Scalability of service and customer experience must be thought through from the outset

"The scalability of customer service and the user experience must be imagined and fine-tuned from the outset, unless we are to deconstruct everything" Cédric Blum, Customer Care Director at Doctolib.

It was a great success for Ino Global and Google Chrome, who welcomed some sixty guests to Google's Paris headquarters last Thursday: during a lively morning, which ended amidst works of art, they discussed the need not to forget voice in customer journeys, even when working with digital natives, and the joys of scalable customer services. We heard from Jott, Doctolib and Onepilot. In the room, executives in charge of customer experience from Pluxee, Le Monde or Silae, Partoo. were all ears. AI is making progress, but the best vaccine is contactability. 

"We didn't think about it from the start: how do we manage to receive 1,000 calls a day? Cédric Blum, Doctolib.
The presentations began with customer feedback on ChromeOS. X's IT Director, C.M  gave his assessment of the use of this OS by the company's agents. The most appreciated features are the ease of implementation and the portability of accounts between devices. The 'loaner' machines enable staff to continue working in their own environment, regardless of the computer they are using. Useful when working on the move or in the event of an accident, such as a spilt water bottle.

Onepilot then presents a testimonial from one of its customers: Jott, a ready-to-wear brand from Marseille founded in 2010. Boris Petit, its customer service manager, explains that Onepilot's per-ticket billing has reassured him: "When you use a BPO, you are captive to the service provider, who is much more familiar with the technicalities of customer service and can abuse them in terms of pricing. This is not the case with Onepilot. Adrien Hugon, founder of Onepilot, then presented the statistics drawn from the collaboration between Onepilot and Jott: 15% contact rate, 80% first contact resolution, 2 hours average response time to a customer request and 90% CSAT (Customer Satisfaction). The same speaker went on to present Onepilot's innovations incorporating AI, in line with many of its competitors: the company is trying and succeeding in diversifying its services to "experiment with the potential of AI": personalised training using AI, recruitment/screening using AI; ticket analysis. 

Doctolib is also involved, represented by Cédric Blum, Doctolib's Customer Care Director. As with Uber, for whom the real customers are the drivers, Cédric Blum explains that it is the doctors who turn to them first and foremost, with very specific and time-sensitive problems such as the procedure for "declaring oneself on holiday". We didn't think about it from the start: how do we manage to receive 1,000 calls a day? Appreciating and understanding the reasons for calls is decisive, as all those involved said. In this respect, the right speech analytics tools can automatically summarise conversations and import them into CRM. Saving time and improving customer knowledge, it's easy to see why this functionality, offered by Callity for example, is so popular. 

Is 50% the incompressible threshold?
With regard to the Digital Natives section of the event, we learned from the round table, chaired by Manuel Jacquinet :
- that "young people" prefer digital communication channels, but that there is still an "incompressible" rate of around 50% of requests reaching customer services, an observation confirmed by Jott and Doctolib.

- that SMS has become an established part of the customer experience, but that it has its limits because it does not sufficiently protect private data. In Adrien Hugon's view, digital natives readily accept "customer on-boarding", the ability to understand and interact with a brand. In his view, it is the older customers who are difficult to manage, particularly for brands focusing their strategy on digital.

Yves Beaugard, Deputy Director of Ino Global, presented the INO CX solution in the best possible way: short and with a focus on interfaces. In the room, Pluxee, Silae, a team in charge of customer relations at Le Monde newspaper (Carole Massip), a major pharmaceutical distributor and more than a dozen other SMEs took notes. And got a real kick out of it. Because what we saw and had explained to us afterwards had to do with Chagall, a certain fresco at the Opéra Garnier, works of art and their digitalisation. We're not allowed to talk about that. You had to come and have an umbrella ! 

How do you recognise an instructive morning?
By its pace, by the fact that even managers as experienced as Nathalie Danoffre (Silae), ex-Bouygues Telecom, Alloga, Viktoria Otero Del Val (ex-Harvard, BCG, McKinsey), seem to learn things. 

By the third half, which was not deserted, far from it, by the cocktail party.   
Quote of the day? Adrien Hugon: "We need to focus on the granular and not just the macro in customer service.

Next save the date: “The Juilliard School of Customer Experience” in September, at La Baule Resort, with Lounis Goudjil (Manifone), Kilian Le Menestrel and Léo Hauet (hipto), Nicolas Panel (Callity) etc..

Front page photo: Boris Petit, in charge of customer service and in-store experience monitoring at Jott and Adrien Hugon (Onepilot)

Crédit photos: Edouard Jacquinet.