Building customer-centric call centers through systems and processes

¶ … ability of an organization to deliver exceptional customer experiences the greater their ability to survive in a turbulent global economy. The managing of customer experiences and the quantification of those strategies through SERVQUAL (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991) ((Parasuraman, et.al.) for example is providing a strong, scalable foundation for ascertaining just how an organization can consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences over time. Customer-centric organizations of the 21st century are far removed from the stereotypical view of efforts in the past century to motivate call center representatives externally. Research over the last forty years shows that motivational posters and sayings are useless unless the call center representatives see the value of taking ownership of a call and attempting to maximize customer satisfaction every time. Studies indicate when they are given incentives to drive up customer satisfaction, and better yet, when there is financial gain for them, the extra few minutes to make sure a customer is completely delighted is worth it. What emerges from this study of customer centricity in call center organizations then is the fact that customer satisfaction is no accident or not the result of the right mix of external motivators, but of a deliberate attempt to re-order internal customer service processes to guarantee exceptional customer service is delivered every time. This re-ordering of internal processes in conjunction with measurement of customer satisfaction ratings for each call center representative continues to be one of the most effective approaches to attaining true customer centricity. A call center rep may have the best intentions in the world to help a customer calling in, yet if the underlying systems and processes are not in place to enable them to deliver consistently exceptional results, customer satisfaction will be sporadic. Customer centric then is much more than the externalities of keeping a call center staff motivated; it is about creating the underlying series of systems, processes, and foundational elements that allow measurable, scalable, and responsive customer service over time. Evaluating calls based on the criterion of responsiveness, proactivity, reliability, competency, courtesy, effective communication and problem solving all reflect how well the systems and processes have been organized to enable call center performance. In conjunction with this systemic approach to designing in a higher potential for call center customer-centricity, the use of training and periodic feedback is also serve to give call center agents the ability to continually improve over time.

As a result of these systemic or process-based and intrinsic aspects of customer centricity in call centers, this literature review is organized as followed. First, an overview of the concepts and definition of customer centricity, followed by a discussion of the importance of customer centricity and customer focus to organizational effectiveness is analyzed and evaluated. Third, challenges and issues to attaining customer centricity are presented followed by assessing call center performance and quality assurance. The final two sections of this analysis concentrate on building a customer-centric call center, and the essential elements for delivering exceptional customer experience from call centers. Customer centricity has been proven to increase customer loyalty and increase recurring revenue over time for organizations that make this value a core part of their organizational structure (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). The contributory effects of customer centricity to the long-term viability of an organization have also been empirically proven as well (Gummesson, 2008). The intent of this literature review is to evaluate these questions and also look at gaps in existing research, recommending further studies to more fully understand this area.

Overview of Customer Centricity

For most organizations the level of customer centricity they attain is entirely dependent on what their existing cultures will allow for. The very strong and often unbreakable norms and values of any organization can kill any attempts to shift an organization off of technology if it is dominated by engineers for example, or financial engineering if they are bankers and financiers. Yet for the values of customer centricity to be at the center of any organization there needs to be a re-architecting of its very core -- all the way down to its value chain -- to make the transition real. Writing in the Practice of Management, Peter Drucker (1954) stated that "it is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper or not." In the classic analysis of marketing's search for meaning, Marketing Myopia the point is made that when customer-centric over product-centric segmentation of markets are defined, organizations have a higher (Levitt, 2004). Drucker (1954), Levitt (2004) and (Kotler, 1967) all advocate customer centricity being so integral to the daily operations of an organization that is every initiative, strategy and program is directly driven by customers' preferences, requirements and needs. In effect an organization becomes a lean provider of customer responsiveness and reflects back to customers across all segments what their greatest preferences and needs are.

True customer centricity is exceptionally difficult to attain and takes a focus on continual improvement through measured results and (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006) and a strong focus on changing the culture of an organization (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). In many cases the lack of customer centricity in an organization is used to also define it. Product-centric organizations that are often highly engineering, innovation and technology driven tend to use the term customer centricity in an attempt to persuade prospects, customers, channel partners and resellers that their products are in fact produced based on their needs (Galbraith, 2005). This consistent practice of attempting to re-label a product-centric organization into one that is customer-centric often also results in customer expectations over time either being marginally met if at all (Galbraith, 2005). In reality in most organizations there is a continual political battle between being product-centric vs. being customer-centric with neither side entirely dominating over time (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006). This presents in reality a hybrid model of customer centricity that many organizations founded by engineering thought leaders, perpetuated through the continual focus on technology adoption curves over customer needs, and the continual adoption of low price strategies begin to realize when their organizations face severe price competition and commoditization (Galbraith, 2005). The greater the reliance purely on technology the greater the need for exceptional levels of continual innovation often managed as a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) process (Tomovic, Ncube, Walton, Grieves, 2010). Purely product-driven companies are also more dependent on their platform partners' continued commitment to R&D as well, relying in effect on them to ensure a high degree of customer centricity in their product designs . Intel is an example of a platform provider who is expected to have a degree of customer centricity in their product design yet also be highly engineering and time-to-market focused in the discipline of their development. As a platform provider for many high tech industries Intel manages to balance itself well between these hybrid roles.

