Digital Customer Service Conversations That Sell – What You’re Probably Missing
With Paolo Fabrizio, Digital Customer Service Consultant at Customer Service Culture
Show Notes
Paolo Fabrizio is a Digital Customer Service consultant.
He’s been in the contact centre industry since the mid 90’s, and has been focused on helping companies improve their digital channel customer service for the past 7 years.
Today, he shares what’s stopping your agents from providing the best digital customer service.
Paolo’s Top Tips When Adding Digital Channels:
Introduce one digital channel at a time, ensuring you have the staff with the necessary skills for each (32:15).
Once you get results with a new digital channel, market the results within your organisation, so you get buy-in from your colleagues (33:49).
You'll Learn:
Why having the right company culture is far more important than the digital platforms you use (03:26).
The common mistake Paolo sees organisations in their adoption of new digital platforms (04:52).
Why good agents in your phone and email channels might not be the right people to provide digital customer service, and what to do about it (06:18).
The 2 essential skill sets that agents need to be equipped with to master digital customer service (08:06).
Why getting rid of scripts for agents will be crucial for you to separate your organisation from your competitors (12:15).
The approach Paolo is seeing contact centres take to make the cultural changes necessary to meet customer expectations (14:05).
‘The Blockbuster risk’ which could make your organisation obsolete, and what to do about it (17:55).
The new skillset Team Leaders need, if they’re to effectively manage agents in digital channels (20:10).
The framework Paolo uses when he assists clients to improve their digital customer service (26:19). Get his e-book which covers the framework at https://customerserviceculture.com/en/resources/#ebook
Connect with Paolo on LinkedIn.
Get your copy of Paolo’s e-book, Digital Customer Service Personas: The skill-set model for Digital Customer Service Assistants
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak. Our Sales Leadership System enables contact centres to increase revenue and achieve their sales growth targets.
Today I'm joined by Paolo Fabrizio, who is a Digital Customer Service Consultant based in Milan in Italy. Paulo, welcome along. Good to have you here.
Paolo Fabrizio (00:29)
Thank you, Blair. Thanks for having me.
Blair Stevenson (00:31)
You're most welcome. As a starting point, tell us a bit about your background and your experience.
Paolo Fabrizio (00:36)
I started working in the customer service area back in the mid-nineties, where I took part in the startup of the first direct insurance company here in Italy. It was a British one.
And from then, I've had the chance to cover many different customer facing roles, firstly in person, and then remotely via digital channels, such as email, which used to be very new and innovative in the mid-nineties. And then later on other customer facing roles - claims recovery, customer service, back-office - and I had the chance to get a broader view of the processes and involvement with customers from many, many different perspectives.
Then later, about 12 years ago, I fell in love with digital channels, firstly, with social media, but the local market, especially the Italian market, wasn't ready to embrace such channels from a customer service perspective. They were already used for marketing purposes, to raise the company's voice, "Please get our offer", "Buy our products and services." But the market was not ready to use them also as new contact centre support channels.
And as I saw and had many, many contacts with colleagues and brands in the UK and the United States where this transformation already took place, I was sure this kind of transformation would also come to continental Europe. So seven years ago I decided to go solo, to become a consultant and trainer and speaker focused on digital channel customer service. And I started seven years ago leveraging all my previous expertise and experiences over many, many years.
And today I serve many different clients, industries in different countries, not just Italy. And I'm very happy to be here with you today.
Blair Stevenson (02:56)
Cool. I must admit, I'm fascinated by the fact that you've specialised in digital customer service. And I guess many contact centres are focused on digital transformation, and putting in place technology solutions. And I guess, different organisations are at different stages of maturity around that.
What are you finding missing in organisations when it comes to addressing digital customer service?
Paolo Fabrizio (03:26)
Well, you said it well, different levels of maturity. When we say the level of maturity, we may think about different industries, but even if we focus on one specific industry, I've worked for many years in the insurance industry, today I have contacts in many different industries. There are different levels of maturity.
And when we say maturity, we should define what we think about maturity, because we tend to focus on digital transformation, which is based on buying and adopting digital platforms and tools. But these are tools. These are very important tools, but they're nothing to maturity.
Maturity is linked to culture. So if we let our internal company culture grow, we can take advantage of digital transformation, digital tools, new support channels, such as social media live, video chat, instant messaging apps.
On the other side, if we do not let our internal company culture evolve, we may use the same channel. We may purchase the best or the most expensive platform, but the results in terms of customer experiences - and of course on upselling and cross-selling, since we're going to talk about the link between customer service and business - won’t be the same.
