Thank you for coming back to the blog. I hope that you’re finding this helpful. I want to encourage you to make this an interactive blog by submitting comments. We welcome your thoughts. Divergent points of view will make this much more useful for all participants. I actually tried to be a little provocative in the last blog, hoping for some feedback! So, without further ado, let’s talk about the first three trends that we see in the Contact Center in 2009.
Alternative Sourcing
Self Service
Virtualization
Alternative Sourcing. There are several factors that we see driving this trend. The main driver is the ability to solve business problems through technology without a major capital investment. Let’s be clear that when I say “alternative sourcing” that I mean a group of financial solutions rather than a group of technology solutions! Alternative sourcing can mean leasing. This has been a viable source for funding a project for many years.
What we’re seeing as a newer trend in alternative sourcing is the use of hosted models, or a managed model. Therefore, the second driver for alternative solutions is really the technology itself. IP Telephony is allowing equipment to reside in any location. That makes the ability to use a hosted or managed solution more possible now than ever before.
There is a big difference between hosted solutions and managed solutions. These differences can be summarized as follows:
· In a Hosted Solution, equipment is typically stored at a site other than the customer site -- usually a hardened data center. The equipment is still managed by the customer; however, the maintenance and the hardware are owned by the Host.
· Managed Solutions are like the Hosted model, except that the management of the equipment is also handled by the Host.
· Hybrid Solutions are rarely mentioned, but are probably the most often deployed method. This is where some equipment is hosted or managed, while additional equipment is deployed in the traditional way. Many times this model is effective because it’s a blend. It also enables a migration path from a traditional model to the hosted/managed model.
It should be noted that while many of the traditional vendors do offer the alternative sourcing models; there are many other players in this arena. Regardless of who you use to support the model, the technology solution employed is still the key consideration – which platform will best meet your business requirements. The means to implement this solution has economic impacts, but this is really a secondary factor. Only by looking at the business needs first and the sourcing second will you be able to realize the full potential of the solution.
Virtualization. Again, IP Telephony has made virtualization an important trend. Many firms are looking at virtualization from two perspectives.
· Employee virtualization – how can a business reduce its brick and mortar footprint while maintaining (or even increasing) revenue or satisfaction? With remote agents and remote sales workers, there are many possibilities. The technology is viable; the biggest questions become cultural, managerial and procedural. When considering this mode of operation, several factors need to be considered. Some examples are security, employee monitoring and management, office setup, and agent productivity.
· Technology virtualization – how can a business increase business continuity or reduce disaster recovery issues? DR/BC planning has always been critical, but often very expensive. The newer technology makes achievement much more affordable. You should make the effort now to determine your firms tolerance for downtime and plan for it accordingly.
Self Service is the final trend that we’re going to discuss today. Now I know that you’re thinking “this isn’t a new trend”. Well, I have to agree with you, it’s not a new trend, but it is a continuing trend. What we’re seeing here is that there is a renewed interest in the hosted model (see alternative sourcing).
Why the interest in the hosted model? The biggest reason we see is that capacity can be increased and decreased rapidly. The firm only pays for usage. This allows the firm to reduce capital expenses, reduce operational costs during slower periods, and augment staff during peak periods.
Another trend that we’re seeing in self service is the desire to bring a consistent and coordinated customer experience to the various interaction channels. That means that the IVR, Website, Blog, Chat, and all other channels should have a similar look and feel. The trick then is to make sure that you are able to effectively report across all channels so that you can more correctly measure the customer experience and the value of the channel.
In the next blog, we’ll discuss the next three trends that we see in the Contact Center in 2009 -- All in One Solutions, Business Knowledge, and Multi-Media (including Presence).
Monday, April 20, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Trends in the Contact Center (part 1)
So, Diane has turned the blog over to me (Gary Wirth) for the next few posts. As promised, I am going to address Trends in the Contact Center in 2009.
Before we talk about the actual Trends, however, it’s important for us to level-set and understand the factors we believe are driving these trends.
