Tag Archives: Business to Business

CCA Excellence Awards 2012 – Percepta shortlisted for Best Outsourcing Partnership

CCA Global Excellence Awards 2012Percepta has been shortlisted for CCA Excellence   Awards 2012 in the following categories:

Best Outsourcing Partnership  

CCA Excellence Awards programme is designed to recognise achievements of individuals and organisations committed to delivering outstanding customer service. The Excellence Awards is the most respected and sought-after programme, unique through its peer group judging process. The judging panel includes professionals from all sectors, and senior executives with wide-ranging experience in customer contact centres.

“I am delighted that we have been selected as one of the finalists for this award which is respected and well recognised within the industry.   I look forward to the award ceremony later this year” – Suzan Tew, Operations and Account Manager.

Anne Marie Forsyth, Chief Executive, CCA said, “In today’s challenging climate it’s more important than ever to recognise the efforts of individuals and teams dedicated to going the extra mile to deliver for customers and these Awards are designed to do just that. Organisations are clearly committed to recognising the hard work undertaken throughout the year. I’d like to wish our short-listed entrants the best of luck. Given the quality of submissions received, getting to this stage of the judging process is an achievement in itself”

The Awards winners will be announced on the evening of 7th November 2012 at CCA’s Gala Dinner & Excellence Awards Ceremony, being held at The Hilton, Glasgow.   Members and non-members were invited to submit for the awards programme. All judges are appointed following a rigorous application process demonstrating their experience and capability to judge the submissions. Only judges who operate or work in customer contact centres are appointed. This innovative, independent judging process allowed the awards programme to be a credible recognition of professionalism and achievement by fellow customer contact professionals.

 View the CCA Excellence Awards shortlist for 2012 here.

I’m Confused about Your Values

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Your opinion of this blog may be different if you are working for a “client” versus an “agency”, as your perspective I fear will be based on your role and background.  Let’s take a look at the client – agency relationship and in particular, the behaviours of each party and how this neither does nor does not uphold their organisational values.  This relationship is important because of its multi-faceted nature. One day I could be a supplier to your company, but the next day be one of your customers, thus it is imperative that your company values are translated equally to every stakeholder.

So what’s my point?

As a supplier we respond to tenders and briefs from clients asking for our proposal to support a part of their organisation.  Nearly every time, the brief will include details of the importance of company values:  how we can deliver experiences that support the clients’ values and how our values must be aligned to the clients’ values.  Now we all know that you cannot measure values, you measure behaviours that demonstrate those values.  So why do some organisations still behave in a way that does not support the values they talk about?  If they cannot behave in the right way, how do they expect their suppliers to behave in the right way?  How do employees of that supplier feel about that organisation and would they, as a customer, be able to be loyal to that organisation?  I feel that this is forgotten so many times and could so easily be rectified. 

So here are my top tips for a great partnership between suppliers and clients:

  1. From the start don’t just talk about values, demonstrate what this means in terms of behaviours.  This does not start when you have signed a contract with a new supplier but from the very moment you meet, during the tender process and also if a contract has to be cancelled.  The way these key stages are managed, says a lot about an organisation and the values it really has.
  2. Clients’ HR and Marketing teams need to be spend time with your suppliers’ employees when you roll out new customer campaigns or when you refresh your values
  3. Reward suppliers not just on achievement of financial targets but on demonstrating those behaviours that support your values

So what are your views – if you are a client, how do you feel this could be improved?  Alternatively, suppliers, what are your thoughts – where has this worked well and why?

Percepta and Qualtrics Partner for Customer Insight Service

As advocates of better customer insight, Percepta shapes its services around delivering change and improvements for our clients based on high-quality customer and employee feedback combined with intelligent analytics.

Today we are pleased to announce that Percepta has created a partnership with Qualtrics, the industry-leading provider of online survey software, for our soon-to-launch survey and customer insight service. Qualtrics delivers to over 200 corporate clients in addition to many more academics and government organisations. This, along with their focus on delivering a great user experience for their clients customers, made this partnership ideal.

The team at Percepta have worked for over 12 months with Qualtrics to understand more about the technology and ensure the right fit for our clients, their customers, and employees. Aligning the vast Qualtrics global expertise in survey technology with Percepta’s experience of using customer insights to manage change is set to deliver an improved service for our clients and their customers.

