The “official” start to the holiday shopping season on Black Friday has not left us without myriad statistics regarding shopping preferences. According to a recent holiday survey of more than 2,300 consumers by Prospectiv, an online performance marketing firm specializing in connecting women to brands, found:

• 25 percent will use coupons more often this holiday season;
• 16 percent will shop online to find the best deals; and
• 35 percent will utilize email to share great deals they either receive or find with friends.

Convergys, a relationship management provider, also unveiled findings from a recent survey:

• 86.1 percent of respondents will plan to shop online;
• 37.3 percent will do all or most of their shopping via the Web;
• nearly nine out of 10 consumers say the most desirable attribute is the ability to shop whenever they like; and
• 61 percent of shoppers prefer the online channel because they can “get customer service on their own terms.”

No matter which numbers you scrutinize, one thing is clear: online retailing is rapidly taking the hearts — and wallets — of consumers. I had the chance to speak with Doug Farmer, Convergys’ senior director of customer management, about his company’s survey results, one statistic that shocked him, and what he has seen in his work with Convergys’ customers in the retail industry.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Ken Redekop, director, customer experience management solutions, Telus

With the holidays around the corner, many are looking forward to spreading holiday cheer with families and friends. But, the period leading up to the holidays often brings less than good tidings when a flood of stressed-out shoppers start making their holiday purchases en masse. The crowds. The lines. The staff shortages. All of these experiences prove frustrating to customers and can even impact a company’s bottom line.

As the busy holiday season draws near, companies would be wise to take stock of their customer experience programs. This involves listening to customers in a multifaceted way, including in-person, online, and over the phone, to provide personalized service and educated answers.

[Editor's note: Check out the December issue of CRM magazine for more on the customer experience.]

[Suggestions after the jump...]

Read the rest of this entry »

While there has been some news of the economy beginning to stabilize, macroeconomic trends are still helping to shape how contact center practice leaders must proceed. Here at the first day of CRM Evolution 2009 at the Marriott Marquis Times Square in the heart of Manhattan, Art Hall, manager of customer relations at Alvarez and Marsal explained to attendees how recessionary conditions are influencing contact center strategy.

“Today’s economy is focusing on performance improvement, which means that most companies are not in the green, are not healthy,” Hall said. “Most are sliding are into the yellow, orange, or red categories. Organizations in the yellow and orange — in the revenue slide, are mostly in denial.”

Bearing this in mind, Hall points out three strategies being employed today by companies owning and operating contact center operations:

• rationalizing contact centers, forcing companies to optimize overhead costs as a way to preserve cash that results in an increased demand in outsourcing;
• rethinking technology investments, which Hall says is leading many contact center practitioners to think about software-as-a-service (SaaS)/hosted solutions, unified communications, and social media; and
• improvement in government service levels, as government agencies are expected to provide the same level of service as private sector counterparts.

Speaking specifically about technology investments, Hall stated this may be the last resort for contact center managers trying to get through to c-suite executives who may not necessarily understand the day-to-day challenges they face. “If you’ve squeezed everything from process improvement and making agents more efficient … it’s time to rethink the technology,” he said.

This also means thinking about adding on other channels including social media. If contact centers do go this route, Hall stressed that it must be integrated into the overall multichannel strategy, otherwise it is all for naught. “We should never lose sight of importance of customer and social responsibility of organizations delivering on their value propositions,” he said. “A judicious use of contact center technology, along with a customer-driven approach to training and live-agent empowerment, should result in effective and efficient operations balanced with high customer satisfaction.”

For the contact center managers and supervisors out there, are you finding these same trends affecting your particular centers? If so, how are you trying to tactically address these trends while at the same time continue to — and improve upon — the experience you deliver to end-customers?

I get the chance to write quite a bit about the topic of customer experience — how companies are measuring it, trying to implement it, and figure out what it actually is. Oftentimes, my focus is on North American-based companies, but new research conducted by Greenfield Online (in full disclosure, also sponsored by Genesys Telecommunications Labs) finds that not adequately following through on customer experience is leading countries across the globe to miss out on precious revenue.

According to the study, businesses in Australia, New Zealand, and India lost a combined $5.6 billion in revenue due to inability to meet customer expectations. That’s not chump change. The largest offender of the three was Australia, which lost $2.6 billion, followed closely by India, losing $2.46 billion. New Zealand came in a distant third, posting a loss of $995.6 million.

The consumer respondents complained that these three countries, in particular, were displeased with automated self-service programs that didn’t allow them to reach a human agent and were difficult to navigate. Also, working with agents who weren’t empowered to make decisions, and having to repeat information — such as name and account number — every time their call is forwarded to another department was another pain point mentioned.

