Total Customer Experience Leaders: Lowest Early Bird Discount Expires Today

Creating a customer centric culture is essential to businesses of all sizes today. And being customer centric means the entire organization must be aligned. The challenge and opportunity to leverage disparate sets of information into strategic action is a shared responsibility and priority across the board. That is why creating a customer centric culture should be on top of everyone's priority list across the organization.

Join John Cushman, Vice President of Business Marketing, AT&T at the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit, taking place October 3-5, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona as he delivers his keynote presentation:

Creating a Customer Centric Culture

In this presentation, John will provide attendees with a behind the scenes view of how AT&T is blending people, processes and new technologies like social media, to improve its own B2B customer experiences. Tips on ways to link various touch points in the LEARN-BUY-GET-USE-PAY-SERVICE Customer Continuum will be shared.

You will also learn how to:

• Create a Customer Centric Culture

• Identify areas of opportunity

• Track ROI and measure success

In addition to AT&T, the following companies will also share their inside stories on Measurement & ROI, Data Performance, Operational Metrics and Social Media CRM.

Kelley Blue Book, CVS Caremark, Verizon, AAA Northern California, Rockwell Automation, J.D. Power & Associates, Maritz Research, CPI Card Group, Customer Experience Partners, Customer Bliss, EMC, Forrester, Expedia, Allstate Financial, Peppers & Rogers Group, Pfizer, FedEx Corporation, GE Healthcare, Microsoft Corporation, and more.

Download the brochure to see the full program.
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit will enable you to effectively measure, align and communicate your customer strategy to ensure business relevance.

Save $500 off the standard & onsite rate. Register with code TCEL11BLOG here:

We look forward to seeing you this October in Phoenix!
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Event Team

Visit the event webpage.
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Looking at The Apple Customer Experience

It's not breaking news that Apple tends to evoke strong feelings amongst their customers. Indeed, "Apple has led the market for the past few years as one of the most innovative, most loved, and most powerful companies and brands in the world." according to stock market opinion and analysis website Seeking Alpha.

Apple products tend to be innovative and ground breaking, setting the bar high, but challenges like the much-complained-about Apple/AT&T partnership and competing technology available more easily or at lower prices do arise.

It's not just the products building Apple fans. So what is it that Apple is doing right to generate this sort of emotion in its customers?

Unique, coordinated customer experiences
This video below from the Wall Street Journal offers some interesting insights into the Apple retail training process that largely controls customer experiences within the store.


Customer-facing team members such as the "Genuis Bar" employees are trained to solve problems, rather than sell, and employee handbooks provide potential scripts for a wide variety of situations. According to this article on PCMag.com "Apple Store staff is forbidden to correct a customer who mispronounces the name of a product."

The in-store experience also extends to design. Developed by executives such as Millard Drexler, formerly of the Gap, and Ron Johnson (formerly of Target and now moving to JCPenney), Apple develops different stores in unique locations, although each has certain elements in common: an open plan, curved edges, natural materials such as wood, glass, stone, and stainless steel. The stores feel like a larger reflection of the products being sold there.

What can we learn from Apple's customer experience successes? This blog post points out ways to translate Apple's innovation to the restaurant industry, and it's easy to see how a corporate culture that balances innovative ideas with highly coordinated in-store experiences can extend to any industry.

What do you think of these inside views of Apple's training policies? Will the public learning of this negatively affect perceptions of the Apple experience? Share with us in the comments!

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Breaking Barriers in Total Customer Experience

Much discussion takes place on the nature of the audience when discussing customer experience - is it business-to-consumer or business-to-business? The answer is, it's both: every customer is a real, live breathing person - a consumer who ultimately seeks out experiences that engage his time rather than waste it. In the Experience Economy, many approaches once reserved for the B2C space have migrated to the B2B space as companies realize they are selling to business professionals who are ultimately "consumers."

