This is the second half of Ann All's interview with Lior Arussy, founder of the Strativity Group, which provides proprietary research tools, strategic analysis, business planning and customer experience innovation design to help its clients operationalize profitable customer experience strategies. Arussy co-authored Strativity's 2009 Customer Experience Management Benchmark Study. Be sure to read the first half of the interview, Putting Profitability into Customer Experience Management.

All: Can you elaborate on the boom-and-bust cycle of customer spending? Based on historical patterns, is there an opportunity for companies that maintain or increase customer service spending during a harsh economy like the current one to gain an edge over competitors?

Arussy: Boom-and-bust is less documented in the customer experience space because it’s relatively new. It’s more documented in the marketing/advertising space, where we see companies slashing advertising budgets during tough economic times, yet some of the smarter companies are realizing there is less advertising by the competition and so they don’t have to compete with so many messages. It’s also a time when customers are watching who is advertising and who is not. This helps them determine strength. It’s especially true in the IT world, where you want to go with an 800-pound gorilla and not one of the companies that might not survive. The extra advertising helps send a message of strength. Those who are able to maintain their commitment during tough times are sending a message that they are best positioned to stay afloat. Therefore, your purchasing with them is safer than purchasing with companies that cannot do that.

We believe the same cycle applies in customer experience. If all of a sudden, you call to receive service and you wait longer on the line because there are fewer people to service you, or the salespeople aren’t available because they were told only to talk to people with a budget, these things will signify to customers that you are balking. That’s not the message you want to send. Customers are watching your investment, your commitment, your engagement, your intensity of relationship with them, more now than they might otherwise. This is a moment for them to say, “How long and how far are you willing to invest in this relationship.”

All: Even for companies willing to invest in customer service, your report found they sometimes experienced problems in delivering improved service. Can you tell us some of the factors that make this such a challenge?
Arussy: Let’s start with siloed information. With silos, nobody owns the customer, nobody sees the complete customer. Sales have their own vision based on their databases, marketing have their own vision based on their databases, and so does customer service and field service, and so on. No matter how much you invest, if you have fragmented and often conflicting views of customers, you won’t get the best result. You need to have a more holistic view of the customer so you are not sending an invoice or calling collections if the customer is disputing whether a package ever arrived.

Tools and authority is a topic that comes up again and again. In this year’s survey, and this was an improvement from previous years, only 39 percent of executives said their employees had the tools and authority to solve customer problems. That is a shocking statement. Basically 61 percent of employees show up to work and the best thing they have to offer customers is their smile. Let’s point a finger at IT. Identity and access management does not allow the right people to have the right access to the right sources of data. It means employees aren’t getting alerts, they might not be queuing customers to the right agents, they do not have the authority to solve problems on the spot.

I can offer what I think is a horrific example. We have a client who is using a pretty robust CRM system. A customer calls and places an order, they verify the address and find out it’s incorrect. The people speaking to the customer want to change the address but aren’t authorized to do so. They have to fill out a three-page spreadsheet with all of the customer’s data and send it to somebody in IT, who will then be authorized to change the address. Aside from slowing down the process and not being able to confirm the order because they don’t know when IT will do that, it sends a message to the customer that the person whom he is dealing with is the wrong person. He wants to talk to somebody who has the authority to help him.

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