It’s probably simplest to break down the drivers into 4 components:
· External (or customers)
· Internal (or front-line agents)
· Management
· Outside Influences
From an external or customer perspective, there is a generational shift going on in how your customers desire to interact with you. There is an increase in younger customers who are experienced in multi-modal communications such as social networking. They are perfectly comfortable with an independent interaction such as self-service. Meanwhile, there is also an increase in older customers (many times they’re long standing customers) who desire to have a more traditional service experience.
A common issue that we see in the Contact Center is around expectations. Senior Executives will often times dictate a reduction in operational expenses. Many times the easiest way to achieve these savings is by providing automated self service to your customers. Well, self service is good in many cases, but the value must be weighed against the loss of personal contact. There are some cases where automation can bring increased revenue while providing decreased costs (one example is in the collections arena). However, I’m sure that we have all witnessed the self-service nightmares in our roles as consumers. There are even websites (http://www.gethuman.com/) that are dedicated to helping customers manipulate systems to get to a live agent. By the way, take a look at that website to see if your company is listed!
The second perspective is with internal or front-line employees. These “Generation Y” employees are demanding the same technology at work that they can purchase as consumers (ex. Skype or Video, Instant Messaging). There are also skill-set differences; many of these employees have expanded ability to instant message and web chat, but with diminished skills at formal letter writing.
Management expectations are the third driver of Contact Center trends. Many firms are still measuring customer satisfaction the same way that they did in the past. These measurements may not accurately reflect your customers’ experience. In addition, the management teams at many of these same contact centers are expecting increased customer service efficiencies and additional sales, at the same time that they are limiting spending on customer service technology. The mandate from senior management, especially in budget-tightening cycles, is to cut back on expenses, and often the Contact Center is viewed as an expense center.
Contact Center managers must do a better job of selling the value of their organization to the firm, and to senior management. They need to convert the impact of a successful customer interaction into terms that management can understand – hard dollar revenue to the firm.
Think about these two statements and decide who you would give budget to. “Our customer satisfaction index is 80%; by decreasing the Average Speed of Answer to 10 seconds, we can increase customer satisfaction to 90%”. Or, “If we add self service for password resets, we will decrease our operational costs by $1 million. We also expect that we will increase revenue by $3 million because the agents will be freed up to spend more time with customers up selling our products”.
I know this is easier to say than to actually calculate; however, my point here is that you need to do a better job explaining what customer service means in terms of revenue or cost savings to the company.
Finally, let’s discuss outside influences. The economy has to be considered the biggest issue facing contact centers. Based on the economic factors, most firms are requiring hard dollar savings and a faster ROI before making any commitments to projects. In order for Contact Center Managers to secure budget for any technology that can help them, they must translate their project outcome to revenue generation or operational efficiencies. These results can sometimes be difficult to calculate (see example above!).
So, now that we’ve reviewed the Contact Center Drivers or Influences, we are ready to start discussing trends. In the next blog, we’ll examine the first three major trends we see in the Contact Center in 2009 -- Alternative Sourcing, Self Service, and Virtualization.
Before we talk about the actual Trends, however, it’s important for us to level-set and understand the factors we believe are driving these trends.
It’s probably simplest to break down the drivers into 4 components:
· External (or customers)
· Internal (or front-line agents)
· Management
· Outside Influences
From an external or customer perspective, there is a generational shift going on in how your customers desire to interact with you. There is an increase in younger customers who are experienced in multi-modal communications such as social networking. They are perfectly comfortable with an independent interaction such as self-service. Meanwhile, there is also an increase in older customers (many times they’re long standing customers) who desire to have a more traditional service experience.
A common issue that we see in the Contact Center is around expectations. Senior Executives will often times dictate a reduction in operational expenses. Many times the easiest way to achieve these savings is by providing automated self service to your customers. Well, self service is good in many cases, but the value must be weighed against the loss of personal contact. There are some cases where automation can bring increased revenue while providing decreased costs (one example is in the collections arena). However, I’m sure that we have all witnessed the self-service nightmares in our roles as consumers. There are even websites (http://www.gethuman.com/) that are dedicated to helping customers manipulate systems to get to a live agent. By the way, take a look at that website to see if your company is listed!