Join Joe Pine, Author of The Experience Economy and Infinite Possibility at the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit, taking place October 3-5, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona as he delivers his keynote presentation:

Breaking Barriers in Total Customer Experience

In this presentation, Joe Pine will show you how to create economic value from the experience you create for your customers, featuring examples from many industries that go beyond good and services to staging economic experiences. He will also focus on the increasing use of digital technology, which can make such experiences more efficient and engaging. He will in particular show you how to embrace digital technology in such offerings, creating experiences that fuse the real and the virtual.

Joining Joe at the one event focused on Measuring, Aligning and Communicating Strategy to Ensure Business Relevance are leaders from: Kelley Blue Book, CVS Caremark, Verizon, AAA Northern California, Rockwell Automation, J.D. Power & Associates, Maritz Research, CPI Card Group, Customer Experience Partners, Customer Bliss, EMC, AT&T, Forrester, Expedia, Allstate Financial, Peppers & Rogers Group, Pfizer, FedEx Corporation, GE Healthcare, Microsoft Corporation, and more. Download the brochure to see the full program.

The Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit is the ONLY comprehensive forum for B2B and service oriented B2C leaders to come together for a high level exchange around the issues that matter most.

Register by June 24, 2011 & Save $500 off the standard & onsite rate. Register with code TCEL11BLOG here.

We look forward to seeing you this October in Phoenix!
The Total Customer Experience Leaders Event Team

Follow us on Twitter for more updates: http://twitter.com/TotalCustomer

Connect to Your Customers With Social Media - Free Webinar

In association with Citrix, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary Web Seminar.

Social Business: How to Create a Holistic Approach to Social Media
- Alex Beauchamp, Senior New Media Manager, Citrix Online

Thursday, June 16, 2011 1:00 - 2:00 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now

When it comes to social media, there's no single "right way" to use it for business. Within its channels companies of all sizes can engage with prospects and customers to drive sales and provide services in a variety of ways.

What matters, however, is that the social media experience your business provides be consistent across the board. A holistic approach is the key to a successful social media program.

Join industry expert Alex Beauchamp to understand the many components of social business and learn how to put them all together into a cohesive plan that best reflects your organization's personality and value.

In this webinar, you will learn how to:
• Engage and monitor in the social space
• Use reporting metrics, insights and advocates
• Create social content and execute social campaigns
• And more...

Title: Social Business: How to Create a Holistic Approach to Social Media
Date: Thursday, June 16th, 2011
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 PM EDT

Register Now. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. This web seminar is sponsored by Citrix.

About Citrix Online:
Citrix Online provides secure, easy-to-use online solutions that enable people to work from anywhere with anyone: GoToMyPC® for remote access, GoToAssist® for remote support, GoToMeeting® for online meetings and GoToWebinar® for larger Web events. A division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the company is based in Santa Barbara, California.

About The Institute for International Research:
The Institute for International Research (IIR) is the world's largest conference company and has been the leader in the provision of business information for over 25 years. IIR produces over 5,000 events annually through its network of offices in over 35 countries.

What Do Your Digital Customer Experience Strategy Look Like?

This recent post on Mashable by Ron Rogowski of Forrester Research points out some important reasons that brands need to have a digital customer experience strategy in the current market to stay competitive.

For example, the role of mobile devices. "This suite of empowering devices has driven customer expectations to new heights, and has increased the frequency of interactions between customers and businesses." (Last week's post on Gripe is a good example of this.)

But what makes a good digital customer experience strategy? Rogowski gave some good starting points:

• Start with company and brand strategy.
• Describe the intended digital experience.
• Direct activities and processes that support the defined experience.
• Guide digital channel investments

More than just a website or a twitter handle, a digital customer experience strategy needs to reflect the overall brand strategy and directly support and reflect offline brand activities.

Together, these elements add up to the real key to a successful digital customer experience strategy - seeing the digital world (mobile, social media and web) as holistic extensions of the brand. These digital touchpoints provide core moments to connect and engage with customers to create lifelong brand advocates.

So what does your digital customer experience strategy look like?

Looking to learn more about customer experience? Join us Oct. 3-5, 2011 for the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit. Hear from the top B2B, and service oriented B2C companies on Measurement & ROI, Data Performance, Operational Metrics and Social Media CRM. Download the brochure here.

