The Customer Service Survey
About VocaLabs
Newsletter #38 Available
Tue - April 1, 2008 02:09 PM
The 38th issue of Quality Times, VocaLabs' quasi-periodic newsletter, is now available on our website.
In this issue, we discuss the recent research results about building broad vs. deep IVR menus.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Newsletter #37 is available
Tue - February 26, 2008 02:30 PM
Issue 37 of Quality Times, our quasi-periodic newsletter about providing good customer service is now available. E-mail subscribers should receive their copies shortly.
In this issue, we go into more detail about the factors which consumers report are important for good and bad customer service, based on a survey we recently conducted.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Getting some ink
Fri - February 8, 2008 01:10 PM
We're mentioned in an article in the new issue of Speech Technology. You need to scroll about 2/3 of the way down, and it's only in passing, but that's OK.
Nice of them to give us a shout, especially since we basically don't advertise in print.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
VocaLabs Newsletter #36 Now Available
Tue - January 29, 2008 01:39 PM
The 36th edition of our quasi-bimonthly newsletter, Quality Times, is now available online. E-mail subscribers should receive their copies shortly.
In this issue we discuss the latest SectorPulse results and talk about the decision to end this product in favor of an expanded Service Quality Tracker.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Ending SectorPulse
Tue - January 22, 2008 04:33 PM
For the past four years, we've been publishing quarterly customer service statistics on major companies in several industries, under the name SectorPulse. Currently we're tracking the banking and mobile phone industries, and in the past we also tracked airlines.
We're currently compiling the data for the December 2007 reports, and we've decided that this will be the last set of SectorPulse reports.
Instead, we'll be focusing on developing and expanding our Service Quality Tracker product, which provides similar head-to-head comparisons of customer service quality, but using a different data collection method.
There are a number of reasons for the change: first and foremost, Service Quality Tracker uses data from unpaid participants who are not part of our consumer panel, but who volunteer to participate on a call-by-call basis. We think this is a superior technique, since it avoids the problem of "professional survey-takers" inherent in any paid survey panel.
In addition, Service Quality Tracker uses a live interviewer who calls the customers within a few minutes of the end of a customer service call, rather than an online survey. This opens up participation to anyone, rather than limiting it to people with Internet access--though to be fair, Internet access isn't much of a demographic limitation in the United States any more.
Other reasons for the change include the fact that most of our clients are now using a call-back interview survey, rather than panel research, so this ensures that the data we collect is as comparable as possible to the data clients are collecting for internal purposes. Service Quality Tracker is a continuous process, rather than happening in quarterly chunks, so it's possible to compare companies over arbitrary and flexible date ranges. Finally, Service Quality Tracker is easier for us to manage internally.
So while it's always a difficult decision to discontinue a successful product with a history, we think this is the right decision for us now. Look for new developments in our Service Quality Tracker over the next several months.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Instead, we'll be focusing on developing and expanding our Service Quality Tracker product, which provides similar head-to-head comparisons of customer service quality, but using a different data collection method.
There are a number of reasons for the change: first and foremost, Service Quality Tracker uses data from unpaid participants who are not part of our consumer panel, but who volunteer to participate on a call-by-call basis. We think this is a superior technique, since it avoids the problem of "professional survey-takers" inherent in any paid survey panel.
In addition, Service Quality Tracker uses a live interviewer who calls the customers within a few minutes of the end of a customer service call, rather than an online survey. This opens up participation to anyone, rather than limiting it to people with Internet access--though to be fair, Internet access isn't much of a demographic limitation in the United States any more.
Other reasons for the change include the fact that most of our clients are now using a call-back interview survey, rather than panel research, so this ensures that the data we collect is as comparable as possible to the data clients are collecting for internal purposes. Service Quality Tracker is a continuous process, rather than happening in quarterly chunks, so it's possible to compare companies over arbitrary and flexible date ranges. Finally, Service Quality Tracker is easier for us to manage internally.
So while it's always a difficult decision to discontinue a successful product with a history, we think this is the right decision for us now. Look for new developments in our Service Quality Tracker over the next several months.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Hotshots
Thu - November 8, 2007 01:32 PM
"Our Employees Are Our Most Valuable Asset" is so cliche that it has collapsed under the gravitational pull of its own clichedom and formed its own parallel universe of cliche.