The second perspective is with internal or front-line employees. These “Generation Y” employees are demanding the same technology at work that they can purchase as consumers (ex. Skype or Video, Instant Messaging). There are also skill-set differences; many of these employees have expanded ability to instant message and web chat, but with diminished skills at formal letter writing.
Management expectations are the third driver of Contact Center trends. Many firms are still measuring customer satisfaction the same way that they did in the past. These measurements may not accurately reflect your customers’ experience. In addition, the management teams at many of these same contact centers are expecting increased customer service efficiencies and additional sales, at the same time that they are limiting spending on customer service technology. The mandate from senior management, especially in budget-tightening cycles, is to cut back on expenses, and often the Contact Center is viewed as an expense center.
Contact Center managers must do a better job of selling the value of their organization to the firm, and to senior management. They need to convert the impact of a successful customer interaction into terms that management can understand – hard dollar revenue to the firm.
Think about these two statements and decide who you would give budget to. “Our customer satisfaction index is 80%; by decreasing the Average Speed of Answer to 10 seconds, we can increase customer satisfaction to 90%”. Or, “If we add self service for password resets, we will decrease our operational costs by $1 million. We also expect that we will increase revenue by $3 million because the agents will be freed up to spend more time with customers up selling our products”.
I know this is easier to say than to actually calculate; however, my point here is that you need to do a better job explaining what customer service means in terms of revenue or cost savings to the company.
Finally, let’s discuss outside influences. The economy has to be considered the biggest issue facing contact centers. Based on the economic factors, most firms are requiring hard dollar savings and a faster ROI before making any commitments to projects. In order for Contact Center Managers to secure budget for any technology that can help them, they must translate their project outcome to revenue generation or operational efficiencies. These results can sometimes be difficult to calculate (see example above!).
So, now that we’ve reviewed the Contact Center Drivers or Influences, we are ready to start discussing trends. In the next blog, we’ll examine the first three major trends we see in the Contact Center in 2009 -- Alternative Sourcing, Self Service, and Virtualization.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The Importance of Customer Touchpoints
Good morning everyone. I hope that you are enjoying your weekend.
I want to thank Gary Wirth for putting together the Blog policies. This morning, I want to address one of the topics we wanted to discuss . . . the importance of customer touchpoints.
We previously defined a "touchpoint" as anything that touches your customers. We also indicated that there are "external" touchpoints (the web, email, messages in queue, etc.) and "internal" touchpoints (materials used by the internal staff during the interaction with the customer). Now let's explore why these are important by using a precise example.
Let's say that a customer calls your company. She is launching this interaction during her lunch hour, and has a defined period of time to complete it. NEVER thinking it would be a problem, she calls the 800 number, and is greeted by a very long menu. And so it begins.
1. She is not told how many choices there are in the menu, or that she could potentially enter her choice at any time during the menu.
2. She is driving, and cannot easily press buttons, and there is no option to "speak" her desired option.
3. She listens to the entire menu, and still doesn't have a clue, based on how the options are offered, what to choose.
4. There is no option to speak to a "live agent".
5. She tries pressing "0" to reach an operator, but that starts the menu all over again.
6. On the second go around, she now presses anything that might get her to someone she can talk to.
7. When she reaches that person, the agent says he can't help the caller, and must transfer the call.
8. The agent performs a "cold" transfer, and dumps the call into the next "queue".
9. The caller, while waiting in queue for 10 minutes, hears a system message saying "your call is important to us" every 20 seconds. The caller is thinking the entire time, "if my call is that important to you, why haven't you answered it yet".
10. Now, the caller, after 10 minutes FINALLY hears that the interaction she wants to perform can be done via the website.
11. In desperation, she abandons the disastrous phone route, and brings up the website.
12. The website comes up, and she desperately searches for somewhere on the site to perform the desired action.
13. After searching for 5 minutes, she finally finds the right link to click.
14. When she clicks on the link, the page comes up with a message indicating that it is "under construction".
Exasperated, she shuts down her computer, screams to herself, and heads back to work.
