The people who know best about customer pain points aren’t in the boardroom, according to Shuvankar Roy. They’re on your front line.
Roy, who joined Optimum as its first-ever chief customer experience officer in 2022, said the company has improved its net promoter scores over 40 points in the past three years. But competition is as stiff as ever.
“That being said, we have much more competition in the market than what the cable industry used to do,” Roy said at Reuters Customer Service and Experience East last week. “The only distinguishing factor is, from my point of view, with customer experience. If you do not make customer experience right for the customer, they have other choices, and they will make it.”
Finding customer pain points and fixing them is key, according to Roy. Optimum goes about that in two ways: listening to the frontline and analyzing what detractors have to say about its brand.
“I learn most when I'm in a call center in the Philippines or in India or in Brooklyn than what I hear through a bunch of PowerPoints in the boardroom,” Roy said. “And I think that's the starting point. Talk to the front lines. They know most what's not working.”
Roy makes a point to visit these contact centers in person. Generally, business process outsourcing companies look to “roll out the red carpet,” but Roy looks to “reverse completely the culture.”
Roy looks for feedback on his first day visiting a BPO, and it can be “very uncomfortable for my team who travels with me,” he said. “The first day is, ‘Tell me what my team haven't done,’ and the feedback that we get is paramount.”
Perhaps the call center has been asking for a process change or a tool deployment for months. He takes that information and assigns it to a scrum team in New York with a deadline. When they deliver, the frontline understands Optimum will follow through on what it promises, Roy says.
“The next time you visit the same BPO, it’s a different level of energy in the frontline,” he said. “This cultural transformation is much more transformative than adopting a new technology, and pushing it down.”
Optimum also examines its NPS scores. The company takes the time every three months to celebrate the progress, but it primarily analyzes the detractors and uses identify patterns among detractor comments.
Roy shared an example: a common pattern among detractors was technicians running late.
“What we figured out is this running late is also dependent on where the technician is, because with some footprints of the U.S., you have to travel for an hour to get your technician while if you are in Brooklyn, you might be traveling the 10, 15 minutes,” Roy said.
Optimum has started providing customized messaging to the customer, given the scenario to help manage expectations.
Transformation begins, he says, with front line feedback and listening to the customer through NPS. “Take the package, and build on it the pillars of opportunities.”
