Why You Shouldn’t Be Obsessed with CSAT

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I am Steve MacDonald, your host, and we’ll have a really interesting conversation today with Michael Fulvio. Now, Michael, you’re the director of customer experience at SNIPES. I’ll let you talk about your retail and e-commerce experience.

But what we’re going to talk about today, and I’m going to let you be the star of this show, is why we shouldn’t be obsessed with CSAT. That’s one of the biggest KPIs that we track throughout the industry, but what you found, and with your goals and what you work towards, there are so many other things that are a higher priority because they ultimately impact the customer experience, revenue, competitive advantage that you have in the marketplace, all those good things.

But what people probably don’t know, which I would love to share some of this kind of stuff about, is that you were an aspiring actor for several years. So, when you talk very right brain or left brain here, we know that you’re now doing things that are very data-driven, very goal-oriented, KPI oriented, but you also bring this kind of innovative, creative juices what I would say called to the mix. So, with that, maybe explain more about your background and what you’re doing at SNIPES before we get started. 

[00:01:20] Michael Fulvio: Sure. So, when you say I’m a recovering actor, that means I waited tables for 15 years; the small microcosm of customer experience, customer service, as you can get into it’s face to face, and on top of that, people are hungry.

I bring much of that to my day-to-day customer experience here at SNIPES. I took a winding road through a couple of SaaS startup unicorns, even on my way here, and customer success, which was all about setting expectations and working with your customer in that way through GovTech or construction.

But life events took me back here to Philly to be closer to my family. Right before the pandemic, I got laid off due to an acquisition, not even through pandemic reasons. Then, I found my way to SNIPES here, which was fortunate. It’s been a really fun journey. 

When you talk about how being an actor comes to customer service, I think a lot about how, as an actor, you’re collaborating with many different artists, playwrights, directors, ushers, or people who might be thinking of movies, all the people who work on that. I make a really big play every day to collaborate across all the different departments, whether that’s store associates, store operations, I.T., buying, allocations, or our fulfillment centers.

I think that collaboration is really what I bring from my acting days to my current role. 

[00:02:39] Steve MacDonald: What I love about that right from the beginning is that, in this day and age, there’s still a perspective that contact centers are cost centers, value centers, and they represent some of the largest overhead costs in the company.

So, one of the big KPIs is how we reduce cost. What you’re talking about is how what you’re doing and how close you are to the customer give you insights and advisor status with the rest of the company. Then, what they’re doing, what you’re promising, and how you’re fulfilling that customer experience.

It’s a two-way street. So, that’s going to be a lot of leads today on our journey. But maybe you could start out a bit about your goals for the contact center, and then that will help us start unraveling why we shouldn’t be so obsessed with CSAT. 

[00:03:29] Michael Fulvio: My overall goal is to turn each of our customer interactions into data that the business can use to make other decisions about what’s going on. A great example is a couple of years ago around the holiday, which is always a hectic time in retail, we had a really big explosion of customer service cases.

It’s not just because people were unhappy with us. It’s about things in the supply chain that weren’t working, quality control issues that were happening, and communication issues. So, that’s just three different departments that I touched on right there already. How do we make sure that we’re tracking that over time and that there’s customer outreach?

Reasons for those issues and communicating that back to the business because every case, every customer who reaches out has an order attached to it. We have a dollar amount attached to each customer contact. That’s not the cost of the contact center. So, these are at-risk dollars because of the issues that are being reported back to the business.

So that’s why I really work to communicate that to all of the business, whether that’s the people buying the supplies, how many boxes we need, what type of boxes? Poly bags? Things like that, or just our logistics team. How many shipments are we splitting up because we’re shipping them from different suppliers? That’s also a real cost to the business. Tracking that over time helps us make decisions about our shipping policies. 

[00:04:53] Steve MacDonald: One of the big things that I’m taking away there is that when you talk about at-risk dollars, you’re talking about making decisions based on what you know from your data in terms of what is actually helping to accelerate and propel revenue, what’s putting revenue at risk, and where we’re losing revenue.

So, that’s the opposite end of the spectrum: There’s a cost to having a contact center and all this interaction that you’re talking about. But if you can correlate it directly to revenue, and you can save revenue and grow revenue, then you’ve just flipped the equation. You’re a revenue advisor to the rest of the company versus a cost center. That’s a very different conversation to be having internally. 

