Customerland
Customerland is a podcast about …. Customers. How to get more of them. How to keep them. What makes them tick. We talk to the experts, the technologies and occasionally, actual people – you know, customers – to find out what they’re all about.So if you’re a CX pro, a loyalty marketer, a brand owner, an agency planner … if you’re a CRM & personalization geek, if you’re a customer service / CSAT / NPS nerd – you finally have a home.
Customerland
Balancing Efficiency and Satisfaction in Customer Support
In our latest episode of Customerland, Dr. Ori Faran, CEO of CallVu, dives into the vital role of agility and cost efficiency, especially for smaller companies looking to thrive in the competitive landscape.
In our second segment, we get into the nitty-gritty of measuring customer experience success. Ori breaks down essential metrics like success rate, opt-in and reuse rates, average handle times, first call resolutions, and customer satisfaction. He also tackles the contentious net promoter score (NPS), discussing both its merits and its pitfalls. Learn how these metrics can sometimes clash, particularly when balancing average handling time with customer satisfaction, and explore innovative semi-self-service technologies designed to streamline efficiency while keeping customers happy.
Our final discussion dives deep into the world of detailed metrics, such as measuring time per step in customer processes to pinpoint inefficiencies. Ori introduces us to the Service Promoter Score, a targeted measure of customer service satisfaction, and highlights the power of AI-analyzed open-ended feedback for gaining nuanced insights. Wrapping up, Ori shares his expert perspectives on navigating the ever-evolving customer experience landscape and CallVu’s significant contributions.
Customer Land is a podcast about customers how to get more of them, how to keep them, what makes them tick. We talk to the experts the technologies and occasionally actual people. You know customers to find out what they're all about. So if you're a CX pro, a loyalty marketer a brand owner, an agency planner, if you're a CRM and personalization geek.
Mike Giambattista:I'm honored to be speaking with Dr Ori Faran, who's CEO of CallView, and for those of you who are not familiar with CallView, actually, rather than me describe it, I'm going to ask Ori to do a far better job of that than I could. Suffice it to say, however, that Ori is as passionate and knowledgeable about the intricacies and the challenges of customer experience as anyone we've spoken with here. So for that reason alone, I'm very excited to have this conversation. Ori, thank you so much for joining me.
Ori Faran:Mike, thank you for having me. It's delightful to be here.
Mike Giambattista:So could you tell us a little bit about CallVu, your role there and maybe just to back it up a little bit even further, why CallVu was created, why it exists?
Ori Faran:Yeah, great, Thank you for the question. So CallView I'll just start with the name. We started the company with channels and then got all the way to no-code creation of any customer experience digitally, Starting from the very top. Callview was created around viewing the call, specifically later actually named Visual.
Mike Giambattista:IVR.
Ori Faran:The team, the founding team. We worked at companies that created IVRs Interactive Voice Response this automated voice that takes the call as soon as you call anywhere and says thank you for calling. Whether you want to do, say or press 1, 2, 3, 4, and we figured that the projects are always challenging because somehow it's very expensive. Figured that this is the projects are always challenging because somehow it's very expensive. All over the place, from technology to the human resource, and at the same time pretty frustrating to everyone to the agent that's a very difficult work and to the caller. People tend to be frustrated from the second they press dial. Something about that is not easy, from the, the voice menus all the way to an agent that is or is not knowledgeable, and it all starts and ends actually with how expensive that is. If you are speaking to a person, that person has to be paid, naturally, and if it's a banker it's even more expensive, or if it's an insurance professional and so on, or a healthcare professional, and then companies try to save and customers just feel that companies try to save money servicing them and then the clash begins. So our first idea that started the company is putting the menus, these IDR Interactive Voice Response menus on the screen therefore called Vue we write it in a bit of a funny way is the colon, then V and U it was. I wanna to say it was popular giving these funky names back then, maybe even now, and then that's what we started from. So you called and then you saw the menus on the screen which makes the navigation easier and makes you hopefully wanting to achieve a little more with the automated part of the call, and then you can go to talk to a person. We can talk about that later, this in-between self-service, but maybe semi-self-service. And then the call got to an agent and then the agent said why won't we be able to control the call further, to put some more on the screen? So we did that. That's our collaboration.
