Your Challenges | Our Solutions

Doing more with less–expanding services despite budget cuts.

We just learned about a required 10% budget cut for 2012 but yet I know that I will have 15% more cases to handle next year. What are my options?

Doing more with less is the strategic imperative of today's budget environment. It's possible if you do the following:

• Clearly identify where you have high value to both your customers and to your bottom line.
• Drive customer behavior to more efficient channels.
• Preempt problems and errors.
• Use segmentation to provide right service to right people.

With PCG's customer experience mapping, we'll help you discover high value areas, while flushing out operational inefficiencies. Then, using Service Innovation, we'll help you develop strong, customer-focused solutions.

Leveraging technology.

I know that technology is key to efficiency–not to mention the fact that my customers are used to using certain platforms in reaching their goals. But I have no idea how to leverage technology to improve my customer's experience. Where do I begin?

In many agencies, senior managers feel separated from the I/T roadmap. But technology groups need the input of business leaders who advocate for the customer experience and for operational efficiency. Once you've done the work to design the improved customer experience, you can translate it into a set of business requirements for system features, functionality, and usability.

PCG works with clients to design and then prototype test the new capabilities as part of an overall service delivery process, so you have a substantiated and specific set of inputs for your technology department.

Prioritizing cuts.

If doing across-the-board cuts is not the way to address agency budget reductions, then how else do I prioritize?

There is a systematic way to identify what service levels and which services can be cut with the least impact on customer satisfaction. Using existing survey data in most cases, PCG can conduct its proprietary Reverse Leverage analysis within our Net Impression® suite of analytical methods to identify the best options for your business and customer bottom line.

Designing service in a mobile world.

We have been using the same service process for twenty years and really need to redesign the customer experience. These days not only do our customers expect really fast, almost instant, service, but an increasing number are turning to their smart phones to do business.

Yes, organizations must continuously improve because customer expectations increase every year. According to a recent PEW report, about 40% of cell phone users use smart phones for internet transactions. Mobile service is about providing cell phone-ready applications but it is also about:

• integrating with other channels
• streamlining web pages
• providing instant response
• offering push and pull alerts and reminders
• incorporating social networking
• dialoguing through texting

The PC-based internet is also rapidly changing–more video/multi-media components, truly customized web pages, broad array of self-help solutions, and higher value search functionality. PCG helps you meet these challenges by tracking these trends and incorporating your customers' highest value items into solutions.

Innovating and designing for the future.

My manager wants more innovative thinking so that we design rather than react to the future, but my employees are not used to this kind of work. How do I steer the team?

Today, it's no longer enough for you to manage operations–as a leader you have to think ahead to future market shifts and be prepared to meet the challenges. PCG specializes in this kind of forward-thinking, from our actionable Customer Research that identifies improvement areas to our Service Innovation which uncovers creative new service options to our Strategic Modeling which can predict customer reaction and business impact. Instead of steering the team, consider harnessing their knowledge and insights. Our collaborative approach ensures that you and your team participate throughout the process.