Inside Perspective from ICMI | Customer Service
The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) held its annual Global Contact Center Awards party this past May.
Gopher Sport won the 2018 award for Best Small Contact Center. (Contact centers with fewer than 75 agents are eligible.) It specializes in selling sports equipment to schools for physical education and athletic programs and prides itself on friendly service.
The company is a client of mine and I’ve been consistently impressed with the customer care team and it’s commitment to service. Beth Gauthier-Jenkin, Gopher Sport’s Vice President of Customer Care, shared some insight into what makes her team so special.
Q: What is Gopher Sport’s customer service vision?
“Our CEO established the service vision about 5 years ago, which is to ‘be the easiest company to do business with’.
“Our plain-language vision has served us well because its meaning is clear. As a company, we often use it in day-to-day conversations as we’re making decisions, asking each other: ‘Does this direction, decision, etc., make us the easiest company to do business with?’ Sometimes the answer is ‘no,’ and we have to rethink our plans.”
Q: What do you believe sets your contact center apart in winning this award?
“We’ve had a customer-focused mindset for 70+ years.
“Our previous CEO, now Chairman of the Board, Joel Jennings, instilled a deep sense of customer commitment in our organization before differentiating with customer experience was the hot topic.
“Company DNA aside, we’ve gotten good at balancing most aspects of contact center effectiveness. We’ve recognized the diverse gifts, skills, and aptitudes within our team and aligned them with key areas of performance and leadership. We’ve been able to lead, coach, and educate team members well. We’ve optimize resources through workforce management. We’ve used continuous improvement and performance management methods effectively. Many wins in these varied areas due to this diverse group of gifted people.
“Lastly, we’re committed to continuous learning. That’s why we’ve soaked up so much knowledge from you Jeff!”
Q: How has the rest of the organization supported the contact center (and vice-versa)?
“The entire organization supports our Unconditional 100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
“Unified support of this customer-focused philosophy, although the right thing to do, isn’t always easy on other teams. For example, large returns and product replacements can be negatives for our Product teams when it comes to maintaining margin targets. Our Quality team works to minimize quality issues and returns, but when customers can return product for any reason, at any time, this can be difficult. So as a company, we recognize and support the greater good, which is taking excellent care of our customers, versus maintaining team standards and KPI’s.
“The contact center supports others in the organization by working to balance customer needs with business needs. For example, we’ve partnered with our Distribution Center to help balance their workload when it comes to order fulfillment. If we only complete order entry after inbound calls and emails are handled, they’d have no orders to ship until 2PM each day. We continuously look at how what we do impacts others and balance the best interest of the customer with business needs, when possible.”
Q: What are some challenges you are working on now?
“We are really interested in ensuring customer insights and feedback are communicated across the organization to keep improving the experience.
“In the past, we’ve sent information to other teams in hopes it’s digestible and actionable, with little success. This is our biggest challenge right now. We have to find ways to ensure the customer is heard, across the company. It seems like this should be easy, unfortunately, technology limits and resource constraints sometimes get in the way. We have to figure this out!
“We also continue to focus on attracting and retaining talented team members. The insights you’ve provided on an improved approach to onboarding and training our newest team members has been a game-changer. Modifying our approach has helped us take better care of these hard working people who want to be successful. This will continue to evolve. We have to keep improving in this area so we have the best people caring for our customers.”
Q: How has the customer service assessment we did helped your contact center?
“This could be an entirely separate discussion!
“It helped us understand our strengths and opportunities in such a clear, straight-forward way. Considering how we grow and improve can be overwhelming, so the prioritized list provided in the assessment was key. The assessment also provided a clear line of sight to key areas which ensure we’re aligned with our service vision.
“In areas we’re missing the mark, the assessment gave us practical, easy-to-implement action items so we become better aligned with the vision. The focus on hiring for culture fit is our biggest priority, and implementing your suggested improvements will continue to yield positive results and transform how we hire.”
(Note: you can find more information on the assessment here.)
Winning this prestigious award was a big achievement for Gauthier-Jenkin and the rest of the Customer Care team. What’s most striking is they aren’t about to rest on their laurels. The entire team is focused on continuously building its service culture.