While those complaints are also levied stateside, the study did come up with some interesting statistics regarding the price tag on how much lost relationships with customers really cost companies.

According to the research, the average value of a relationship ended due to poor customer service experiences costs:

• $338.85 in Australia; the average consumer ending 1.37 relationships;
• $257.33 in New Zealand; the average consumer ending 1.17 relationships; and
• $121.81 in India; the average consumer ending 1.84 relationships.

Scary numbers, especially since the majority of customers surveyed here will not crawl into a corner and cease to use the product or service in question. According to the study, at least 60 percent of respondents each of the three countries took its business to a competitor.

Do these numbers surprise you? Do you think the prices here are similar — or (gasp) worse — here in North America?

[Editors’ Note: The next chapter in this case study appeared in our August edition of CRM magazine.]

There is a common misnomer that customer service representatives (CSRs) are either poorly trained or just taking the position to make ends meet. Combine that with an advanced degree from an institution of higher education, and you have a recipe for CSR morale disaster.

Nowhere was this more evident than at OSIsoft, which helps companies record and track systems data information on the health of the software utilized. The company’s support staff all hold degrees in engineering or an engineering discipline, and Don Smith, vice president of customer support for the company, says the idea that the degree may be wasted working in a customer support position had plagued the company for years.

“Customer support has a reputation of being a starter or low-end position,” Smith says. “The average person expects to have the first person [they speak with] barely take down their name and know nothing about the product in question. You have people telling parents what they’re doing, and the parents ask, ‘That’s a good job for you as engineer? You got your master’s from Stanford, right?’ So I wanted to grow the role and integrity of the position.”

Smith recalls that many who had entered the position of support agent quickly wanted to transfer to other facets of the company such as sales or engineering. Agent retention had plummeted to lows of approximately 29 percent, mainly because they viewed the position as a stepping stone rather than a quality career destination. “I wanted them to see support as one of the most exciting jobs they have,” he says.

A key way to help accomplish this aim, according to Smith, was to finally rejuvenate the company’s broken knowledge base system. Only 40 percent of those who utilized it reported that they were able to find the proper answer. Smith wanted to incorporate all of the company’s employees — including the support agents — to expand the volume of articles with the most up-to-date, correct information. “If I could get a third of the company in a room at one time, ask a question, and agree on an answer … that’s as good as we’ll get,” he says. “That’s my dream.”

To make this dream a reality, OSIsoft turned to Socialtext, an enterprise 2.0 solution provider, to provide a wiki that would empower all employees to contribute when applicable. Through the use of the wiki, Smith can show the support workers they are not only doing break/fix issues, but are also helping to keep the world’s largest companies running smoothly. “Using the technology with our support people means they are engaged in their work, instead of being burdened by the workload and missing the fact they are doing exciting work,” he says. “The wiki allows that to happen.”

Retention has risen to 85 percent since implementing Socialtext’s wiki. “Support is where the action is happening,” he says. “They’re learning relevant stuff, be it helping an alternative energy launch get off the ground or get solar wind farms on line. We are providing a manufacturing record of what’s going on, and we are on the cutting edge by helping companies get the information they need to resolve problems.”

Who says innovation has to cost gobs of money?

I just had a conversation with a couple of members of Vertex North America’s management team – John Hall, managing director, and Kurt Thearling, head of decision sciences. Vertex North America is a facet of Vertex, a United Kingdom–based business process and customer management outsourcing group.

Amidst talk about customer experience, and the metrics used to measure it for different verticals – according to Hall, the company is focusing on utilities, retail banking/consumer credit, travel/leisure, telecommunications, technology, and retail in North America – the notion came up about many companies still not recognizing that contact centers are more than just cost centers.

Hally says it is especially important today that, instead of trying to focus on automating all communication channels, to uncover the “pockets of value that have been untapped in overall customer interaction.”

“There is a place for automated channels, but it is not the whole story,” Hall stresses. “This may mean moving people to a higher-cost channel [like a live agent] because the cross-sell or upsell can be closed more easily. It’s very important to understand what the value and role is of each channel, and divert the right transaction to the right channel.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in late June, I wrote a story for our Web site, www.destinationCRM.com, about Interaction Process Automation (IPA), the latest offering from Interactive Intelligence.

Shortly thereafter, I was able to catch up with Geoff Calhoun, director of information technology at AccuQuote, since his company will be implementing IPA. Here are his thoughts on why his company decided to give IPA a chance.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Ian Jacobs, senior analyst, Datamonitor

[EDITORS' NOTE: This is part of a series of posts that began here, dissecting a two-page chart that appeared in CRM magazine's June 2009 issue on social media. The digital edition of that issue can be found here, and a standalone image of the chart itself can be seen here. (Click on the “View Full Size” button at the top right of that page.) To view all posts in the series, please add this RSS feed to your RSS reader.]

