How to Make Customer Service a Part of the Company-Wide Culture

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today we have a very special guest on, Silke Robeller. Now, Silke, you have a big job. You’re the Director of Global Customer Care at Rainforest Alliance and all over the world, and I’m gonna let you explain a little bit more about that.

[00:00:18] Steve MacDonald: But that only really starts to define who you are. You’re actually on the advisory board, and I wrote it down here, for the German Customer Service and Contact Center Association. Yes. You are also the Vice President of Fida, which is an organization that advocates for women to be on boards.

[00:00:37] Steve MacDonald: And I’d love to hear a little bit more about what you do, how you advocate, a little bit more about you before we dig in. And when we do dig in, we’re gonna be talking about how to make customer service a part of a company-wide culture and why that’s so important. But before we do that, I’d love to hear some more about you.

[00:00:59] Silke Robeller: Thank you. Yeah, Steve, I was trained as a business IT professional, so my first job was at Microsoft where I did support for Word, at that time, Word for Windows, Word for DOS. It was really in the nineties. It was very early. Yeah. So, and from there I made my way. I worked, for example, for Amway, the biggest direct selling company in the US.

[00:01:27] Silke Robeller: I worked for other companies in the publication business, IT business, also fashion and retail. And now I am in the sustainability area and working for the Rainforest Alliance. And at the Rainforest Alliance we certify crops. We do projects for donors and philanthropists, and I have the pleasure to lead a global team of experts helping our customers, our B2B customers worldwide.

[00:01:57] Silke Robeller: The customers are, for example, grocery chains and can go along the supply chain down to the farmers. And this is what we do every day.

[00:02:08] Steve MacDonald: You’ve got a lot going on, but I would love to tap into the wealth of knowledge that you have, and I’m gonna ask a big question just to start us out. Mm-hmm. Why is customer service like a secret weapon for growth inside of companies?

[00:02:25] Steve MacDonald: And when we say secret, we’re not as well known as we should be for being a growth engine. So I’d love for you to kind of unpack all of that for us if you could.

[00:02:36] Silke Robeller: Yeah. The customer service department or customer care department, however you name it in your company, is like the business card for your company. When your customer calls, usually they call because of a problem, not because they want to appraise you. They want to have a problem solved. And the way you, as a contact center, care for your customer and the way that you provide all the solutions and services, like solving inquiries, caring for platform issues, terms and condition processes, whatever the customer may need, especially when we are in the B2B business with really big companies.

[00:03:20] Silke Robeller: That’s the business card of your company. And if your support is better than the one of your competitor, this pays directly into the customer satisfaction and the loyalty of this customer to your brand.

[00:03:36] Steve MacDonald: You know, just to underscore what you’re saying a bit here, McKinsey in 2023 came out with a study and they looked at 400 different B2C and B2B companies that were highly profitable, and they determined the number one differentiator in the market was CX.

[00:03:54] Steve MacDonald: And obviously, customer experience covers every interaction. But we have the most interactions with customers than anyone, right? Yeah. So a huge part of the differentiator, the competitive advantage that we have as a business. So absolutely the connection to a growth engine, so I just love what you’re saying there.

[00:04:16] Steve MacDonald: You also though, you talked about the contact center curse that kills growth. And I’d love to just understand a little bit more about what you were talking about there.

[00:04:27] Silke Robeller: You know, a lot of companies, they see the contact center as only a cost center, but they’re not aware of the value that we deliver.

[00:04:38] Silke Robeller: We are the ones who nurture the connection from the clients to the company. I can say about my contact center and our customer care team, our satisfaction rate is 95% for last August. That means of all our inquiries that we have, we send out surveys and 95% came back with a positive perception, right?

[00:05:09] Silke Robeller: So we ask, do you have a positive, neutral, or unsatisfied perception, and 95% state that they have a positive perception of our service. What this really means for the company, what we solve, what we do with our clients. Normally when you have a sales team or some kind of key accounts or relationship managers in your company, they do the day-to-day acquisition, but for the organizational and administrative parts, they give their clients in the hands of your customer care team.

[00:05:46] Silke Robeller: And so you do all the things around for the customers. Let me say order entries or doing reporting or solving problems, platforms, system issues, whatever the company is asking us. We are helping. We are supporting. And when they state that 95% of our business interactions are positive, then this is a statement.

[00:06:14] Steve MacDonald: You know, there are a lot of studies out there that show even a percentage change in, like, a CSAT score has a direct correlation and impact on revenue. So, like, going back to this idea that you had in the beginning of the contact center as a growth engine. These aren’t just nice-to-know, that we’re doing a good job.

