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In mid-May, Byram Healthcare Centers Inc. officially launched automated voice assistant (AVA), an interactive voice response (IVR) system that's expected to greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its customer response.

"We take thousands of calls each day and want to make sure that each time a customer calls in they are answered promptly and routed to the customer service team that can best assist them," Jeff Mignone, the company's senior vice president of operations, stated in a press release.

The obstacles

A distributor of disposable home medical supplies and services to patients at home, Byram Healthcare's livelihood depends on how fast and effectively it can respond to queries and orders from customers across the country. While the company supports some Web-based ordering with healthcare organizations, it deals with hundreds of thousands of customers over the phone.

"Making sure every detail of their interaction with AVA is exactly right has been a monumental undertaking," notes Philip Mutino, Byram's manager of telecommunications.

The solution

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My company is looking for a way to uncover unvoiced customer complaints – do you have any suggestions for how we should do this? To uncover unvoiced customer complaints, first, employ a policy we call "complaint discovery." Constantly work to obtain customer feedback, and ask whether the customer has any complaints or suggestions for future improvements at... More...

What metrics should we be using to measure and anticipate customer behavior? Measuring and anticipating customer behavior are two different things. "Measuring" behavior really means "tracking" it. Customer behaviors include much more than mere consumer purchasing behavior. Customers interact online, in the store, and at the call center. They voice complaints... More...

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Creating Customer Value, Linking call center agents and customer profit with Martha Rogers, November 2008.

Call center agents can have a big impact on customer profitability and build customer value for their organization. In this installment of our Creating Customer Value podcast series, Martha Rogers explains how companies can encourage call center agents to focus on customer profitability, discusses the difference between inbound call center agents and outbound call center agents in handling customer interactions and gives tips for leveraging predictive analytics technology to build profitable customers.

Visit the Creating Customer Value podcast archive.

  Linking call center agents and customer profit 

Named one of the nineteen most important business gurus of the past century by Business 2.0 Magazine, Martha Rogers, Ph.D., is a founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group. Martha has been recognized for the past decade as one of the world's leading experts on customer-based business strategies and growing customer value.

Highlights:
Fast forward to questions that interest you most.

00:43 We've recently asked our call center reps to start cross-selling and up-selling. They have become so focused on hitting their marks that we feel customer service may be at risk. How can we turn things around and get our agents to instead focus on the customer experience and building customer profitability?

03:58 What can our customer service reps do to transform unprofitable customers into profitable ones? Are there any best practices we can have them follow?

07:58 How do inbound call centers and outbound call centers differ in the way their agents build customer profitability?

09:57 How can we leverage the data collected from our predictive analytics software to help our customer service reps build customer profitability?

   Related resources on customer equity and customer profitability 

Read Peppers and Rogers' latest book, Rules to Break & Laws to Follow.

Find out if it's possible to increase customer profitability by starting a call center.

Ask your own customer equity questions of Peppers and Rogers to be answered on an upcoming podcast.

If you prefer to read rather than hear Peppers and Rogers' answers, visit SearchCRM.com's Ask the Expert pages:

Ask the Expert: Customer equity: Long-term and short-term
Ask the Expert: Building trust with customer strategy

Learn about the link between call center agents and customer profit and find out how predictive analytics technology can help build customer profitability in this podcast.

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