Alan Bates, service development manager for Percepta, explains, “Finding a quality technology partner for our survey and customer insight service was critical. We have many years of experience in the analysis of multiple data streams, from voice of customer and voice of employee to sales, product, and process-related information. Having built this kind of intelligence for each of our clients, we needed software that can help us in the collection of that data and is flexible enough to work for a diverse range of businesses, sectors, and customers. This is the perfect combination of customer-focused improvement with world-class surveying software.”

A number of global brands are already experiencing the positive results of this new partnership ahead of the official service launch.

Keep up to date with the launch of our survey and customer insight service by following us on Twitter using #LoveYourCustomer or connecting with us on Facebook.

Communication: Everyone’s Talking About It

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How do consumers communicate with an organisation? How do organisations communicate with consumers?

Today, consumers can talk to a brand representative over the phone, through email, and online through social networks.  But amidst all the discussions over “multi channel” customer service, whatever happened to good old fashioned face-to-face?

A large utilities firm is putting faith back in this method –equipping call centre staff with video links to create more face-to-face contact with customers – as they believe it has the power to encourage current customers to stay and lost customers to return.

But should we all be including face-to-face in our “multi channe” strategies, if it has the power to increase customer loyalty?

Perhaps examples from other industries can demonstrate the true potential of face-to-face communication, like o2.

Last Thursday, the Percepta UK marketing team attended Dunning Design’s monthly “Communications Breakfast”, hosted by o2.  They presented “o2 Ville”, a collection of innovations designed to help consumers cope with all their communication demands.  o2 Money senior partner Martyn Wallace opened the presentation with a demonstration of how many of us could begin paying for products or services using an internet enabled mobile device, rather than with a debit or credit card.  And even as one audience member questioned the speaker on the problems o2 may encounter with the battery life of such devices, most attendees seemed taken by the idea.  Tim Craven of o2 Wifi then took over the floor to explain how the organisation plans to provide dedicated nationwide Wifi hotspots, providing internet access for consumers, whatever they are doing, wherever they are.  Moreover, this would be available for everyone, regardless of your mobile network.   

Lastly, o2 Health associate Julian Rolfe introduced “Side by Side”, an innovative scheme which allows clinicians to speak to their patients hundreds of miles away, and share medical information such as MRI scans and x-rays with other medical professionals.  o2 suggests that the technology can save on unnecessary and often time consuming travel.  A pilot “Side by Side” scheme was rolled out by o2 and NHS Western Isles in 2011, and immediately made an impact to the lives of both patients and clinicians in this remote area.  Some statistics to highlight this impact include:

  • 67% of clinicians said that their ability to diagnose patients had increased
  • 80% of clinicians said that they were able to see patients sooner and with greater ease
  • Travel was reduced by 9 hours for some patients
  • Around £6500 was saved on travel throughout the trial period – and was put toward other resources
  • Patients’ satisfaction scores recorded over the pilot scheme was higher

Overall, NHS Western Isles found that service capacity had improved greatly over the trial period. 

As we left the presentation, I began thinking about how this technology could service other sectors as well as health. 

For NHS Western isles, the need for face to face communication over any other form was clear, but could it be used alongside other methods?  Could businesses begin to use such technology to reach out to their customers, and create a stronger bond? Communication, after all, is the key….let me know your thoughts on this.

Percepta Joins Glasgow Chamber

After 12 years of working in Scotland’s largest city, Percepta has joined the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.

Since 2000, we have employed hundreds of experts in the city, from customer service advisors to technical specialists and directors. Percepta made a further commitment to Glasgow in 2006 when the office was announced as the regional corporate headquarters for the Europe, Africa, and Asia Pacific regions.

We are now pleased to confirm our membership in the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, promoting Glasgow as a great city for business and opening our network to support and partner with other businesses in our community.

Keep up to date with our activities with the Chamber by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

Find out more about the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce here.

Featured Vacancy – Marketing Executive

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Many people feel marketing is a strange and specialised area, with numerous complications and a slightly different view on the world from the other departments within the company.  That simply isn’t true, as everyone has experience of marketing, whether they know it or not.  There is one product that everyone should be able to sell, a special package of skills, experience and knowledge that is unique. That product is simple: it’s you.

Your marketing pitch is your CV; it’s how you present yourself, how you to get an employer to buy into the brand that is your skills and what you can bring to the company.  Percepta are in the market for the right candidate.