Plus follow us on twitter for updated information at @TotalCustomer.

Michelle LeBlanc is a Social Media Strategist at IIR USA with a specialization in marketing. She may be reached at mleblanc@iirusa.com.

Is Social Media The Place To Gripe?

This post in the New York Times calls attention to a new application called "Gripe." Gripe is a service that allows users to automatically send customer service complaints both to a company and to their facebook and twitter followers.

The makers of Gripe claim that sending the complaints automatically to all Facebook friends will lessen the likelihood of frivolous claims, and features a "word of mouth power" rating to business owners to clarify how many potential viewers a gripe will have.

Given that many consumers are already turning to social media as a channel to vent their frustrations, it seems it was only a matter of time before an app like this was invented. It does provide an important service to businesses, as it alerts them to the problems immediately where regular complaining on a personal Facebook page could be heard by friends, but not by the offending company.

Still, is Gripe really a necessary service? Will having such a "frictionless" way to complain prevent consumers from following proper channels to settle their complaints first? What do you think?

People Management, Disney Style

Today while on the NACCM Customer's 1st facebook page I came across this white paper from our Facebook friends Disney Institute on the popular topic of People Management.

The paper is very interesting in that it tracks how Disney sets expectations for employees from even before day one, and then follows through with training, reinforcement and rewards to keep the "cast" operating smoothly. For example, in describing the hiring processes at Disney, they acknowledge that the company culture may not be for everyone, and that it is in fact better to give potential employees the chance to self-select out before entering into the company

"Early in the process, candidates can view a film depicting what it is like to work at Disney. The film also communicates conditions of employment. After viewing it, a small percentage of candidates self–select out of the process. This is a good thing, since those candidates might not be "right fit" for the culture—and Disney might not be right–fit for them. This process not only saves time and money, but it leaves the applicants feeling good about themselves and our company."

Another great quote that struck me from the article was the following "When your staff sees the big picture, they also see how vital their roles are in the business." Indeed communicating the importance of small roles to the larger goals of the company can both motivate employees towards exceptional service, and inspire greater teamwork and compliance with company policies.

So what does all this say about customer service? Generally, Disney Institute has found that happy, inspired employees are more likely to provide great customer experiences.

"We’ve found over and over that if an employee feels truly valued in his or her job, if they understand what is expected of them and feel they are contributing, they will go above and beyond to deliver great service."

It's all about setting expectations, training, and finally recognizing and rewarding excellence. Read the whole paper here.

Your Customer is Your Priority:

Your business is only as strong as your consumer allows it to be. Today, most companies use the term customer centricity often, but saying it is the easy part. Taking the concept of what it means and applying it to your business, day in and day out, that part can be difficult. Stores.org states, “Properly executed, customer-centric strategies can transform service into engagement, information into excitement, satisfaction into inspiration and otherwise passive shoppers into ambassadors for your brand.” Sometimes a business will focus so much on a product, that they tend to lose sight of what’s really important, the consumer.

One of the easiest and most effective ways to remain in constant contact with a customer is through technology. Twitter, Facebook, any type of social media, can be used for informing a customer, and also for feedback. Sometimes it’s as simple as clicking the word ‘like’. And with so many different forms of communication you can tailor it to each one of your client’s needs.

The foundation for building and maintaining excellent customer service comes from within a company. Setting the precedent for your employees not only in the beginning, but also daily will help ensure the best quality service for your clients. Bizcommunity.com reports, “Research has shown on numerous occasions that companies with effective face-to-face communication (defined as communication sessions with leaders who are trained in leadership communication skills) are up to twice as likely to be more engaged and deliver better customer service, both internally and externally.” The more internal communication, and education, a company has the better.

Many companies have the resources to carry out these tasks, just not the strategies to execute them. The business world is constantly evolving so it’s up to the leaders of the company to bridge the communication gap between the future of their business and their employees.

