Building Customer Service from the Ground Up

Transcript

[00:00:01] Steve MacDonald:  Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives Podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today we have a super interesting guest and topic. We have Chris Rojas and Chris, you are the head of U.S. Customer Service at Raisin. You’ve been in the business for about a couple of decades or so, I’d say now.

[00:00:21] Steve MacDonald: But one of the things that is interesting about your background, because you’ve started from the ground up, blank sheet of paper, two, three different times over. You’ve had the opportunity to rethink and say, here’s how we should lay out operations in our customer support teams, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

[00:00:43] Steve MacDonald: What are the key lessons that we can learn from going through that multiple times that we can take forward as executives in the customer support industry and customer service industry, that we can use in our daily operations and our thinking because one of the biggest things that we’ve got to do continually is fought that perception of us as a cost center versus a tremendous value center for the organization.

[00:01:09] Steve MacDonald: So I’m excited to get in here today, but first, if you wouldn’t mind, maybe explain a little bit more about your background before we get started.

[00:01:17] Chris Rojas: Sure, I’d be happy to, Steven. Thank you so much for having me on. When you say a couple of decades, it takes you back a little bit, but it’s true. I’ve had the privilege of working with several great companies in this industry, building and leading a team at S&P Capital IQ, growing a team at National Debt Relief, taking on a pretty simple organization, building that up 10X, and adding to their capacity.

[00:01:48] Chris Rojas: Now, as the Head of Customer Service for Raisin, I am responsible for several high-net-worth individuals who are not super comfortable with technology, who are getting out of their comfort zone to leverage Raisin’s savings marketplace to maximize their interest.

[00:02:08] Chris Rojas: So, I’m in the business of both creating great experiences to get these folks comfortable, holding their hand through the process, and then doing it in the right way where we are partnering with our teams internally and collecting all the data that we need to continue to build out on what’s been a phenomenal story for us here for the last five years in the U.S.

[00:02:29] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. I’d love to start at the top level. What are the key lessons? What are the things that are right away going through this process that you’d want to let us know about building from the ground up, scratch, blank sheet of paper, however you want to call it? How would you get us started on this conversation?

[00:02:47] Chris Rojas:  When you start from the beginning, the first question that you need to answer with your partners is, what is the purpose of customer service in this organization? Because it could just be answering questions. It could be about customer retention. It could be, that I know that I’m going to have serious technical gaps, and I need this human capital to fill those gaps and keep our customers comfortable. It could be, look, let’s just keep complaints away, and we’ll handle everything else as best we can. It could be several different things. You’ve got to get aligned with all the other stakeholders in the beginning and make sure that everyone understands what you want the team to be.

[00:03:37] Chris Rojas: Once you are aligned on that framework, and by the way, that framework doesn’t always have to stay the same. It can change. It can be negotiated down the line, but you’ve got to start somewhere. Once you have that framework, then you can think about all of the things that customer service traditionally needs to do.

[00:03:57] Chris Rojas: I have an idea of my end state, my long-term goal, and the levels of sophistication—the functions I need to execute. What am I prioritizing along the way? What am I doing with the budget that I have to start with? How do I begin to put those pieces into place so that I can be ready when we all agree it’s time to handle the most important tasks and then build out all of that functionality as time goes on?

[00:04:26] Chris Rojas: So, it’s not just answering questions. It’s also the quality assurance piece. It’s the data piece. It’s, are we only inbound? Are we going outbound? What channels are we covering? All of those different elements—you need all of those in place to create great experiences and meet that expectations. Then, over time, as your business thrives, and I’ve been lucky enough to work at places where they have found success when you can build that data-driven case that says we’re being successful in this way, we could be even more successful if we had this tool set or focused on this area. You go back to your partners and say, can we all agree this is a good use of our time and resources, and move from there?

[00:05:11] Chris Rojas: So, I think you’ve got to know who you want to be. You have to have that dialogue with your partners, and then you just have to stay laser-focused on where you want to get and the path to getting there. Use that as your North Star as you continue to build out that organization.

[00:05:28] Steve MacDonald:  I love that because you started by saying we’re going to be collaborative. The reason why, at the very beginning, I brought up that there’s still, unfortunately, in this day and age, the perception that contact center support centers are cost centers is because they have large overhead due to a lot of employees. So, how do you address the perception that others in the organization have about your bandwidth and what they think you can do in terms of benefits to the organization?

[00:06:04] Steve MacDonald: You have the voice of the customer. You can help with sales, marketing, product development, operations, and the website, as well as various other departments within the company. So, when you’re collaborating, are you also selling or promoting the benefits of how we can work together? Is that a part of your game plan?