The same can be accomplished with services organizations. Balancing a hybrid model of product and customer centrism is how many organizations, foundation on technology, are attempting to migrate to being customer-centric (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006).

Researchers and theorists have often defined customer centricity through thorough analyses and comparisons to product-centric organizations as well. Starting with a comparison of the philosophies between products vs. customer centrism, the former is entirely focused on the tangible, measurable attributes (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006) while the latter is entirely focused on how to bring the customer decision-making process into the product effectively (Galbraith, 2005). Organizations also credit this philosophical difference with entirely different approaches to innovation and new product development, where the customers' preferences, perceptions and unmet needs are taken into account in the new product development and introduction process (NPDI) (Crosby, Johnson, 2006). Customer-centric organizations also seek to define their organizations by their alignment with customers' future goals and objectives as well (Tomovic, Ncube, Walton, Grieves, 2010). In short, customer-centric cultures see the continual investing in relationships as more critical than continually moving down a product timeline or moving one product generation to the next (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006).

Customer-centric organizations also have a business orientation build more on relationships, with significantly less of a reliance on transactions (Sharma, Mathur, Dhawan, 2009). Product-centric organizations on the other hand are highly transaction-driven and reliant on the product features and functionalities of their systems to differentiate their products from competitors. This transaction mindset, coupled with the eventual commoditization of components, can often lead to highly competitive market spaces that eventually are not profitable. In the frameworks that Dr. Kim and Mauborgne have defined, this would be equivalent to creating a "red" ocean where profitability is often sacrificed in the name of increased unit volumes over time. Drs. Kim and Mauborgne (2004) indicate that purely spending on R&D is no guarantee of finding highly profitable or blue ocean markets, and that instead it requires a more creative, unique and different perspective to find opportunities in the market and fully capture them based on insights from customers with unmet needs (Kim, Mauborgne, 2004). Customer centricity then can also have a significant impact on the perspective an organization has of its market and the opportunities inherent within it and other, tangential and territory market areas as well. This aspect of blue ocean strategies being driven by customer's perspectives, preferences, unmet needs and wants further underscores its inherent value and also its usefulness from a strategy perspective. The ability to find uncontested markets, which is a key aspect of blue ocean strategies, is predicated on how customer-centric an organization is as well (Kim, Mauborgne, 2004). The concept of a blue ocean strategy is one of finding an untested market space and exploiting it not through massive amounts of Research & Development (R&D) spending, but through the development of innovative approaches to anticipating and responding to current and future customer needs. As a result, blue oceans or uncontested markets are often found by more customer-centric organizations, versus those that are product- focused and organized around transactions. Companies who have a high reliance on a product-centric approaches to managing their businesses run the risk of entering "red" oceans or those markets where price is used as a differentiator and often loss of profitability results (Kim, Mauborgne, 2004).

Whether customer-centric organizations can attain consistently higher levels of profitability varies by their industry, process efficiency and overall ability to generate greater sales from products and services aligned to user's needs. Customer centricity alone will not drive profitable revenue growth, yet it does create a culture that can attain more alignment to customer' requirements, lead to greater customer intimacy, and define greater levels of mutually agreed on growth. In effect customer centricity sets the stage and mindset for embracing and even aggressively seeking out change in the name of customers' needs.

As a result customer-centric organizations often have an organizational structure that reflects their centricity on how their customers think. They have morphed their organizational structures into segment-based and market-based organizations. Examples of this include Dell Computer Corporation's focus on small & medium business, K-12 Schools, universities, and enterprises or those organizations with sales over $1B in revenue. Organizing their functional areas by customer segments has given Dell the ability to create domain experts in each area. These domain experts continually study the key buying criteria of each customer audience in their customer segment of responsibility, concentrating on how to guide Dell into the product and services direction to stay relevant to prospects and customers. This customer centricity is critical for Dell in their rapidly shifting product lifecycles, as the underlying and future needs of customer needs guide product development on a continual, nearly daily basis at the computer manufacturer to ensure the company's revenue targets can be attained through new products.