Ori Faran:And then we figured that most of what we collaborate on are digital forms. So we created our own version of digital forms and the important part in ours is not necessarily the signature. You can sign it with your finger or say I accept and agree, if you want, or sign with your finger, but since this is customer services, quite often the form is filling multiple items together with the agent, because forms in professional contexts sometimes are confusing or complicated or valuable in a way that I want your help doing whatever I need to do to feel more confident. So these are unique channels and then all different channels that are digital, outbound over mail, web pages and so on and so forth. So we started from some specific unique channels that are somewhere in between visualized VR and collaboration, somewhere in between digital and the real world, and then expanded to all digital, to more standard digital, and the later part of the story is that creating processes.
Ori Faran:Creating digital processes is something that we agile practically with regards to cost and without just being able to change things tomorrow if I need them, and create few versions is another significant necessity, and, with smaller companies, keeping that not necessarily very expensive is also something that is important. So so we took the first parts, various digital channels, and created our own version of drag-and-drop. So I would say that, with CallView, creating any customer service, and we start with a micro process. So each customer services related topic is one type of a journey. Creating a journey with us is as simple as it is to create a webpage with Wix, for example. So just a generator or a studio where you create your journey and then multiple journeys and then distribute across channels where you create your journey and then multiple journeys and then distribute across channels.
Mike Giambattista:So, in preparation for this conversation, we're doing a little bit of research and came upon an article that referenced CallView in I believe it was Fast Company and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that the article was quoting research that CallView had done. That had to do with how long people are willing to wait before talking to a human, which was really interesting because, speaking to an awful lot of people in the cx world, that's one of those golden metrics that everybody tries to hold out there. But what I think I understood and I don't know if you have any context to add to this is that there's quite a variance in those tolerances and it appears that those variances some of them are probably personality-based, but they can be largely circumstantial as well. And they can be largely circumstantial as well.
Ori Faran:And again, I don't know if you have that at your fingertips or recall which report this was from. But it seems to me that if we can bring any clarity to that key metric, that's going to be important to a lot of people listening to this. So I think it starts with the perceived complexity of the topic I'm calling about. But there's another interesting part or piece to it, because currently, nowadays, digital is around for good I would say 30 years so people know it's there and people tend to be in a mindset of trust me, if I call, there is something I need from a person and not from self-service, which is something to keep in mind when trying to offer self-services to callers.
Ori Faran:Digital is not new. Everyone knows digital. People are not calling because they don't know where to find digital. They call because they think their issue or the topic they want to discuss is slightly more complicated or slightly more personal than self-service would take care of, and the perceived importance and complexity therefore is, from their point of view, justifying a person to talk to. Now there are some topics where it's almost, I would say, objectively correct, things like an insurance claim. To me as a caller, it might be perceived as complicated, or maybe it is really complicated. I want someone to help me and guide me through terminology, through the process and maybe even and that's part of, I think, many actual conversations take responsibility so that whatever is submitted eventually is done with a professional or with someone who's halfway or maybe more responsible for the document or that submission to be accurate.
Ori Faran:So people when they call very often the set of mind is believe me, I do need to talk to a person and when using self-services in this context, we have to be respectful.
Mike Giambattista:So a little.
Ori Faran:I would say careful with how aggressively we push people back to self-service, if they could. Now, maybe. One more thing to add to that is that we're all natural speakers. As people, our most natural way to communicate is by talking to one another. This is how we're built as humans. This is how we're built as humans, so people find it important and even comforting to talk to another person. And again, to change, to push people to a different channel is challenging, and if we do that, we need to do it in a way that considers what we just talked about the preference, the feeling, the perceived complexity.
Ori Faran:We can talk about it going forward.
Ori Faran:But when we try to intervene in a call with a proposition for self-service, we will try to do it as an augmented option, so not instead of the voice channel, instead it's added to the voice channel.
Ori Faran:And one more thing that we try to do that is maybe somewhat unique in the approach we're taking is semi-self, so kind of relax. You're going to talk to a person but before you do, who are you? That's authentication and what do you need, and maybe you want to read and sign something that that is halfway or taking you towards the process and then when you are talking to someone, the call is shorter and more focused and that's cost saving or maybe doing that, trying starting to provide information. You'd figure that, okay, if I lost my credit card and I want to block it for 48 hours and know what's the number of the gas station I last used it at, I don't really need the person. So we will try to divert the call, but do it in a way that is kind of respectful and try to lead you to the decision that you don't need to talk to a person, or if you still do need to talk to a person, take you to that person with the added information with you.
