100% Response Rate, 98% Retention Rate, 80% Referral Rate, Oh My!

Hello everybody and welcome to the Account Experience podcast. My name is Adam Dorrell and I'm here to bring you a great guest today who runs, well, what I can only describe as one of the most modern contact centers that I know we're going to really lean into. What Icon Communications does for that is that company does and how, what makes it special. But there's a few things I really want to bring to the table today. You know, everyone that listens to this knows that I'm really dedicated to response rate and I'm told that the response rate for this particular program is 100. I think that's pretty impressive. So we'll dive into that and the net promoter score. Closing the loop. If you would like to join me as I introduce Helen Hickin from Icon Communication. Helen, welcome to the Account Experience podcast. How are you doing?

Very well, thank you. Adam, thank you so much indeed for inviting me on the session today.

I am so proud that we can get you on here. I've really heard a lot about the programs that you've been operating on and I'm really excited to do this now. I think you can probably introduce your company way better than I can, but tell everybody about Icon Communication, where you are and about what you're doing for clients.

Yeah. So Icon, we're based in the Czech Republic in Prague and we've been operational for nearly, well, just, just coming up to 18 years now. So sometime we specialize in the business to business arena, creating tailor made solutions, focusing on customer experience, inside sales and account management solutions. Being in Prague and being in the Czech Republic, that means we do that in lots of different languages. We are as a minimum talking every day in 30 different languages and very proud of a very prestigious client base.

That's amazing. I mean, you know, we get listeners from all over the world here. I mean, I know that for example, you run a program for us. There's a global program with, you know, reaching out to the U.S. so you got, you know, one of, that's always one of the things that as a Brit, you know, I got very limited language skills, but so I'm always a base. People do the stuff in different languages. How did, how do you get over the challenge of first of all doing 30 different languages in your business?

Yeah. And you know, when you start a business there's always some unpleasant surprises and there's always some very pleasant surprises. So part of our due diligence when we went over to the Czech Republic and Prague in particular was we knew one of the reasons for Setting Icon up was we saw that there was a gap in the marketplace. So going back to sort of 2000 and 2002, 2003, there was onshore and there's offshore. There's no such thing at that point in time. Nearshore and looking at customers and clients, requirements to have good quality resource at a reasonable price point. But picking up on the language bit, wanting to consolidate operations. So there were more and more European hubs. We saw through our due diligence, we knew that the Czech Republic would support a breadth and depth of language. What we didn't realize, and one of our pleasant surprises was just the amount of expats that this country attracts. 90% of our workforce are expats. Really Phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. So, you know, such as supporting your program, Adam, it means that you've got absolutely brilliant caliber resource. And customers, end customers really just don't even question where the call or the conversation is coming from. Their assumption is just it's within their home country.

I can totally imagine it. I love Prague. Great city to live and work in. And that's something that you've obviously been able to exploit for. For that basis. Yeah. So. And I think it's really true. You're right. You're right. In my career, I was also thinking about near shoring and offshore now, and especially with COVID it doesn't matter where you get the people from to some extent, but if you've got that, you know, that base of people there, what a fantastic resource you've got.

Oh, yeah. The one recent stat that came out is of the working population in Prague right now. One in four expats. It's mind blowing. But then again, I think, is it mind blowing because, you know, you've said it is such a lovely country and city to work in. And I think the one thing that the Czechs have really got right is this balance about what those guys do in their spare time. And that is great because that's translated to all nationalities. When you live there, there's some great countryside. You know, you can go skiing, you can enjoy the hot weather when it's there. Yeah, it's a. It's a lovely place to live and.

Super beer, of course. I'm also an expat myself, so I completely understand the drive behind it. Helen, diving into some of the. The types of clients you've got. Can you give some color behind what type of work you're doing as we dive into your Net Promoter program? We can think about that.

Yeah. Thank you. And so basically, our Tremendous experience is really supporting, as we said, focusing on the business to business arena. We have great specialization in a number of sectors, but the key sectors that we're supporting right now are technology, travel and leisure and also within the telecommunications center or sales service sectors as well. So a great breadth. And with that it's been. This is the bit that I love about our industry. Having seen so much experience across a whole range of different sectors, being able to share learnings from one sector to another and see the improvements that can be realized, it just makes your job really awesome.

