Sally Bagshaw: Beyond the web – Customer service center content strategy

Sally Bagshaw explores why businesses and organizations should fold customer service into content strategy and how to do it.

• 51% of US consumers switched service providers in the past year due to poor customer service experiences
• Top customer content frustrations: making it to hard to find/understand info or take action!
  • Self-help sites and systems that can’t answer my questions
  • Too much paperwork or online forms
  • Not being able to understand the info provided to me
• There’s been too much focus on the funnel
• We don’t reward existing customers enough
  • Need to instill confidence, earn their trust, help them get stuff done

Why We Should Pay More Attention to Customers

• Contact with the customer
• Everything is measured
  • Call centers, help desks — track all sorts of data
• Better for the bottom line
  • If customers are leaving, this costs the biz in the long run
  • $6 trillion a year globally lost because of people switching from service provider to service provider

Types of Customer Service Center Content

• Product guides
• Social media
•  Forms
• Web content
• Intranet content
• Knowledge bases
• Instant chat
• Email and letters
• Scripts (lots of service centers moving away from this; too unnatural)

Silo Syndrome

• Customer service often gets forgotten when it comes to strategy
• Web content =/= customer service content
• Content disparity = bad experience!

How to Solve the Problem

• Improve the experience for both the customer and the operator

Create Content with Empathy

• Use the appropriate tone
• Respect privacy and personal info
• Use clear, familiar language

Optimize for the Operator

• Consider how the operator uses/accesses content and build that into strategy
  •  Efficiency key
• Improve  internal search
• Tag content properly
  • Are tags in the language of the customer or internal lang.? are you making people learn 2 ways to reference things? why?
• Use logical file names and URLs

Design Better Forms

• Only ask for what you need
• Make instructions clear
• Group questions logically
• Focus on good flow

Think about Format and Structure

• Know how content will be used
  • Will it be read on the phone? Then test it by reading aloud, see if you run out of breath, etc.
• Include heading and subheadings
• Design for scanning

Plan the Right Workflow

• Include content in workflows
• Capture feedback and updates
• Create a maintenance plan
  • How are you going to keep quality high?
  • How will things be updated?
  • Is this plan sustainable? Do they have the time/people/resources to keep it up?

Case Study: Legal Aid Queensland

Background

• 16K client service officers
• Access legal info pages (web pages)

Considerations

• Legal terms vs. client terms
• Pages would be read out loud
• Vulnerable clients should seek legal advice

Approach

• Call center visit
• Interviews, analytics
• Content inventory and qualitative audit
• New digital style guide
  • Bite-snack-meal model (h/t Ginny Reddish)
    • Bite: lets people know they’re on the right page
    • Snack: succinct summary
    • Meal: more detailed info, inverted pyramid

Case Study: Sunsuper

Background

• Superannuation funds
• 86 staff
• 10k calls a week
• 1.1 million member statement/s year
• 2.1 million email marketing per year
• 2 million posted letters (welcome emails, follow-ups, etc.)
• 500 templates
• 75 customer service email templates

Considerations

• Superannuation is complex and heavily regulated
• People care about different things at different life stages
• Wanted to encourage people to use Member Online

Approach

• Existing template review against web content
• New template that structured emails consistently
  • Consistent structure
  • Element/writing tips/example
• Tone of voice guidelines and standard calls to action