Cliche or not, whatever success VocaLabs has attained is thanks in large part to the efforts of David Leppik, our VP of Development, and Dan Taylor, our VP of Operations (David also happens to be my brother, but that's a story for another day). David is an amazingly talented developer and software architect who is probably as productive as ten normal programmers, and Dan has done a consistently outstanding job of keeping our infrastructure operating with a high degree of reliability despite very limited resources.
Today we discovered a problem with one of our web pages loading slowly. We'd gotten a couple reports about this over the past couple weeks, but it's often hard to pin down a "page loads slowly" report with all the possible causes (most of which we have no control over). This time, though, we got a detailed enough report to reproduce the problem on our end, and David and Dan swung into action.
Within ten minutes, Dan had isolated the bottleneck on our production server to a particular database query which was taking about a hundred times longer than it should. David recognized the query as one which had changed slightly in a new version of our code deployed about two weeks ago, and the pair determined that the database server wasn't handling the query as efficiently as it should. We should be able to have a fix in place in fairly short order.
Of course fixing one bug isn't going to make or break us, but this is an example of the kind of efficiency and teamwork David and Dan deliver consistently every day. Thanks to them, we've been able to consistently get projects done on time, keep our systems running smoothly, and bugs rarely remain bugs for very long.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Today we discovered a problem with one of our web pages loading slowly. We'd gotten a couple reports about this over the past couple weeks, but it's often hard to pin down a "page loads slowly" report with all the possible causes (most of which we have no control over). This time, though, we got a detailed enough report to reproduce the problem on our end, and David and Dan swung into action.
Within ten minutes, Dan had isolated the bottleneck on our production server to a particular database query which was taking about a hundred times longer than it should. David recognized the query as one which had changed slightly in a new version of our code deployed about two weeks ago, and the pair determined that the database server wasn't handling the query as efficiently as it should. We should be able to have a fix in place in fairly short order.
Of course fixing one bug isn't going to make or break us, but this is an example of the kind of efficiency and teamwork David and Dan deliver consistently every day. Thanks to them, we've been able to consistently get projects done on time, keep our systems running smoothly, and bugs rarely remain bugs for very long.
Posted by Peter Leppik
New issue of Quality Times is available
Thu - October 25, 2007 12:59 PM
In this issue, we present some results from the latest round of SectorPulse surveys, and a cautionary tale about writing survey questions.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Report Card Time
Tue - October 23, 2007 02:44 PM
This morning we released the grades from our latest round of SectorPulse surveys rating customer service at mobile phone companies and financial services companies.
As usual, we'll have a newsletter out shortly, but for now you can get the key points from our press releases: banks, and mobile phones.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Busy Weeks
Tue - September 4, 2007 03:36 PM
Whew!
Blogging has been light the past couple weeks, because we've been running all kinds of crazy here. SpeechTEK was two weeks ago, and that took David and myself out of the picture for almost a week. The weeks before and after SpeechTEK, David was on vacation (he split his two-week summer vacation so he could pull booth duty at the show--thanks, David!). Last week I took a couple days off, too, because of wacky end-of-summer schedules for the kids.
Now the kids are back in school and everyone is in the office for the first time in about three weeks, but I'm getting ready to go off to ACCE next week. So I'll be busy preparing for a trade show all week.
Throw in a new client project which might kick off this week (we hope), plus a new product announcement I hope to have ready by the end of this week (in time for ACCE), and we're going to be busy busy busy.
But that's better than the alternative.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Now the kids are back in school and everyone is in the office for the first time in about three weeks, but I'm getting ready to go off to ACCE next week. So I'll be busy preparing for a trade show all week.
Throw in a new client project which might kick off this week (we hope), plus a new product announcement I hope to have ready by the end of this week (in time for ACCE), and we're going to be busy busy busy.
But that's better than the alternative.
Posted by Peter Leppik
See us at SpeechTEK!
Tue - August 7, 2007 12:37 PM
If you're planning to be at the SpeechTEK conference in New York in a couple weeks, come visit us in booth #507. We're busy getting stuff ready to go this week, and I'm expecting a great show. I'll be speaking twice: once at 11:30 Monday morning, and again moderating a session at 2 PM Wednesday.