Dell's culture is an interesting one from a customer centricity standpoint as a result. On the one hand they are highly attuned to production efficiencies, lean manufacturing, and their build-to-order strategies for producing highly customized PCs and laptops. On the other they have designed an entire organizational structure to be aligned to customer segments, with specific focus on the unmet needs, preferences, wants, and future possible requirements of users (Selden, Colvin, 2004). A hybrid organization that blends production efficiency with customer-centrism, Dell is typical of many companies who compete in high tech, software and other areas of rapid technological change where anchoring the organization and its value to customers' perceptions and requirements of value, preferences and needs are important. Best practices in customer centricity then within high tech organizations is more predicated on keeping a balance on production and lean manufacturing efficiency and defining organizational structures that can compensate between both, achieving equilibrium (Strikwerda, Stoelhorst, 2009). This equilibrium is specifically accomplished by making each production process, each manufacturing lean strategy and continual process improvement requirement all centered on its contributions to customer satisfaction and customers attaining their goals. Even in hybrid organizations where manufacturing and customer centric organization structures have been created to reflect the company's segmentation strategies, aligning each area of manufacturing to be as responsible and accountable as possible is key.

Customer centricity will also dictate if an organization will choose to be myopic and concentrate only on the internal factors critical for their success, and in so doing perpetuate an inward-centric mentality, or choose to concentrate on the external factors and their accountability for making results happen for customers. From an organizational focus perspective, customer centricity requires senior management to model the behaviors they expect the organization to adopt and eventually engrain into the daily performance of the processes, procedures and tasks to be done (Chakravarthy, Lorange, 2007). When this occurs the shift moves away from metrics that approximate the market dynamics to really knowing exactly what is happening in the market. The shift from attempting to quantify the market from the outside is transformed into actual relationships with customers. Employees are customer advocates in organizations that have a highly customer centric focus and mindset. The focus is on customer satisfaction and growth through customer loyalty beyond transactions. As a result, organizations tend to place much greater emphasis on valuing the relationships and insights gained from conversations with customers over any amount of internal, and often distanced, analysis. Changing the organizational focus of an organization however is exceptionally difficult and requires that senior management concentrate on the most critical pressing tasks to keep their companies customer-centric over time. Removing outmoded procedures that may get in the way of listening to customers, getting rid of outmoded ideas of how to manage customer service, replacing no longer relevant support and service programs, and also removing any and all factors that can deter customer data driving innovation must be addressed by senior management for lasting change to occur (Chakravarthy, Lorange, 2007). A customer-centric organizational focus requires continual vigilance and a continual level of support from senior management to stay as a predominant force in an organizational culture (Chakravarthy, Lorange, 2007). In comparing those customer-centric organizations that excel in every aspect of their businesses, the delineation of minimally acceptable vs. exceptional performance is in the ability to create a passion for customer centricity that is not easily replaced. The role of senior management is crucial in this regard with the celebrating of customer-centric, often selfless acts on the part of employees, being critical for the culture to continue growing and strengthening itself over time.

In evaluating the differences between product-centric and customer-centric organizations the use of performance metrics is markedly different. In product-centric organizations there is total focus on profitability per product line, costs and P/L by product group, and a focus on getting as many products out as possible in the shortest period of time. This product-centric focus tends push out any metrics having to do with customers as a result, and often leads to bundling products, attempting to overstate the performance and value of features, and the inevitable reliance on price over value (Nolan, 2009). Yet in a customer-centric organization the metrics are more attuned to lifetime customer value, customer satisfaction measures including the use of SERVQUAL, and the development of ongoing customer relationships that are reflected in lifetime customer equity as well. In short there is no single area that more starkly and completely defines the differences between a product-centric and customer-centric organization than the metrics chosen to measure performance over time. Product-centric organizations also over time tend to celebrate milestones that are entirely focused within the organization, with a new product launch being a critical one. Instead of celebrating a customers' first use of the product or better yet, the first customer satisfaction survey or questionnaire received with a perfect score, product-centric organizations develop a more insulated view of the world that perpetuates cause-and-effect thinking. This cause-and-effect thinking is driven by the dollars and time spent on the product driving it into existence with customer's adoption being seen as a given. In fact celebrating the overall success of a new product when it launches and is adopted by customers is more indicative of customer-centric organizations as it means finally the connection has been made from all the internal efforts paying off with customers' needs being met. Customer centricity then from a product development standpoint is all about racing to stay in touch with their evolving, sometimes rapidly changing needs and delivering a product that reflects those requirements (Nolan, 2009).