[00:06:27] Chris Rojas: I’ve been lucky enough to work with smart people who can sense a sales pitch. What is always important is to understand the tension that your colleagues are addressing over time. For instance, if I think about marketing and acquisition costs for customers, consider what it costs to convert a prospect into a paying customer.

[00:06:56] Chris Rojas: If we can add to that investment by 10% but increase the chances that we’ll retain that customer by 50% or 75%, then I’ve made a data-driven case for customer service because I’m helping to decrease your marketing spend.

[00:07:14] Steve MacDonald: You’re increasing the lifetime value of that customer, which is reflected in the overall metrics. The ideal customer profile (ICP) is the customer that comes and stays, making them one of the most important revenue contributors a contact center can have.

[00:07:31] Steve MacDonald:  You’re also cross-selling and upselling, dealing with people who are considering buying and may not necessarily know the breadth of services available. What you just brought up is one of the most important areas. Tying the contact center on a data basis to the overall revenue of the organization is a connection that, unfortunately, is not made very clear in most organizations.

[00:07:57] Steve MacDonald: So, is that a part of your reporting? Are you building from the ground up, knowing that our KPIs contribute to the overall revenue of the company? Is that part of your mindset when collaborating with other organizations?

[00:08:15] Chris Rojas: For sure. It’s feeding the data back to the organization. So, not just the number of calls, the handling time, and the abandon rate, but also qualitatively, what is your customer satisfaction? And what’s the commentary behind that? The underlying commentary you’re getting from customers can help identify those points of friction and work towards eliminating them.

[00:08:38] Chris Rojas: Separately, you want to identify customers who are potentially going to reach that ultimate component of the customer life cycle and become your advocates and evangelists. These are the folks you can give a little extra love, attention, and spotlight to, and put them to work.

[00:08:58] Chris Rojas: Talk about how phenomenal you are, your service, your product—what it is that you’re offering. Get that out to folks. If you can bring that data to your team and they can leverage it to help maintain and grow those relationships, again, you’re driving a ton of value and cost savings for the organization. You’re reminding everyone that, as the eyes and ears of the consumer, you’re not just a cost center as seen in the past.

[00:09:32] Steve MacDonald:  I love this focus on data because when it gets up to the C-suite and the board, and they’re looking at costs, allocations of funds, and short-term return on investment—this quarter’s quota versus next quarter’s quota—that’s where this data helps. But you also brought up an important part: the qualitative side. You have the ear of the highest authority in the business; there is no higher authority than the customer.

[00:10:04] Steve MacDonald: So, how does the qualitative side come into play here? That’s a huge part of the reporting and demonstrating that we’re not a cost center; we’re a value center. I understand the data side and how you do that. From a qualitative perspective, how does that work?

[00:10:24] Chris Rojas: At the beginning, you need to have a sense of who you want to be and what level of service you want to provide as an organization. Think about those other experiences you have in life and try to visualize the service experience you want to create in your mind and the minds of your colleagues or team.

[00:10:51] Chris Rojas: At Raisin, for instance, trust, care, and warmth are the maxims we bring to these interactions because folks are clicking on their devices and sending around six figures through electronic payments, just because they are looking to maximize their interest and stay ahead of inflation. If you’re not making them feel great about the people they’re working with, the systems they’re using, and the partners they’re partnering with, then you’re going to lose them. All that time and effort to get them on board will be gone. So, you need those principles upfront.

[00:11:31] Chris Rojas: Once you have those, you need to make it crystal clear to everyone how to get to that point. What does that great interaction look like, from the way we introduce ourselves in automated ways to the first words that come out of an agent’s mouth or the first greeting that comes out when they’re sending an email in chat? The tone they use, either in their writing or vocally, along the way, should make sure folks feel heard. All of those different elements matter.

[00:12:03] Chris Rojas: As you work through those interactions, you need to pay careful attention to them. You also need to pay careful attention to the legal and compliance aspects, as well as the policy and procedure aspects of those interactions. Customers need to feel great; we need to follow the rules; and, most importantly, we need to ensure we give people the right answers and solve problems the right way.

[00:12:31] Steve MacDonald: So, I’m going to take two things that you’ve said in the last six or seven minutes, put them together, and ask you a question about it. You talked about what we can do if marketing, the cost of acquisition was X, but if we could help extend the lifetime value, which is very much tied directly to revenue.

[00:12:48] Steve MacDonald: And then, to summarize, you’re saying we need to make our customers feel great. Well, Gartner and McKinsey have all put out studies that have said that, in today’s day and age, the most important competitive advantage for companies is CX. With rapid technological change, we can’t stay ahead with our platform or our technologies.