Complimentary Webinar: Silencing the Voice of the Customer (VOC): New research methods to create breakthrough products and services

In association with Strategyn, The Institute for International Research invites you to join us for a one hour complimentary Web Seminar.

Silencing the Voice of the Customer (VOC): Focus on the "job-to-be-done" and create breakthrough products and services
Tony Ulwick, Founder & CEO, Strategyn
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011 1:00 - 2:00 PM EDT

Reserve your Webinar seat now here.

Over the past 30 years, innovation experts have led companies to believe that it is impossible to know all their customers' needs. They contend that customers can't articulate their needs, and that customers have latent needs - or needs they don't know they have. What if it turns out that this thinking is wrong?

There is a new way of approaching your customer needs but it's not with the Voice of the Customer. Over the past 20 years Strategyn has created and refined an innovation process called Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) that invalidates this old thinking. In addition, a ten-year track record study reveals that when the world's most respected companies silence the voice of the customer and gather the right inputs for the innovation process, they experience an 86 percent success rate. This is a complete turn-around in the innovation industry.

In this webinar, Strategyn founder and CEO, Tony Ulwick will demonstrate how thinking about innovation and customer needs from a "jobs-to-be-done" perspective enables companies to create winning growth strategies and breakthrough products and services.

What you will learn:

* The shortcomings of listening to the "voice-of-the-customer"
* How to define a market from the customer's perspective
* How to create a growth strategy using the right customer inputs
* How to organize the innovation process around the right customer insights

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

About The Institute for International Research:
The Institute for International Research (IIR) is the world's largest conference company and has been the leader in the provision of business information for over 25 years. IIR produces over 5,000 events annually through its network of offices in over 35 countries.

Focusing on What The Customer Thinks

This interview on the Forbes MarketShare blog with Jim Bush, EVP of World Service at American Express, contains some great insights regarding the American Express customer experience strategy.

I was particularly struck by the following quote:

We also strongly believe that great service doesn’t come down to what we think about our performance internally. It’s all about what the customer thinks after every interaction. So we’re not measuring our performance by internal measures. Instead, we’re gauging it by looking at whether customers would recommend American Express to their friends based on their experiences.

Is your company doing anything to shift the focus from internal performance to customer reactions? If so, how? How are you measuring customer loyalty? The American Express study mentioned in the blog is interesting reading regardless of where your current strategy stands.

Thanks for Attending

Thanks to those who joined us yesterday for the Targetbase webinar on Engagement Optimization in Healthcare.

If you have additional questions for our dynamic presenters Trae Clevenger, Senior Vice President, Innovation and Brian Kaiser, Vice President, Healthcare Strategy they can be reached at brian.kaiser@targetbase.com and trae.clevenger@targetbase.com respectively.

Or follow Targetbase on twitter @TargetbaseRX

For more information about our ePharma events, visit the ePharma blog here.

The Customer Is Always...On Twitter?

Have you seen this article from Fortune exploring the efficacy of various customer service channels for eight real-life brands?

Not that long ago I was discussing the future of technology in regards to customer service. Here we have eight cases of companies using twitter, in addition to phone and web channels, to address customer issues...with varying degrees of success. Even Zappos, a known customer service champion, falls somewhat short when put to this test.

The fact is, customers are going to seek answers on channels like twitter - or worse, badmouth your brand. Refraining from having a twitter presence means you may not immediately hear the complaints, but they'll still exist. The best policy is therefore to listen and respond in the best way possible. (A topic IIR occasionally addresses on the Community 2.0 blog). Is the social media team at your company prepared to deal with this challenge? Where does customer service and social media intersect? It's an interesting conundrum.

Are you on twitter? We are, follow us @customerworld.

Complimentary Web Seminar from Targetbase and The North American Conference on Customer Management and The Institute for International Research

Join Targetbase and The North American Conference on Customer Management for Engagement Optimization in Healthcare, a one hour, complimentary webinar on Thursday, March 10 from 2-3 PM EST.

Space is limited. Click here to reserve your Webinar seat now.

How do you measure the impact of customer engagement with your content and communications? How can you use a customer’s pattern of engagement to strengthen the relationship and drive prescriptions and adherence?

