Contact Centers: Accountability and Positive Impact on P&L

Transcript

[00:00:08] Steve: Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve McDonald, your host, and we have a very special guest today, Harini Gokul. Harini, you are the chief customer officer at Entrust. You’ve worked at places like Amazon and Microsoft. Your perspective on the customer experience delivered through contact centers is really interesting, and it ties right into the title today, which is accountability and a positive impact on the bottom line.

[00:00:37] Steve: If you wouldn’t mind explaining a bit more about your background but kick us off in terms of how you think about growth and the contact center impacting P&L to get us started, that would be great. 

[00:00:49] Harini: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Steve. I’m so excited about this conversation. Having grown up in and around customer experience and customer care all my professional life, my one insight or takeaway is that customer engagement, customer experience, and customer care delivered via so many channels, including contact centers, are vehicles for growth.

[00:01:14] Harini: As a football fan, I think customer care is an offense mechanism, not a defense. That is the journey I’ve been on over the past 20 years or so now to change the perception of customer care, and delivered via contact center from a defense, let’s go there when there’s a problem perspective to offense. How do we proactively harness the insights and intelligence we get from customers to drive growth for our business and customers?

[00:01:46] Steve: What you’re doing here is amazing because you’re reframing the entire conversation in the industry. Most contact centers are viewed as cost centers, something that, from a board level, CEO level, and your level, we look at and ask, “How do we maintain or reduce costs?” because it’s one of our biggest operating expenses. So, how would you address someone with that mentality, who sees contact centers as cost centers? What you’re portraying here is incredibly different—you’re like the offensive coordinator calling plays from the sideline. That’s fantastic. How do you start to try to change that mindset? 

[00:02:24] Harini: I would start by asking them a question: Tell me about a time when you were at your worst, and someone helped you. How do you feel about them after the experience? I find that to be the door opener or the perception changer questions deep because often when a customer comes to a contact center, they’ve tried all other options. They are at a place where they need help, and they need help with a sense of urgency. That team in the contact center helping the customer navigate and address their problem has an incredible superpower to change the tenor of the conversation.

[00:03:06] Harini: How they react, the support they provide, and the assets they create and share with the customer help transform the customer’s experience of the organization they are engaging with. Research and statistics prove that recovering a customer through a dissatisfied experience or an escalation translates into much higher growth.

[00:03:24] Harini: A customer who experiences this escalation with you and then comes out happier and more satisfied will spend and do more business with you. There is a direct correlation between delivering a great customer experience via the contact center and your top-line group.

[00:03:49] Harini: This is why I care so deeply about this being an offense played, a growth play. So, that’s a question I would ask, and I would have a dialogue with somebody at a cocktail party who asks me why I care about contact centers as deeply as I do.

[00:04:06] Steve: It’s interesting because all kinds of strategies happen in the C-suite you’re a part of. No matter what time of the year we’re looking at next year. How will we grow? What are the levers that we’re going to pull? How are we going to achieve X percent growth this coming year?

[00:04:21] Steve: I’ve been involved in many C-suite conversations and strategy conversations; I have yet to hear someone at the table talk about how customer experiences can be an offensive mechanism—a growth strategy. 

[00:04:45] Steve: We discuss products, trends, and macro trends in the industry. We also discuss competitive issues, current events, product extensions, and other topics. But you’re saying that the contact center and customer experience should be part of the organization’s growth plan.

[00:04:59] Harini: Absolutely. Think about the world we live in, Steve. Do you watch Netflix or Amazon? 

[00:05:04] Steve: Both

[00:05:05] Harini: Right? Here’s a simple example: Regardless of what you watch, you’re in the SaaS—consumption world. What happens if Netflix doesn’t have the show you like? Do you go to Amazon? 

[00:05:14] Steve: Sure. 

[00:05:15] Harini: If Amazon has a series you love, you still come back to Netflix, right? Our customers have a lot of choices these days, not only consumer options like Netflix or Amazon but also commercial options. What is important for a customer, especially a B2B enterprise commercial customer, is value in an age with more cost constraints. 

[00:05:41] Harini: We are all under more constraints this year than the previous year, where the cost of capital is increasing. Today’s dollar is more expensive than yesterday’s because of all the macroeconomic conditions. There is more and more pressure to show value for the things we purchase, and that is what’s changing this conversation,

[00:05:58] Harini: It’s helping me reframe this discussion of customer experience and customer care, being a driver for growth because the products may be excellent, but if a customer is not able to find value from that product or service, the propensity for them to move away increases at the end of the day.