Okay, now that I've got the housekeeping stuff ouot of the way, I'm going to launch into one of my standard rants.
Why, oh why, does everything at a tradeshow have to be so &%^* expensive?!?
I've heard all the sales arguments: "it's a small price to pay for the exposure," and so forth, and I don't mind paying the promoter for the booth space. After all, the guy who runs the show is taking a big financial risk, and doing a lot of work to bring customers to the event.
But look at some of the other prices: $110 for a single electrical outlet in our booth (not even a full circuit, either: we're only allowed to draw 500W). $750 for a wired Internet connection for three days ($400 for WiFi access). $200 for a table--not even a nice table, but a crappy folding table disguised with a polyester tablecloth. $50 for a cheap plastic folding chair. Many items cost more to rent for three days than to buy brand-new.
These are the prices the hotel and the exhibit services company charge, and they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. Want to pay less than the extortionate hotel price for electricity? Tough luck.
Oh, and if your booth can't be carried in by hand by a single person and set up without tools in under 30 minutes, you're not allowed to set it up yourself. Installation and disassembly will run almost $200/hour with a one hour minimum.
It would be cheaper to hire my lawyer and accountant to do the job instead. They'd probably do a better job, too.
Which brings me to the other half of the rant. For these kinds of prices, you'd at least expect a reasonable level of service, but that's asking too much. I pretty much assume I'm going to have some problem with the exhibitor services at every show. We've been overcharged, billed for services neither requested nor delivered, and even been dunned when the exhibit services company actually owed usmoney. Good luck getting a refund, by the way: if you overpay, often they'll only offer a credit for future services not a check for the overpayment.
Worse, the terms are some of the worst I've ever encountered. Not only do they demand payment in full in advance, but they also ask you to sign a blanket credit card authorization. Do I trust them to bill the credit card correctly? Hah!
(On that last point, by the way, I always refuse. I simply will not sign a blanket credit card authorization, especially with companies which tend to do such a poor job. We pay in advance by company check, and if the exhibit services company thinks we owe them more money after the fact, they can invoice us like everyone else.)
So if I'm ever offered the CEO position at Cisco, Microsoft, or some other huge company with tons of market power, one thing I'll do is start refusing to exhibit at these events unless the hotel and expo services companies start offering reasonable terms and prices. Sadly, at VocaLabs, we don't have the ability to make that stick.
Okay, rant over. Come see us at SpeechTEK.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Why, oh why, does everything at a tradeshow have to be so &%^* expensive?!?
I've heard all the sales arguments: "it's a small price to pay for the exposure," and so forth, and I don't mind paying the promoter for the booth space. After all, the guy who runs the show is taking a big financial risk, and doing a lot of work to bring customers to the event.
But look at some of the other prices: $110 for a single electrical outlet in our booth (not even a full circuit, either: we're only allowed to draw 500W). $750 for a wired Internet connection for three days ($400 for WiFi access). $200 for a table--not even a nice table, but a crappy folding table disguised with a polyester tablecloth. $50 for a cheap plastic folding chair. Many items cost more to rent for three days than to buy brand-new.
These are the prices the hotel and the exhibit services company charge, and they can get away with it because they have a monopoly. Want to pay less than the extortionate hotel price for electricity? Tough luck.
Oh, and if your booth can't be carried in by hand by a single person and set up without tools in under 30 minutes, you're not allowed to set it up yourself. Installation and disassembly will run almost $200/hour with a one hour minimum.
It would be cheaper to hire my lawyer and accountant to do the job instead. They'd probably do a better job, too.
Which brings me to the other half of the rant. For these kinds of prices, you'd at least expect a reasonable level of service, but that's asking too much. I pretty much assume I'm going to have some problem with the exhibitor services at every show. We've been overcharged, billed for services neither requested nor delivered, and even been dunned when the exhibit services company actually owed usmoney. Good luck getting a refund, by the way: if you overpay, often they'll only offer a credit for future services not a check for the overpayment.
Worse, the terms are some of the worst I've ever encountered. Not only do they demand payment in full in advance, but they also ask you to sign a blanket credit card authorization. Do I trust them to bill the credit card correctly? Hah!
