Meeting Evolving Customer Demands
1 Sep, 2007
By: Lynda Kate SmithQuestion:
I’m seeing more and more self-service features being incorporated into customer care operations. Is customer care shifting to more of a self-service model?
---Interested in Iowa
Answer:
Customer care operations are evolving because the needs — and demands — of callers are evolving. In the old Care 1.0 world, companies dictated what products and service levels were available. Consumers had little choice but to accept what they were offered.
Today, in the Care 2.0 world, great customer service is expected and viewed as an entitlement by consumers. The quality of their interactions, the customer experience, has emerged as a critical factor in gaining and maintaining competitive advantage.
Consumers are ascribing value to companies based on their experience interacting through the various channels available to them, including live agent and automated, self-service applications such as touchtone and voice. The benefits of self-service as noted by consumers is its availability anytime of the day, the ability to get immediate service and not have to hold for an agent, its speed, and their ability to be in control. Also in research recently conducted by Harris Interactive, consumers identified a 2:1 preference for using voice or speech services versus touchtone.
Question:
So does this “shift” mean the replacement of call center agents?
Answer:
No. Self-service applications should be structured to direct the most complicated questions to call center agents who are best able to handle their needs. While consumers are increasingly comfortable obtaining general company information, managing accounts, or performing basic transactions via self-service, they may prefer to speak to a live agent when resolving billing issues or problems with products and services. Routine questions should be directed to self-service applications such as voice, freeing up agents to deal with the more complicated customer interactions. In fact self-service solutions can help a company with the retention issue often seen with agents; having to deal with trivial customer issues is a prime reason for agent turnover. Self-service for the more general issues allows agents to be the Curtsey signed up to be.
Question:
Sounds like the “stakes” are higher for the call center – when the care provided doesn’t meet customer expectations.
Answer:
Absolutely.The consumer’s voice carries a lot more weight and travels a lot further than it used to. Social computing environments and consumer-generated media – like YouTube and numerous customer service related blogs - are creating new venues where the most passionate of consumers will post text, creative and sometimes highly negative audio and video “captures” of their care experience – that is exposed to thousands of consumers perusing the site looking for entertainment. That entertainment becomes quite “viral” as it gets shared, e-mailed and passed along -- exponentially expanding its reach and impact, often turning into a media frenzy. Care then becomes a marketing and brand concern as a single consumer now can speak to – and influence -- thousands, potentially millions of others.
Question:
Our touchtone system doesn’t effectively guide callers to get answers to their problems. Can voice automation improve the customer experience?
Answer:
According to Forrester Research, managing high-value customer interaction is becoming impossible with decades-old touchtone systems. Punching numbers just doesn’t get it done when customers have complex issues. Drawbacks of touchtone systems include:
• Inability to reach a live agent quickly
• Inefficient routing of calls that result in speaking with multiple agents
• Too many menus
• Inaccurate information
• Extensive hold times
• Difficulty inputting information, such as account numbers and names.
Voice automation solutions are an outstanding alternative. Unlike touchtone systems, whose complex menu mazes can lead to misrouted calls and a bad customer experience, speech-based systems allow customers to describe their needs in their own words and move directly to their destination so organizations can direct inbound calls more accurately, more efficiently and with higher caller satisfaction.
Question:
What are the most significant changes you see emerging as it relates to the contact center - and care in general?
Answer:
It is really about being as “smart” as you can about the customer. Speech analytics is offering businesses a new way to improve the quality of care and understanding the consumer. Now, instead of manually listening to each call to evaluate the call agent and identify trends – this process can be automated. This automation can be used more rapidly and gain business insights on areas including consumer issues and preferences. This should help business pre-empt large-scale issues while enabling call center professionals to be able to better respond to customer needs.