[00:06:20] Harini: We know that acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining an existing one. So, from a mathematical perspective, what does this imply? We prioritize retaining customers. If we care about retaining customers, what follows? Value. Value is what the customer seeks. Consequently, every one delivering value to that customer becomes a growth accelerator. 

[00:06:44] Harini: That is where the role of customer experience, customer care, and engagement via the contact center takes prominence. Because a customer is not looking for, ‘Oh, you’re my call center, you’re my customer success manager, you’re my salesperson.’ They look at all of the points of engagement and say, ‘ You guys figured out your act together, right? ‘ I see you. I see one organization.’

[00:07:05] Harini: That drives us to work more seamlessly across the functions, share intelligence and insight, and help deliver that value to the customer. So, I think this move to SaaS, to a consumption-usage business model, has focused on customer experience because that is how to deliver value. 

[00:07:32] Steve: It’s five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to expand the relationship with an existing customer. Benchmarks are usually around 30% or 40% of new revenue.

[00:07:44] Steve: More strategic planning should come from customer expansion in the coming year. If that’s the truth, then we should be thinking significantly about how we are expanding those customer relationships, yet we have agents talking daily to these customers. 

[00:08:01] Harini: Exactly. 

[00:08:02] Steve: That is the front line.

[00:08:03] Harini: That is the front line. Then, the question becomes, ‘How do we create a closed loop? How do we take that front-line intelligence with our teams building those products and services so we can provide them feedback? How are you using my product? How are you using my service, and what can I do better for you based on the feedback we get from customers?’

[00:08:22] Harini: I think of the contact center and that engagement as the canary in the coal mine that raises its hand and says, ‘This is going to be an issue at some point, or this is going to be an opportunity for us. Let’s get up.’ So, building those systems of connection among our teams will be a critical mission to driving that expansion you talked about, which in turn drives the growth we discussed.

[00:08:46] Steve: You just introduced a really important concept I do not want to pass over. You’re talking about agents being consultants to other departments, informing them with intelligence coming directly from the customers themselves. 

[00:09:01] Harini: Yes. 

[00:09:02] Steve: In my mind, that puts the role of the agent, and with everything you’ve been saying, from here to here, in terms of the quality of the agent that you’re trying to hire, the amount of training, the amount of support, the amount of face time they have with other different departments, yet in the industry, there’s still horrendous agent turnover.

[00:09:23] Steve: It’s been an ongoing problem so long that it’s almost like an accepted evil. We’re just going to have to put up with it. I’m going to ask you to rate this question if you could. On a scale of 1 to 10, How important is addressing agent turnover to the overall growth, as you’ve been talking about the organization’s vitality? One, it’s not important at all, and agent turnover is not important to the company’s growth. Ten, it’s vital to the positive impact on the company’s growth. Where would you rate that and why? 

[00:09:55] Harini: It’s such a great question. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say 8 is the importance of agent tenure, legacy, and history. For me, having that center of gravity that understands the customer and their pain points and opportunities and can feed that back to the rest of the organization is important, so the number is eight. There’s so much nuance there because we can do better with our contact center colleagues.

[00:10:21] Harini: We have an opportunity to invest in skills. We have an opportunity to reskill and upskill our colleagues and talent so that they can help our customers more effectively and efficiently. Leveraging the technology and innovation coming our way goes hand in hand with that.

[00:10:39] Harini: I’m a big proponent of agents. They are super important and mission-critical to our purpose. We need to continue investing in them with skills and capability investments and leveraging innovation to help them do their jobs more frictionlessly, efficiently, and joyfully.

[00:11:01] Steve: I love this. I’m sure the agents in your organization already know and feel this. But agents don’t feel heard most often. They don’t feel like they have career progressions. They feel like AI is coming and going to steal their jobs, so they’re temporary.

[00:11:21] Steve: They feel anything but valued, in general. I’m not talking about trust in your agents, but that’s the case in the general industry. You take that last part; this is a major issue with agents. Is AI going to replace my job? What’s your opinion on that?

[00:11:38] Harini: Someone who’s been in technology and has seen a few of these inflection points play out, the one to the cloud was a big one. This question was asked before, Steve, and we’re all still here, right? Will the cloud take my job? As somebody who embraces technology, the way I think about it is that we need to find a way for technology to help us deliver on our goals better.

[00:12:03] Harini: How do I leverage AI or other technologies for hyper-efficient customer care that meets customers where they are in this omnichannel experience while retaining the responsiveness and personal contact customers require? I believe technology is not a tool but a means to an end. And that end is how we serve our customers better. 