So what I'm observing is that there is too much focus on the tools, and too little focus on evolving the company culture. And when I say company culture, let me just add one important thing. The great leap forward is just to be a company centric culture, not just a customer service department evolved culture.
Otherwise we are a very beautiful, lovely neighborhood in the city - if the city was the, the entire company, the entire organization - but if internal communication is not aligned, and values are not aligned in between departments, the results would be partial.
Blair Stevenson (05:38)
Makes sense. And I'd like to come back to this idea of culture very shortly. Before I do, I was actually watching a short video when you were at the Customer Service & Experience Summit, in the UK, back in 2019. And one of the things that you said was that good agents in traditional channels are not necessarily the right people to provide digital customer service.
And specifically what you mentioned was that good digital agents need to be able to correctly detect customer sentiment. So I'm just curious about that. Tell us more about that.
Paolo Fabrizio (06:18)
Yeah. It was a bit provocative, of course, but I still do believe it. Especially after this one year and a half of a pandemic. Digital channels have spread a lot all over the world. When I said that, I didn't mean that the people are not good, but the skills they have are not enough.
I've worked a lot in many different companies. When I was a manager, I started as a contact centre agent in 1995 in what used to be the previous Sky TV version in Italy. And then I've had a lot of contact with clients who have contact centres.
Even though you've got very experienced staff, great agents, with a lot of great skills and mature on traditional channels, such as email and the phone, it doesn't mean they're ready to do the same great job over live chat, over social media - which is totally different compared to live chat - over video chat or WhatsApp or instant messaging apps. Because you need also to add new skills. You need to add new skill layers. Otherwise you're not ready to do the same great job over digital channels.
I know that firsthand, because during my training sessions, we do a lot of exercises. We simulate digital channels on a platform, and then we analyse the results. So what went good? What went bad? And focusing on the what's and the why's.
Blair Stevenson (08:01)
What are some examples of the skill development that's required for people handling digital?
Paolo Fabrizio (08:06)
There are two essential elements that agents need be equipped with in order to leave the agent role and become a digital customer assistant. I call them 'Online Conversation Specialists'. Not people who answer on the phone, not just people who answer only email; people who master conversation on digital channels, and culturally move from just a reactive approach to a proactive approach, leading conversations.
So most of the time, customers start the conversation, but you need to own and lead the conversation. That's crucial in terms of customer experience, employee experiences, perceptions, sentiments.
And back to your question, one of the most important and underrated phases of a digital conversation - regardless of digital channel - is detecting customer sentiment with incoming social media comments, live chats, queries or others.
So before hitting the dashboard on your PC, you need to wait a second and try to see, "Okay, I'm focused on the technical aspect. I am an agent. I know about my organisation. I know the technical aspects, but what does the customer want? What does the customer feel at the moment?"
Because otherwise I may reply in the best way, because I'm skilled as for the technical part, but my answer won't be effective. Because it's not fine tuned to the sentiment of the customer. Is he nervous? Is she nervous? Is she worried? Angry about the situation? Is something wrong? Are they stressed because they need a very quick answer getting travel insurance before going in a couple of days to the other side of the world, hopefully to New Zealand?
So these are things that we need to know before answering, otherwise the results that I see during the training and the analysis and the assessment that I do prior to working with customers, is that too many interactions lead to stress, to lower customer satisfaction, misunderstanding, not evaluating from the customer's stand point the real value of the service provided.
And, of course, we lose the great opportunity to provide excellent assistance to our commercial colleagues in the marketing department. Because I do believe that today, more than ever, customer service digital channels have become also a business pillar. Not just answering , not just handling claims or other complaints. But also another area that prepares customers to be ready and happy to listen to marketing and sales department offers. And improve and increase the level of trust, which is crucial in order to build long lasting relationships.
Blair Stevenson (11:45)
It is. It almost strikes me that what you're talking about is, if you're dealing with face-to-face, as we are, or by telephone, you have the classic active listening skills, which ideally you want an agent to employ. And it seems to me, what you're really talking about is almost the digital version of active listening skills, to minimise the effort the customer has to put into the transaction.
Paolo Fabrizio (12:15)
Yeah. That's true. And another thing that I see is that if we moved from a contact centre area, still dominated by scripts, one of the big constraints that managers face, and agents then need to unleash, is to get rid of the scripts.
Of course, taking advantage of macros inside their omnichannel platforms. That's fine. Especially where there are high volumes. But at the same time, unleash the power of the agents, providing them with clear guidelines and procedures to provide seamless experiences. But at the same time, setting them free to express their personality, their human feelings.
