Auscontact Service Excellence Award 2022: GRIST insights
This year was the second year GRIST collaborated with Auscontact to assess and present the Service Excellence Award. The Service Excellence Award is based on GRIST’s assessment of submitted service calls, designed to objectively measure the quality of the customer service conversation based on micro-behaviours demonstrated that drive great customer outcomes. Calls were submitted by range of industries across the country.
In the presentation below, GRIST Director, Caitlin Ziegler, and Senior Behavioural Analyst at GRIST, Kate Goldby, talk through the data insights from this year’s assessment, including what some of our finalists and the winners did differently. We also interview Group Service – Care Manager from nib, Ben Stunell, whose team took out the top spot for the second year in a row. Ben talks through how their approach changed from this year compared to last and what helped drive their #1 result, boosted their performance and delivered business outcomes. Read on for some of the webinar highlights.
GRIST and Auscontact deep dive into the Service Excellence Awards data, giving you the insights and tools to drive better customer experience that will ultimately result in better outcomes for you, your customers and your business.
When analysing the data from those that participated in the Service Excellence Award, a micro-behaviour that everyone did significantly more frequently than the average* was to empathise and or enthuse with customers.
This behaviour involves responding in a genuine, personalised way to a customer's situation or need, it creates rapport and helps generate a customer-centric tone. It shows that agent understands what the customer is going through and conveys excitement or interest in their situation.
Here are some examples of how this can sound:
For an empathise: ‘It can be a bit stressful, can’t it?’
And enthuse: ‘Oh, congratulations!’
Pretty simple, right? Knowing that, it’s a bit surprising that even on the best service conversations, it’s only happening half the time!
*comparing to an average of all service conversations assessed by GRIST over the last 3 years
Graph showing the difference in the frequency the micro-behaviour 'empathise/enthuse' was demonstrated in the calls submitted in the Service Excellence Award compared to GRIST's average service data.
nib’s performance
Where nib stood out from their peers was through the front-end ‘engagement’ component of their calls. Engaging and connecting with a customer upfront in the conversation helps them feel welcome and connected by assuring them you're here to help.
The big takeaway here is that the award participants were only regularly using the customer’s name on half of their conversations, while nib are using it on almost all. They then double down and continue to build customer rapport by seeking to engage in 73% of interactions.
Engagement can be as simple as asking someone about their day or the weather – the key is that it is either PROACTIVELY initiated by the consultant OR as a genuine response to customer engagement. These micro-behaviours sprinkled throughout a conversation make it feel more human and unique.
Graph showing how frequently the Service Excellence Award winner used the customer's name and sought to engage with them compared to all participants in the award and GRIST's average service data.
Want to know where your organisation’s customer service strengths and opportunities are?
At GRIST, we develop, teach and assess micro-behavioural conversation frameworks, like this model, to help leaders and team members pinpoint what they could do differently and get insights into how they can achieve better outcomes from their conversations. Our ability to objectively measure the quality of conversations at a behavioural level is unique.
Want to find out more?
Contact david@gristconsulting.com.au to arrange a meeting to discuss how we can help lift your customer service.
