November 13, 2019
“It is a great honor for Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur to be certified to the COPC Customer Experience Standard. Our customer service centre provides services to both customers and drivers. Efficiency is important, but quality is what all Shouqi staff pursue. I hope we are ready to offer warm and quality services with the tools and methodologies we have learned through COPC certification.”
— Liang Haichen, Co-CEO of Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur
Du Duo, Senior Director of Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur Customer Service Centre, oversees the management of customer experience, multiple channel services and the establishment of service systems. By improving service quality, and enhancing capabilities and
driving products and operations with customer experience, Du Duo has led the centre to offer standard, transparent and consistent services to customers, helping to make Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur a brand that stands out with quality and warmth.
Rachel Cui, director of COPC APAC, had an opportunity to sit with Du Duo and ask her about Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur, about the company’s future plans and about the experience she and others have had with COPC Inc.
Q: Du, can you tell me a little about Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur?
Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur is an online car hailing platform established by Shouqi Group, answering the call of the Ministry of Transport on the renovation of the traditional taxi operations. Shouqi Group, with its 68 years of experience in car services and the well-known “State Guest Service Team,” has been offering services to major foreign affairs and political conferences including the NPC (National People’s Congress) and CPPCC (Chinese Political Consultative Conference) in China. More than 1900 country leaders, over 7000 ministers and similar groups have enjoyed Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur services. With the fast development of the internet, Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur was built on the idea of brand quality and value, passing on the same excellent service to each and every customer.
Today, the car hailing industry is in a chaotic phase, with most platforms offering similar services. However, Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur believes its customer-centric service and warmth toward its customers are strategic differentiators, and the company is determined to become the most trusted brand by truly satisfying its users.
As the frontline of Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur, customer service is the key touch point for both drivers and customers. Customer service is also the bridge between users and the brand, which is why major attention is attached to its overall efficiency and ability to resolve issues. During the certification process, COPC Inc. helped us sort out our service process and identify opportunities for operational improvements, which enabled the optimization of our efficiency and customer experience. Being certified to the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard, we are now more confident and able to proactively help customers solve their issues with a professional customer service system that improves both driver and customer satisfaction. We will continue the legacy of an honest and transparent service attitude and the pursuit of detail-oriented customer care to create higher value for our customers.
Q: What do you consider to be the biggest challenge for the customer service centres of car hailing industry?
Today, the car hailing industry is moving toward standardization, which brings our focus back to building qualitatively meticulous service as the core competence of our business. Being customer-centric, genuinely caring about our customers and putting their needs first are the keys to victory in this battle. However, an important point is to determine who our users are — customers or drivers.
As the provider of services and the bridge between drivers and customers, the goal of the customer service centre is to meet the needs and expectations of customers while helping drivers recognize and share the value of the platform. Based on safety and driven by technology, the Shouqi customer service centre aspires to provide our users with consistent, standardized and transparent services through empathy, rationalization and legalization.
Q: Where does the Shouqi customer service centre fit in the management of end-to-end customer experience, and how do you manage and improve?
Our statement of direction is, “Make satisfaction a habit.” Driving improvements of products and operations from the core of the company with the voice of customer is the main responsibility of the customer service centre.
With the guidance, practices, models and tools provided by COPC Inc. consultants, the Shouqi customer service centre has achieved a remarkable transformation from wanting to excelling, from simple to complex and from fragmented to structured. The utilization of process and approach were boosted with a number of projects dedicated to improving our system, customer experience and satisfaction. By collecting the voice of customers with a structured approach, we have also driven the improvement of multiple departments to increase issue resolution and customer satisfaction by offering better services and experiences for both drivers and customers.
“Driving improvements of products and operations from the core of the company with the
voice of customers is the main responsibility of the customer centre.”
Q: How did Shouqi first learn about COPC Inc. and decide to work with us? What was the purpose of the certification?
At the Shouqi customer service centre, we hope that every customer can receive satisfying solutions through clear communication, that the needs of every customer are valued and realized, that every customer can experience the subtle personalization and surprise in our services, and that every customer can always use our products with high expectations and delight. With the aspiration of achieving such excellence, Shouqi engaged COPC in December 2017 and started its journey of building a world-class customer service centre. We consider the COPC CX Standard to be a proven mechanism that strategically ensures structured operations, consistency of people, process and technology, as well as continuous improvement of customer experience operations.
Q: Tell us about the COPC CX Standard certification process?
In April 2018, COPC Inc. conducted a baseline assessment of our customer service centre, after which many findings were brought to our attention. For example, we were lacking business planning and structured operation management — not enough data analyses and reviews were conducted, and the targets were not properly set. Also, since CX drivers were not identified through data collection and analysis, the solutions we provided were not fully meeting the needs of our customers. Upon the recommendations of COPC Inc., we adopted a new management methodology to measure the performance of people, process and technology, and we improved our service and quality with a more structured approach. Within 11 months of our efforts, the Shouqi customer service centre, striving in such a challenging industry, achieved certification to the COPC CX Standard in March 2019. Further reviews were done to identify the highlights of this project, leading to future plans for even greater perfection.
Q: What are the major improvements achieved during the certification?
Working closely with COPC Inc. and its consultants, Shouqi achieved improvements in service, efficiency and quality:
- Took industry features into consideration when it came to WFM and established our unique scheduling model based on weather changes, business risks and supply-demand data, which led to a 16% increase in service level.
- Designed and deployed a customer satisfaction survey process, and developed action plans according to the results. In addition to monitoring agents, Shouqi also established an audit process to discover systematic issues and the root causes of poor performance. As a result, customer satisfaction has been above 96% for 12 months in a row. Survey response rates improved by 27%. Meanwhile, multiple channel customer satisfaction was improved from an initial 64% to 86%.
- Established incentives for KCRPs (Key Customer-Related Positions) to encourage staff to find opportunities for system and process improvements from their daily work and customer feedback.
- Collected customer feedback with a structured approach, drove improvements from all departments and proactively deal with customer issues. CPO (Call per Order) saw a decline of 14%, cost per transaction was lowered by 41% and issue resolution and customer satisfaction were improved at the same time.
Q: What challenges do you foresee in this industry in the next few years?
The market is still quite unstable. Bars are being raised by governments while competition remains fierce. Only brands who offer services with true quality and warmth will survive. Shouqi, which is dedicated to improving services and operations, is bound to stand out in such an environment. Our customer service centre is determined to become the pioneer of service experience, the outpost of customer voice and a practitioner of consistently exceeding customer expectations and requests.