I wish I could say that this was an unusual customer experience, but it is not. What do you think the caller's impression of this company is? The willingness of this person to try to contact this company again is going to be dependent upon a number of factors, including choice.
1. If the customer can deal with another firm to fulfill her requirements, she is going to look for options, and the firm has lost what could have been a potential sale, and a new customer.
2. If the customer must deal with this firm, she will do so unhappily. Her perception of this firm has been formulated by her experience in this attempted interaction . . . and it is NOT positive.
There are whole websites dedicated to failures in effectively dealing with customers. Companies need to understand how important the customer interaction is in formulating your customer's view of your firm. We have looked at only one representative interaction, and I think you can see the point.
I have written a white paper that delves more into this topic. You can find the white paper on our website (http://www.align.com/). Look for it in the lower right hand side of the home page. It is called "Put yourself in your customer's shoes", and it can be found in the "WHITE PAPERS" section.
Looking Ahead to the Next Post
My colleague, Gary Wirth, will be writing the next couple of blog posts, dealing with trends that we see in the Contact Center in 2009. Enjoy, and I'll be back!
Have a wonderful EASTER. Diane
I want to thank Gary Wirth for putting together the Blog policies. This morning, I want to address one of the topics we wanted to discuss . . . the importance of customer touchpoints.
We previously defined a "touchpoint" as anything that touches your customers. We also indicated that there are "external" touchpoints (the web, email, messages in queue, etc.) and "internal" touchpoints (materials used by the internal staff during the interaction with the customer). Now let's explore why these are important by using a precise example.
Let's say that a customer calls your company. She is launching this interaction during her lunch hour, and has a defined period of time to complete it. NEVER thinking it would be a problem, she calls the 800 number, and is greeted by a very long menu. And so it begins.
1. She is not told how many choices there are in the menu, or that she could potentially enter her choice at any time during the menu.
2. She is driving, and cannot easily press buttons, and there is no option to "speak" her desired option.
3. She listens to the entire menu, and still doesn't have a clue, based on how the options are offered, what to choose.
4. There is no option to speak to a "live agent".
5. She tries pressing "0" to reach an operator, but that starts the menu all over again.
6. On the second go around, she now presses anything that might get her to someone she can talk to.
7. When she reaches that person, the agent says he can't help the caller, and must transfer the call.
8. The agent performs a "cold" transfer, and dumps the call into the next "queue".
9. The caller, while waiting in queue for 10 minutes, hears a system message saying "your call is important to us" every 20 seconds. The caller is thinking the entire time, "if my call is that important to you, why haven't you answered it yet".
10. Now, the caller, after 10 minutes FINALLY hears that the interaction she wants to perform can be done via the website.
11. In desperation, she abandons the disastrous phone route, and brings up the website.
12. The website comes up, and she desperately searches for somewhere on the site to perform the desired action.
13. After searching for 5 minutes, she finally finds the right link to click.
14. When she clicks on the link, the page comes up with a message indicating that it is "under construction".
Exasperated, she shuts down her computer, screams to herself, and heads back to work.
I wish I could say that this was an unusual customer experience, but it is not. What do you think the caller's impression of this company is? The willingness of this person to try to contact this company again is going to be dependent upon a number of factors, including choice.
1. If the customer can deal with another firm to fulfill her requirements, she is going to look for options, and the firm has lost what could have been a potential sale, and a new customer.
2. If the customer must deal with this firm, she will do so unhappily. Her perception of this firm has been formulated by her experience in this attempted interaction . . . and it is NOT positive.
There are whole websites dedicated to failures in effectively dealing with customers. Companies need to understand how important the customer interaction is in formulating your customer's view of your firm. We have looked at only one representative interaction, and I think you can see the point.
I have written a white paper that delves more into this topic. You can find the white paper on our website (http://www.align.com/). Look for it in the lower right hand side of the home page. It is called "Put yourself in your customer's shoes", and it can be found in the "WHITE PAPERS" section.
Looking Ahead to the Next Post
My colleague, Gary Wirth, will be writing the next couple of blog posts, dealing with trends that we see in the Contact Center in 2009. Enjoy, and I'll be back!