Finally the differences between product-centric and customer-centric organizations become evident in how information and knowledge is used. In customer-centric organizations knowledge and intelligence are used to make every interaction with the customer as insightful and useful as possible. Intelligence and information within the company is used to attain higher levels of customer satisfaction and greater levels of customer loyalty. The ability to take all available customer information and create an agile, market-driven architecture that can respond quickly to their changing requirements is a competitive asset (Strikwerda, Stoelhorst, 2009). In product-centric organizations however information of all forms is used for customer control and compliance. The use of advanced techniques for managing customer variation and deviation are used to make sure that the majority fit within a tightly defined group that is easily managed. In a product-centric organization then, data is used to make the tasks of managing customers easy and less burdensome. In these organizations customers are seen as an interruption or a necessary annoyance. Over time in product centric organizations a transaction-based mindset sets in and the company slowly loses touch with the customers who made their existence possible in the first place.

In conclusion, the definition of customer centricity is much more than believing in a mantra or expecting to have a world-class customer-driven organization merely from saying that customers come first always. There is a much more fundamental and deeper level of integration required in organizations that are truly customer-centric. From their systems of record and stores of information being integrated to customer-facing processes, to the focus of their senior executives on how to make the company more oriented towards the needs of customers, these organizations work very hard to make sure all processes, systems and strategies stay in alignment to the requirements, preferences and expectations of customers over time. Customer centricity is also being adopted to assist organizations it gaining greater levels of marketing and selling productivity while responding to markets that are diversifying quite rapidly over time (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006). In addition to these factors, customers are also becoming exceptional in their ability to research and gain expertise in product and services areas of interest. As a result, they are often much more demanding that they have ever been in the past. Studies indicate that the value equation of customers is altered during recessionary times as well, with a higher level of expectations around service, support, and responsiveness. Product-centric organizations struggle at best to keep up and at times mimic the processes, systems and procedures of customer-centric organizations yet find it difficult to scale over the long-term. Ultimately the greatest differentiator a company has over the long-term are the value of its customer relationships and the depth of insight they can provide, insights into how the organization can be improved, and ultimately how loyalty can be attained. Purely having a customer-centric business does not guarantee a profitable one. Studies by Reichheld and Detrick (2003) however indicate that once an organization has been able to attain a high degree of customer loyalty their churn costs, services costs, and customer acquisition costs drop significantly. Loyalty, when systematically and consistently pursued through the use of programs and a continual strengthening of the reciprocal relationships between companies and their customers, can have a very significant long-term financial impact to the organization from cost reductions (Reichheld, Markey Jr., Hopton, 2000). From a primarily financially driven focus, customer centricity when combined with loyalty can have a very significant effect on profitability of a firm over time by reducing its costs and increasing profitable sales to existing customers (Reichheld, Detrick, 2003).

The Importance of Customer Centricity to Organizational Effectiveness

The measurable results of a customer-centric mindset often emanate from the financial investment in business process improvement that are directly made as a result into customers' unmet needs, preferences and requirements. These types of investments are often at a very fundamental, systemic level in organizations to make their entire series of databases, systems, and programs all align to the needs of customers (Reychav, Weisberg, 2009). As was mentioned in the earlier section, truly customer-centric organizations re-architect entire processes or approaches to make them more transparent, customer-centric and worthy of trust. The need for making customer centricity a foundational element in the process improvements made is directly tied to the eventual customer loyalty and long-term cost reductions achieved (Reichheld, Markey Jr., Hopton, 2000). Investing to drive up loyalty by getting key customer criteria taken care of from a process standpoint not only can make an organization easier to do business with, it can increase loyalty as well (Reichheld, Detrick, 2003). This is especially true if the modifications made to key process areas are made specifically based on customer feedback and specific, focused feedback has been provided to them with regard to the re-engineering of core process areas.

Ultimately a higher Return on Investment (ROI) can be achieved when these processes are better aligned to the needs of customers first. There are many factors behind a more positive ROI being attained yet the most predominant is the fact that with greater customer focus and customer-centric modifications to a process, there will eventually be greater reliance, trust, and valuing of that specific process over time. For the customers who request for example a call centre to quit focusing just on time spent and more on closed problem percentage as a proportion of total calls for example, the re-defining of the key processes is needed in the call centre first and a re-definition of just what excellent is in call center operations is. Yet only after going through these definitions can any organization make intelligent investment decisions and look to attain a positive ROI from their customer-centric investments in system and process improvement.

Customer centricity then plays a very critical role in organizational effectiveness as it defines how investments will be made in business improvements, determines what the payback will be for those investments, drives the financial levers of an organization and ultimately impacts shareholder value. Figure 1, Evaluating the Value Chain of Time-to-Value Investments in Customer Centricity, shows the relationships of these factors and highlights why it is so critical for customer centricity to drive organizational effectiveness investment strategies.