[00:13:14] Steve MacDonald:  It’s so easy to innovate on a product today, and we have so many competitors. We don’t necessarily want to be a low-cost leader. So, product and price are very typical competitive advantages, but those have eroded over the last few years.

[00:13:30] Steve MacDonald: When you say we have to make the customer feel great and we can extend the lifetime value of that customer, that’s exactly what McKinsey was talking about. They discussed how it contributes to the overall value, all the way up through stakeholder value, stock price, and all kinds of ways that you measure value in an organization. So here’s my question: What do you think about CX, customer experience, as the most important competitive advantage for businesses today?

[00:14:00] Chris Rojas: I’m a little biased working in this part of the world, but throughout my career, I have believed in customer experience as a differentiator. Think about the restaurant experience. Think about going to a posh restaurant, getting a delicious meal, and not feeling loved, wanted, desired, or special, as opposed to going to your favorite neighborhood place and getting a reliable meal from a server who genuinely cares, smiles, makes eye contact, and is attentive. They might make a mistake, but they apologize and work hard to deal with it.

[00:14:39] Chris Rojas: They might not know the answer to a question, but they’ll own it. They’ll go ask, get you the right answer, and make you feel like they gave you a confident response. One line that I’ve always used when teaching is to imagine you’re going to a restaurant and you say to the server, “I’m allergic to garlic. Is there garlic in this dish?” The response you get is, “Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s no garlic in this dish,” as opposed to, “You know what? I’m not a hundred percent sure. Let me go check with the chef, and I’ll be right back.” They go check with the chef and come back, saying, “I just spoke with the chef, and he confirmed there is no garlic whatsoever in this dish.”

[00:15:22] Chris Rojas: Two very different experiences, but it just goes to show the importance of knowledge and trust and how that creates a differentiated experience. What you’re getting can be awesome, pristine, or perfect, but if it’s not delivered in the right way, giving you the right feeling, those folks are going to have a tough time staying around.

[00:15:45] Steve MacDonald: Absolutely. Short story: we just changed the company that services our home’s heating and air conditioning system. They called before the appointment and said it would be 15 minutes before they arrived. They asked if there was a good place to park mentioned they would be passing a Starbucks and offered to get me a coffee on the way.

[00:16:06] Steve MacDonald: I’ve never heard that before. I have no idea if that has anything to do with how good they are at HVAC, but it certainly set them apart, and they were very gracious. Sometimes, there’s very little we know as consumers, or even B2B buyers, about how to differentiate between companies. However, the experience of working with those companies is always a major differentiator.

[00:16:32] Steve MacDonald: I want to switch directions now and say this all sounds great, but there are many challenges to building an organization. What challenges have you seen while building and rebuilding? What challenges should we always look out for, and how did you navigate them?

[00:16:55] Chris Rojas: Well, going through the memory banks over a couple of decades, I’ve worked with companies that have had very different customer bases. I know those different customer bases have greatly informed our choices.

[00:17:11] Chris Rojas:  Raisin typically serves customers who are doing a lot of cash saving; they are a little more affluent and mature, and some are technically sophisticated. Some are stepping out of their comfort zone for yield. National Debt Relief, on the other hand, serves a more financially vulnerable audience who feels the pinch and is looking for help to overcome their challenges. At S&P, I worked in a B2B transaction serving many financial services professionals, primarily analysts and associates who were technically savvy but had seniors urging them to use market data to solve problems.

[00:17:54] Chris Rojas: The first thing to consider is how to meet those customers where they are. In the case of Raisin, customers used to going into a branch may want that personal touch. That’s why, when we built out our team, we focused on email and voice initially, eventually adding chat as a convenience feature. Customers wanted to speak to a human and feel like they weren’t just sending their cash into the ether.

[00:18:27] Chris Rojas: Meeting your customers where they are, depending on who they are, has always been a huge component. Additionally, in smaller organizations, you never have endless resources at your disposal to address challenges, so being as technically savvy as possible is crucial.

[00:18:48] Chris Rojas: You want to hire the best people, but you have to make choices—just like every adult does. You have a budget, expenses, and things you want. Am I going for the better system? How do I want to allocate these resources today and over time? How do I measure the success of those choices to determine whether to press on or make a change?

[00:19:12] Chris Rojas: So, I think being smart about resources has always been super important due to constant limitations. It’s essential to have a clear understanding of how well those resources are being used, which has been a significant focus for me.