Because what customers want is fast, effective digital channels in a very human environment. And that makes the difference when you have the support from what you consider a top two or top three company not for you, but for me as a customer.
Blair Stevenson (13:37)
Yeah, I want to deal with a person, not a robot. You mentioned culture earlier. If you think about successfully integrating digital channels into customer service, obviously as you mentioned, some cultural change is necessary. What sort of changes need to happen in your experience?
Paolo Fabrizio (14:05)
Well, it depends on the company. I've seen a lot of growth in just a short period of time, especially here in Italy, but also in Europe, companies that make a lot of progress in just a couple of years, in terms of culture.
Being aware that they need to invest in customer service and moving from "The less we spend on customer service, the better." Moving away from considering the customer service contact centre as a cost we have to get just like taxes or insurance, "We have to do it. We'd better do that."
And I'm observing and working with organisations who decided to allocate yearly budgets for maintaining and improving digital customer service, both on digital platforms investments, but also on skills training. Because also, Customer Service Managers, not just agents, need to get re-skilled or up-skilled due to these sudden changes.
When we talk about changes, we need to not forget that these sudden changes come from the customers. Customers have raised dramatically the bar in terms of expectations. They've changed behaviour. And we know that the bigger the company, the slower they are to change.
And that's why big companies, big contact centres, have bigger issues compared to small, medium size companies. Because they're not agile. And some of them are becoming agile, not just in terms of the technical agile way of working, which is good.
But agile means being able to drive your car, not take for granted that the route is the same or the direction is the same. Be aware. Listen, if you need to take another route to save time on your side, on the customer's side, to change car, if necessary, to be ready to change, if necessary, more often than you used to do in the last 10 or 15 years.
When I started working in customer service, in companies we introduced after five years email, and then we had email for 15 years before introducing a new digital. Now in the last 12 years, we've got some social media for customer service.
Then we've got also a strong growth here in Europe as for online reviews, which have become also a digital customer service channel. And that's where the link between branding, marketing and customer service take place and need to be leveraged.
Then we've got live chat. Now we've got video chat, especially in Europe for hospitals, medical structures, but also for banks who decided to use video support for specific high-level products and services, or high investments. Then we got the messaging apps. In just 10 years. And maybe in the next five years, some of them will decline. Some of them, just like video, customer service will grow.
Blair Stevenson (17:46)
Yes, totally, totally. It's interesting how quickly change is occurring, isn't it?
Paolo Fabrizio (17:55)
Yeah, that's interesting from our side. That's scary and I really do empathise with organisations because I worked over 15 years, 20 years in organisations, and I know that change is not easy. Because it involves people and involves the resistance of people towards the change. But we need to change our mindset. Otherwise we become very quickly obsolete. I think that any company, even the best ones, even the biggest ones.
If we think about big insurance companies, like Allianz or Generali or Zurich, or big brands, just like I would say Ikea. They're not safe, even though they're great, they will become obsolete in a few years if they don't listen to customers, don't update and improve their processes, face-to-face in-shops, brick, and mortar, digital channels, their websites, and other channels, they would become much quicker obsolete.
I would call this 'the Blockbuster risk' that every company faces.
Blair Stevenson (19:05)
Yeah. So when you're talking about culture, in many ways, what you're talking about is these organisations need to become more and more and more customer focused.
Paolo Fabrizio (19:16)
Yeah, and that's another important fact because there's much talk about being customer centric, being customer focused. Too much talk. Just like a few years ago when I went as a speaker to many conventions and events all over Europe, there was a focus, a hundred percent focus on chatbots, chatbots, chatbots. One shot, one kill, one solution.
I don't believe that one specific aspect can be the solution for any kind of organisation. Regardless of the size, regardless of the culture, regardless of the industry. I believe that culture is important. Culture is crucial. And that makes the difference today more than ever.
Blair Stevenson (20:10)
Totally, totally. We've talked a lot about agents, but you've also made a comment about managers. Do they require a different skillset from people who are managing telephony and email? What's the situation there?
Paolo Fabrizio (20:31)
Well, as for managers, the demands on them have become higher and higher.
Firstly, Customer Service Managers need to quickly learn about omnichannel digital platforms, the dashboards where agents are able to handle conversations, regardless of the incoming channel. And Customer Service Managers need to set up the KPIs, the service level agreement in order to know what's going on, what's going well, or what's changing rapidly, what's going badly, in order to intervene in a timely manner.