I'd like to get into that actually because of course there are contact centers and there are contact centers and you very much operate sort of at the premium or boutique end of the market. And how does that, you know, how have you been able to win business in that area? Because it's hugely competitive. What do you think some of the ways that you've been able to mark yourself out against your competitors?

I love that question because, you know, through, through Covid and I hate, you know, harking back to Covid because it's been used so many times, but it really has allowed a lot of companies to take a step back and say, how have we got here? What are we really good at? And you know, how have we won the business that we've got and how can we do more of that? And I'm, I'm really proud and the team are really proud of. 80% of our revenue has come from client referral business. So up until two years ago, we didn't have a sales team. So it came from word of mouth. Now we have a great growth plan and we really are, you know, we're pushing, we're pushing where the company's going over the next three years. We've now got a sales and marketing team. So, you know, in that 18 years, Icon has grown through the great work it's done and clients predominantly referring our work.

That is fantastic. I mean, I think we're about 30% referrals, but 80%, that's astonishingly good. Now let me ask you this. Do you prod people to do this? Do you say, would you like to refer us. How do you. Or is it literally just word of mouth?

Tell me we do now because yeah, previously we, we were, we class ourselves and so many people use the best kept secret. But I think we were incredibly modest and you know, I take responsibility for that in terms of, you know, we've always had a very responsible approach to outsourcing. And with that, obviously my job is to make sure that we have a strong foundation and profitable organization, which is why we've been in business for 18 years. What. What we. What we didn't do is, again, have this proactive approach to growing the business. And we've got that now. But, no, the answer to your question, Adam, is we were going up. We do now. We do now go to clients, and we do actually explicitly say, look, you're getting great service. Who else would benefit from this?

But that happened by accident, I'm guessing. Okay, but how did you get into this position? So I was being somewhat facetious about asking whether you'd activated them, but 80% client referral is almost unbelievable. So, okay, what's your special source? Do you have a process in for measuring what customers are saying about you?

Yeah, no, that's. So for sure. So with any successful business, there has to be some structure and there has to be some methodology. And the one thing that icon, one of our core pillars is we want feedback. Sometimes that feedback hurts, and sometimes we're super proud of it, but we need that feedback. And that is why the business has grown. And not just from clients, from colleagues, from our workforce as well. So it is about soliciting feedback, honest feedback, and understanding, which goes back to nps. NPS is at the heart of our business and making sure that we understand who really will refer us now. And if we haven't got the NPS score that says that clients are going to refer us, we need to know why, and we need to know what we're going to do better. And we need to put action plans in place to make sure that we are, you know, we're retaining and, you know, 80%. We still got 20% to go. So it's not as if we've got to the end of the line to continue this, this, this traction and trajectory we're on.

I think that sounds like a really good, humble brag, actually. Let's dive. Let. Look, myself and I think a bunch of the people that listen to this are total nerds that really want to go into the nuts and bolts of the program. So, you know, I said that you. You had 100% response, contact response. I mean, is that true? How do you get. And how do you get there? Talk about that.

Yeah, and we've. We've worked hard because as we all know, the response rate is key because you can. You can get two or three people respond with a great NPS score, but it's not representative. So we've got to have a good confidence level in Terms of what our data is telling us. The reason that we believe that we're getting such a phenomenal return rate is our, our clients can see that as a result of going through the process. We listen, we are putting plans in place and we're doing something about it. So you know that age old adage, you reap what you sow if you keep taking, just give us, we just want your feedback and we're not going to. It's really, I mean, a phrase that probably gets overused, but that closed loop process, you give it, you're taking your time, you're giving us a few minutes, and we are going to do something with that, with that feedback. That is why I personally believe it encourages clients to give us more feedback in the future.

Yeah, I totally agree. Once, once you've, once you bake that into your culture, it's really hard to let it go, but it is hard to get into your culture. So did you do this from day one, Helen, or did this evolve? What was your journey like?