[00:05:40] Michael Fulvio: Yeah, of course we want to respond to the customer quickly and efficiently, whether that’s a refund, a reship, or promo codes that we can send out. But that’s not like solving the issue. Appeasing a customer is, of course, part of the job. But I want to solve that issue for all of the customers who are reporting these types of things.

[00:05:59] Steve MacDonald: Tell me a little about the authority you speak with internally when working with these other departments. You’re talking about solving problems, addressing challenges, and saving revenue.

We talk a lot on this podcast about having a seat at the table with the rest of the company—not just a seat but a seat where you speak with authority. What is your seat like with the rest of the company?

[00:06:26] Michael Fulvio: I’ve had a seat at the table, and I think I’ve earned that through bringing this data to our conversations and leading with that, I don’t know if I understand other people like, how do I get a seat at the table? But I’ve been fortunate enough that my partners here across the business, departments, and leadership have been really open to hearing our customer issues and what we can do about them.

[00:06:48] Steve MacDonald: But I think the lesson for others who are listening here right now is that they want to have a larger role in that seat at the table. One of the things you just said there is that I’ve always come to the meetings with the data.

So, there are the facts behind the business, the challenges, and the undisputed problems that need to be solved. So, you don’t just come with anecdotal evidence. You come armed with, ‘Hey guys, here’s a problem. Here’s a challenge. Here’s a way we can address that. It’s going to impact us positively internally and externally with the customers.’ 

[00:07:18] Michael Fulvio: You know, leadership will see something posted on social media and freak out, and that’s an anecdote. But when you put that in a larger context of data when you come back to leadership, you can say, ‘Absolutely, we are on top of this case, and we were responding to that customer. But here’s the larger context of what’s causing that issue on social media that is perceived as a larger issue. Here’s how we’re doing it and who I’m partnering with to improve it.’

[00:07:43] Steve MacDonald: Could you give us an idea of the top go-to data that you arm yourself with to have these internal conversations and make a positive impact? 

[00:07:54] Michael Fulvio: Some of the top data points I’m looking at are the overall incident rate. How many customer contacts are we getting versus how many orders per week, per month, and per year, as well as our case reasons? 

Working with some automation and our human agents assigning that appropriate case reason, I seem to have too many when I talk to other people about this, but to really break down, we’ll talk about fulfillment, all the things that could go wrong in an e-com fulfillment order.

From the address being wrong to maybe the wrong item being put in or the wrong customer’s order happening, people are moving quickly, trying to get the job done. So, now they hit fulfill, and we’re waiting for UPS to pick up that product. Do we have a problem with UPS coming around to one of our suppliers? Are they not coming in a timely fashion? When it gets to UPS, is it getting stuck somewhere? 

Then, when after it’s marked delivered, we have just 5 different case reasons for just a couple of the problems that might be from someone simply asking, where is my order? I think a lot gets bucketed under WISMO, but we’ve probably got 12 different case reasons underneath that some case reasons so that we can really attack those different parts of the process and make sure that everything’s working right and all those different points.

[00:09:12] Steve MacDonald: Some might say, Michael, you’re way into the weeds. Is UPS getting to the warehouse on time? Is there a problem with the fulfillment delivery? Isn’t logistics responsible for that? ‘ What’s your response to, ‘ No, I have to be involved in all of this. ‘

[00:09:34] Michael Fulvio: It’s about the customer expectations. We all live in an Amazon world. But we all expect things in a day or two now. So, when we might not have pickups over the weekend from some suppliers and a customer orders on a Friday, they’re going to be hitting us up on Sunday saying, where is it? 

We need to make sure that we are working with our suppliers to get things done, but also with our IT development and web team so that communication is laid out in the way of this expectation. If we’re looking at this case, the reason is that something’s waiting for UPS pickup, and we can start to zero in on the timeframe. We can better set those expectations with our customers.

[00:10:12] Michael Fulvio: Whether that’s automated in an email, on our front end, or somewhere else along the way. 

[00:10:16] Steve MacDonald: So, anything that’s responsible for delivering against expectations, as expectations are growing and growing. As an example, go back just a few years ago, whoever thought you could actually get something in two days, guaranteed.

There are a lot of things that we’ve been talking about here: Logistics, solving problems, and meeting expectations. That goes to say, okay, there’s a new set of KPIs with your data that you’re tracking, which is an example of why CSAT isn’t the one you’re just obsessed with. You’re obsessed with those directly impacting the customer experience and delivering against their expectations. That’s why you’ve rejiggered the list of the KPIs that you’re looking for. Is that an excellent way to articulate it, or how would you articulate it? 

