The document highlights a Voice of the Customer (VoC) strategy employed by Kansas City Water Services and West Monroe Partners to enhance customer experiences and engagement. It outlines their methodologies for collecting and analyzing customer feedback, which informs actionable improvements across various service channels. Key results demonstrate significant correlations between reduced customer effort and increased satisfaction, indicating the effectiveness of the VoC program in driving customer loyalty and operational improvements.

1. BUSINESS
CONSULTANTS
DEEP
TECHNOLOGISTS
Utilizing Voice of the Customer
Insights to Improve Customer
Experiences and Build Engagement
Hosted by West Monroe Partners and Kansas City Water Services

2. © 2015 West Monroe Partners | Reproduction and distribution without
West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Today’s Presenters
2
Paul Hagen
West Monroe Partners
Customer Experience
Sr. Principal
Tom Hulsebosch
West Monroe Partners
Energy & Utilities
Senior Managing Director
Kip Peterson
Kansas City Water Services
Communications Manager
Email:
phagen@westmonroepartners.com
Phone: 1(213) 631-4808
Email:
thulsebosch@westmonroepartners.com
Phone: 1(312) 980-9320
Email:
kip.peterson@kcmo.org
Phone: 1(816) 513-0280

3. © 2015 West Monroe Partners | Reproduction and distribution without
West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Agenda
3
 Voice of the Customer Introduction
 Kansas City Water Services’ Program
 Q&A

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Voice of the Customer (VoC)
The strategy, processes, people and technology
utilized to capture customer perceptions about
interactions within an organization…and to drive
improvement.
4

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
DEEPEN CX for Continuous Improvement
5
DEFINE EMPATHIZE ENVISION PLAN ENACT
What’s the
Customer
Experience (CX)
North Star?
What is the
current
experience?
What should the
future CX look
like?
What capability
gaps exist?
What’s our
roadmap for
change?
Design,
prototype, test,
measure CX,
iterate, and
manage change.
Help us
develop a
CX strategy
and
roadmap
West Monroe has a proven methodology that helps
guide our joint team through the process of
identifying opportunities for improvement through a
deeper level of analysis

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.6
DEFINE
Activities:
Identify the
Customer
Experience (CX)
North Star.
EMPATHIZE
Activities:
Understand the
current experience.
ENVISION
Activities:
Determine what
the future CX
should look like.
PLAN
Activities: Identify
existing capability
gaps. Develop our
roadmap for
change.
ENACT
Activities: Design,
prototype, test,
measure CX,
iterate, and
manage change.
Activities: Listen,
Analyze, Report,
and Act on
customer feedback.
Tools: Developed
VoC Program
VOC
Continuous improvement on your DEEPEN CX strategy and roadmap is an
ongoing exercise enabled through VoC programs
Tools:
Innovation Sprints
Tools: Personas
and Journey Maps;
CEI
Tools:
CX Transformation
Roadmap
Tools: Portfolio
Management
Scorecard
Tools:
Rapid Prototyping
DEEPEN helps
us develop a
CX strategy
and roadmap
VoC enables
us to
continuously
improve upon
business
processes and
strategy

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
A unified VoC Program creates the big picture, listening across
touchpoints, analyzing and reports findings and ultimately, driving action
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LISTEN ANALYZE
REPORTACT
Gathers customer feedback
from multiple sources
across all interactions
Distills insights about the root
causes of customer
dissatisfaction or advocacy
Communicates customer
insights to relevant staff
members organization-wide to
illustrate problem and
opportunity areas
Creates accountability and
prioritizes actions to enhance
the customer experience and
drive business benefit
VOICE OF
THE
CUSTOMER
PROGRAM

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Mature VoC programs utilize the appropriate listening tools for their
business to analyze, report and act upon customer feedback
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• Surveys
• Interviews
• Online/offline focus
groups
• Customer advisory
panels
• Text and speech mining
• Online community
panels
What are customers
telling us?
• Open-ended questions
• Text and speech mining
• Social media listening
How do customers feel
about us?
• Observations,
ethnographic research
• Behavioral tracking and
analysis
• Web and mobile tracking
What are customers
actually doing?