Yeah, it did evolve. And one of the biggest learning points for us, and this is like, this is talking to our customers is we really do everybody is time precious. So we've thought very hard about the questions. And also we're dealing with many different geographers. So we've really simplified how we ask those questions. Because, you know, over the journey, the questions could have been too long. There were words in there that didn't translate from one country to another. So making sure that the question is super simple in terms of what is it we really want to get back. So trying to avoid ambiguity. The other thing as well is making sure that the customers are educated in terms of when it's. When it's that question about would you recommend? And looking at the overall scoring system, unless I knew about NPS, I would have thought 8 is a really good score. You know, if I was giving somebody an 8, I'd be like, you know what? I've given Adam a really good score. He's going to be really happy with that. And I think that over time, clients understanding what NPS is, we're doing it because we're going to do something about it, but we're doing because we want to know if the health of our business, would you recommend us? Are you really satisfied with our service, understanding the scoring system? Actually, it's not. It doesn't mean we're just trying to get a better score. It means that we're actually getting a true picture for what our clients think. Does that make sense?

Adam Yeah, I think so. I could tell you a whole bunch of stuff I can. You know my history about the Dutch effects. The Dutch never give nine or tens. Apparently nobody gives a nine or ten. Except it's not true. Because when you do a great program, people are really happy to give a 9 or 10.

Yeah, you're absolutely so true in terms of perception that is there is that, well, you're never going to get this. But when people actually understand this is a scoring and if you're happy with what we're doing, then you'll get the.

Right score back this episode of the Account Experience Podcast is sponsored by Customer Good, the leading B2B account experience software that ties revenue to your experience data in real time to help you make better account centric decisions that drive revenue growth. Quick question. What do you guys think is the number one reason B2B experience programs fail? Believe it or not, it's Lack of C Suite Buy In Customer Gauge's research with mit, they've found the quickest way to align yourselves with the C suite is to actually align with what what they care about most, which is revenue. That's why CustomerGage is literally built from the ground up to maximize and track the revenue contribution from your experience program in real time. Companies like dhl, Anheuser Busch, Heineken, yeah, we get a good amount of FreeBear1 login, Iron Mountain, H&R Block, SuperOffice and SugarCRM are already using Customer Gauge to maximize their growth by tying their programs to revenue. And with over $10 billion worth of account revenue actively being managed in Customer Gauge, yeah, that's billion. With a B, they're the leader in the space. But maybe even more interesting, they found that once you get alignment with that C suite, the needs of these B2B practitioners or the program champions are evolving too. In such a complex account environment, it can be really tough to measure and act on feedback quickly across multiple departments, divisions, or even locations. Luckily, Customer Gauge has you covered there as well, with account native features that easily help you not only measure the feedback from multiple stakeholders in an account, but act on that feedback in real time. Because at the end of the day, if you're not empowering your frontline staff with the right insights to address customer issues, you're going to be dealing with a churn issue. It's not a matter of if, it's really a matter of what. Customer Gauge helps you distribute this experience data across your entire organization, regardless of department, regardless of location, regardless of the vision, all in real Time. No manual spreadsheets or a team of analysts are needed. Customer Gauge's mission is to help B2B companies harness the power of account centric growth to drive meaningful change in their businesses. And that's a powerful thing. If you want to see Customer Gauge in action, go ahead and check out CustomerGage.com and get a demo of account experience today. You won't regret it.

Okay, I'm going to nerd out with a few quick fire questions. So how many times a year do you survey your customers?

Twice.

Twice a year. Okay. And multiple people in each organization, how many would you say on average?

On average, about three or four per organization.

And really you've got about 100% response rate. Okay, so I'm going to dive deep into is that email, SMS or you actually phoning people up?

Email. But then if somebody hasn't responded, we will say, look, it's super important. We know you've been on vacation. Whatever you do, it's two or three minutes, please, please respond.

Now that's interesting because, because you, you know, at heart you're a, you know, human contact center.

Right?

A premium contact center. And yet you're still asking people to go for the email but prompting them to do it. Now, for me, that's an interesting thing because you presumably could get a different answer if it's voice to voice or if it's email. What do you think of that?

Very true. We feel that the email communication means that the customer can do it when they, when he or she wants to. And then the telephone, like, can you please just go ahead and just click this quick link to do it is conducted by our marketing department or sometimes if that doesn't work, we will get the account team to say, look, please do it because so it is that closed loop and you know, there's something in it for everybody by making sure that we get as high a response rate as possible.