[00:19:31] Chris Rojas: Lastly, in these dynamic organizations, sometimes you think you’re going to zig, but the organization zags. For instance, earlier this year, Raisin launched a convenience feature that allowed customers to more easily move between different savings products, called the Raisin Cash Account.

[00:19:52] Chris Rojas: Regardless of what was in the big grand plan, the bottom line is that we had many customers who needed their hands held and explanations on how to use this new feature and why it would benefit them.

[00:20:10] Chris Rojas: In these dynamic organizations, events external to you can dictate what you need to prepare for, and that’s okay. It’s your job as a senior leader to partner with the rest of the organization to create great experiences.

[00:20:28] Steve MacDonald: So, understanding the people first, because you’re building an organization to meet the needs of a very individual group of people, makes perfect sense. Then, aligning with the needs of the organization—how does that play into your thoughts on team development, specifically with the agents? You’re not alone in having a group of individuals that you serve who want to be able to talk to a human.

[00:21:00] Steve MacDonald: But AI is coming in, and there’s this great promise that it’s going to take a lot of the load off of us. Team development balanced with AI and that technology—how do you think about that?

[00:21:13] Chris Rojas: I think AI is a great enabler. I believe the next phase of customer service will involve agents who can handle five to ten times the customer base they can today because of automation. Automation can take what the customer is saying or doing, look at their history and account, and serve up suggestions to an agent. The agent can then deliver those answers on their own, or potentially, AI can provide those answers, putting the agent in a better position to solve for the customer.

[00:21:50] Chris Rojas: That’s where I see the next phase going—not eliminating people, but empowering them to do a lot more. In this way, you’re creating better service while also fulfilling the promise of efficiency that this technology can bring.

[00:22:06] Chris Rojas: Regarding team building, I genuinely get pleasure from helping others. I firmly believe many others share this sentiment and enjoy assisting someone in solving a problem and feeling better. For example, I often hear, “Oh, I was so worried about this, and now I feel great. Thank you so much! You’ve been such a big help.”

[00:22:30] Chris Rojas: I experience a personal feeling of joy from this, and I know many others in the world feel the same. Therefore, when we’re looking for team members, we want those who genuinely take pleasure in helping others and will be great teammates.

[00:22:45] Chris Rojas:  If I can optimize for those two traits and find someone with basic innate listening, learning, and communication skills, I will challenge myself to teach this person my industry, my processes, my policies, and everything else. I think that’s helpful.

[00:23:04] Chris Rojas: If you know something about banking and payments, that’s great, but I can teach you that. What I cannot do is teach you to like helping people. I cannot teach you to be a kind, caring, considerate teammate. I can try, but I don’t believe I can succeed in that. I do believe in my ability to teach the business. From a frontline and team lead perspective, I want people who aren’t leading in service because they see it as the next step in their career progression. I want someone who leads from the perspective of wanting to help others succeed. They should find pleasure in helping people maximize their potential. The leadership aspect, not the management aspect.

[00:23:50] Chris Rojas:  I think of the management aspect as scheduling, payroll, and all the mundane tasks you must deal with as an adult. However, the leadership aspect is about being a coach, inspiring others, and creating an environment where people can succeed. I want others with me who believe in what we’re doing, want to help people, and want to maximize potential. I feel fortunate to work with many such individuals at Raisin today.

[00:24:20] Steve MacDonald: With that philosophy, which I think we all hear and love, we were in the section where we’re talking about challenges. That’s not necessarily easy to do, and one of the biggest challenges in the industry is agent turnover. We just got talking about how important the agent is in creating that experience, and even with the trends of AI, it’s not replacing agents.

[00:24:47] Steve MacDonald: But a lot of times, it’s taking over the smaller stuff, and the more important, meaty stuff that a person needs to address is still there. So, in this environment where the human is even maybe more important than it has been in the past, how important is agent turnover? And how do you address that challenge?

[00:25:07] Chris Rojas: I don’t think anyone would argue that keeping your people and keeping them happy is vital. If you are making the level of investment in folks, there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into hiring, training, onboarding, cultural assimilation, and getting folks fully onboarded and engaged in what you’re doing.

[00:25:29] Chris Rojas: So, it’s massive to keep your great people. Coach them, manage them, and make sure that they understand they’re accountable for their performance. But for those people who you want and who have a long-term future in the company, you have to offer them something to stick around for.

[00:25:48] Chris Rojas: Not just another day of trying to solve 40 to 80 problems in a day, but actually, what are the other great things about this organization that you can look forward to as you grow your career? I’ve worked very hard across every place I’ve been to give every opportunity for individual contributors to grow into other roles in the organization.