So this is a very technical up-skilling that many Customer Service Managers need to do from a technical standpoint. "What kind of platform do I need? Do we have the budget? Let's have a conversation with our IT department. In terms of scalability, the number of agents, the number of channels, our future integration with new channels. Do we choose this platform thinking about today, but also thinking about tomorrow, in a couple of years?" And that's an important step.
And this step selecting an omnichannel digital platform sometimes take between one and two years from what I've seen. Because it's a big investment, or a mid-size investment, or just involving in two or three departments. What happens in Europe is it takes between 10 and 20 months.
And meanwhile, you still may be providing digital customer service over two or three different platforms. A Facebook page, manually, your email accounts, your phone or CTI (Computer Telephony Integration), without having a single view of the customer, without having the stats, without empowering agents to have the overview and the history of previous conversations.
So being slow, lack of sharing information from one channel to another, risking to ask the customer more than one time the same question. So that's what's happening at the moment.
When you buy a new car, you need also the driver's license, right? You need to take some time to, "Okay, I need this car, I have the budget." But when I get the car, I need also a driving license. And the driving license is the new skills.
And also Customer Service Managers need to become digital customer service, meaning the digital platform, how to use it, how to set it up. Because providers of course provide you the digital platform, which may not be good for the pharmaceutical industry, company, or insurance or a retail company.
You need to adapt it to your own goals, needs, KPIs. And of course, changing the relationship with your agents, asking them new things, letting them be trained on digital customer service, and specific digital channel requirements
The two main features and skills that agents need to improve on are empathy and emotional intelligence. Which is not usual in everybody.
Blair Stevenson (24:10)
Unfortunately.
Paolo Fabrizio (24:12)
I think that empathy and emotional intelligence can be trained. But it's much easier for them to learn and use it, because they already use it their personal life. Others who are not so familiar towards these elements, who struggle in becoming good digital customer service assistants, who struggle with digital conversation who say, "I don't want to use digital channels. I just want to answer over the phone or email where I feel safer."
And the biggest risk that I see is that sometimes Customer Service Managers tend to be afraid of one or more digital channels for this reason.
Blair Stevenson (24:57)
You're making a very strong argument for taking an omnichannel approach versus a multi-channel approach. And I think one of the things you're referring to is that customers hate having to repeat information. I call, I send an email, I give the information, or I talk to someone and give the information and the next time I contact the organisation, I have to give it again. Incredibly frustrating.
Paolo Fabrizio (25:25)
To give you an example, maybe you add your comments on a Facebook company page, and you get as a response, "Please send us an email because this is not a customer service channel." Well, I talked to somebody who claims to be working at the company. Do your work and inform your colleagues. I don't need to repeat the same thing.
If I go into a shop and say, "I need this kind of support", "Oh we don't do support in this small brick and mortar soccer shop, please go to another shop." This is something that may be accepted by ourselves until a few years ago. Now in the real time, mobile, digital world we're living in, this is something that is unbearable.
Blair Stevenson (26:09)
Absolutely. What are the processes that you use with your clients to address some of the challenges that you've talked about today?
Paolo Fabrizio (26:19)
Starting from the skills I'm applying, my Digital Customer Service Personas Skillset model, which is also included in a e-book that I co-wrote with my colleague, Maurizio Mesenzani, here in Italy. We've got also English version for our foreign clients. And this framework is what we apply with our clients in order to let them take a leap forward and bring the digital customer service to the next level.
So the first thing we we need to say is that this skillset, the Digital Customer Service Personas Skillset, is focused on the agent, in order to enable them to become online conversational specialists.
And it's based on two main important aspects. First thing, digital channels for customer service are different compared to traditional ones. Digital channels are different from one another. So you need some skills and competencies, specific ones for public channels, such as online reviews and social media.
You need other skills and competencies to manage and master real-time private conversations, just like live chat. You need also some other specific gesture skills when you've got video customer service. Otherwise you may do some big mistakes that I've seen.
You need other specific skills and competencies when it comes to providing support through instant messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, telegram, or Facebook messenger.
So we design specifically, we do the three different layers for these three different digital channel specific areas.
At the same time, we divide into competencies, skills and other aspects that you need to get equipped with in order to do a great job. And when we work with clients, we start with an assessment before doing all the consultancy and training. So we get copies of already digital customer conversations handled by the clients.
We read hundreds of conversations. I personally read 1,307 digital conversations in the last year. I numbered them. By reading them, I got the opportunity to learn the most frequent situations for specific industries. We may talk about B2C or B2B or B2B2C companies, industries.