The tight integration of content, data, cutting-edge analytics and technology can deliver optimal customer interactions and drive your marketing objectives. Learn about an innovative approach that is providing marketers with an actionable gauge of relationship strength and the ability to drive and optimize ROI.

What you will learn:
• Define a “positive engagement” with your content both online and offline
• Connect an “engagement” with the desired outcome, be it your healthcare professional customer writing a prescription or a patient refilling one
• Create relationship management programs that are driven by a pattern of engagement
• View a case study

Speakers:
Brian Kaiser, VP of Strategy
Trae Clevenger, Senior VP, Innovation

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements:
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows ® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh ®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS ® X 10.4.11 (Tiger ®) or newer


North American Conference on Customer Management
For over 8 years, NACCM has been your most trusted partner for peer-to-peer sharing, leadership building sessions, and legendary storytellers, leaving you with the inspiration and empowerment to make a difference. NACCM balances practical content you can take action on, unique experiences that reinvigorate, and big-name keynotes that inspire- all while stressing the importance of keeping the customer at the center of every business decision.

Are Mobile Apps The Future of Customer Service?

Between reading about the recent addition of ICE (Interactive Customer Experience™) TV and Mobile programs, a virtual, interactive concierge service, to the newly opened JW Marriott Indianapolis Downtown and learning the results of the most recent J.D. Power and Associates study on customer satisfaction—wherein automated response systems did nearly as well as the industry average satisfaction level—it seems clear that automated customer service and customer service systems are a trend with staying power. American Airlines, as we discussed last week, also offers mobile applications to keep customer experiences stress free, such as the Mobile Boarding Pass system.

With a general public that is increasingly using smart phones to text and tap their way through the day, it’s hardly surprising that some would prefer to address customer service issues in this manner. Why dial an 800 number and wait to speak to a service representative, when you can call up the Internet or an app from your mobile device for immediate answers? What was once simply the realm of Interactive Voice Response technology now includes elements such as text, touch and visual inputs and outputs.

What is your company doing when it comes to automated response systems and mobile technology? Do you see mobile apps as a potential time and money saving device? Or is developing and maintaining mobile technology seen as an additional unneeded expense? If you are developing mobile technology, will it be proactive—such as the American Airlines or ICE applications, which address customer needs before a problem arises—or reactive, such as a direct link to customer service questions? Share with us in the comments!

Honoring Employees For Improved Customer Service

With the holiday season behind us, many are relieved to have the stress of annual travel over with. Meanwhile those who travel regularly throughout the year continue to face increased security, long lines, high prices and more.

American Airlines is looking to put the pleasure back in traveling and improve the flying experience for its customers by building a sense of competition between airport station teams and honoring improved customer service and innovative problem solving with its quarterly “Customer Cup” awards.

San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic were awarded the Customer Cup this quarter for improvements in internal customer satisfaction ratings in several categories, including increases in customer interaction and baggage delivery ratings. The Customer Cup represents a small part of the airline’s focus on improving the experience for its customers by strengthening internal communication and processes. Employees from all sectors of the business are encouraged to bring forward ideas and solutions to improve the travel experience for customers, and recognition programs such as this one reward innovation.

"Given the challenges the industry faces, the Cup is a great way to recognize the accomplishments of our employees," Mark Mitchell, American's Managing Director – Customer Experience stated in a press release, "It's through their dedication and ingenuity we can deliver exceptional travel experiences of our customers."

By improving participation in improved customer experiences amongst internal stakeholders and streamlining customer experiences with new technology—including iPad, iPhone and Android mobile apps—American Airlines is turning the focus away from the inevitable negatives of flying and towards increased customer satisfaction. Has your company had any success with employee recognition programs? What goals and strategies do you have for 2011 to improve your customer experiences?

Happy Holidays from Customers 1st!

We're taking some time off from our coverage of customer service to celebrate the season with our loved ones. We want to sincerely thank you for your readership, your comments and your participation. We look forward to returning to the world of customer service management in 2011!