[00:06:36] Steve MacDonald: These are leading KPIs that we should be talking to our C-suite executives about and framing correctly and saying this isn’t just an internal number for us, right? Yeah. This is a number that will impact our growth. This is the kind of thing that should be talked about at the board level, right? And so nobody comes into the board meetings and says, hey, how’s the CSAT going?

[00:07:01] Steve MacDonald: Right? And this is why I loved how you did it in our previous conversations about how you framed how we need to stand up, we need to advocate for ourselves, but there’s something that goes on inside of us. And you called it the imposter syndrome. Mm-hmm. And so I’d love for you to tell me in your words what you were meaning there.

[00:07:27] Silke Robeller: Yeah. Often the customer care officers have the feeling that in the company ranking, they came just after the cleaning lady, and really, they do such amazing things for the company. And we established a thing called the World of Love, where we put on our internal intranet all the appraisals that we got for the team. We are really working in certification and traceability, and this is, let me say, a complex area. This is not easy. This is not like ordering shoes and sending it out.

[00:08:24] Silke Robeller: Yeah. So my team has to have a lot of detailed knowledge, and we get really nice letters and emails from our customers stating, well, you helped me through the certification. I couldn’t have done it without you and thank you very much.

[00:08:24] Silke Robeller: We are always so friendly, even when we have repetitive questions. And we put it in a PowerPoint presentation and we shared it also with our CEO and our C-suite. And everyone in the company can look at these appraisals. And so our team is visible to the whole company. And, on top of that, we have a format called Monday Morning Cafe.

[00:08:48] Silke Robeller: This is where all the staff from all departments come together to hear some news. And from time to time, we share our customer satisfaction ratings there, and also there, we got the appraisals and say, well, you did a good job with our client, or our client is very happy. And this is really like patting on the shoulders for our customer care officers.

[00:09:15] Steve MacDonald: So I know that you’re not doing that just to say, hey, look at us, look at how great a job we’re doing. You’re doing it to change perceptions, right? Yeah. And so I’m just curious, without naming any names or giving any information out, but, like, when you shared that with the C-suite executives, because you said it, right?

[00:09:37] Steve MacDonald: Most C-suite executives, and so this doesn’t have to be pervasive at your company, but most look at us as like, of course we have customers and they’re gonna have questions or they’re gonna have problems, so we need to have people that help them. But let’s get that set up, let’s contain the cost to do that, and let’s get on with the business of growing our business.

[00:09:57] Steve MacDonald: Right. And so you’re changing perceptions here, and I just wanted to know, like, what are some of the perceptions you think you changed? Tell us a little bit of a story if you could. When you shared that with the C-suite, what happened? What did they say?

[00:10:10] Silke Robeller: So when I shared it directly with my Chief Product Officer, she also shared that with our board. And the board members were not aware of which amount of questions or issues or tickets we get per month. Maybe 80, something around that. Yeah. But it is that we are really digging deep into the details, and we are helping our customers with very complex questions. And just to make them aware of what we are doing, this is really an eye-opener also for the C-suite.

[00:10:53] Steve MacDonald: Yeah. So we need to create those eye-opener moments, right? None of us got into the industry thinking we were gonna be salespeople. And let me explain that. I want you to get your take on it because we have to sell what we do and our importance internally every day. We support these external customers, right?

[00:11:13] Steve MacDonald: That’s our mantra, it’s our mission, we’re set up for that. But we have internal customers that, if we want to gain resources, expand our operations, do more things proactively, maybe pay to have an AI expert come in and help us, right? You know, like, all these things to help us do what we’re gonna do so that we can serve the external customers and be that growth engine.

[00:11:38] Steve MacDonald: We gotta make the case. We gotta sell. We gotta advocate for ourselves.

[00:11:44] Silke Robeller: Yes.

[00:11:44] Steve MacDonald: And so what you’re talking about, tell us how important that is in kind of our own internal salesperson strategy.

[00:11:52] Silke Robeller: The customer care center is like a spider in the web. Yeah. We have our, let me say, our legs or our fingers in every department.

[00:12:04] Silke Robeller: We have to know about what our markets or sales team does. We have to know what the accounting team does, what the marketing team does. Every other team, we have to be informed about what’s going on with the company. When we have new go-to-market products, the customer care team has to know everything before the launch.

[00:12:27] Silke Robeller: We had to undergo trainings to make our customers happy. When they see it, oh God, something new. I have to read several pages, and oh God, yeah, I just go to the customer care team, I take the phone, I write an email, and they help me understand if I don’t get it. And so it’s really a big responsibility that we have, so we need to have.

[00:12:54] Silke Robeller: The right things in place. We have to have the right knowledge when something comes up like a launch or a relaunch or whatever, so that we can help our customers. And this is also seen in all the departments around. We already help in the user acceptance test. We help in proofreading. We are not only the ones who are provided with the knowledge, like here you have it and then go. We are actively involved in the preparation of the launch and also the knowledge that we share.