Mike Giambattista:Interesting. I'm referencing that article in Fast Company again. What was based on what you just said? The article. It wraps up that section of it by saying the survey commissioned by customer experience platform CallView offers a compelling rebuke of automated customer service solutions at a time when companies are leaning into chatbots like never before. And yet I think that's not necessarily correct, because what you're talking about here is a hybrid approach. You're certainly not saying one or the other. I mean, that seems to be what CallView is all about and, I think, what 99% of CX professionals would advocate for, so it's not really a rebuke at all.
Mike Giambattista:I take a little bit of issue with the way this is wrapped up here, especially having heard from the CEO himself on it, but there's clearly a strong preference by people who are calling in. If they've got, if they have decided they have a compelling reason to speak to another human, that they're willing to wait to speak to a human, uh, in overwhelming numbers. Just you know how long and how well is it handled. I think those things are, are, are are more the the responsibility of the, of the recipient of the call, but clearly they're willing to. So there's not really a rebuke here at all. It's simply you know what's the best way to handle a customer inquiry or customer complaint if you already know they prefer speaking to a human, and that's fairly knowable.
Ori Faran:I completely agree.
Ori Faran:And that's fairly knowable. I completely agree. And speaking about that, I have to say that I try to take both sides the side of the customer who is calling and probably rightfully thinks he has the right to talk to a person, thinks he has the right to talk to a person A and that his matter is important enough and, assuming he already considered the digital option, he's now made a decision that the company needs to respect and talk to him. So that's one side. And the other side is the side of the company company and providing a human response. Allowing a customer to talk to a representative is indeed very, very expensive. That other person needs to get paid, he needs to be knowledgeable, he needs to have the tools and indeed large companies have customer services teams that are tens of thousands, some are even on the way to 100,000 employees that take scores.
Ori Faran:Otherwise, people in time of need will wait forever or very, very long, and that's hyper-expensive and this is taking the company side expensive and people need and this is taking the company's side people need to to realize that if I'm going to the bank, I have to drive and park and pay for all that and take the time and then wait in line. There will be people in front of me in the line and I'll respect that. Somehow, when people are calling, they expect the whole situation is easier. Calling is less of an effort than going physically to a place, and still I, as a caller, I'm expecting people or the other side to pick up my call with a very knowledgeable and capable person very, very fast. So I think the truth is somewhere in between.
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Mike Giambattista:I'd like to talk for a few minutes about the way, the various ways, companies measure their success or failure as it relates to customer experiences, and there are all kinds of metrics out there. We have healthy debates internally here about which ones are useful and which ones are. Should have been thrown away a couple of decades ago. But that's just internal. You're you're a working professional running a company that uh, probably deals with these. These metrics, uh, day in, day day out, they're probably vital to the way you do business and your customers do business. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that.
Mike Giambattista:I'm going to call out five different metrics that are all very, very popular, but maybe we can just unpack those a little bit, see if there are other ones out there that you feel might be helpful in this realm, or should we just go about creating something that is universally useful? So the first one is success rate. We kind of have various kind of sub definitions of what success rate might be Opt-in and reuse rate, average handle times first call resolutions and, of course, customer satisfaction and net promoter scores. It's that last one that ends up bringing up the most debate here.
Mike Giambattista:Internally, we have certain advocates for NPS that are diehard, and I don't care what useless the information that that you derive from it is, it will never go away. And yet, uh, you know, we see, we see a lot of companies who are taking a bit more sophisticated approach to CSAT and NPS kinds of understandings, but doing it with a bit more sophisticated data-based algorithmic approach, if you will. So I've just thrown a lot of stuff on your plate. We've got success rate, opt-in and reuse average, handle time first call resolution, average handle time first call resolution, csat and NPS. When you're talking to your clients, what are the key metrics that you're advocating they look at, and yourselves internally.
Ori Faran:So I must say that the later one that you mentioned, net promoter score that there are multiple debates around and even the math is a little more sophisticated or complicated is still quite popular and indeed the question of would you recommend, makes some sense makes some sense. It's kind of it's wrapping up the inner parameters of bottom line Is it useful and valuable or not? And we tend to measure it because it's popular and well-known and comparable. Then, average handling time and first contact resolution are the more numeric measurements of a successful process. Okay, the challenge, the problem, is that it varies. You have to measure that for each and every type of interaction, otherwise it's somewhat useless and there's a bit of a risk in pushing these too hard. Average handling time you sometimes talk to an agent where you almost feel as if that agent is measured by keeping the call as short as possible and that's inconvenient. So it kind of contradicts the net promoter score and other customer satisfaction matrices. And going back to some unique technologies, I want to think that what we do tries to be unique. In a way, allowing a hybrid approach can reduce average handling time without compromising the ability to succeed, because some of the call is taken or some of the topics of the call are taken out of the call and the call still remains. So the notion, the idea of a semi-self-service tends to be an interesting one, to say the least. An interesting one, to say the least.
