Customer Thermometer - Customer Service Department of the Year
Company: Customer Thermometer, Witney, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Company Description: Customer Thermometer is the market leader in survey solutions; with our 1-click email feedback software we’re helping the world’s most customer-obsessed businesses get quick and accurate feedback from their customers in seconds. With over 1,400 customers and operating in 60+ countries, we’re taking the market by storm and our innovative approach to surveying is revolutionising the feedback sector.
Nomination Category: Customer Service Department Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Department of the Year – Computer Software - Up to 100 Employees
Nomination Title: Customer Thermometer
Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since the beginning of July 2017 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
THE BUSINESS
I’m sure everyone has received a survey or two from a company asking for feedback on a product/service. You click on the link only to be faced with a plethora of questions. So, what do you do? Complete the survey in full? Well, that’s not very likely (often companies achieve less than a 10% response rate). Complete half the survey and drop out? Or worst-case scenario for the company, ignore the survey altogether.
With businesses needed actionable feedback and real-time customer insight more than ever, we (Customer Thermometer) gave them a solution that didn’t exist in the marketplace – 1-click surveys (appendix-1).
THE NEED
We took the market by storm and before long,droves of companies were copying us with their own 1-click surveys. The market was becoming saturated and we needed a way to stand out from the crowd…
…INTRODUCING THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC
Given what we do as a business, we needed to demonstrate effortless and excellent service. We wanted to create an experience that customer would remember. Then out of the blue, an email came through from a customer suggesting our customer service agents named themselves ‘magicians'because they had given her such great service.
It was a seedling of something greatand before long the idea had exploded. By 2016 we’d created the Ministry of Magic (our customer service department) with everyone working within it being a Magician (customer service agent) – appendix-2.
TEAM’S ACHIEVEMENTS
Since its formation, the Ministry of Magic has done fantastic work in transforming the customer service experience/journey, including:
-Creating an exciting brand and story behind the department. As a global company, our customers love the little bit of Englishness within, being akin to Harry Potter.
-Creating an engaging book (‘Good Customer Magician, Bad Customer Magician’). This is like the Bible of customer service and is given to new recruits to teach them best practice in delivering excellent customer service (appendix-3).
-Producing ‘Customer Love’ packs, gifts for long-term customers (appendix-4).
-Developing a range of feedback icons (appendix-5).
-Ensuring all customer communications are personalised and sent within a day (our competitors send standard replies and it can take days).
-Ensuring that every employee who joins us spends their first month at the Ministry to learn what customer service is all about and how to deliver the best experience; it’safter all what our business is about.
-Putting measures in place to to continually monitor customer satisfaction and make improvements where needed. For example, recently we received feedback that our survey set up was a little long-winded. So, the teamcompletely reinvented it to improve the customer experience.
-Creating helpful materials (appendix-6) and blog posts (appendix-7) to assist our customers with their own customer services strategies.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
As a result of the great work of the Ministry of Magic and itsMagicians, we’ve achieved fantastic customer satisfaction.
Practising what we preach, we survey our customers on an ongoing basis, using our own software, so our score updates itself in real time. The average satisfaction score across the past year has been 95.8% (appendices-8+9).
Furthermore, our customer retention rate is 88% - incredibly high for a subscription software business. With all the competition out there now, this score istestament toa great product and the exceptional customer service delivered by the Ministry of Magic.
BUSINESS BENEFITS
We’ve seen great business results, including:
-Increasing our customer base to 1,400+ vs. a target of 700 (appendix-10).
-Increasingto operating in 60+ countries vs. a target of 20.
WIDER BENEFITS
The tech industry is male dominated with just 15% of employees being women. With our innovative customer service model, we’ve attracted a much higher average number of women to the team – currently 75%.
CONCLUSION
We’ve created a truly unique customer service department that is delivering excellent customer satisfaction and is setting the standard for the way customer service should be done!