JUNE 7, 2009 — Like all who have bravely gone before me in this experiment, I feel I must thank Josh Weinberger, CRM magazine, and destinationCRM — not just for giving me the opportunity to blather on and on (and on), but also for being foolhardy enough to tackle a project as ambitious as a Social Media Maturity Model.

Virtual hats off to you guys. Let no one say you lack chutzpah!

The ambitious nature of the model itself makes dissecting it a daunting prospect. As Christopher Carfi alluded to in his June 3rd post, any one of the throughlines in this model could form the basis of 30 days of meaningful discussion.

(Oh, and Chris — Thanks for setting the bar so high for the rest of us poor schlubs. A video? With onscreen highlighting? Come on — have pity on us poor, technologically deprived analysts!)

Since I only get one day for my soapbox, I’m going to try to tackle a reasonably small segment of the model: some of the ways that customer service might change that are not explicitly detailed in the model.

I have two main areas to expand on:

1. social media–focused service as a driver of improved product development; and
2. community-assisted service or user-collaborative service.

Service-driven product development: As an analyst covering the contact center and CRM space for many years, I’ve always pointed out that companies large and small are missing a tremendous opportunity for continuous improvement in product development by not using all the data they gather in their customer service operations. In the same way that Google is arguably a more-effective tool for predicting flu outbreaks than traditional epidemiology, contact centers can be an excellent predictor for identifying aspects of a product that demand improvement.

Note that I am not talking about user-driven design of products—others have put forth that idea [see detail from the Social Media Maturity Model, left, which makes a reference to the product design aspect in the top-left "Sales" quadrant], and while I have many issues with that concept, it’s simply a different beast than what I’m talking about here.

I’m referring to the untapped motherlode: If companies mined the data that they were sitting on in all those megabytes of recorded customer calls, they would have a much clearer idea of what problems were costing them precious dollars in customer service. They could focus future development efforts on fixing those issues and reduce the volume of costly customer support contacts.

I understand the structural limitations that get in the way of companies doing this type of proactive product development today. Contact centers ‘own’ their data. But even if the contact center identifies a product problem (or a pricing problem, for that matter, or even a Web-site-design problem), there’s little the contact center can do about it. Not only does the contact center not “own” those areas of the business — but without some involvement, vision, and direction from higher up the corporate ladder, the center doesn’t even have much influence in those areas.

Social media, however, can change this equation.

By making silos and their attendant structural hurdles visible to customers, social media can provide a great impetus for companies to tackle those flaws. Think about a Facebook-like customer-support site: If 500 customers have similar problems with a product and post to the support site, the last 400 to arrive will see that their issue is inherent to that product. The visibility of the problem intensifies the urgency for a solution. If that sounds like product development and product improvement driven by a desire to avoid corporate embarrassment — well, it is. Embarrassment can be a powerful motivator; just ask the collections industry.

User-collaborative service: Frankly, I was really quite surprised to not see something in the Social Media Maturity Model’s service category on community or peer-to-peer service. [See detail of the chart, right, for a closeup view of that quadrant.] While my first point in this blogpost — service-driven product development — may belong in the farther reaches of the model’s time scale, user-collaborative service is already happening.

In a formalized, online social network sense, there are sites such as Get Satisfaction, a site that calls its function “people-powered customer service.” The site itself acts as a neutral space — i.e., not a company-sponsored or -controlled site — in which regular customers can exchange ideas, and get help with or tips about product- or service-related issues.

The Get Satisfaction site allows companies to participate on essentially an equal footing with customers, and knowledgeable customers are as likely (and often more likely) to be the ones providing support to other customers. Some very large companies, including Adobe, use the site to help their customers and to help arm their expert customers to help each other. And hundreds of other companies should probably be paying attention to this social media–driven support concept since their products are being serviced via this medium. [Editor's Note: Get Satisfaction was one of CRM magazine's 2009 Rising Stars. See our coverage here.]

But a specialty support site is not a requirement for this more-collaborative approach to customer service. It is happening on Twitter, as well. Caltrain is the commuter train that runs from San Francisco to San Jose, right through the heart of Silicon Valley. Thousands of people use the train to commute to and from their jobs every day. Service delays, trip cancellations — even the status of the scarce space on the train cars that accommodate bicycles — all command great interest from Caltrain’s riders.