Have a wonderful EASTER. Diane
Monday, April 6, 2009
Customer Touchpoint Blog Policies
Diane asked me to be a “guest blogger” today. I work for Diane in the Align Contact Center practice as a Senior Project Manager. Prior to Align, I worked as a VP of Customer Service at a medium-sized contact center and as an Account Manager for a large telecom equipment manufacturer selling Contact Center solutions.
Today’s topic will be the policies that we will adhere to on this blog. Recently I heard a High School student use Wikipedia as a reference source. I politely advised him that Wikipedia shouldn’t be considered a source. Well, I think I have the same healthy skepticism for most of what I read on blogs. So, I think it’s important to understand the perspective and ground rules that we will follow on the Customer Touchpoint blog.
Since Align is an independent consultant in the Contact Center and IP Telephony space, many times we are privileged with non-disclosure briefings on products and features for the major vendors. Similarly, we almost always have non-disclosure agreements with our clients. Because of this, our blog will not compromise anything that is considered proprietary to either vendors or clients.
We will focus on areas that we consider relevant to today’s contact center. These will include business, technology, process, and general contact center management related topics.
Since this will be an ongoing, online dialogue, we will make sure that the posts remain unchanged once published. That means that we will not delete posts once they are put into the blog. If there is a need to clarify or change something in a previous post, we will add a new post or comment rather than deleting the post.
Our style of writing will be informal while providing substance. Our goal is to create an interactive forum where followers can leave feedback and comments, even suggesting future topics of discussion.
Here is a summary of the Customer Touchpoint Blog policy:
o The Blog will be managed by Diane Halliwell, Align Contact Center Director; she will invite Guest Bloggers where they can add relevant information.
o We will not publish any information that is proprietary or obtained under non-disclosure agreements.
o We will focus on relevant business related topics in the contact center arena.
o Any vendor information published will be vendor agnostic.
o A link will be provided to any online references and original source materials.
o Posts will be maintained and archived; any changes to a posting will be noted but not deleted.
o Online Feedback and Comments are encouraged.
o Readers can invite others to read the blog.
From the policies listed here, I hope that you can see that this blog is intended to maintain a high standard of discipline in discussing relevant contact center trends. I look forward to engaging in some online discussions and watching the blog grow.
Today’s topic will be the policies that we will adhere to on this blog. Recently I heard a High School student use Wikipedia as a reference source. I politely advised him that Wikipedia shouldn’t be considered a source. Well, I think I have the same healthy skepticism for most of what I read on blogs. So, I think it’s important to understand the perspective and ground rules that we will follow on the Customer Touchpoint blog.
Since Align is an independent consultant in the Contact Center and IP Telephony space, many times we are privileged with non-disclosure briefings on products and features for the major vendors. Similarly, we almost always have non-disclosure agreements with our clients. Because of this, our blog will not compromise anything that is considered proprietary to either vendors or clients.
We will focus on areas that we consider relevant to today’s contact center. These will include business, technology, process, and general contact center management related topics.
Since this will be an ongoing, online dialogue, we will make sure that the posts remain unchanged once published. That means that we will not delete posts once they are put into the blog. If there is a need to clarify or change something in a previous post, we will add a new post or comment rather than deleting the post.
Our style of writing will be informal while providing substance. Our goal is to create an interactive forum where followers can leave feedback and comments, even suggesting future topics of discussion.
Here is a summary of the Customer Touchpoint Blog policy:
o The Blog will be managed by Diane Halliwell, Align Contact Center Director; she will invite Guest Bloggers where they can add relevant information.
o We will not publish any information that is proprietary or obtained under non-disclosure agreements.
o We will focus on relevant business related topics in the contact center arena.
o Any vendor information published will be vendor agnostic.
o A link will be provided to any online references and original source materials.
o Posts will be maintained and archived; any changes to a posting will be noted but not deleted.
o Online Feedback and Comments are encouraged.
o Readers can invite others to read the blog.
From the policies listed here, I hope that you can see that this blog is intended to maintain a high standard of discipline in discussing relevant contact center trends. I look forward to engaging in some online discussions and watching the blog grow.
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