Talk about CX customization in 2014, you need to understand accents. What accent does your business have?

Businesses around the globe have to adopt, adjust and tailor their services to meet the peculiarities of their customers. Accent, is an integral part of the customization of customer experience- companies are required to consider this as a critical aspect of their customer strategy. Wikipedia conceive of accents as a linguistic variety which differs in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. In the UK alone, there are about 40 different accents that exist and with globalization surging in modern economy, it is very certain that a firm’s customer base comprises of nationals from a host of countries with a variety of accents.

A key area where this could be employed would be on the IVR and most importantly voice recognition facility on the call centre channel. A few weeks ago, I called up Sky TV to renegotiate my TV package. I dialled the number, had several options which were not exhaustive or comprehensive enough. I was then asked to say my post code, I said that once, and it requested that I should repeat it, as it seemed the voice recognition did not get it. It was a prolonged and painful experience that prompted me to consider leaving for the competition. Take a pause and Imagine for a few minutes, a very high value customer, that has a different accent to that of the default voice recognition, making a call to the call centre and they are being moved in circles because they have a variant accent to that of the default IVR voice recognition.

In 2014, the key phrase in gaining the competitive advantage is the ‘Customization of the Customer Experience’ – as businesses have to be flexible and sensitive enough to design its strategy to suit the culture, personality and peculiarities of her customers. Understanding your customer’s language, accents and culture goes a long way to show you value their worth. Going forward, it would be great if every company, designs her IVR service to present all customers with a choice of either saying or typing their account details, post code, order number, tracking number or any information required to route the call. Companies should not assume or generalise that all her customers have the default IVR voice recognition accent.

On a more demanding but interesting note, businesses could invest in incorporating a host of major accents to its voice recognition service. It would take a while but this might be a good point of differentiation if the customisation of customer experience is to be taken seriously.  On the contrary, some IVR research like that carried out by call centre helper, expressed that only 18% of contact centres adopted a speech recognition system.  The research states that the problem with customising the IVR voice recognition system in line with accents is that of accuracy- an accuracy of about 70% is what was achieved. In the same research, a call centre consultant stated that with proper tuning and modification, the accuracy level could increase to 90%. The biggest challenge to customising the way we listen to how a customer talks to us via IVR is not that of recognition accuracy but a word that may not be on the list. The findings concluded by stating that the “out of grammar” errors can be in the 15% range which affects the overall speech/accent recognition capabilities of IVR.

Regardless of the inherent challenges, companies that would excel in her customer strategy in 2014 are those that listen to their customers speak, make an understanding of what they are saying and act accordingly. Remember accents indicate where you customers are coming from, understanding them helps you know where they are headed for. 

Gratitude investment: is your brand appreciating or depreciating in value?

William Arthur Ward, once said, “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it, is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” The essence of gratitude or the act of being thankful to customers within the business climate, largely impacts upon the brand perception and value.  Having gratitude towards customers is not enough but investing the gratitude by way of expressing it helps improve the perception and affinity towards a brand.

NBC news, ran a story of a café in Nice called Le Petite Syrah, they would make customers who say “Thank You” and are generally polite pay less than customers who do not. The price of coffee in this café starts at 7 Euros and drops to 4.25 Euros, when a customer uses the word ‘Please.’ When the customer goes for the full, “Good morning, a coffee, please,” and the politeness discount reduces the price to about, 1.4 Euros. This development- inspired customers to be exceptionally polite and grateful in a bid to get coffee for free, and this totally transformed the attitude of customers as they became less rude, more polite and grateful due to the price reduction for good behaviour. Now, this is the business demanding the appropriate and appreciative behaviour from her customers.

The idea of gratitude investment is critical as customers feel empathy and value when their patronage is genuinely appreciated. On New Year’s Eve, before I got off the train, the driver in a very genuine and thoughtful tone enthused, “Thank you for travelling with southern and have a happy new year.” It was a simple thank you but was said in a very heartfelt manner- that made me feel he really meant what he said.

Gratitude investment, involves expressing genuine and thoughtful thank you to your customers. The premise of this approach is to help generate gratitude within the workforce or employees, this then transcends to the customers. It is very difficult to have a disgruntled and ungrateful workforce express gratitude genuinely to customers.

Research has showed that grateful people- feel better about life, exercise regularly, make progress in actualising personal goals, optimum degree of alertness and awareness, enthusiastic-optimistic-determined, they are more likely to help others. Steven Foran, Known as the ‘Gratitude Guy’ opines that this set of employees show a better attitude towards their employer, job and the customers. They positively impact upon loyalty and customer service- by exhibiting sincere and genuine care and empathy towards customers. Empathy is viewed as a messenger of care during and after the customer interaction. Using my personal experience on New Year’s Eve, the train driver showed genuinely he cared about the passengers by wishing us a happy new year. That was the only train driver, of all the trains I boarded, close to the New Year that took out time to genuinely thank his passengers and wish them a happy new year. His tone of voice, pace of speech and demeanour was genuine, not robotic, sincere and intentional. I could tell this was an employee that had gratitude within him, as you could only give what you have. If an employee has ingratitude within them, they could only express a robotic and an insincere ‘Thank You’. Customers could sense when gratitude is being faked, acted upon or expressed in a robotic manner.

Let’s borrow a leaf from the French Cafe in Nice, Imagine as a brand or company, your customers pay £1 more on an item, whenever your staff says thank you or shows gratitude. I could only imagine, that your employees would use ‘Thank You’ at the start and the end of every sentence and would probably, keep the conversation long enough- to use more ‘Thank You’ and show more gratitude. This gesture or attitude would be robotic, insincere and exploitative in nature.

Gratitude investment is very critical to brand appreciation or depreciation. Remember the value of your brand is dependent upon the perception, emotions and inclination that customers have of your product and service. For brands to appreciate in value, businesses are required to show gratitude to their customer base in a very thoughtful and sincere manner. To achieve this goal, firstly, executives have to look inwards by facilitating employees to express gratitude in their personal life.  Employees can only give or express what they have- gratitude within their personal lives would help them show thoughtful appreciation towards customers.

Suffice it then to say that, gratitude investment demands for businesses to show genuine interest in the wellbeing of their workforce- to ensuring they are making personal strides, achieving goals, having a positive outlook in lives and express personal gratitude about life. When you coach and inspire your workforce to feel good about themselves, you are investing in gratitude, inspiring your team to extend such gratitude to your customers, and in-turn your customers would uphold your brand in high esteem.