Case Study: Ritter Communications

CUSTOMER PROFILE

THE GOAL

Developing a new approach to customer experience

Ritter Communications initially had an essentially ad-hoc approach to customer experience, with its call center customer service representatives handling issues as best they could as they arose. There was no strategy or team dedicated to customer experience.

The company engaged an experienced and ambitious Customer Experience VP with the goal of developing a more proactive and coherent approach to customer experience. This involved developing methods and looking for tools to measure customer satisfaction and to understand the customer journey.

As part of the new strategy, Ritter Communications decided to look at both satisfaction and likelihood to recommend. The company team determined that the best single metric for tracking and measuring those parameters is the Net Promoter Score® (NPS).

THE SOLUTION

Understanding NPS®

The Ritter Communications team decided that the most effective and efficient option at the time was to reach out to NiCE Satmetrix Systems, the company that developed the NPS® metric. NiCE Satmetrix and Ritter Communications collaborated in analyzing needs and setting up a program to track NPS® as the primary measure of success in the company’s customer experience initiatives.

A SaaS solution, NiCE Satmetrix incorporates robust surveying, reporting and analytics based on NPS®, customer effort scores, proactive surveys, and more. Based on that data, it provides real- world insights, reporting, automated action alerts, and suggested workflows.

According to Venice VanWinkle, Director of Quality Assurance and Compliance at Ritter Communications, initial enthusiasm and support for the NPS® initiative was high, but the value of the program wasn’t fully understood until actionable insights based on the NPS® survey feedback became available. Emphasis from senior leadership, combined with training on how best to evaluate and act upon survey results, solidified the importance of the program. Functional area leaders began depending on it to identify opportunities to optimize customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Ritter Communications mapped the entire customer journey of its residential customers, using NiCE Satmetrix to obtain feedback at each touchpoint along the way. After seeing success in that line of business, the company decided to expand the use of NiCE Satmetrix to its commercial customers as well. The QA team designed several touchpoint surveys for use after typical enterprise customer interactions, as well as twice yearly surveys focused on NPS® parameters.

Forward-Looking Feedback

Ritter Communications leadership realized that the NiCE Satmetrix system could also be a powerful proactive tool for premarket research on service or product changes before they happen. The company sent out such opinion surveys to its customers and used the responses as actionable insights to optimize the planned changes for maximum customer approval. Similarly, NiCE Satmetrix has been used to score participant responses in a focus group for introducing new services.

Ritter Communications is devoting its resources to learning all it can from the NPS® metric to improve customer satisfaction. To this end, the company established an internal cross-functional task force of 15 to 20 people from various departments dedicated to driving NPS® improvements. They analyze the NiCE Satmetrix data from two surveys conducted each year and design an action plan to improve employee performance around the drivers of customer experience.

In addition, company leadership has added incentives across the company to motivate achievement of designated NPS® targets each year. At the end of the year, if the NPS® metric has attained an improvement target, then everyone in the organization gets a bonus. In this way, the entire workforce is committed to supporting the initiatives of the NPS® task force. Additionally, management-level employees have at least 10% of their annual bonuses tied to achievement of NPS® improvement each year.

A Finger on the Pulse of the Company

In a very innovative step to improve cross-functional workflow, quality and efficiency, Ritter Communications is applying NiCE Satmetrix principles and technology to measure internal employee satisfaction and the extent to which functional areas support each other’s efforts. Employees are regularly surveyed regarding their experience interacting with colleagues who are their “suppliers” in the daily workflow. Known as PULSE (Pure Understanding Leads to Service Excellence), the project began by identifying what each employee supplies internally and to whom. Then, the QA team developed surveys regarding service issues that arise during handoffs within the company. A similar survey was developed to identify potential workflow optimizations.

The internal surveys provide satisfaction ratings for each functional area, with both an overall score and scores for their interactions with each internal customer or supplier department. The head of QA then reviews the scores together with the leader of the functional area, identifying problems and developing a plan to improve their internal interactions.

THE RESULTS

Understanding the customer experience

NiCE Satmetrix has enabled Ritter Communications to understand the customer experience and zero in on areas of dissatisfaction. With that insight, the company’s dedicated task force develops initiatives every year focused on the drivers of customer experience. As a result, there have been incremental improvements every year in overall NPS® scores since the implementation of NiCE Satmetrix. This includes satisfaction with customer service representatives, field technicians, and network performance.

• Meaningful year-over-year NPS® improvement in many of Ritter Communications’ markets.
• Among the top NPS® rankings in the telecom industry.
• Analytics-driven CX service initiative drove customer ratings from negative to positive.

The PULSE program has also moved Ritter Communications forward. Although the program is still in its early stages, there has been a very positive response from 100% of the teams involved, with employees highlighting the actionable, targeted, and achievable goals it provides.

THE NEXT STEPS

Continuous customer insight

The PULSE program is set to continue, with each department taking greater ownership of defined overall internal NPS® goals. Senior management has directed that each functional area leader set PULSE improvement goals annually and implement tactical plans to achieve those improvements.

For further improving customer experience, Ritter Communications is planning to use NiCE Satmetrix with more focus groups to get accurate feedback on new products and services prior to their launch.

In addition, the company is considering using NiCE Satmetrix for business intelligence in their changing market. As new regulations allow for greater local competition, NiCE Satmetrix surveys and analytics can provide insight into customer intentions and expectations.

_{^{Net Promoter Score, Net Promoter, and NPS are trademarks of NiCE Systems, Inc., Bain and Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld}}