The top frustrations of customers and agents are the same – Interview with Jeff Nicholson of Pega

September 1, 2021

Today’s interview is with Jeff Nicholson, Global Leader, CRM Strategy for Pega, where he heads up the company’s CRM market strategy and vision worldwide. Jeff joins me today to talk about their recently released new piece of research: Resolution revolution: Customer service insights report, what we can learn from it, what we should be focusing on, agent experience, the emerging landscape of customer service and sine waves!

This interview follows on from my recent interview – What do immersive VR, empathetic interactions and stand out customer service have in common? – Interview with Monika Jo of Mursion — and is number 401 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my chat with Jeff:

Pega’s new piece of research: Resolution revolution: Customer service insights report.
How do we simplify service despite our complexities?
The nature of work has changed more than we have realized and more than the data is telling us.
If you think average handle time (AHT) is the most important metric for a help center, you’re probably trying to solve the wrong problem.
82% of customers are now willing to use self service. However, 46% don’t actually expect it to work.
The top frustrations of customers and agents are the same: having customers repeat themselves.
What some organizations are realizing is that they can get better traction by focusing on the micro-journey and not on the channel.
One client insurer implemented a real intelligent virtual assistant that was able to answer customer specific answers around their claim 24 hours a day. In doing that, it was able to resolve almost 80% of the inquiries right there and then before they required any agent intervention.
27% of consumers said that they felt like their entire day had been ruined by bad service and one in 10 (10%) nearly cried.
Maya Angelou – “People will seldom remember what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel”.
72% believe their organizations provide better customer service than their competitors. But, that’s mathematically impossible.
80% of businesses admit that the quality of service is actually different across the channels.
50% of customers saying that they’re only selecting the phone because they think it’s the only way that they can effectively get their issue resolved.
How do we operationalize the agent’s experience to deliver good customer experience in the moment?
We talk about friction on the customer’s side but we also need to consider if the employee faces friction too.
Think of it as like a two sine waves. If they are out of sync then they can cancel each other out or cause interference and distortion. However, if they are in sync then you end up with a more powerful signal and outcome.
We are thinking about and building systems to orchestrate and support those kind of experiences.
If you’re just trying to do automation for automation’s sake, in many cases you just end up automating a bad process.
60% of businesses service leaders believe that Covid is going to have long term consequences for customer service, particularly when it comes to digital strategies.
Brands need to organize around a customers journey centrally regardless of the system or channel and continue to build resolution to those micro journeys in the center and then activate them out channel after channel after channel.
North of 50% of customers, according to the data, are going to your website first before they call you, even if it’s just to find your phone number. So, when they go to those web properties, what is the experience they’re seeing?
Jeff’s Punk CX word(s): Solve it.
Jeff’s Punk CX brand: StepChange Debt Charity.

About Jeff

Jeff Nicholson, Global Leader, CRM Strategy for at Pega, where he heads up the company’s CRM market strategy and vision worldwide. A recognized customer engagement thought leader, Jeff works closely with industry analysts, and serves as a frequent presenter at CRM industry events across the globe on subjects including CRM, AI, customer journey, digital transformation, and customer data protection legislation. His viewpoints and opinions have been featured in publications and outlets including AdAge, Chief Marketer, CRM Magazine, CMSwire, CustomerThink, and Forbes.