I really, I love to hear you say that because many of my clients think that, you know, it's almost unattainable to get that high response rate. Some clients at 60% response rate by email, but to get to near 100% is great. And I think it really shows that commitment of closing the loop as well. So congratulations on that. Are you prepared to reveal your Net Promoter score? Can you talk about that?

I'd love to. Thank you for asking the question. So our latest Net promoter score was 70%. Yeah, we were very proud. We set ourselves, and don't ask me how we calculated it. We set ourselves a target of 74. We ended up with 70. We were really happy. I mean 74 was really. We were, we're in the process. We set 90 day plans and 90 day plans for each quarter is about really challenging where we're going. And we could have set ourselves, you know, a score of 50, 50 would have been brilliant. But it's like, no. What do we think is the absolute ultimate that we think we could get for that quarter? So 70 we were really happy with.

That's awesome. Let's dive into maybe some of the details about it. I mean some of the things that you learned from customers as a result of doing this over the. There any things that caused you to change direction from some of the customer feedback?

Yeah, in terms of some of the, some of the. One of the key points that I could mention is it's talking. One of the feedback forums that we had was that it was trying to engage. Our teams are incredibly engaged. They're brand evangelists. And what it was is we want to try and improve the feedback from the team and how the team itself can help shape our business moving forward. And one of the things that came out of that is that team now gets involved with the client when they consider their pricing structure for the next commercial period. That's awesome. And that was something, I mean the customer didn't say within the feedback. I'd like the team to get involved with our pricing structure but from the feedback that we receive, it was teasing out actually that team is day to day listening to what your clients are saying. I'm not saying that all of their pricing suggestions got adopted, but then of course you've got a team that is so engaged they can understand why the pricing has changed, hasn't changed and it just breeds further success and further engagement and further retention moving forward.

Let me just make sure I understand this because. So, because your team is acting as an outsourced part of your, your, your, your brand client, but they're in contact with the customer. So you're saying that they were able to offer good advice on a pricing strategy to end customers? Well, that, that to me is a fantastic example of deep partnership. You should feel really proud about that. And that's a good two way dialogue. And were the pricing suggestions adopted?

Yeah, a fair chunk of them. I mean some of them, no. But as I say, the key element there is the team then understand why not. And you know, rather than just, rather than just feeling that their voice is about voice, voice is heard and I think the strategic importance that the frontline Voice of an organization has actually that being listened to in a very grown up forum. The power of that is. You can't measure the power of that.

I think that's phenomenally powerful message you've got. I mean we see this companies have become much more porous these days. When I started that company were very vertically integrated. But now you're able to partly because of technology, pick best of breed in your multi channel setup. Right. So people who are great at doing social media or operating one to one in contact centers. I think this is a really great opportunity for companies to understand what their key strengths are and leverage companies like you for the, you know, for certain parts of their customer interaction.

I agree and I think within the B2B space this is, this is where we see a big opportunity. And you know, I appreciate within the B2B space there is a. There is a perception that the offering is so complicated. A lot of companies keep things in house because it's just like that's just how we have to do it because we. But it's not true. And the customers that we have and this is where we really want to champion this business to business space. Because allowing experts in communications such as Icon to handle that facet or certain elements of that facet really will allow the customer to concentrate on their business. Because Adam, you've been in the industry a long time too. We know that, you know, we're dealing with people and people and people. It's. It's a time consuming thing and it will suck up a lot of organizations. Time and outsourcing to a specialist really does bring the best of both worlds. It doesn't have to be everything but the right facet for sure.

I couldn't agree more. I mean we've certainly seen this in the logistics space where you know, people would not even dream of, you know, doing their own logistics these days because you can use a 3 or 4 PL to do that stuff. And I think it's really the same in your domain that you know, you're able to also to benchmark your clients against one another and put the processes on that, you know, the way that you can get your staff trained and how people can do that in a way that no brand owner can fully recognize. So I think this would be the shift that we see that brand owners really start to think, okay, what business are we in? Probably it's the data that we own and then we'll figure out ways of going to market using the most appropriate thing. You know, just thinking aloud here. But I Think that's really, really. We'll see much more of that. So, hey, you're really pioneering in this space, Alan.

