Customer service. It’s key to anyone rewarding us with his or her time, attention, business and loyalty. But solid, measurable feedback is hard to come by, right? That’s what TempWorks client services folks thought, so they put their super software developers to work. The result? A customer satisfaction survey called Voyager that provides immediate feedback for the front-line support people.
“We want to identify a particular support representative and a particular customer case that is being handled and get feedback on that specific interaction and exchange,” says Kevin Prow, TempWorks support analyst. “Following the closure of the support ticket, customers are asked to participate in a short survey. If a customer is not happy, the survey will expand to ask some additional questions. Those include being asked if they would like a manager to get involved, which in turn generates an immediate response from us.”
Most companies may think they know the level of service their reps provide. But ultimately it’s what customers think that really matters. And you can’t really know what without asking.
“From a support perspective we simply didn’t have a good way to measure customer satisfaction,” states Melanie Kramer, Vice President of Client Services for TempWorks. “We have seen other companies use a survey and we wanted to make it as easy as possible to fill that out while at the same time be able to collect valuable data. Further, there is also an opportunity through Voyager for customers to tell us about what features and functionality they might want in future software, so it really opens up the lines of communication with our customers on lots of levels.”
Every time a customer contact comes into the Voyager system, the customer receives an email right away stating that their email was received, giving them a ticket number, and letting them know someone will be following up shortly.
Then when they have worked through the issue with the support rep, the customer will receive another follow-up email, stating the resolution and that the ticket has been closed.
But there is also a link to give some feedback. When a customer clicks on that link, it will take them to the survey embedded with the case information of whatever ticket they were working on, and tracking back to a particular customer rep.
In addition to the multiple choice survey, there is also a free text field where TempWorks asks for general comments.
If there are no action items, nothing negative to impart, then that is the end of the survey. But if the customer is dissatisfied, then it expands with a checkbox.
The results give management hard data, actual customer feedback in a standardized formula about how a particular rep is doing, as opposed to opinions, says Prow.
“Another benefit is the instant feedback the support reps themselves receive. Everybody has bad days. If I’m less friendly than I should be during a customer interaction, and I get a single star for friendliness, it puts me on notice I need to improve my attitude on the very next call. It’s truly instantaneous. Conversely, if I am getting top scores for friendliness and responsiveness, it’s like a pat on the back that will likely make me feel really good and reinforce my behavior.”
“If I’m less friendly than I should be during a customer interaction, and I get a single star for friendliness, it puts me on notice I need to improve my attitude on the very next call. It’s truly instantaneous.”
Prow, who told me was absolutely “giddy” about Voyager when I asked if he was excited about this, says it’s just the first step of what he calls a living project.
“We don’t know what we don’t know. As we begin to receive these surveys and generate some meaningful feedback, I’m sure it will shape our questions in the future and guide us as to what to ask and just how to ask it. This has been a long time in development and I think it will really benefit us when it comes to customer service.”