[00:12:25] Harini: Teams like mine that embrace this mindset, viewing technology as a friend and a means to an end, are already seeing the benefits. We can do more for our customers than before and for our teams, who signed up to engage in rich, complex customer interactions. 

[00:12:47] Harini: So many of the rinse-and-repeat, the simple, how-do-you-fill-an-Excel-sheet-type work does not give them joy. They want to be with customers more. So, my leaders and I always think, how do we get our teams more time with the customer? What could we help reduce in terms of busy work for them that can help them get that customer exposure?

[00:13:08] Harini: I think of embracing technology to achieve these outcomes for both the customer and our internal teams. 

[00:13:14] Steve: You keep saying some really important things here. Did I hear you say that you want to increase average handle times? That’s one of those key metrics that usually happens if we’re trying to reduce costs.

[00:13:26] Steve: We’re trying to save costs because it’s one of the biggest overheads. We’re not usually trying to increase average handle times. But I understand that the concept or the context that you’re talking about here is, sometimes, it’s in the better interest of the business and the growth of the business to spend the time with the customer to solve their problems, turn around, and actually use that as a growth opportunity, not an, ‘Oh, I’m being judged on my average handle times. I will get in trouble if my average handle times go up.’

[00:13:53] Steve: How do you consult with the agents about the KPIs that they’re being measured on? 

[00:14:05] Harini: This is a great conversation. We’re working on what good looks like when we embrace digital, when we embrace this omnichannel experience, and when we embrace how to engage in more complex cases constantly. You’re right; the more complex cases requiring more agent attention come to us as the simpler things disappear.

[00:14:26] Harini: Yes, that is a trade-off. We have to make it so that the average handle time or resolution time may go up, but as long as we know it goes up for the right reasons, we’re comfortable with that. I think metrics are only as important as the means they serve. Metrics by themselves don’t say a lot.

[00:14:43] Harini: It’s in the context of the business you’re trying to manage and the customers you’re trying to serve. So, I’m very pragmatic, and our leadership is very pragmatic in saying what the new metrics are we need to reflect well in this new digital world. 

[00:14:57] Steve: Was that an education for the rest of the C-suite and the board, enlightening them that there is a reason for a whole new set of metrics?

[00:15:08] Steve: We’re not throwing everything out. Nobody’s getting rid of CSAT scores, but how we look at this and judge it has to change. 

[00:15:17] Harini: Yes, and the benchmarks change. What is the benchmark for more complex products versus simple complex versus engagement? Fortunately, I have a very open and supportive board and leadership team that lets us stay informed and educated and do the right thing for the customer.

[00:15:34] Harini: But I would say, as long as people know you’re doing the right things. Let’s look at technology. Let’s look at different ways to help our talent get skilled. Are we constantly investing? Are we looking at ways to build capabilities out? Folks are comfortable that we will measure the right things.

[00:15:52] Steve: I will ask you one thing I’m curious about. Whether this is one of those evolved metrics or if it is in some way to measure: keeping agents happy since they’re the front line here. We discussed culture and its importance in our previous conversation. Is that one of those evolving metrics we need to consider? Whether it’s a hard metric or not, but as a benchmark, how we’re creating culture, how that’s impacting the frontline experience, how it’s impacting growth, is that part of the evolved set of metrics or benchmarks that you’re looking at?

[00:16:27] Harini: Absolutely. I think the word, the culture piece, is the key. That is the reason we are successful: because we have a culture of being customers first. When it says being a customer first, you work backwards and say, what does that mean? It means that when a customer comes to you and says, I prefer to chat with you than to be on the phone.

[00:16:46] Harini: We respect that. We are the customer first from that engagement. We do what it takes to make sure that we meet a customer where they are and deliver what is needed, but it’s absolutely about the culture to start by focusing on what the customer wants and working backward from that. I think that’s helping reframe the conversation everywhere.

[00:17:06] Harini: When you consider it a cultural strategy, a broader customer strategy, as opposed to ‘this is what we do for the contact center.’ 

[00:17:15] Steve: That makes sense. I remember you talking about accountability and its positive impact on P and L in our previous conversation, and we included that in the title of this episode.

[00:17:25] Steve: Tell me about this accountability part. How are you holding yourself accountable to this growth engine we’re discussing here? 

[00:17:33] Harini: I’ll make it a little bit more generic: To drive growth, we need to be accountable for the numbers, quotas, and metrics that accrue to those groups.

[00:17:43] Harini: They come in many different ways, but one that I’ve found helpful is for contact center teams to have support and maintenance agreements P and L. Anytime you buy hardware, you get a support maintenance agreement. For the contact center team to hold that and deliver against that goal often is a powerful accelerator and a powerful way to focus the team on the goal ahead.