We are looking for an experienced B2B Marketing Executive to join our marketing team. The successful candidate will be at the core of the marketing department, supporting Percepta’s regional strategy.

Should you be the successful candidate you will have a wide variety of duties including owning all activities around online, digital and external presence, external communications, brand design and development, CRM and supporting the lead management and brand engagement programmes.

 

We are looking for a flexible candidate with a variety of skills, particularly in digital work and a passion for marketing who wants to help Percepta make an impact both on and off the web. You’ll likely be qualified in marketing, or have equivalent experience, a strong creative side and great communication skills.

 

So jump into our elevator and apply here.  We look forward to hearing you pitching your personal brand package.

 

Marketing, HR, Customer Service – who should lead the strategy on customer experience management?

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I have recently seen several discussion on LinkedIn, even started some myself that are asking “Where does CEM sit in an organisation” “How can HR and Marketing partner to deliver great customer experiences”. “Should HR associations (CIPD) and Marketing associations (CIM, IDM) be better aligned”

These are all great questions and you would think that they would be simple to answer, bearing in mind that CEM seems to be top of the agenda for most organisations. From what I have seen, just on the more popular social media sites, there is one thing for sure, people have strong views on this subject, but there is not always agreement on what the answers are.

Here are my thoughts

1. One lead, supported by the whole organisation

Because the role of “owning the customer relationship” has historically been the responsibility of sales and marketing, CEM has naturally been picked up by the marketing lead and I believe that its needs 1 person to take the helm, but it is important to recognise that CEM must be supported by all areas of the organisation; HR, Customer Service, Finance and also the external partners, suppliers, and distribution channels.

2. HR and Marketing have to be aligned

It is no good having strong brand messages if your employees do not deliver the brand experiences. An obvious thing to say and many people do say it. But in reality how many organisations make sure this happens? How do you ensure that that every individual who can influence the customer’s experience understands what they need to do on a daily basis? How do you ensure it happens: Training, reward and recognition, coaching? For me this is why it is so crucial that the HR and Marketing teams work together. It brings the internal and the external together to deliver great customer.

3. Change will always happen

Delivering CEM inevitably produces change. If marketers do not know how to manage change themselves or have not been trained to understand how to coach people through change, their goals will not be achieved.

4. CEM – is long term not short term

Traditionally organisations have followed the funnel based approach (Read the Forrester report “It’s time to Bury the Marketing Funnel”) to market their organisations. This short term view of the world put the focus of winning new customer on pre sales activity and the marketing and sales teams. This very short term view has to change if CEM is to work. In particular, Marketeers have to have a longer term view, gathering data over the whole lifecycle to make sure the customer received the experiences that they are expressing in their marketing messages.

The Debate- Can public sector workers skills transfer into the Private Sector successfully?

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A debate has raged since a survey conducted by Barclays corporate and the Financial Times shows that 52% of the private sector would not employ public sector workers who may lose their jobs in the government spending cuts.

Conversely, a survey conducted by recruitment agency Badenoch and Clark show that 44% of public sector workers surveyed, think that their skills will not transfer into the private sector.

I would like some feedback from anyone with insider knowledge as to why the private sector employers and the public sector workers think this way.

44% of public sector employees surveyed thought that they would not need retraining to join the private sector, whilst the same number expects to work within the public sector for life.

The private sector does not appear to have this perception of a job for life.  Could there also be assumptions that public sector workers learn one job very well, and then are promoted within that business area only, for example, within the finance dept.  Their skills are concentrated in one department, thus limiting their employability.

The public sector has also much stricter union participation, as well as employment regulations than the private sector so employees’ rights are much more protected. Could these people deal with the private sectors less strict regulations?

There is also a perception that communication flows from the top down in the public sector and that all business processes are filtered down  to the “shop floor”, not allowing for any input from non managerial  employees.  Creativity and individualism is actively encouraged in the private sector so there could potentially be difficulties in adjusting to that way of working.  I’d be interested to hear what others think on this subject.

As I have never worked in the public sector myself, I do not have any firsthand experience of the processes involved from an employees perspective, but I have had to deal with them as a stakeholder, and in a B2B context where I have found the communication channels to be slow, bureaucratic and rather lacking in any imagination when dealing with end users.

Have I opened a can of worms or shall we get some interesting debates going regarding this subject?