During the CCA Annual Conference, Valerie Darroch, Editor of inTouch magazine took the chance to meet up with Fizzback CEO, Rob Keve to chat about how the company helps its clients to create a customer centric culture within their own businesses and the subsequent rewards that they reap. The conference which was attended by 600 contact centre executives saw Fizzback share its vast knowledge and experience with delegates as Learning Zone Sponsors:

Fizzback: Intelligent use of customer feedback pays dividends

Deploying intelligent customer feedback systems makes good business sense as organisations are increasingly struggling to keep track of customer views across different contact channels, says Rob Keve, Chief Executive of Fizzback, a specialist in innovative customer engagement solutions.
Customers may voice their approval or disapproval of an organisation’s staff, products or services via an array of contact channels including a call to a help desk, an SMS, email, or increasingly these days, a customer may bypass traditional routes and turn to Twitter to air a grievance.
Whichever channel is used, the message delivered and its impact is crucial as it can determine whether or not a client defects to a competitor and it can also affect public perceptions of an organisation’s brand and reputation.
Keve explains that Fizzback helps an organisation to stay close to its customers by using a sophisticated customer feedback solution which enables companies to listen, respond and act in real-time to customer complaints across all channels. The system has the added advantage of being able to present a real-time unified picture of what customers are saying, creating a dashboard which clearly shows ‘the voice of the customer.’
Its own customer base includes a number of high profile corporations including Carphone Warehouse, O2, T-Mobile, National Express and Phones4U who have realised considerable business benefits as a result of using Fizzback’s solutions.
Tesco, also a Fizzback customer, uses the system to listen to its customers through six different channels simultaneously. Many clients have set up ‘voice of the customer’ teams to follow up on issues highlighted through the feedback system.
A key benefit is that Fizzback gives users the intelligence they need to turn potential detractors of an organisation into not only satisfied customers but potential advocates for the business. It incorporates an innovative ‘Red Alert’ system which flags up customers who are so unhappy that they are likely to withdraw their business.
Keve says: “If clients respond effectively to these Red Alerts they can prevent 70% of them leaving.” He adds that clients have reported a 25 to 36 point increase in customer advocacy in less than a year as a direct result of acting on real-time customer feedback.
Keve says customers are far more likely to respond positively to requests for customer feedback at what he calls ‘the point of experience’ – or when they have just completed a transaction. Timing matters, as feedback is then immediately analysed automatically using a unique artificial intelligence engine developed by Fizzback.
Real-time feedback techniques deployed by Fizzback achieve a high customer response rate of 46% compared to average industry response rates of 5%. “It’s about gearing the system to when a customer is willing to provide feedback not when it suits an organisation,” Keve says.
The system can pinpoint common problems such as service outages, delivery delays or product faults, enabling users to focus efforts effectively, with the added bonus of delivering efficiency savings and performance improvements as a result.
“T-Mobile raised its First Call Resolution rate by 10 percentage points by using Fizzback and another client reduced their employee turnover rate from 26% to 21%. Phones4U saw a 61% drop in complaints as a result of them addressing issues raised by feedback.” Keve says.
A customer’s view of an organisation is usually only as good as their last customer experience, making it imperative that agents deliver consistently good service. Keve says Fizzback assists organisations by driving employee accountability for every interaction with  customers and, critically, it delivers intelligence that is actionable.
Many organisations handle customer feedback in-house but Keve says this can result in ‘filtering of information’ which risks some issues being hidden or ‘skirted over.’  An independent solution makes it easier to identify underperforming agents, he says.
“We have the ability to feedback hundreds of comments on individual agents and this is commonly used to drive compensation of agents and to inform coaching and mentoring of staff. It helps to point out the root causes of issues…our job is like peeling an onion, we peel back all the layers to expose the essential concerns of customers,” Keve says.
Often the intelligence gathered can be used to inform strategic changes, an example of this being done successfully is T-Mobile which previously rewarded agents on the basis of whether or not a customer called back within a week. T2 used feedback data to restructure its reward and recognition system with the new focus on whether an agent resolved a customer’s issues successfully.