Figure 1:

Evaluating the Value Chain of Time-to-Value Investments in Customer Centricity

Sources: Based on analysis of Shah (et.al.): (Anderson, Baggett, Widener, 2009) (Braff, DeVine, 2009) (Anderson, Baggett, Widener, 2009)

Implicit in any customer centric organization and its investments in business improvements to the magnitude shown in Figure 1 is a high degree of reciprocity and loyalty as well. This figure communicates a one-way flow of investments to make manufacturing, the new product development process, product data and the company knowledgebase accessible by customers over the long-term, support for quality, resource optimization and support for collaboration both within and outside an organization. Each of these areas has a direct impact on the delivery of customer satisfaction delivered over time. In recent years for example the focus on quality has become very significant due to problems with Chinese toy manufacturing, Chinese milk production, and more recently, the Toyota brakes and acceleration pedal issues. Problems of this magnitude also receive oversight from several global governments including the U.S., Japan and others. Customer-centric organizations struggle with meeting quality management guidelines periodically yet recover. Viewing quality however from the vantage point of customer centricity, investment in quality management system and continually evaluating their performance is an investment in customer loyalty over the long-term. Implicit in the knowledge network Toyota produced to manage suppliers and indoctrinate them into its working practices; customer centricity was at the very center. The Toyota Production System (TPS) as a knowledge sharing network specifically illustrates how the auto manufacturer was able to attain a Network Effect of knowledge transfer by unifying suppliers all with the common goal of better serving customers with high quality parts and products (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Making their supply chains lean and more focused on the customer is what has kept their per-unit costs down and allowed them to grow globally despite a recession (Shook, 2009). If Toyota had not invested as heavily as they had previously in TPS and lean manufacturing to make their organization as effective as it is today, the current challenges it faces would have been even more severe. The costs then of being customer-centric have over the years been very high for Toyota and the build out of their TPS system (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000). Yet it shows that when customer centricity at an organizational and strategic process level is consistently and religiously adhered to as it is in Toyota for example (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000) that the tenacity of a system and its processes actually improve for being more, rather than less, customer centric.

This concept of customer-centric organizations being more adept at being organizational effective is also seen in how manufacturers are streamlining their quoting, bidding and special pricing processes through call centers. Bidding, estimating and quoting are selling strategies many manufacturers and service providers have turned to in an effort to gain greater market share. To the extent these strategies are aligned with the needs of customers and most importantly, how they choose to purchase products and services from a company has much to do with how effective they are from a customer centricity perspective. By making bidding, estimating and quoting as customer-centric as possible based on customer feedback, organizations have been capable of earning greater loyalty by showing they are listening and responding. Improving organizational effectiveness begins by taking the perspectives and insights from customers and acting on them. In the case of manufacturers and service providers who rely on call centers to capture orders from their customers, being able to manage the variation in orders for off-the-shelf vs. build-to-order or highly customized orders is absolutely critical. Customer centricity as a source of innovation and improvement at the strategy and process levels for the more advanced build-to-order requirements is critical. The reliance on customer centricity to redesign the process by which customers can customize products to fit their unique needs through Web-based bidding, estimating, quoting and product configuration systems is an area growing with the greater adoption of mass customization as a selling strategy. Inviting customers to provide feedback as to how the bidding, estimating, and quoting process are working and whether it is meeting their needs or not can be done easily using the SERVQUAL methodology, which is discussed in a later section of this literature review. The focus in this section is how large-scale strategy and process improvements are made based on an organizations' adoption of a customer-centric philosophy that seeks to break down barriers and inefficiencies that get in the way of their serving customers. Organization effectiveness ultimately can only be accomplished by seeking to significantly improve strategies and the processes defined and continually updated to improve them. Figure 2: The Impact of Customer Centricity on Bidding, Estimating and Quoting Workflows graphically illustrates how one high tech manufacturer was able to drastically reduce the time required to fulfill a quote using feedback gained from customers and also through process re-engineering. Customers had become reluctant to place orders through the call centers for build-to-order products and their related services given the turn-around on more complex quotes being up to 3 weeks or more. The enterprise customers often told this high tech manufacturer (who has since been acquired) that their quotes would need to be responded to within at least a day or less for the customer themselves to generate interest and support for the initiatives underway in their organizations. If the quote took longer than three days it was in effect useless for these larger organizations.

Figure 2:

The Impact of Customer Centricity on Bidding, Estimating and Quoting Workflows

Challenges and Issues to Attaining Customer Centricity

As quotes continued to drop from enterprise customers the sales managers who ran the outbound call center created a series of in-person meetings with their larger corporate or enterprise accounts. In these meetings the call center and sales management teams heard that the quotes were often wrong and had been often stopped for manually producing the drawings and designs when all the customers needed was a quickly produced Autodesk drawing file. The customers also mentioned that the product configuration checking and validation was often taking weeks alone. These same enterprise customers mentioned that competitors had been able to automate this process down to hours and as a result were beginning to win more of the business. In some cases competitors completed three iterations of the quotes and had delivered the products before a quote came back that was accurate.