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Insights gained from a Voice of the Customer program can drive significant
organizational results
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Improve the
experience and
engagement
Increase
customer
revenue
Decrease
customer
costs
Acquire
new
customers
Enhance
customer
loyalty

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
• Combined water, wastewater & stormwater public utility
• Have served Kansas City, MO since 1873
• $350M Enterprise
• 850+ Employees
• 470,000 Residents Served
• 170,000 Residential & Commercial Customers
• 32 Wholesale Water & 27 Wholesale Wastewater Customers
KC Water Services Snapshot
10

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Kansas City Water Services
11
Prior to their voice of the customer program, KCWS collected feedback in two ways:
1. KCWS CSAT Survey: Received by 400 residents each quarter (may or may not have
interacted with the utility), asking a total of 36 questions
2. 311 Post-Interaction Cards: Physical comment cards distributed if a customer was
transferred from 311 (City Hall) to the utility’s Contact Center, asking a total of 6
questions

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Primary Issues
12
 Uncertain if these customers actually interacted with KCWS over the specified time
frame
 Could not pinpoint the exact interaction touch point the individual was referring to in
their feedback
 Feedback was not fresh in the minds of customers since the surveys were not sent real
time

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
The
Solution:
A Voice of the
Customer
Program
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 Selection of a voice of the customer platform (Qualtrics)
to measure customer satisfaction, customer effort and
other channel-specific metrics
 Established “listening posts” on:
 Public website
 Customer payment portal
 IVR (Contact Center)
 Live agent (Contact Center)
 Lobby (walk-in)
 Field services (scheduled appointments)

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
Feedback from
listening posts
drove design
decisions for the
public website,
customer portal
and the mobile
app
14
• Ability to save credit card and checking account
information
• Simplify the sign-up process for auto bill-pay
• Reduce number of clicks to log into account
• Discovered early AM account access issues
• Added payment arrangement options
• Affirmed customers expected same online options
offered by other local utilities

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KC Water Trending VoC Results: Customer Effort
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“It was _____ to interact with KC Water.”

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KC Water Trending VoC Results: Customer Satisfaction
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“How satisfied are you with your recent interaction with KC Water?”

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West Monroe Partners prior consent is prohibited.
There is a large positive correlation between reduced customer effort &
increased customer satisfaction across all measured VoC channels
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OVERALL
Correlation
Coefficient
0.666 0.854 0.851 0.819 0.986 0.961
IVR LIVE AGENT LOBBY MFS ONLINE
Each VoC channel’s
correlation coefficient
shows an extremely
strong positive
relationship between
reduced customer effort
& increased customer
satisfaction!

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Results
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 Monthly reports and trending analysis of customer
feedback to track towards customer experience KPI goals
 Strengthening our process for turning feedback into
actionable process improvements
 Second chance to resolve customer issues
 Opportunity to recognize positive employee performance
19,000+
completed
surveys
8,000+
comments
provided
Affirmed relationship between reduced
effort & increased satisfaction

19. Q&A
Tom Hulsebosch
West Monroe Partners
Energy & Utilities
Senior Managing Director
Kip Peterson
Kansas City Water Services
Communications Manager
Paul Hagen
West Monroe Partners
Customer Experience
Sr. Principal

20. Thank You!
Tom Hulsebosch
West Monroe Partners
Energy & Utilities
Senior Managing Director
Kip Peterson
Kansas City Water Services
Communications Manager
Paul Hagen
West Monroe Partners
Customer Experience
Sr. Principal
Email:
phagen@westmonroepartners.com
Phone: 1(213) 631-4808
Email:
thulsebosch@westmonroepartners.com
Phone: 1(312) 980-9320
Email:
kip.peterson@kcmo.org
Phone: 1(816) 513-0280