Ori Faran:One more thing that I think that wasn't in that list of measurements that I think makes sense, or at least it does to us, is measuring the time per step. Some steps take more time than others. If you're thinking about filling out a form or taking a process where there's several items to answer or even several pages, several steps to that process, and it's interesting to measure success and time of every step. A success and a time of every step. Think about going and asking the customer for a customer ID, for example. That step can be long but it makes sense because once I'm on that step I'd have to go and figure out where to find that step. Some other places, taking too long to answer a question might indicate that the question is unclear or create some kind of an uncertainty. So maybe that's another measurement If we don't have enough already that I want to throw into the mix. I would say item handling time.
Ori Faran:So not an average or maybe an average, but per item and not per the entire process.
Mike Giambattista:Interesting. I mean, it makes an awful lot of sense and especially, I mean I think it also gives every organization who's using it to apply their own kind of set of contexts. You know, as you've said, because if you're an insurance company and you need to, you know somebody needs to replace a card versus speak to. You know, whatever that is, from the most simplistic inquiry down to the most complex, you now have a way of measuring that.
Ori Faran:There's two more I want to suggest. Perhaps One is somewhat similar to net promoter score, but it would be service promoter score similar to net promoter score, but it would be service promoter score Asking about would you recommend the bank services or the phone company services to someone else? Takes into consideration a little too much. If I'm happy with the broadband, if I'm happy with I don't know content that my phone company provides to me, yeah, I would recommend, even if the service wasn't great. So such question that blends the services and the customer services or the service in this call might be a little unfair.
Mike Giambattista:Might be happy with one, or Reaching two different ideas and asking for one metric, one grade.
Ori Faran:Perhaps a service promoter score or customer service promoter score or customer service promoter score, and one more is and it actually connects to AI. Now is an open question. Since what we're doing with the phone services as well as with digital services is being digital on both, it's as easy to add another question that you might or might not answer Probably not, by the way. The number of answers is limited because people wouldn't bother to answer that every time, but some would. The same way, you see responses and responses and people voicing themselves on Airbnb or booking or different sites for different stores, and it would be what did you think about the company or the services today?
Ori Faran:The reason why it now makes more sense than ever to ask such question is that we can and other companies hopefully will be able to do that or maybe can already to analyze the sentiment of these answers and summarize them very easily, much easier than before. Last year it wouldn't make sense to ask such question because if you got 10,000 answers a day, no one can read them or read them in a way that is valuable for the company. Now I can ask AI, which is a no-brainer could you please collect the feedbacks with a positive sentiment and a negative sentiment and helped me realize what was said today, this week, this month, and even get to a little deeper resolution, like are there differences in numbers of or in types of sentiments between days, between weeks, holidays and and so on so you would, you would call that kind of just a kind of a re-ask of NPS.
Mike Giambattista:So the first that is numeric.
Ori Faran:What did you think about the service? I would call a service promoter score, right Rather than promoter score. That, again, as you said, blends the service that I'm getting from the company and the service that I got from the human that just talked to me together, which is a little bit difficult to tell the difference and know what was good or bad and what's not. So that's that, and the second part is maybe an open-ended question, or we can think and give it a name, kind of Open-ended sentiment question or something like that.
Ori Faran:Exactly Interesting. Share with us your thoughts, your experience and, again with AI, you can even ask a very open-ended question and then ask AI to analyze which answers are related to the services the company provided, which related to the services that an agent provide. So, yeah, that's a very valuable actually tool.
Mike Giambattista:Yeah, and you're right. If this was, If you had tried to deploy this last year, it would have been an entirely different set of answers this year. It's you know.
Ori Faran:And impossible to analyze.
Mike Giambattista:Yeah, yeah at that volume. Well, ori, thank you so much for your time today and for your thinking and for kind of giving us the perspective from the top of at least your corner of the CX world. We will, of course, post a link to call view. I invite all of our listeners to check out the company. But, ori, again thank you, and I'm so looking forward to the next time we get to do this.
Ori Faran:Yeah, absolutely Mike. Thank you so much for your time.
