you know, people join a community and it really enables a self-help solution, and they get, you know, influencers in the communities to drive them to solutions. But it also gives them an opportunity to connect to a live agent via chat, email, and in some cases voice. I really think that, you know, over time you're going to see consumers bypass traditional methods. Instead I'll look for them to go to Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Whatsapp, Apple Business Messenger, Google Business Messenger, right? We're really seeing a huge growth in that space. And it's an interesting dynamic how they get there, and, you know, we're a society that is becoming more influenced by influencers, right? People that profess to be the SMEs, we believe them and we take their direction. And, you know, many of us believe and inspect, and we’ll go check things out on our own to make sure we're getting the right advice. But consumers do have an access to that media and they can go do it.
There's over a billion users on TikTok. It's important for brands to promptly curate and monitor that content that's going on in there, and many of our customers that are very active in social, you know, they have people monitoring. And auto manufacturer, I heard the other day that they'd hired 25 ambassadors and they're giving them, you know, a vehicle for the year and use of a private helicopter once a week, or once a month, to help them monitor what's going on in social media because it's become such a large portion of the service environment.
So, in terms of measuring all of this, how should organizations measure technology's effectiveness in improving the customer experience? Are there ways to do this beyond, you know, we’ve got Net Promoter Score; we’ve got CSAT, or customer satisfaction. Are there ways to do this beyond those kind of go-to metrics, or, in other words, how do organizations know that they're using the right technology to serve their customers?
I personally believe that there's no more a measurement than customer experience. You can look at all the other things; you can look at ASA, handle time, hold time, First Time Fix Rates, all of that. But it comes down to customer experience. That said, I think that each of us have a little different vision of what makes us loyal, what our experience is like. And it's up to us to enable our consumers, our customers, to be able to get the medium that they choose, right? You know, the comment I made about employees earlier, it's not just about empowering them, if you don't enable them. If we're going to empower our consumers, our customers, we have to enable them. And that's going to come through the implementation of different technologies, different support mechanisms, what we're doing with Teamwork AR. At the end of the day, the ASA may deliver a good CSAT score, but if the call ends there, that's not necessarily going to generate customer loyalty, which we've shown in surveys is what really drives repeat buys and increased revenue profit.
Listen to the Episode
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About the Guest
Steven Petruk: Throughout my 20+ year career, I have managed teams on the forefront of information technology, infrastructure, and customer service innovation.
At CGS, I lead the company’s highly experienced executive and global delivery team in the development and implementation of technology-based outsourced solutions. Prior to my time at CGS, I served as Senior Vice President/Worldwide General Manager of Managed Services at Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions and spent 17 years at IBM in numerous leadership and executive roles. As IBM’s Vice President of Enterprise Services, I was responsible for a number of product lines across the U.S.
I am highly passionate about delivering high-quality solutions to clients looking to position their teams on the forefront of digital transformation by empowering them with tools to increase productivity, operational excellence, revenue, and extraordinary business growth.
Most recently, I was proud to work with CGS on Teamwork AR™ - an augmented reality tool poised to revolutionize field service teams across the industry spectrum. With the power to make everyone a genius, this collaborative technology allows users to connect from any device, anywhere in the world. Powered by fully customizable high-quality content, Teamwork AR™ has diverse use cases - from enhancing training to elevating remote support and interactive sales engagement across a range of field services industries - from manufacturing to remote assistance and everything in between.
About the Host, Greg Kihlström
Greg Kihlstrom is a best selling author, speaker, and entrepreneur and host of The Agile Brand podcast. He has worked with some of the world’s leading organizations on customer experience, employee experience, and digital transformation initiatives, both before and after selling his award-winning digital experience agency, Carousel30, in 2017. Currently, he is Principal and Chief Strategist at GK5A. He has worked with some of the world’s top brands, including AOL, Choice Hotels, Coca-Cola, Dell, FedEx, GEICO, Marriott, MTV, Starbucks, Toyota and VMware. He currently serves on the University of Richmond’s Customer Experience Advisory Board, was the founding Chair of the American Advertising Federation’s National Innovation Committee, and served on the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Marketing Mentorship Advisory Board. Greg is Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified, and holds a certification in Business Agility from ICP-BAF.