Confero Blog

Confero, Inc. Names Business Development Manager

by Confero Inc.

CARY, N.C. —Elaine Buxton, president of Confero, Inc., (www.conferoinc.com), a national customer experience measurement firm, has announced that Janet Morrison has been named business development manager. Morrison joins Confero with more than 20 years of marketing and sales experience, and 18 years of experience in the financial services industry. Her background includes leading client service and sales initiatives, business development, sales management, marketing research and focus group moderation. Most recently, Morrison served as the regional sales and marketing officer with BB&T, and was responsible for communicating mystery shop goals and results, providing guidance to managers on how to access mystery shop results, encouraging improvement and recognizing employees for superior mystery shop behaviors.

Listening to Employee Telephone Calls: How Do Multiple Employees Approach the Same Customer Inquiry?

by Elaine Buxton

Listening to employee phone calls allows you to imagine yourself as the customer and hear firsthand how your employees interact. Many times managers of front line employees would like to listen to employee conversations but don’t always have the capability to do so. Other times, managers have monitoring capabilities but must listen for hours to hear how multiple employees approach the same inquiry.

One way to gain this capability is to consider audio recorded telephone mystery shops, which offer the following potential advantages:

Listen and evaluate employee and customer comments in their own voices, for a realistic idea of what your customer’s experience sounds like.
Recognize inconsistent telephone approaches among employees in order to move toward more uniform customer service delivery.
Identify areas where employees may have missed a sales opportunity.
Recognize employees for meeting/exceeding company expectations in customer service via the phone.
Pinpoint areas where employees may have used a more effective approach to resolve a customer issue.
Train other employees by reviewing a “perfect” phone shop, in order to show them a strong example of excellent phone interaction with a customer.

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Confero, Inc. Named To Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Privately-Held Companies in America

by Confero Inc.

CARY, N.C.—Elaine Buxton, president of Confero, Inc., (www.conferoinc.com), has announced that the national customer experience measurement firm has been recognized by Inc. magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

The 2009 Inc. 5000 is a list of the nation’s top 5,000 fastest-growing businesses based on revenue growth from 2005 through 2008, and represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. During the three (3) year period beginning in 2005, Confero has experienced

Customer Wait Times: Ideas to Make the Wait More Pleasant

by Confero Inc.

The Wall Street Journal’s Carl Bialik (“The Numbers Guy”) talked with our own Rob Barry, along with other experts, about the customer view of time spent waiting in line.

Rob knows a thing or two about wait times. He has worked with our grocery store clients to measure customer experience for the past six (6) years. As Rob stated to Carl, “Grocery stores are focusing more on quickness of checkout probably than ever before. Society has created an environment where everyone is in a hurry.”

In his August 18, 2009 blog The Waiting Game, Bialik digs into the art, science and numbers behind “queuing”, “standing in line” and “standing on line”.

Is customer waiting time about math or perception…or both? Thanks, Carl, for a fascinating look at waiting!

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Mystery Shopping for Revenue Generation: Maximize the ROI of Your Mystery Shopping Program

by Elaine Buxton

Mystery shopping usually means measuring customer experiences as they relate to specific performance expectations for service delivery. This means that mystery shoppers are typically reporting on behaviors and conditions that affect the customer experience.

It’s beneficial to take this thinking further. Setting sales goals for your staff, using mystery shoppers to see that they are working toward them and then rewarding success creates revenue generation opportunities.

What if your mystery shopping program also produced an immediate pop in revenue? For an example of this in action,

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