Further, the existing process workflows through the call center did not allow for pricing variation or volatility as well and often led to entirely new quotes needing to be produced on products near the end of their lifecycles. This just made the situation worse according to customers, forcing them to continually look first to competitors who could literally complete several quoting cycles in one cycle that the high tech manufacturer could. With competitors now realizing the 21 day or longer time to generate a quote was in fact bringing them business, they accelerated their internal systems even faster to generate accurate quotes within hours. While the high tech manufacturer was by nature highly product centric, if they had not stopped to speak with their enterprise accounts an entire line of their business could have been gone in a matter of months.

Instead the sales management, call center, it, and systems analysis teams worked to complete the modifications to the quoting process as shown in Figure 2's second panel. This took well over nine months to complete yet the high tech manufacturer was able to hold onto its customer base by working through more efficient product configuration workflows. The end result was a completely automated system that generated quotes specifically to customers' requirements in approximately an hour. None of this would have happened without at least reaching out to customers and attempting over time to become more customer- centric. As is the case with a rapid move to customer centricity, when a process is so broken that it is beginning to cost revenue and customers, organizations find a way to really align their systems and processes to help customers attain their goals.

In conclusion, customer centricity is essential if organizational effectiveness is to be achieved over the long-term. As the examples have shown first from a broader and more strategic vantage point of investments in new strategies and processes to a very specific bidding, estimating and quoting process, customer centricity acts as a catalyst of organizational effectiveness. Therefore the impact of customer centricity on organizations ultimately is to make them more profitable not only from the loyalty effect (Reichheld, Detrick, 2003) but also through the more fundamental re-ordering of processes to respect customers' needs and preferences over time.

Assessing Call Center Performance and Quality Assurance

Many organizations rely on a series of methodologies for measuring call center performance quality assurance. One of the more well-known brings together a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach to making sure there was a balance of operational and customer-centric metrics to ensure customers' preferences and attitudes are captured. One of the most pervasively used is SERVQUAL and its related performance metrics. One of the primary factors in SERVQUAL's exceptional growth as a methodology for tracking call center performance and quality assurance is its ability to also factor in the attitudes of the call center representatives themselves as well (Ramseook-Munhurrun, Naidoo, Lukea-Bhiwajee, 2009).

The SERVQUAL methodology is used for measuring the variation or difference in the median levels of expectations vs. actual performance of an organization as reported by customers and also by service center representatives. Approximately over 900 studies have been verified and empirically tested using the SERVQUAL methodology, many of them being multi-year in scope (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1988). These studies when taken together over the decades in which they were completed illustrate how critical it is to be customer centric as an organization to gain the trust of customers for the long-term (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985). In essence measuring the variation or distance between where a company is on its service strategies and processes vs. where its customers believe it needs to be is the foundation for a highly effective roadmap to significant improvement over time.

An essential aspect of the methodology is that the measurement be completed as the service is being delivered, or during the service delivery process. For call center representatives this is often handled through the use of a Web-based survey sent to customers immediately after a call with the call center. Following the actual deliver of service is invaluable in capturing perceptions, attitudes and the insights as to what needs to change to improve. This is essential as the interaction between the call center and client is more accurately measured when done as immediately as possible to the actual service event (Parasuraman et al.). Comprised of five generic dimensions SERVQUAL was originally designed to validate to what extent customers' expectations were met or not (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1991). The first of the five dimensions of SERVQUAL is assurance (Crosby, Evans, Cowles,1990) (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1988). This is the dimension that concentrates on areas that require the most effort to change within an organization as they are culturally based and involve sharing knowledge and intelligence that others may hoard on occasion. Studies have also indicated that this dimension of SERVQUAL is critically important as a determinant of trust within selling, service and service recovery scenarios (Anderson, Baggett, Widener, 2009). Assurance is a critical determinant of trust and integrity throughout a long-term relationship with a customer as well. Trust in fact is the catalyst of customer loyalty and assurance is key to making that happen.

The second factor in the SERVQUAL methodology is empathy, or the ability of an organization to create, maintain and grow processes that create a culture that places a high value on a caring, individualized environment where customer needs are critically important. Empathy is critical for customer centricity to permeate an organization as a philosophy of operations. Organizations recently have been turning to Web 2.0 technologies (O'Reilly, 2006) and social networks (Bernoff, Li, 2008) to better empathize and understand the needs of their customers. Web 2.0 technologies are making it possible for customer-centric organizations to gain more real-time feedback on their current and future plans and how they resonate with prospects and clients as well (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The combining of social networks, customer satisfaction strategies and SERVQUAL to measure their accumulated effects has become an evolving best practice in the field of customer centricity. From a call center perspective the use of SERVQUAL to benchmark the level of performance over time of development and training programs can be benefit in assisting organizations in finding the areas in need of the greatest improvement.

