Ever encountered the 'watermelon effect' in customer service?
It's when metrics like Average Speed of Answer (ASA) and Average Handle Time (AHT) look green and promising, yet the real customer experience is hidden red flags, just like a watermelon's interior.
🎙️ On this week's podcast, Stephanie Shaffer De Jesús reminds us to dig beneath the surface of initial data—because what looks good on paper doesn't always align with the customer's true experience.
Catch the full episode here:
🔗 https://lnkd.in/gaaFxbkQ#CXInsight#WatermelonEffect#CustomerService#ContactCenter
One of the things I wanted to know and I still want to share it with our audience is if you decide to run your contact center with Xelas experience level agreements over SLA service level agreements, what are the actual hard metrics that you're seeing there? What are the metrics that your clients are using? Like are they using average channel time or call response rate and and things like that? What are they using? So think of it as an integration almost right. So it's a handshake. So it's like the. The age-old battle of quality versus quantity. This is how they kind of they lock step and they play together in the same sandbox if you will. So you've still got your SLA's right, but there was an effect that we call the watermelon effect in the industry of when SLA's right, like all of your your ASA, your HT, like all of that good stuff is green, but on the inside they experience is red. So that's where the term watermelon effect came from. So when they actually kind of work together in their integrated then they're both green, green on the outside. And green on the inside because you've got that positive attainment. So the way that we utilize those today is when you look at the different like incentives and look at you know are we doing well and where do we need to get better. You can look at those at a percentage basis. So think about like as a contact center, if my sole job is an in the IT world for example to make it fast, make it friendly, make it easy and get it resolved right. So if you think of if you ever need IT support, if you hit those four items, you're good. You're golden. You've done what you need to do. Now if you have different percentages of satisfaction, right, so you roll those up to survey scores, you can do that on both like unsolicited and solicited feedback. But if I'm like for an example, like I've seen productivity impact, if you've impacted my productivity, only 80% are satisfied, that means 20% are not satisfied. And that's definitely somewhere where you want to dig in. So that's an example of like where the rubber hits the road, how to look at those metrics.
Impressive customer service metrics can hide dissatisfaction just as a watermelon's rind conceals the fruit within.
Statistics and data are the places where you start digging deeper to bring in innovation, and better customer experience.
Yes! This is such a great topic. Data and metrics are just the first layer of the informational. They should be used as a indicator to what you should look at next. The customer’s stories are what tells us pain points, frustration and what ultimately will lead us to losing them.
I help SMB CEOs and Coaches build Personal Brands | LinkedIn Ghostwriter | Healthcare and Tech Content Marketer
11moImpressive customer service metrics can hide dissatisfaction just as a watermelon's rind conceals the fruit within. Statistics and data are the places where you start digging deeper to bring in innovation, and better customer experience.