Customers and getting attention on Twitter for your business?
September 2, 2011Come on Adobe. On Customer Experience, you can do better than that. #CEM
September 9, 2011This is the fourteenth in the series of interviews with business leaders in the ‘customer’ space, leading authors, thought leaders and general all round good guys and gals, that I think that you will find interesting and helpful in growing your businesses.
Previously, in Customer complaints are great, I spoke to Michael Hill of ComplaintsRGreat (complaintsrgreat.com), a business that specialises in helping businesses manage customer complaints better.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to Vala Afshar, Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys, who I connected with on Twitter after he spotted my post: What else can you do with customer testimonials? and retweeted it. Following that, I reached out to Vala being intrigues by his title: Chief Customer Officer and asked him if he’d like to be interviewed for the blog.
I was very pleased when he agreed. Our conversation covered a number of areas. Here are some of the highlights:
- What is means to be a Chief Customer Officer?
- The evolution of Enterasys into a customer focused business and what it took to achieve that.
- Empowering employees to learn to lead without a title.
- How they use good, qualified and well-paid engineers to handle client issues on the phone and consistently achieve a 94% 1st call resolution rate.
- How being the best in your field does not necessarily mean that you need to be the biggest.
- How people, process, innovation, structure and culture have been the five critical success factors to creating a customer centric business.
- Balancing IQ and EQ is key to building better relationships with employees and customers.
- How they measure ‘assists’ in customer issue resolution as a key KPI and measure of intra-team working and engagement.
- Innovation is not just about technology, it’s also about people, process and culture.
About Vala (from Enterasys’ website)
Vala Afshar is Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys Networks, a Siemens Enterprise Communications Company. Afshar is responsible for worldwide services operations and technical support functions including contact center operations, field engineering, support engineering and infrastructure technologies. Afshar and his team have successfully implemented an award winning (CRM Magazine Elite Services) cloud computing customer relationship management framework that enables Enterasys to use business and performance management analytics to achieve best-in-class customer satisfaction and employee retention. Enterasys’ strong technical service and support capabilities are recognized globally by customers, partners and industry analysts as a true company differentiator.
Afshar joined Cabletron in 1996 and has held a variety of increasingly senior-level management positions at both Cabletron and Enterasys. Previously, Afshar was Vice President Services, Vice President of System Quality Assurance, Solutions Engineering, and Worldwide Educational Services. Afshar earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.
You can connect with Vala on Twitter here and check out Enterasys here.
60 Comments
What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/iPj0XOF
What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/jyJOhte via @adrianswinscoe
What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/kRFAa2g via @adrianswinscoe
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RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/Kqg6Cdt @enterasys
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/Kqg6Cdt @enterasys
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of @Enterasys http://t.co/2H6vyOt @siemensent @valaafshar
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What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys | Adrian Swinscoe – http://t.co/dmIDztB
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/NBbe3qQ
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/NBbe3qQ
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of @Enterasys http://t.co/2H6vyOt @siemensent @valaafshar
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of @Enterasys http://t.co/2H6vyOt @siemensent @valaafshar
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/Kqg6Cdt @enterasys
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/Kqg6Cdt @enterasys
I'm always amazed that more "world class organizations" don't have chief customer officers http://t.co/2LkAU1c
@ValaAfshar Congratulations on the article .. http://t.co/f5OvDSm
RT @adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of @Enterasys http://t.co/Ee34WtP @siemensent @valaafshar
What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of @Enterasys http://t.co/EhCW8EC
Role of chief customer officer & company differentiation via customer #service http://t.co/C1tAZ3u @adrianswinscoe. #custserv #cx #cxp #cco
Role of chief customer officer & company differentiation via customer #service http://t.co/C1tAZ3u @adrianswinscoe. #custserv #cx #cxp #cco
Meet @ValaAfshar, Enterasys Network Chief Customer Officer http://t.co/1S8sxXQ and read his interview blog with
@adrianswinscoe interview with Enterasys Chief Customer Officer, @ValaAfshar http://t.co/4T6XxBD on What is a CCO? #cxo #cco
@adrianswinscoe interview with Enterasys Chief Customer Officer, @ValaAfshar http://t.co/4T6XxBD on What is a CCO? #cxo #cco
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What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/FAahVdj
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"@adrianswinscoe: What is a Chief Customer Officer: Interview with Vala Afshar of Enterasys http://t.co/h0HdMrI"
HEllo Adrian
There are four points that have really caught my attention:
– How they use good, qualified and well-paid engineers to handle client issues on the phone and consistently achieve a 94% 1st call resolution rate.
If you look at the customer services domain you will find the opposite – lowly paid people who tend not to have adequate knowledge / expertise before they are put in front of customers. The interesting thing is that by the time these “agent” acquire on the job learning they leave. And so it goes on and on. Clearly there are exceptions – some organisations do a better job of looking after their customer service folks.
– How people, process, innovation, structure and culture have been the five critical success factors to creating a customer centric business.
The tendancy is to pick one thing and focus on it. Yet, the art of juggling is to keep many balls in the air at the same time and to do so in harmony. The same goes for cooking – taking various ingredients and making them work in harmony. The same goes for customer-centric business.
– How they measure ‘assists’ in customer issue resolution as a key KPI and measure of intra-team working and engagement.
As organisations push more and more of the easier stuff onto customers via self-service it is logical that the contacts that fall on the customer services staff will be more complex. Which means that these agents are highly unlikely to be able to resolve these queries on their own. So they will need to tap expertise in the company. That requires a collaborative environment: culture, performance management system, technology…
– Innovation is not just about technology, it’s also about people, process and culture
A great point – innovation fundamentally starts with transforming your frame of reference: seeing a new world of possibility. And the biggest innovation is around how we view our relationship with people. Why? Because it is the most flawed – in my opinion.
Thanks for sharing.
Maz
Hi Maz,
Thanks for your comment. You pick out some great points and insights from Vala’s interview. I think there is a lot in there and some great insights into how to really create a sustainable customer centric business.
Thanks for your comment,
Adrian
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