But I also see how they differently handle live chat conversations, social media, or scheme that they apply on any channel that aren't successful, the best practices that they're already using, and the areas of improvement.
So after this analysis and assessment, we share the results with the managers, because we need the managers to be involved in this process. And we focus on the main areas of improvement. Then we squeeze them in terms of designing the training, which are 50% of the time focused on exercises, simulating conversations, and analysing the results as I mentioned earlier.
And so that's the method we're using, leveraging the Digital Customer Service Persona Skillset model. That's the method that we've used successfully in the last few years, and it's not fixed forever. We started using this framework a couple of years ago. Now we introduced a new version, including also the video chat, which is going to grow a lot in the next years. And, of course, it would need to be adapted in the next years.
But one of the things that I want to highlight is that one thing that any customer service cannot take for granted is that, "Okay, I've experienced guys and girls, so they don't need to be trained. We did the training four or five years ago." Five years ago, it was like 20 years ago. Next two years, it may be 20 years on, because customers have changed radically in terms of their behaviour and expectations.
Blair Stevenson (31:28)
Yeah. You mentioned an e-book. Is that available on your website, or how the people get hold of that?
Paolo Fabrizio (31:35)
Yes. It's free. My e-book, Digital Customer Service Personas, an English version is on my website. It's available for everybody.
Blair Stevenson (31:52)
Nice. Well, in that case, we'll make sure we put a link to your website in the show notes when we finish.
Just one last question, Paolo, just to wrap up, if you think about a contact centre leader, who's in the process of adding digital channels alongside their voice and email channels, what advice would you give to someone who's on that journey?
Paolo Fabrizio (32:15)
Well, of course, taking baby steps first, because when you need to change, you need to be convinced. And then you need to convince your boss, your managers, your directors. If you're a manager, maybe you have a conversation with your director.
And if you're focused and convinced on digital customer service opportunities, not just in terms of improving your KPIs, but improving your KPIs to improve customer satisfaction and improve business results, in terms of renewals, acquiring and getting new customers, building rock solid, long lasting relationships, taking the customer standpoint outside the customer service department, letting him become an issue and a topic crucial for the whole organisation.
So this is a very important role. And I know from firsthand experience that sometimes you may find some resistance. Especially when you have conversations with your colleagues, managers, from other departments, or some of them. Or just your director may not be fully committed as you are.
So that's why you need to start with baby steps, not just changing the world. Start with one channel. If you want to introduce digital channels, just introduce one at a time. Make sure you're equipped in terms of staff, number of staff, skills, digital platforms before introducing them.
And then, after a few months as you get results, as you get reports and the analytics, market your results within the company. That's important because customer service people, like myself, are often so focused on the conversations and dealing with the customers, that we tend to take for granted, or to underrate, the importance of marketing our results. We know that our marketing colleagues are very good in doing that.
Another change that Customer Service Managers needs to make is to also become marketing managers. So as they get results, they show it and market them to their directors, to their colleagues. Getting not just the buy-in from directors, but also getting other colleagues curious.
I have a very interesting experience with a big client I started working with four years or five years ago, which is one of the biggest gluten-free food providers in Europe. They are based in the north of the Alps between Italy and Austria, but they've got operations all over the world.
They started the digital customer service operation four or five years ago in the headquarters. Then they shared the results internally. Then the marketing department asked them for support and insights and tips for Instagram support. Then the bridges of cooperation improved a lot.
And now marketing and customer service are doing a great job, so that they extended this model all over their operations. Not just in terms of digital customer service, but from an overall business standpoint. I think this is a great result.
Blair Stevenson (35:46)
Makes sense. Paolo, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.
Paolo Fabrizio (35:53)
Thank you, Blair. It was great for me. Of course, we focus on our job and on our passion, which is customer relationships. I just want to thank you for this opportunity to come back virtually to New Zealand, a country that I love, and I hope to be able to come back in the near future. And, meanwhile, it was great talking to you. Talk to you soon.
Blair Stevenson (36:16)
Thank you very much. Well, that's it from us today. For listeners, you'll find the link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Paolo on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paolo-socialcustomerservice/), you'll also find the link to his LinkedIn profile in the description too.
And I'll make sure to put a link to his website there as well (get Paolo’s free e-book at https://customerserviceculture.com/en/resources/#ebook).
And if you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensonblair/), you'll find links to my LinkedIn profile there too.
Well, that's it from us today. Have a productive week.