[00:26:12] Chris Rojas:  So, where I had all of my managers, my QA, all of that, I grew them organically at Capital IQ. And if they didn’t stay in my organization, they could grow; they would get tapped and move into a customer success role.

[00:26:24] Chris Rojas:  At National Debt Relief, when I started with a handful of people—15 people—that grew into a 160-person organization where I had two managers and team leads. I had levels of leadership for folks that I built into those roles: legal specialists, admin, all of these different areas where they grew into now.

[00:26:46] Chris Rojas: Today, about half of my direct reports at Raisin started off as frontline agents, thanking folks for calling Raisin and asking how they could help. These folks have played a big role in the growth and development of the team, and they’ll continue to do so. I think you also need your organization to support you, so we have a learning and development budget for employees at Raisin, which helps retain them as we’ve become a larger organization. We’re rolling out different levels of individual contributors.

[00:27:17] Chris Rojas: We’re getting to a point where we can have more specialization around learning and development, quality assurance, data, analytics, and all of these other functions that you must have running effectively to continue to grow an organization efficiently. So, I think a lot of it is about those opportunities for folks to grow their careers if you want to keep them in your organization.

[00:27:42] Steve MacDonald: One of the takeaways from what you just said is what you were genuinely intending, and that is, I think it was a couple of years ago, Forrester came out and talked about this gap between managers and agents in trust. Trust gives agents a little latitude to go outside the sequence of how to answer this question or that question and allows them to adapt and handle situations in ways they think are best.

[00:28:12] Steve MacDonald: When people are growing and, like your direct reports, they’re moving into different areas of the organization, it means they want to stay and they trust the organization. Tell me a little bit about trust and agents in that whole process and how you feel about that.

[00:28:30] Chris Rojas: If you expect someone on your team to create a great experience for a customer, they need to come into that interaction in the right headspace, with the right energy and focus. They can’t be worried about a lack of support. They can’t be at the edge of the diving board, wondering if there’s enough water to support them when they jump off. They have to know that there’s plenty of water and a lifeguard. There are various ways in which we support folks, and everyone must understand that our success is intertwined.

[00:29:09] Chris Rojas: It cannot be successful if every leader and every frontline individual contributor is not set up for success every day. They need to know this. They need to hear it. It has to be a two-way street. You can’t just tell people that; you have to show it through your actions. You have to listen to folks and take action on the things you can to drive improvements.

[00:29:32] Chris Rojas:  You have to be smart about change management, and that’s incredibly important in a dynamic organization because, if given the opportunity, change, change, change, change, change can be overwhelming. It’s scary when you get asked a question and you think, “Oh, I feel like I went to a training, and they talked about it, but I didn’t know if it went live yet.”

[00:29:53] Chris Rojas: Change management is also a vital component of this. If you provide people with time, resources, and support, they will feel much better and develop greater trust in you and the organization that supports them in creating those great experiences.

[00:30:11] Steve MacDonald: Much more eloquently said than I’ve heard before. That’s fantastic. Chris, we’ve gone over so much, and I have a feeling we could probably go on for another couple of hours. But if there was one single takeaway that you wanted people to have from listening to or viewing this podcast, what would that be?

[00:30:32] Chris Rojas: That great service can help the success of any business is worthy of the right level of time and investment and can bring that to any organization. If everyone can agree on what you want the service to do, and if you can have a clear vision of what the service should deliver, then you can focus on putting the right pieces in place to bring and deliver that vision. I think it’s as worthy of an investment as any other area of the company.

[00:31:09] Chris Rojas: I think if you’re a responsible steward of that function, you can accomplish that goal. Do it cost-effectively, do it in a technically smart way, and add tremendous value to your organization. So, I don’t think anyone should just sit back and let a team say customer service is just call center customer service.

[00:31:32] Chris Rojas: It’s something we have to do. It’s not just eating our vegetables. Customer service is the seasoning that can make your meal phenomenal.

[00:31:45] Steve MacDonald:  I love it. If people have questions afterward, is it appropriate if we give out a link to your LinkedIn profile so they can get a hold of you?

[00:31:54] Chris Rojas: Yeah, I’d be more than happy to answer more questions on this. I could talk about this for hours.

[00:32:00] Steve MacDonald: Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all these insights and lessons learned, starting from the ground up. These are lessons that we need to remind ourselves of continually. 

[00:32:09] Steve MacDonald: It’s not like you do it in the beginning and then you can forget. This is valuable advice for us, no matter what stage we are in our organization. So, thank you very much.

[00:32:18] Chris Rojas: Thank you, Steve.