(On that last point, by the way, I always refuse. I simply will not sign a blanket credit card authorization, especially with companies which tend to do such a poor job. We pay in advance by company check, and if the exhibit services company thinks we owe them more money after the fact, they can invoice us like everyone else.)
So if I'm ever offered the CEO position at Cisco, Microsoft, or some other huge company with tons of market power, one thing I'll do is start refusing to exhibit at these events unless the hotel and expo services companies start offering reasonable terms and prices. Sadly, at VocaLabs, we don't have the ability to make that stick.
Okay, rant over. Come see us at SpeechTEK.
Posted by Peter Leppik
New Newsletter Online
Wed - July 25, 2007 09:46 AM
The latest edition of our newsletter, Quality Times, is available online and to e-mail subscribers.
In this issue, we discuss the latest SectorPulse results, confirmation bias in surveys, and a pair of upcoming (abbreviated) workshops we're doing at industry events.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Listen to us live
Tue - July 10, 2007 02:30 PM
Tomorrow evening at 7 PM Eastern, I'll be the guest on "Digital Spin," a call-in show on WEAA public radio in Baltimore (88.9 FM).
New professional Services
Mon - May 7, 2007 02:09 PM
We announced a suite of new professional services today. We've always provided survey design and consulting services to our clients who hire us to perform surveys, and now we'll be offering those same services to companies which already have a survey in place, or haven't decided to use VocaLabs' survey services.
Our professional services include:
Survey Design: create a custom survey questionnaire and consult about the appropriate survey process to meet the client's business goals.
Survey Review: provide recommendations about an existing survey to improve the quality of the data and better meet the client's needs.
Process Action Review: examine the business processes a client uses to turn survey data into improved customer service, and make recommendations for a more effective process.
Data Analysis: In-depth analysis of survey data to generate specific recommendations for improving customer service.
We've developed a lot of experience in the best ways to design and implement a survey to meet the unique needs of a call center or other customer service operation. In the past, though, we've only used this expertise to the benefit of companies which hired us to perform their surveys. Now we'll be able to provide any company, whether they use a VocaLabs survey or not, with the advantage of our unique knowledge.
If you want to learn more, send us an e-mail at sales@vocalabs.com.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Survey Design: create a custom survey questionnaire and consult about the appropriate survey process to meet the client's business goals.
Survey Review: provide recommendations about an existing survey to improve the quality of the data and better meet the client's needs.
Process Action Review: examine the business processes a client uses to turn survey data into improved customer service, and make recommendations for a more effective process.
Data Analysis: In-depth analysis of survey data to generate specific recommendations for improving customer service.
We've developed a lot of experience in the best ways to design and implement a survey to meet the unique needs of a call center or other customer service operation. In the past, though, we've only used this expertise to the benefit of companies which hired us to perform their surveys. Now we'll be able to provide any company, whether they use a VocaLabs survey or not, with the advantage of our unique knowledge.
If you want to learn more, send us an e-mail at sales@vocalabs.com.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Newsletter #32 is now online
Mon - April 23, 2007 10:29 AM
The latest edition of VocaLabs' newsletter, Quality Times, is now available through our website. E-mail subscribers should receive their copies shortly.
In this issue, we discuss the latest SectorPulse results, discuss our new Professional Services offerings, and provide some more information about our upcoming workshop.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted by Peter Leppik
Linking Some Ink
Wed - April 4, 2007 01:35 PM
Here's a couple of dead-tree publications we've been featured in recently:
We sponsored a Testing, Tuning, and Tools supplement to Speech Technology Magazine (downloading the article requires free registration).
We won Product of the Year in Call Center Magazine. They list the winners in alphabetical order by company name, so you'll have to scroll to the bottom to find their VocaLabs writeup. Maybe it's time to change our name to AAA AArdvark Satisfaction Services.
Posted by Peter Leppik
We won Product of the Year in Call Center Magazine. They list the winners in alphabetical order by company name, so you'll have to scroll to the bottom to find their VocaLabs writeup. Maybe it's time to change our name to AAA AArdvark Satisfaction Services.
Posted by Peter Leppik