Reaching out to customers

According to Jupiter Research, companies are increasingly offering proactive interactions through chat and click-to-call to consumers who trigger business rules such as high shopping cart value, length of session inactivity and the customer’s lifetime value.

By Susan Maclean

Coordinating the various ways your centre is in touch with customers and prospects is a must now that there are so many choices for customers to contact you. This need to coordinate contact channels has given rise to customer interaction management (CIM) which unifies customer communication touch points – including phone, email, chat, text messaging, Web self-service, video, collaboration, real-time offers and VoIP – through a common set of knowledge, monitoring and reporting tools built to optimize current and future interactions.

CIM products also tap into relevant information across other software such as CRM systems so that agents can access appropriate information for faster, more accurate inquiry resolutions. By working in tandem with CRM and back office systems, CIM is said to help access data in those multiple systems to satisfactorily resolve a current customer interaction at hand.

A number of companies – including eBay, Microsoft, Dell, Sprint, AOL, Epson, Pitney Bowes, Outsell and sponsors IBM and Talisma – participate in the CIM Forum (www.cimforum.org) which is described as “a business and technology consortium designed to discuss best practices and critical insights related to customer service and sales support systems.”

Having CIM software and procedures in place has helped centres develop proactive interactions with customers. A proactive chat or VoIP interaction is one that is offered to the customer, rather than a ‘reactive’ chat or VoIP session where the customer initiates and the company responds. Being proactive gives companies control over which customers are offered the option to chat or communicate via VoIP. It is typically associated with a more sales-focused agent, although there are applications for proactive chat in a support or services environment as well.

A Jupiter Research/Ipsos Talisma Corporation proactive survey in September 2007 asked the question: “while shopping online in the last six months, for which of the following reasons did you contact customer service? Select all that apply.” The replies included billing or pricing issues, delivery delays, technical support needed, order cancellations, questions about product description, return requests, shipping charges and policies queries, items out of stock, difficulty with web site navigation, general policy questions, problems with shopping cart and queries regarding locating items at local offline stores. As none of these reasons for the customer to initiate contact would likely make an offer of help be viewed as intrusive or unwelcome, it would seem there are many opportunities to reach out to customers.

CIM Forum best practices reveal offering website visitors the option to chat, VoIP or click to have an agent call has been effective when:

• a shopping cart is abandoned;
• a visitor exceeds a pre-defined time threshold on a designated page;
• there appears to be difficulty completing web forms or other self-service functions – for example, if a financial services customer makes an address change, an agent could offer chat to determine if the customer needs additional assistance or another product; or
• some pre-determined number of knowledge base articles did not address an online visitor’s needs.

Jupiter Research analyst Zach McGeary in his report Real-time Online Interaction Strategies notes that the contextual nature of chat and click-to-call interactions has increased conversion rates by as much as 20 per cent and decreased handling time by the same amount. He found that proactive sales chats, versus reactive sales interactions, could also decrease handling time by as much as 20 per cent. As well, conversion rates for click-to-call interactions were 25 per cent higher than typical call centre conversion rates, although these rates decrease for various industries with relatively more-complex inquiries, such as travel, high-tech, computer sales, mortgage and lending, and increase for others, such as retail.

McGeary cautions, too, that availability of proactive outreach must be toggled by agents’ availability. “Consumers should not wait more than one minute for an available agent after they have accepted the invitation and filled in any required information about themselves,” he advises. However, even 30 seconds is probably the maximum most of us would care to wait for a response.

In selecting proactive software to support such activities, look for:

• routing and queuing capabilities to streamline delivery to a particular queue or agent;
• the ability to have rules to turn chat on and off according to workload peaks; and
• agent productivity tools. Such essential tools include: agent preview, which allows agents to see what customers are typing before they click the “send” icon; a chat grammar/spell checker/corrector for agents; canned replies; typing shortcuts; repeat visitor ID; one-click escalation and bookmarks for pages they frequently push to customers.

