Become A Customer

Increasingly, forward-thinking companies are finding that the fastest way to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty is to encourage employee participation -- that is, to engage their customer-facing employees in helping to shape the customer experience.

The Victotria's Secret Experience

"The customer service organization really needs to be
involved with every organization that's involved with the customer," said Manuel Diggs, Victoria's Secret Direct Customer Service Director, in a panel discussion. As an example, he explained that customer service agents proofread upcoming catalogs to check for verbiage that might be confusing to the customer. That way they can prevent issues that might cause a customer to call. He added that agents also provide input on packaging and feedback about upcoming promotions.

His division is also heavily involved in customer
interactions, so customer feedback plays a big role in
company strategy. Diggs relies on post-purchase surveys to gain customer insight. In addition, associates hold regular roundtable discussions to share what trends they're seeing on calls and offer suggestions to management on how to improve the customer experience. "Feedback is a gift," he said. "Associates like the opportunity to share with the leadership team what customers are saying."

The Qwest Experience
Executive Vice President of Mass Markets Paula Kruger
spoke of her company's "One Team" program, where
employees shadow each other. Call center agents go on
service calls with technicians and sit in on marketing
meetings to discuss upcoming promotions, for example.
"It builds respect for what everyone does," she said.

The FaceBook Experience

At social networking site Facebook, customer support
employees rotate sitting in on staff meetings from other parts of the organization. "It gets us all on the same page in terms of understanding," said Tom LeNoble, senior director of customer support operations. In addition, all Facebook employees get trained in the customer service center, and engineers regularly update customer interaction tools as customer needs grow. "We work very hard to be
involved and engaged."

-- Be a customer --

The easiest way to understand the customer experience is to be a customer yourself. At Facebook, all employees are Facebook users with personal accounts. LeNoble said that the customer support group does all user and QA testing for new features before they are released. And Qwest gives its contact center agents the same mobile phones as the company sells, Kruger said, so they can see what its like and what the features are. Also, the company recently started
offering DirecTV, so Kruger installed the satellite
television service in every contact center and encourages employees to use it during breaks. "We want to let them get comfortable with the product as a customer," she said.

The Peppers and Rogers Group
By Elizabeth Glagowski