[00:13:31] Steve MacDonald: You just opened up another avenue of another set of internal customers. You have every single department in the company, right? Mm-hmm. You’re having more conversations with customers than anyone.

[00:13:42] Steve MacDonald: You hold the voice of the customer, the highest authority in the business. You can impact launches, you can impact marketing campaigns, you can impact sales strategies, right? You can impact operations, you can impact every different department. But if we’re operating under imposter syndrome, we tend to play a backseat role, which is where we’re typically seen, right?

[00:14:08] Steve MacDonald: As a support function. And so here’s the takeaway I’m taking on here is you gotta be not that backseat, introvert department. You gotta be very proactive, right, in translating the knowledge of what you are doing into the rest of the company. Is that a good takeaway from what you’re saying?

[00:14:29] Silke Robeller: Yes. This is a good takeaway. You have to be involved very early, at the early stages of something new because you have the knowledge of what our customer needs and wants, and you can bring in this knowledge to our planned go-to-market initiatives. Then you can influence them according to the needs of our clients.

[00:14:53] Silke Robeller: When we do, for example, a user acceptance test, we can say, well, this works, or maybe it doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe we have to change it here or there, whatever it is. And we have to lobby for ourselves so that we are not forgotten. I don’t think that any department forgets us just on purpose. That’s not it.

[00:15:14] Silke Robeller: Maybe they didn’t think of asking us, yeah, that’s it. So, and we lobby again and again and again that we are involved, and we will then be involved if we do that. So we are lobbying for ourselves.

[00:15:29] Steve MacDonald: I love how you said that they might just not think of us, right? So in marketing for our customers, we create a very specific persona of who this person is and their needs and their challenges.

[00:15:44] Steve MacDonald: If you think about it, like the internal customer, these departments, what’s their persona like? The language I use when I talk to a C-suite executive is gonna be very different than the language I use when I talk to somebody in operations or about that product launch, right? Their KPIs, their goals, what they’re trying to do to help support the business is very different.

[00:16:07] Steve MacDonald: And they’re all really busy. Like, the fact that they didn’t think about us isn’t because we’re not valuable, right? Another big takeaway is like, we gotta see our own value when others don’t. And you have a recommendation for us all. It’s like, I think you called it a three-step formula for customer service recognition of who we are and our value, right?

[00:16:32] Silke Robeller: Yeah.

[00:16:33] Steve MacDonald: I’d love to hear what those steps are from you.

[00:16:35] Silke Robeller: Yeah. Especially if you talk to the C-suite or to your general managers, whoever. I think at first, you have to have your KPIs straight. You have to have some customer satisfaction index or net promoter score, whatever you like to have in your company.

[00:16:55] Silke Robeller: And really, you have to lobby on that and to show that. And what I really liked a lot is to participate in customer service awards. Yeah. Let it be, for example, the Stevie Awards, or I think new is the Drum Awards, or the CCV Awards in Germany, or Top Service Germany Awards. These are important so that you can show the value of your center.

[00:17:23] Silke Robeller: Also compared to other centers, maybe in the same industry, maybe also amongst other industries who do also the B2B service. And that you get feedback. They show you where you are and where you stand. And this gives you also some more ideas. What is it in my center that I can improve? What else can I do? What can I adapt or learn from others? It’s just knowledge sharing.

[00:17:53] Steve MacDonald: Yeah. But knowledge sharing that you’ve got to, I’ll use the marketing campaign analogy again, right? You create a campaign with a number of touchpoints that changes perceptions of your audience. These are all touchpoints.

[00:18:08] Steve MacDonald: You’re laying out a campaign to basically show your internal customers, the different departments, and your C-suite executives the value of who you are. We have to think about, this isn’t a one-time thing. It’s not like, look at our CSAT scores, we’re doing a good job, now go on. Right? You have to constantly be doing this. Oh, I love this.

[00:18:31] Silke Robeller: What we do on top now, as one of our latest projects, is we invite all our new hires to our customer care department.

[00:18:40] Silke Robeller: They can sit with our customer care officers and listen in to what our customers want. They can see what our customer service staff does.

[00:18:52] Silke Robeller: And this also strengthens the bond between the new hire and the customer care team. The new hire can be from the data team, the marketing comms team, or whatever. So that when they start, as part of the onboarding, they become quite understanding of the customer care team. And after some months, as I say, we shadow back.

[00:19:16] Silke Robeller: That means we go to this new hire and let them explain what he or she does. Then we share this knowledge that we got there with the whole customer care team as a kind of presentation. This strengthens the bonds further between our departments. This is a very valuable thing that I think not many companies are using.