We, we, I mean, we, as I say, we were one of the first organizations to pick up the near shore opportunity. And with the B2B space, we're really champing in that right now, for sure. So we have a massive responsibility. And you're. Dealing with customers is a big thing because it can really accelerate and propel organizations. And that's our job. We get such a buzz of seeing our customers just improve and grow. And yeah, that's what it's all about.

Helen, you've got a very diverse team, obviously by the need to satisfy all the different languages. So I'm interested, maybe you can tell us a little bit about some of the opportunities and challenges that the diverse team gives you.

It's been a massive opportunity, Adam. And as a result of dealing with, you know, We've got over 100 different nationalities within our center. And with that, I've learned so much. So when we look at how dealing with one another, making sure that we're a really great place to work, making sure that our colleagues feel that they want to refer us as well, I mean, we've got a great. In terms of attracting new colleagues into the business, nearly 30% of our new recruits come from colleague referral.

Oh, that's awesome.

That's, you know, that is, That's a great statistic. So what it's translated to is just as client satisfaction is key, obviously colleague satisfaction is key. And the reason colleague satisfaction is really key is the happier and more engaged the workforce is, by default, they're going to be giving a better experience to our customers and our clients so that we know there's a direct correlation between the two. So there is a lot of focus on that. There's a lot of focus on culture. We were very fortunate because when we set up Icon 18 years ago, it was a virgin territory. We had a lot of experiences from the team that set the business up. And the one thing that was most precious was guarding the culture. And, and it's. And it's grown and it's grown positively. And the more nationalities, the more languages, the more appreciative we are of other people's perspectives, points of views. And that diversity then really does translate into, you know, shifting this way in which we see and think. And ultimately that goes back to making sure that our customers and our clients are happy.

And again, with metrics on this, you've got a measurement process in place to Measure your colleague satisfaction.

Yeah. So when we, the latest score that we have is 88% would recommend icon as a great place to work. So we obviously want to get, you know, we want to get it higher, but that's still a great statistic to have.

Congratulations. I think it's really good. Okay, Helen, you're pioneering, you've been pioneering for a number of years. What is next? What's in the future for Icon and the business?

Yeah, I mean again, as we move forward, we know that technology plays an ever increasing part of solution mix. So we have a customer success team that constantly searches lots of different technology solutions partners. Our role is to make sure that we are delivering the absolute best, most brilliant customer experience for the, for the, for the, for the best roi. So for us it's about using brilliant technology with absolute premium resource individuals. And the good news is, is that now there's some really good technology options out there. The stuff that was really a bit mundane, a bit boring within this industry you don't have to do that. This work within the BPO space, within the contact center industry is stimulating. It's interesting. We're actually making a difference to our customers, businesses. You get job satisfaction and with that. So in answer, Adam, it is about constantly looking at business transformation, how we can further support the business to business space and really looking at focus, further nailing inside sales and account management and customer experience. So those are the three areas that we're really focusing on.

Fantastic. I love the story that you've got. I'm just going to see if I can summarize it so everyone's got it. So first of all, you want to make sure that you get very high response from the voice of customer feedback program you got coming. You're looking for 100% and you're going to chase them down. If they're not doing it right, you're going to reinforce that by doing closed loop activity, telling people what you learned and about what you're doing, about the stuff that gives you higher net promoter score in the 70s and that is what delivers this high referral rate that you've got of 80%. I mean that's a model for anyone to learn from. Helen, I think you should be really congratulated with that. And it's a great lighthouse way of doing things. B2B. Well done.

It's a great team. So thank you very much. I will pass that on.

So Helen, how can people reach you?

Yeah, so Basically I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on the website. So Icon advantage. Please reach out. If you, if you search Icon Communication centers, you'll find us, but LinkedIn will probably be the quickest, the quickest route.

Fantastic. And also, you know, for what counts, I'd give you a solid 10. I think you get a great job for us, so you can count me on that.

That's a pure accolade. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us today. And once again, thank you for CEO of Icon Communication, Helen Higgin. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Helen, thank you very much. Indee.