Here are our top Customers 1st posts from 2010:
New customer experience measurement system for USPS
NACCM 2010: Day 2 in Pictures
NACCM 2010: Rogers Communications’ Customer Retention & Satisfaction Approach

We wish you Happy Holidays!

Threadless looks to FaceBook for Customer Support

Internet Retailer recently turned to Facebook to support their customer service. By teaming up with Parature, Inc, they were able to create a "Support" tab on their Facebook Fan Page that hosts FAQs. If customer questions aren't answered in the FAQ questions, customers can contact employees for answers. Not only does this get many of the questions answered, it allows Threadless to monitor what customer service issues need to be handled more quickly than others.

Brianne Hattaway, director of customer support for the online retailer, stated, “Our approach to support is shaped by our online community and their need for transparency and immediacy. We can reach out to our customers on Facebook even more than before and give them a fluid support experience across different channels with the personalized support that Parature enables on our site.”

What other kinds of innovative services have you seen to support customers on Facebook?

NACCM 2010: Day 2 in Pictures

Day 2 of NACCM 2010 in Photos:

NACCM 2010: An Interview with the Conference Chair

On the last day of NACCM 2010, we caught up with Curtis Bingham, President and Founder, CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER COUNCIL, the Chair for the 2010 Conference.

NACCM 2010: How Leaders Must Empower Employees: CareerBuilder.com Focuses on People, Process and Culture

Presented by: Mike Hargis, CAREERBUILDER

-Millennials are 2-3x more accepting to new technologies
-Millennials prefer structure for their day
-Millennials would rather work as a group than as individuals

How do you retain Millennials? Trust, balance and structure

Career builder only keeps people in their call center for 24-36 months, otherwise they get burnt out. Create a fun environment with degrees in psychology, philosophy, then go on and invest in their training. They do at least 3 events a year to build leadership, such as “Extreme Events”. They reward by creating videos. Employees share these videos, and it makes it easy to attract the right type of people to your company.

They’ve created an App to refer candidates on Facebook. By sharing content, they were able to successfully communicate to more people

NACCM 2010: The Hartford’s Journey Toward Building an Award Winning Culture

Presented by Sue Brinker, AVP Property & Casualty Learning, Hartford Insurance
NACCM, 2010

Hartford’s Advance 50 team is comprised of 5,000 highly credentialed reps with advanced degrees in an aging-related field. The obvious gap is that the customers being served average an age of 65, while the reps are 24 years old. Therefore hiring for attitude is critical, with training, individual coaching, enabling systems, metrics, and rewards to do the rest.

Their training is very deliberate and lasts 11 weeks, 6 weeks of which is live work with customers. New hires are on the phone side-by-side with their mentor as soon as day 8, which enables the employee to learn, apply the knowledge, and be coached.

Empathy and patience are critical for these 24-year olds, since many of their AARP customers are recently widowed, have suffered a stroke, or have hearing loss. They task the rep with working on their own improvement plans where opportunities are discovered. And they maintain the “best call” library contest that serves as both a recognition vehicle and also provide examples as an excellent resource.

NACCM 2010: Ace Care Increases Efficiency without Losing “Tribal Knowledge” or Personal Touch

Presented by Kalus Buellesbach, NACCM 2010
Helping you is the most important thing we have to do today.



As the world’s largest retail cooperative, Ace has 4600 independent stores served by 4,200 direct employees. Their challenge has always been to create a support environment that emphasizes quality while scaling the business.

To that end they implemented the Ace Care Center project, which focused on improving service by utilizing the resources from 85 people in 7 different helpdesks that served retailers, consumers, vendors, and employees. Starting with unifying contact processes and rationalizing service hours, they were then able to improve service levels and drive quality. Since they had little budget, they were able to implement a call recording system using $100 devices from Radio Shack and provide robust agent scorecards using Excel-based tools, using the budget for bonus compensation that rewards agent performance.