[00:11:05] Michael Fulvio: Yeah, absolutely. I have a cross-departmental weekly omnichannel customer experience report that people from all across the business attend, and CSAT is just one of the KPIs on our 20-slide deck. We’re looking at the number of cases coming in. That incident rate is something we lead with. 

What’s our first reply time? What’s our average handle time? These are things that are in our control a little bit more. Obviously, with those case reasons, but then just looking at our fulfillment, what suppliers are we fulfilling from? What are their average fulfillment times? Because, like I said, that’s a lot of WISMO cases.

What are we canceling? Why are we canceling? Where are we canceling? Is it a buy-online or pick-up in-store option? Is it shipping? Is it a store order that was made in-store at POS? We track those and their performance separately. Where are these in-store orders being placed? What parts of the country? What are our split shipments? Then, of course, what are we refunding? Why are we refunding? We do social listening as well. What’s going on social? So, I just rattled off a ton of different KPIs that affect CSAT. But if we get those right, that impacts our CSAT. Even more than just focusing on the CSAT and how else we could quickly appease our customers.

If we give them larger promo codes, refund them, and reship them, these aren’t getting to the root of the problem that’s causing people to write in the first place. That’s why I think we as a business are a little less obsessed with CSAT and looking at all these other data points that will affect our customer experience.

[00:12:42] Steve MacDonald: You mentioned in our previous conversations that you look at things beyond CSAT, like KPIs, incident rate, and bringing that down. Throughout the entire industry, there is a growing perspective that incidents aren’t necessarily bad.

That’s somebody trying to use our store or make a purchase. That’s an engagement interaction. If we control that engagement and have a good customer experience, we can build that MPS score, that CSAT, and loyalty.

We can build differentiation. As you said before, nobody comes for the SNIPES brand in your store as much as they come for their purchasing a name brand on your store. Tell me a little bit about that incident rate, what you think about doing with it, and how that can actually become a competitive advantage for your brand.

[00:13:47] Michael Fulvio: Sure. Yeah. We are focused on reducing that incident rate. Because that’s when someone comes to us when something’s wrong, we’re looking to expand our view of the customer outside of CSAT by hitting our customers at different points of their journey with different types, as you mentioned, NPS or other CSAT scores right after checkout, right as they get on-site post delivery.

We’re opening up now our view of the customer from just outside of those incidents when they’re coming to us and trying to go to them to get a better understanding of them. That’s why we’ve made investments in social listening as well, and we’re seeing a positive response on social media. That’s not just people talking about their orders.

So, we’re really just trying to find other ways to measure our brand and our customers’ interactions with us outside of that customer satisfaction score that comes right after they reach out to us. 

[00:14:41] Steve MacDonald: And not only measure, but finding new ways to engage with the customer and that you can work on that experience. One of the things we did talk about was that the CX experience is one of the biggest competitive advantages you have because of the experience of buying. There are other places where you can buy name brands, but that experience is one of the most important that differentiates you. 

[00:15:09] Michael Fulvio: Yeah, something I really love about SNIPES is the community outreach that we do. We don’t publicize it very much, but we are in the communities where our stores are making community gardens, teaching coding classes to kids, and giving out backpacks full of gear as school season approaches.

We do that because we know our communities support us, and we don’t ask our customers about how they feel about that too much. We hear about it on social media, and we hear about it sometimes through outreach. They were glad we were there in their community that day or giving out driving around with a food truck on Thanksgiving or Christmas. But we’re not bringing that into our view of who our customers are in a data-driven way. 

I’m looking to partner with our marketing and events teams to add to some of the other data points that I mentioned earlier. 

[00:16:00] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. I’m going to take a little bit of a right turn here because part of what we talked about before was the importance of the agent. Once addressing the incident of the questions coming in and how that gets addressed, obviously, with AI, there are lower-level things that are being addressed more and more automatically and chatbot opportunities are given so people can get answers right away. But there will always be incidents for which we need an agent.

How important is agent turnover in your mind? Throughout the industry, there are ridiculous turnover numbers that we seem to have accepted. But on a scale of 1 to 10, talk about the importance of agent turnover in your overall efforts and what you’re trying to do. One, it’s not important at all. I couldn’t care less. Ten, it’s vital and critical to our success as a company. 

