From Customer Interview Customer Magazine, January 2001

  Laura Grimes on the topic of monitoring practices...

"Gathering data is one thing, finding the time and resources to analyze it is another.  If you do too much monitoring you may be creating an additional expense,” says Laura Grimes, senior vice president of Harrington Consulting Group. “Each company needs to examine what transactions they want to monitor, determine the right sample size and then stick to it.”

The second step, she says, is to make sure what is measured is consistent with the organization’s goals.

The View At C-Level
Customer service representatives have an immediate impact on customers. As a front-line customer advocate, what they say and do affects the customer experience. However, when everything is said and done, it’s the upper level executives that are ultimately responsible for making sure customers continue to visit and generate profits for their companies.

“Pressure is being put on the senior executive team to actually care about the customer experience,” Grimes says. “They’re the ones being held accountable in the boardrooms and by stockholders.”

Executives who embrace the benefits of monitoring are rarely disappointed. If monitoring products are installed correctly and everyone has a clear understanding of how it will assist the company as a whole, return on investment (ROI) can take as little as 10 months, Grimes says.

“Monitoring has to be portrayed as an organizational effort and not an individual effort,” Grimes recommends. “Agents need to see that other things can happen because of monitoring and it’s not just about them being under scrutiny. When they feel it is an organizational effort they tend to like it better because they know they’re making a contribution.”