[00:19:44] Steve MacDonald: You know, I think you’re right. I think it’s quite revolutionary. We’ve heard stories where the CEO likes to take customer requests a couple of hours a week or something like that. And you’re like, oh, it’s really great.

[00:20:00] Steve MacDonald: But you’re expanding this to everybody new should have a customer orientation. I mean, there’s never been a company alive that would honestly say, No, we’re not customer-obsessed. We’re not customer-first. Right? No, I mean, we all are.

[00:20:15] Silke Robeller: I think no company can survive without any efficient customer service. You need to have efficient customer service to survive. Yeah, that’s evident.

[00:20:26] Steve MacDonald: But what I really love is that not only did you invite all the new people—what a great way to get oriented into the company and learn about the customer, right? Because no matter what department you’re in, you’re serving the same customer.

[00:20:42] Steve MacDonald: So if you’re not in tune, if you’re not listening, and you don’t understand that customer, how can you do your job properly? You’re proactively helping them do that, but then you’re also going and learning what they do. So if you are going to stand up as a customer support organization, a customer contact center organization that says, I want to work, I want to help you, operations, product, marketing, sales,

[00:21:08] Steve MacDonald: You can show, I’ve actually taken a lot of steps to really learn so that I can give you good proactive recommendations. That is very unique. I talk to a lot of contact center, customer support, CX people on this podcast, and I will definitely say that’s very, very unique. Thank you.

[00:21:31] Steve MacDonald: We’ve talked about a lot here, but what’s a question I haven’t asked? Like what haven’t we covered that you would want to make sure was part of this podcast before we were done?

[00:21:43] Silke Robeller: I think we all must be clear about what an asset a customer care center is. With that, the customer care manager, director, or vice president—whoever—really is a lobbyist for their department.

[00:22:00] Silke Robeller: We really need to work on that, to spread the word all over the company. And not only that—we should also exchange, like I do for example, in the Customer Service and Call Center Association, where I exchange with other customer service executives.

[00:22:23] Silke Robeller: Or with vendors and others around, so that I am really on top of the knowledge that’s currently going on and that I also learn from others. I also serve as a jury member for customer service awards, and from all the applications that you see there, you read through them and you really learn a lot.

[00:22:49] Silke Robeller: And there is really a big takeaway in that, that you can learn from. And of course, it’s effort—yeah, when you have 30 applications to look through. But it’s really valuable that you do that. With that, you can put your customer service to the next level.

[00:23:11] Steve MacDonald: Yeah, we should never stop learning how to do customer service better. Right. You know, I’m just curious because you’ve had such a huge career here—if I asked you this question, what’s your most proud moment that you’ve had in your career?

[00:23:28] Silke Robeller: There were some proud moments. It was one proud moment when I could lift a customer service center from the perception of average to excellent.

[00:23:41] Silke Robeller: Another point for me was when I was awarded the Top Service Germany Award some years ago. My team excelled there, and I was so, so proud of them.

[00:24:00] Silke Robeller: And what I’m proudest of is serving as an advisory board member of the Customer Service and Call Center Association, where I share my knowledge and help others to exchange.

[00:24:12] Silke Robeller: There we organize, for example, regional meetings where we do all the knowledge exchange. We hear external trainings, speeches, and presentations that we can all talk about—and that brings us forward.

[00:24:28] Steve MacDonald: You’ve got a lot to be proud of. And I just have to tell you right now, the mission of this podcast is to bring different perspectives and insights together from all of our experiences so we can all learn and share. In your advisory board memberships, in the things that you do—that’s in your DNA, because you’re helping everyone, right? And you’re doing it again here today. So I wanted to say thank you for that. But I have one last question for you.

[00:24:56] Silke Robeller: Yes.

[00:24:56] Steve MacDonald: Here’s the question. We have definitely covered a lot of territory on this podcast. Our poor human brains can only remember about two or three things at a time. If there was one thing—the single most important takeaway—you wanted people to have from tuning into this episode, what would that be?

[00:25:17] Silke Robeller: Be proud of your customer service center. Value it highly. And lobby for it.

[00:25:27] Steve MacDonald: That was three things, but it was really quick. Thank you.

[00:25:31] Silke Robeller: That all ties together.

[00:25:33] Steve MacDonald: Yes, absolutely. And you know, I know people are going to have questions. Would it be appropriate that we give out a link to your LinkedIn profile so people could reach out to you and ask questions?

[00:25:44] Silke Robeller: Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah. Please do that.

[00:25:46] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Well, you know, the mission here is to share, and if we all do that, it’s like the rising tide that lifts all boats.

[00:25:56] Steve MacDonald: And I think you were an incredible rising tide today. I just want to say thanks for coming on.

[00:26:03] Silke Robeller: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure for me. Thank you for having me.