[00:16:55] Michael Fulvio: I’ll give it an 11 even. I know we talk about AI, and I’m a big believer in AI down the road. What we’re finding right now is that these kinds of automation are amazing for first touches.

But as you said, people need to know we need humans to know how to be a little bit more curious and problem-solving than any AI that I’ve seen currently. Sure, they can be nice and friendly, and they can sound human. But we need people who are curious and empathetic to investigate our systems and relationships about what’s going on and where things might have broken down. 

Just like any retailer, I’m sure we’ve got many systems that talk to each other in exciting ways. Sometimes, it takes a little bit of investigation to help out a customer and ultimately turn that data into data so we can take it back to the business. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a team that stuck with me for the last few years. We’ve added some people here and there but haven’t had too much turnover, and that will likely be persistent in the business for longer than anyone wants to admit.

[00:17:57] Steve MacDonald: And specifically, the role of the agent you just talked to incredibly well, but the turnover issue. 

[00:18:04] Michael Fulvio: Yeah, I mean, I just saw one of those listicles the other day that the top hardest job was customer service because you’ve got people coming to you angry. 

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve got an issue. I expect you to solve it. That might be based on some much larger businesses that have a lot of different options for me. We’re talking a lot about first-party fraud out there happening as well, and things are coming at you in all caps or people are coming at you very loudly.

It’s not an easy job, and it’s not easy to take that in all day, every day. So, I’ve just been fortunate enough to find team members who can laugh it off and share those ridiculous calls and texts. I also encouraged my team to remind the people they’re talking to that they’re humans that they’re talking to. 

[00:18:52] Steve MacDonald: What do you do regarding training or culture in valuing your agents? Do you have that as a goal and as a mission and how do you think about that in terms of being able to retain your agents? 

[00:19:07] Michael Fulvio: Yeah. So I’ve got a fully remote team, which kind of happened during the pandemic. They haven’t been asked to change since they’ve got really clear daily metrics that we can see. Leadership is not worried about what they’re doing because I can just pull out data real quick.

We’ve got some overseas support for nights and weekends. I build a culture through online Zoom meetings like this. We have a daily stand-up that is more about team bonding than sharing any data or updates. Of course, that happens, but there are many laughs every morning.

Also, I’m a Slack for lifer. We keep a Slack conversation going all day long. That is a mix of anything and then some customer service questions thrown into the channel as people ask, what do you do here? I’m still asking that questions. What should I do here? Because somehow, there’s a new issue—not a new issue, but a new situation every day where someone brings something new to you.

[00:20:01] Steve MacDonald: We’ve spent a lot of time talking about many different things. If there was one takeaway that you wanted people to have, and if you’re going to remember one thing, remember this from our conversation, what would that be?

[00:20:16] Michael Fulvio: I would just say, find all those data points, and if you can’t measure something, figure out how to measure it. If that’s running a report every day and putting it in an Excel sheet, that’s how you get to the data and hopefully get people to build you some better reporting.

That’s maybe automated so that you can report on what those fundamental issues are to your customers and not just where’s my order or this tasted weird. I don’t know what some of your people might be working for, but turning every customer interaction into data and then finding the systems that feed those case reasons and turn that into data. 

[00:20:57] Steve MacDonald: We had a chief experience officer on the podcast, but a very similar point of view to yours, and she said, my goal is for the agents and that feedback and data that’s coming from the customers themselves to make us smarter as a company and allow us to make better decisions, on behalf of the customer, on behalf of our agents, on behalf of all the different departments from logistics to operations to the people that are designing the experience on the site for the customers. My takeaway from what you just said is to get the data that helps you be smarter and perform better in all aspects of what you do as a business. Is that a good takeaway from that?

[00:21:40] Michael Fulvio: That’s a much more concise way of what I said.

[00:21:42] Steve MacDonald: I know that people will want to ask questions as follow-ups to this. Would it be appropriate for us to share your LinkedIn profile so people can reach you?

[00:21:54] Michael Fulvio: Yeah, absolutely. I love the conversation. 

[00:21:57] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Michael, thank you so much for sharing these insights. One of my biggest takeaways is how relentless you are at going after and getting that data, which will allow you to work with every different department internally.

That relentless pursuit of data while making things better and addressing challenges is very inspiring. Thanks for bringing that to the podcast. 

[00:22:26] Michael Fulvio: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Steve. Appreciate it.