The third factor of SERVQUAL is reliability, which is by definition the ability of a service organization to deliver consistent performance over time (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985). This is an area where call centers continue to struggle significantly from the standpoint of performance. This dimension of SERVQUAL also is critically important for establishing trust and credibility in a call center operation over time.

The fourth factor in the SERVQUAL measurement methodology is responsiveness. On this dimension the variation in how customers view time relative to the perception call center representatives often becomes a critical issue. In the case of customers on hold, wait times can appear to be significantly beyond the actual time itself. In other words, time on hold is perceived as significantly longer than it actually is, hence the high level if dissatisfaction customers report via SERVQUAL scores for having to wait on hold an inordinate amount of time to get assistance. This is a critically important area of SERVQUAL because customers will often rate an organization higher if they are more responsive and attempt to solve the problem through effort rather than just putting the call on hold, waiting to speak with an expert. This perception in the fundamental differences of time often also contributes to the variation in SERVQUAL rankings between call centers and their approaches to managing wait times. Changing the perception of how long a wait is requires innovative approaches to keeping customers engaged. It is an evolving best practice which has shown that when a customer is greeted within 60 seconds on a call for example their satisfaction level significantly improves and they are more likely to have a higher SERVQUAL score on responsiveness as a result. These nuances of call center support and management have an accumulative very large impact on the satisfaction levels of customers and can eventually lead to customer loyalty.

The fifth factor in the SERVQUAL methodology are the tangibles. This includes the many communications materials, branding and marketing collateral and the use of call center training scripts and programs to teach reps on approaches and techniques for ensuring higher caller satisfaction over time. As with other aspects of service, the effectiveness of these is measured immediately after they have been implemented. A conceptual model of SERVQUAL is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: SERVQUAL Conceptual Model

Source: (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, 1985)

Essential Elements for Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience from Call Centers

The ability to consistently deliver exceptional customer experiences over time reflects more of the systemic and process-related customer centric strengths of an organization than its willingness or morale to please customers consistently. Despite even the most well-intentioned call center representative, the ability to engage in service recovery decisions within seconds and make commitments and keep them is more of a function of the systems, processes and procedures being in place than the willingness to freely share incentives for not leaving a company. In other words even with a passion for service there must be a strategic framework in place to ensure consistency of customer experiences is attained. Of the many frameworks and constructs available for this purpose, the Customer Centricity Model (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006) presents and equilibrium-based view of organizational alignment and systems and process support, with continual feedback based on financial metrics and leadership commitment shown over time. The entire model is anchored in a conceptual framework of product vs. customer centrism and is shown in Figure 4, Customer Centricity Model.

This model is very effective in defining the elements necessary for delivering exceptional performance in call centers as the key organizational determinants necessary for consistency of exceptional customer experience are all present.

Figure 4: Customer Centricity Model

Source: (Shah, Rust, Parasuraman, Staelin, Day, 2006)

The integration of organizational alignment and systems and process support for example is critical for providing call center representatives with the necessary information and data mining support to understand the context of customers' problems while also increasing FSR rates by finding potential causes of problems the customer may not be aware of. In addition the use of revised financial metrics that illustrate the ROI of delivering exceptional customer experiences is also evident in the model as well. Leadership commitment is the overarching aspect of the model as this is the most salient aspect that impacts adoption of significant change within organizations. All of these factors combined lead to an ecosystem that empowers the call center representative to meet and exceed customer expectations on a consistent basis. The tension in organizations between being product vs. customer centricism is what distracts many from being able to deliver exceptional performance over time. By having this attribute shown in the outer area of the model the need to balance these two potentially opposing facets of a strategy are made more realistic.

Delivering exceptional customer experiences consistently then is more of a synchronized set of systems and processes then, not so much a hit or miss strategy on a per call basis. With a cohesive and balanced ecosystem as is shown in Figure 4, organizations can plan and launch call centers that align to specific customer expectations and exceed them over time. It is in the consistency of process and systems that makes the difference in continually exceeding customers' expectations or not.