[00:18:06] Harini: It is only one thing besides everything else. In addition to thinking about the types of cases we’ve solved, the insights, and the learnings, that’s my second big focus. There is so much insight-learning and pattern-matching that happens. How do we take that back into our teams? How do we reward our teams for doing that for creating knowledge-based articles? For writing blogs to show thought leadership as they work with the product teams?

[00:18:25] Harini: We think about accountability in multiple ways. Quantitatively, I like the idea of carrying the software maintenance quota and a thought leadership accountability that gives them a seat at the table for a more rigorous product discussion.

[00:18:46] Steve: I love that you talked about thought leadership because each one of these customer interactions is also an opportunity to help educate. As you mentioned a couple of times here, it is not just the product of SaaS technology itself but also getting them to think differently to help reframe the conversation.

[00:19:04] Steve: I had never thought about that as a part of the role of the contact center. Could you expand on that just a little bit more? 

[00:19:12] Harini: Absolutely. When you think about delivery teams, whether they’re professional services, these teams implement and deploy solutions with the customer or contact center teams that hear feedback from the customer and often help them get activated or sort out challenges with activation.

[00:19:30] Harini: There’s incredible learning on how we build products and services to meet our customers’ needs and better build products and services. But we often lack a mechanism to take that back. Taking that and saying, ‘If I see it across five customers, there’s a scale here. I’m seeing it at scale. How do I capture that?’

[00:19:48] Harini: Write something that addresses the problem and then find a long-term systemic fix. These are both important pieces. I work in deeply technical, complex solutions, and I also find that our contact center is one of our most technical colleagues.

[00:20:04] Harini: There’s a lot of technical expertise, and people take pride in sharing and building on it. This is one way of publishing thought leadership, talking about it in forums, and talking about it with our product teams, which is one way to help them. They should take pride in their work, share it, and build respect for it.

[00:20:23] Steve: Is there a connection with marketing that loves to produce thought leadership? 

[00:20:27] Harini: Yeah. 

[00:20:28] Steve: And tapping into as a former CMO myself. 

[00:20:31] Harini: Yes. 

[00:20:32] Steve: I have never considered going to the contact center as a source. It’s a great source for thought leadership, and I’ve been in the business for a while. Thank you for sharing that idea.

[00:20:41] Steve: I think anybody watching here is a contact center leader or chief customer officer. That’s just one more example of a number of things you’re doing that the contact center can provide great, incredible value to other departments. 

[00:20:57] Steve: We’ve covered quite a bit here, but what haven’t we addressed that you would want to say, ‘Steve, I want to make sure I’ve made this point’? 

[00:21:06] Harini: I think we’ve covered a lot of ground. The piece I’ll leave us with is that we need to be a learning culture, Steve. For the function to evolve and live up to its potential, we need to be learning.

[00:21:17] Harini: We need to embrace new trends, technologies, and ways of doing things. That would be the key for a contact center to thrive in a cloud-first SaaS-first model, not just survive. 

[00:21:29] Steve: If people were listening and said, ‘I believe this is what I want to do.’ What would be your suggestion on the best way to get started?

[00:21:40] Steve: There’s certainly a starting point for making these kinds of systemic changes in evolution and how we think about adopting new technologies, working with other departments, and driving growth in the organization. Where does it start?

[00:21:56] Harini: It starts by listening. For example, in many of the organizations I’ve worked with, we have C-level leaders do a tour of duty with our contact center to listen to customer feedback. I find that it’s very powerful to be able to listen in real-time to what your customers are saying about you.

[00:22:15] Harini: So, if you start anywhere, start by listening to what your customers say about you. 

[00:22:20] Steve: Fantastic. I know we could go on forever, but if people had follow-on questions, would it be appropriate to give them a link to your LinkedIn profile? 

[00:22:30] Harini: Sure, that’s also a good way to start.

[00:22:32] Steve: Harini, thank you so much for all of these insights and for expanding our understanding of the role of customer experience and contact centers. You’ve highlighted how they can impact every level of the organization, right down to the bottom-line revenue and the company’s profit and loss statement. This perspective is certainly not prevalent in most organizations’ views of the contact center and its role. 

[00:22:57] Steve: Thank you for bringing that to light in such an articulate way. 

[00:23:00] Harini: Oh, thank you, Steve. I appreciate this. As I said, I grew up in this role when we all did customer success before our roles were called customer success, so I have a deep appreciation for the strategic nature of the work and the human-first nature of this work.

[00:23:15] Harini: I’m excited to talk about it and share more.