NACCM 2010: Service Sabbatical: Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Employee Development Opportunity

Patricia Dilane, Director Member Service Delivery, Blue Cross Blue Shield Massachusetts

Service Sabbatical is an innovative program from BCBS-Mass that improves quality, reduces attrition, and generates goodwill in the community, driving hard ROI.
The initial objective they had in mind was to provide the ability for associates to grow professionally, not just job training, and also be able to provide stronger ties to the communities they serve. The thinking was that this approach could improve quality and attrition metrics, paying for itself.
The week-long curriculum focuses on
• Big-picture call-center operations
• Business challenges that the center faces
• Team building through development of solutions to those problems, including interviewing executives to gain context and knowledge while gaining more exposure
• and a community event that “gives back”

They run the program regularly, accepting 10-12 associates into the program each quarter from a pool of approximately 50 applicants. Senior management believes in this and attends the sessions as well, both participating and encouraging. They even now have a wait-list from senior executives that all want to participate.



Feedback from the associates has been incredible – survey responses are tremendously positive. But beyond that, BCBS quality metrics have increased for all participants, many have been promoted and attrition has decreased. The program has even expanded into Claims and Provider Services areas, further facilitating cross-functional collaboration and teamwork.

NACCM 2010: View from the Top

Jay Steinfeld, CEO, Blinds.Com
It’s hard to do one thing 100% better than everyone, but you can do 100 things 1% better. It all adds up.



Blinds.Com is the largest provider of window treatments on-line, and has revenue per employee equal to Amazon and Facebook. Their mission is to create an experience that makes buying complex and customizable products surprisingly easy and exciting.
To accomplish this Jay runs the business by the numbers, with a critical number KPI being Gross Margin per visit since this reflects conversion rates and sales growth, and provides a leads into where to dig deeper. But repeat business and referral rates, and Net Promoter Scores are also extremely important, and Jay uses those to make sure they can get customer needs addressed with the right priority.
Jay spent many years driving to customers’ homes before going on-line , and believes in the power of customer feedback at the individual level. In that regard, Blinds.Com establishes Net Promoter Scores around the organization, even down to the individual agent level, calculating NPS for each agent. Driving some internal competition, Blinds.Com believes in the effectiveness of transparency and publishes all scores out to everyone. This rather unique practice drives other great behaviors, including better information sharing between departments, better collaboration between teams.
Those interactions with customers have shaped their core values: improve continually, and experiment without fear. Jay hires people that are aligned with these beliefs, asking prospective employees during the interview how they have strived to improve themselves within the last 6 months, and what they did to change for the better. As a result Blinds.Com has a team of people that works together and strives to do better, especially when it comes to improving the customer experience.
Jay attributes their incredible growth over the years to those core values. In fact, the business didn’t really take off until those values were formally established and became part of the business’ DNA.
Some examples of how this manifests itself in some simple practices:
• All employees have the opportunity to present at regular all-hands meetings
• Teams maintain open whiteboards showing the things they are working on with facilitated areas for new ideas.

Jay writes a regular column on BNet called the No-nonsense Boss. Sounds more than worth checking out.



[This blog provided by Steve Bernstein of Waypoint Group, and cross-posted at the Customer Insight = Revenue blog]

NACCM 2010: Learning Leadership Disney Style for Strong Business Results

Presenter: William Greenwald, HUMANA

Leadership Details from Disney:
-Attention to detail – Humana has no meetings between 8:00-9:00 and 4:00-5:00 so they can meet with their employees and say good morning/good evening
-As leaders, you must listen to your employees. They can provide insights as little things you can do to improve your employees interactions with customers.
-When someone is asking a question, figure out what they’re really asking.

Expect resistance – Great leaders must listen. Managers must listen. Most people have problems with change. Have you ever been taught how to deal with change? People have resistance because they don’t know how.

Make people your brand. Is it common practice in your organization? People aren’t often in the most conventional places. Leaders can pick out talent in individuals even though they may not have had previous experience. Hire for your organization with emotional intelligence.

-How do you teach leaders to teach others?
-“Burn the free fuel” – do the free things – recognize your employees, show up to the employee birthday parties, recognize your employees and their spouses
-Train for leaders, not just skill