Leading the customer experience
Instead of relying on first contact resolution (FCR) rates that measure your ability to react to your customers, consider this argument that anticipating customers’ needs and addressing potential issues before they contact you better satisfies and retains customers. » BY ALLAN HAZELTON

Contact centres have traditionally used FCR rates as a key performance metric. While FCR rates can be useful in assessing how well contact centres handle incoming requests, this is an internal process measure and does not provide an accurate view of how well a company is treating its customers. In fact, they can be quite misleading. By the time customers call or email a company, they’ve probably already visited a website, bounced around a phone system or been confused by a product manual. As a result, what many companies view as FCR actually represents second, third or even fourth contact resolution. When customers have to reach out to a company multiple times to resolve an issue or obtain needed information, their frustration increases.

Strive for zero contact resolution. Organizations that embrace this proactive approach will substantially improve their customer experience, which translates into a distinct competitive advantage.

Higher standards, higher stakes
The Internet and the global marketplace have dramatically altered the way companies and customers interact. Today’s consumers have access to unprecedented choice. With a click of the mouse, they can find another vendor offering a similar product at a comparable or even lower price. Switching to another vendor is easy and typically costs nothing.

Consumers’ expectations are also rising. Whether customers have a positive experience with a competing company — or with a company in an entirely different market — does not matter. Companies are no longer compared only to others in the same industry. They are being compared to the very best organizations customers have ever encountered.

In addition, when today’s customers are disgruntled, they can immediately visit a number of websites to let millions of others know, doing serious damage to a company’s reputation and brand image. At the same time, the web can amplify the positive “buzz” about organizations that deliver exceptional customer experiences.

When consumers have a vast range of choices, greater expectations and can easily take their business elsewhere, a superior customer experience may be the most compelling reason that they do business with you. In fact, respondents in the August 2007 U.S. Customer Experience Report by Harris Interactive cited outstanding service as the number one reason they’d give more business to one company versus another – ahead of both lowest price and best quality.

Anticipating customers’ needs
Because the essence of zero contact resolution is anticipating and addressing customers’ needs before customers reach out to you, this approach can substantially improve the experience you provide to customers.

It also reduces contact centre costs because it pre-empts phone and online workloads. Clearly, a customer initiated contact that is avoided will reduce workload and contact centre operation costs. But its true value is derived from the way it improves customer satisfaction.

Some ways to achieve zero contact resolution include:

> Targeted, service-focused outbound communication – Let them know about issues that may affect them – for example, if you discover a potential problem with a product, inform customers before they discover it. This tactic can take the form of emails, bulletins, newsletters with customized content or outbound text-to-speech calls.

> Service-focused, event-driven communication – Specific events can create unique opportunities to inform and engage with customers. For example, an airline may need to alert customers when bad weather threatens to disrupt travel plans. Shortly after customers purchase certain items, you can inform them of related accessories or service contracts. Less-than-positive experiences, such as late deliveries or malfunctioning products, can also trigger outreach, such as an apology.

> Behaviour-based communications – Close observation of customer behaviours may also lead you to reach out to customers. For example, if a customer’s buying volume suddenly jumps, you can let him or her know about special packages that may be available to reduce costs at these higher volumes, or additional services for preferred customers. If a frequent customer stops making purchases for several weeks, you can contact the customer to inquire about potential problems.

You can use the insight you glean from various touch points to ensure that your products and services closely align with your customers’ needs and wants. This approach can eliminate a wide range of complaints and significantly improve customer satisfaction. To do this, you must be able to capture and analyze customer information to provide your product managers with the reports they need to appropriately modify and enhance your company’s offerings.

Implementing a proactive strategy can keep your customers happier – which means you’ll keep more of your customers. It will also pre-empt a substantial volume of incoming customer communications, allowing you to spend more quality time with customers on issues that require special attention.

Allan Hazelton, senior solution consultant in Canada for on demand CRM vendor RightNow Technologies, can be reached at ahazelton@rightnow.com or 416-214-7588.