The use of financial metrics to measure the long-term effects of customer centricity is also captured in this model. The ROI of having strong organizational re-alignment, supported by systems and process support can be measured from a customer satisfaction standpoint. The long-term effects of customer centricity as measured in ROI is possible when the cost reductions due to less customer churn, and the incremental sales generated over time from up-sell and cross-sell are factored into the analysis. In aggregate all of these factors taken together shrink the barriers that separate organizations from being more customer-centric, which is defined in the model as the overarching objective. All of these elements working together must be driven by a strong organizational focus on measuring and quantifying satisfaction to the call center representative, and creating rewards and incentives for delivering exceptional customer experiences. Using transactional leadership styles to incent and reward performance that leads to immediate customer satisfaction has been shown to be effective in service-based industries (Toor, Ofori, 2009). The combining of transformational and transactional leadership styles to reward and motivate employees is exceptionally effective (Toor, Ofori, 2009). Transactional leadership is often relied on for managing by a carrot-and-stick strategy, yet studies indicate that the "stick" aspects of this strategy only work for a very short time. Rewards cause a long-lasting change over time in call center representative behavior while punishments typically do not (Toor, Ofori, 2009). This aspect of leadership is not specifically covered in the model shown; however it is essential for a call center's culture to continue growing in its customer centricity. The aspect of leadership covered in the model is one of balancing all other factors to ensure synchronization of all systems and strategies towards the common goal of customer centricity.

Conclusion

The intent of this literature review has been to evaluate customer centric, its role in call centers, how it is defined, and how its impact on organizational effectiveness can significantly improve an organizations' ability to compete. Examples have been shown of how customer centric investments in process improvements can over time lead to significant ROI and also to improvement performance in terms of cost reduction through the loyalty effect. There is also the lesson learned from the call center which was managing a bidding, estimating and quoting workflow for a high tech manufacturer. This specific workflow illustrates how critical it was to continually improve the processes that customers rely on over time to attain their objectives as well. The fact that customer centricity is more about process re-engineering and the aligning of information assets internally to empower call center representatives to attain higher CFR rankings has also been analyzed in this literature review. The determinants of a successful call center that is customer centric focus on these aspects of how to best use analytics to understand customer intentions and also develop strategies that can lead to service recovery if necessary. The development of service recovery strategies based on sentiment analysis data and the use of linguistic analysis can also provide useful insights into the analysis of unstructured content as well. All of these factors favor the development of comprehensive business intelligence (BI) and business analytics platforms that can assist call center professionals in defining strategies to mitigate lost customers and ensure a consistently high level of customer satisfaction.

Customer centric organizations never stop improving. They are continually looking at how they can create value by streamlining the processes and systems that reach their customers. The development of customer advisory councils and periodic communication is not enough in a Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 1996) world. Instead what is needed is the use of social networking applications that can engage with customers constantly and listening becomes interactive, in effect creating conversations. The use of social networks as a means to stay connected with customers and continually fuel customer centricity in an organization is critically important (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The use of social networks has become pervasive from a marketing and promotion standpoint. Using them as a means to gain insights into how to become more customer-centric by regularly doing satisfaction surveys, brand value surveys and unmet needs analysis can be done in a fraction of the time through more traditional and more costly approaches to gaining customer feedback (Bernoff, Li, 2008).

Customer-centricity in many organizations has more of a hybrid implementation, sharing a mindset of product centricism as well. The intent of this literature review is to accurately and realistically show how organizations navigate between these two areas. The case of Dell Computer Corporation, which its customer-centric organizational structure and customer-driven manufacturing is a case in point of an organization that has a hybrid approach successfully working. The important of customer centricity in an organizational structure is made also clear from the example of the high tech manufacturer whose quoting and product configuration workflows took well over 21 days to complete when competitors were able to complete them in 1 hour or less. This example illustrates how critically important it is to align internal processes and make them more customer-centric over time or risk being overtaken by competitors as well.

The challenges organizations face in becoming customer-centric are based more on their biases to be more product-centric, and through inertia, refusing to change and embrace a more customer-centric mindset overall. The costs of refusing to listen to customers is well shown in this analysis across several examples, with the greatest cost being a lack of creativity on how best to change over time to stay relevant and needed. Overcoming the challenges of being a customer-centric organization must begin with a strong leadership focus on making customer needs and requirements the very core of the organizations' culture. Transformational leaders have this ability to keep organizations moving forward towards the goals of being customer-centric and vigilant to changes in customer requirements over time. Once an organization has been able to successfully overcome these challenges the development of a series of customer-centric metrics is critical. The discussion in this literature review focused on call center performance and quality assurance using the SERVQUAL methodology. SERVQUAL is also used for providing 360 degree feedback as well, which has created shared expectations within call centers for minimum performance levels to be delivered over time. The ability of metrics to change a culture and bring up performance is evident in the research cited.

For customer centricity to become engrained in an organizational culture the alignment of metrics, processes, systems and constancy of leadership is critical. Call centers that reward and highly focus on FCR over time have a higher probability of creating sustainable financial results over time relative to those that simply focus on churning through calls and call volumes. This is a fundamental mindset shift in call centers and requires an intensive level of knowedlgebase and database integration, navigable by call center reps and integrated to CRM systems to make the data relevant in real-time. Making each moment of truth with each customer optimized given the accumulated knowledge in an organization is the essence of customer centricity in call centers.