The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
A Hopeful Morning
Thursday - December 01, 2005 04:32 PM in
This morning I attended the Minneapolis St. Paul edition of the Aspect/Concerto traveling road show, and thought I'd share an opinion or two. For those of you unaware, Concerto Software recently completed the purchase of Aspect Communications and changed the Concerto name to Aspect. This is one of those mergers that seems to make business sense, and the new company will be an even greater powerhouse in providing technology solutions for call centers. Let me be clear. From the presentation, unless the new Aspect makes some major mis-steps (unlikely), this is a business poised for greater success.
As you might expect, the CEO began the presentation designed to reassure and encourage the client base, but a dozen or so slides into the Power Point, I saw something new, and for which I was most impressed. Without going off on a chicken or egg tangent, vendors of technology to contact centers always emphasize the features of their product such as managing the call flow tools, technical measurement reporting and such. This "how it works" focus over "why you need it" may be a response to contact center managers that focus on process and costs over good service. Examples are tools for managing staffing levels to control payroll or lowering the average call length, etc. etc.
Well the CEO told the audience they had the wrong priorities. He was subtle but direct in telling his customers they should be focusing on the business principles of serving the customer rather than on the numbers. It was refreshing to hear this truth rather than falling back on promoting this or that widget Aspect sells. I hope the Aspect sales guys in the back of the room caught the message. Later, the chief engineer, who was, as expected a bit boring speaking about protocols, forthcoming technology, programming languages and such, mentioned a particularly neat (technically) project they were developing with a cellular carrier and key Aspect account. The idea was truly a new wrinkle on handling customer inquiries efficiently. But as a former wireless carrier CEO myself, I knew the concept would bomb because while it sounded great, it would not give the customer better service. At the break, I told him so, and surprisingly he also "got it" and assured me the odds were high that the client would abandon the concept. He knew that technically brilliant and good for the client company solutions were different than satisfying the customer.
My point is that the new Aspect impressed me because top management really understands that it isn't the technology, it's the results as measured by the consumer. If they can filter this down to the marketplace, Aspect will deserve every future success they receive.
Posted by Rick Rappe
Well the CEO told the audience they had the wrong priorities. He was subtle but direct in telling his customers they should be focusing on the business principles of serving the customer rather than on the numbers. It was refreshing to hear this truth rather than falling back on promoting this or that widget Aspect sells. I hope the Aspect sales guys in the back of the room caught the message. Later, the chief engineer, who was, as expected a bit boring speaking about protocols, forthcoming technology, programming languages and such, mentioned a particularly neat (technically) project they were developing with a cellular carrier and key Aspect account. The idea was truly a new wrinkle on handling customer inquiries efficiently. But as a former wireless carrier CEO myself, I knew the concept would bomb because while it sounded great, it would not give the customer better service. At the break, I told him so, and surprisingly he also "got it" and assured me the odds were high that the client would abandon the concept. He knew that technically brilliant and good for the client company solutions were different than satisfying the customer.
My point is that the new Aspect impressed me because top management really understands that it isn't the technology, it's the results as measured by the consumer. If they can filter this down to the marketplace, Aspect will deserve every future success they receive.
Posted by Rick Rappe
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