Caltrain’s Web site provides a published schedule, but it’s a fairly static page and has no facility to provide real-time travel alerts or advisories. Even if Caltrain’s site did provide real-time notices, there was no mechanism to have those notices sent to riders.

The @caltrain Twitter feed came to the rescue. The @caltrain account on Twitter identifies itself as “community-supported Caltrain notices, one tweet at a time.” Interested Caltrain riders receive an email key that allows them to email tweets that then get posted to the @caltrain account. As I type this blogpost, there are some train delays and the tweets are flying, giving the 1,500 or so followers of the feed real-time updates on what is going on with their commute. Users helping other users, creating some social form of community support.

That is the user-collaboration element. But this is not simply a case of the lunatics taking over the asylum. Caltrain officials themselves use the @caltrain feed to provide information — they preface their tweets with an upper-case “O” to identify themselves. There’s a very good reason for the company to get involved in this effort: The social media–driven communications are often faster than the mechanisms of corporate communications will allow.

An example: In early June, a train hit and killed someone in California. This caused massive and widespread delays throughout the system. The Twitter feed not only kept passengers informed of the delays, but of the actual cause. And it did so much more effectively than Caltrain’s own communication system.

I saved a tweet from that day:

@caltrain: Power of twitter: passengers on my train knew details of delays before our conductors did

Admittedly, user-to-user support for public transit is not quite in the same league of complexity as user-to-user support in the realms of home networking or automotive repair. But the underlying concept can work across all sorts of verticals, especially if the companies get involved on the users’ terms as Caltrain did by joining in the user-generated efforts of the @caltrain feed.

In fact, that’s really the key of what I see missing from the model: Users will collaborate with each other to help solve issues and companies will need to get involved on the community’s terms, not their own. It’s a major shift in mindset, and one that may cause some wrenching growing pains, but it’s coming.

Bonus Topic (or, “Continuing the Torture”): I know I promised just two issues, but I have another idea — minor, and not as well-formed — that I’d also like to throw out to the four winds.

The model actually has a slot for preventative service, but it seems to be the result of direct engagement with and continual feedback from customers. That does seem to be one of the logical conclusions from the trends that are pushing service out of the realm of formal customer service organizations (i.e., contact centers) and into a more social domain. But the model also seems to imply that these changes are taking place exclusively because of the flourishing social media — and that may be overstating the case.

These changes are not happening in a vacuum. Being a bit o’ geekiness myself, I would argue that pervasive computing and ubiquitous computing can and will also have a role in the transition to preventative service. When some manufactured object can tell the company it needs servicing/upgrading/fixing, the company can push that service proactively, either through computer-to-device communications or through proactive contact between the company and the customer. This happens now in some enterprise technology departments, at least in the machine-to-machine realm (although those systems aim for self-healing), so why should consumer-focused goods be any different?

Obviously, pervasive computing will also not drive preventative service on its own. There’s some undefined field of overlap between socially mediated customer service and support and technologically automated service and support. Just something to watch for on the edge of the five-year time frame spelled out by the model.

Finally, while my mother never literally told me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything,” that cultural message sank into my brain somewhere along the line. So I want to be clear that I am not just about pointing out ideas missing from the model. I also want to heap some praise on the model: CRM magazine has done a stellar job of putting a stake in the ground and allowing this conversation to unfold.

Bravo, folks.

Ian Jacobs (ijacobs@datamonitor.com) is a senior analyst at Datamonitor and an ASBPE-award-winning columnist for CRM magazine. He can be found on Twitter at @iangjacobs. For more on his perspective on social technologies in the enterprise, see his Customer Centricity column from CRM magazine’s June 2009 Social Media Special Issue.]

Last week, I attended SAP and the Americas’ SAP User Group’s (ASUG) user conference, SAPPHIRE, in the friendly and extremely hot confines of Orlando, Fla. While I blogged, live tweeted, and wrote for the Web site about some of the key takeaways from the conference, there was a not-so-subtle lesson about customer service that I personally learned.

If you look up Type-A personality in the dictionary or, in my case, Wikipedia, you’ll probably find a picture of me. If not, you should. I like being early, having things done, and I can’t function without a to-do list nearby. I called a shuttle service the day before I was to fly back to CRM magazine’s world headquarters in Manhattan in order to arrange a pick-up from the Orange County Convention Center to Orlando International Airport.

Mind you, when I spoke to the customer service representative (CSR) at the time, she told me to be at a very specific location at a very specific time  — outside the North entrance between the two escalators at 3:50 p.m. OK. I also obtained a confirmation number, which turned out to be a lifesaver.

Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon at 3:40 p.m. Of course, I am outside in my designated location 10 minutes early on the off chance that the shuttle arrive early. I have the slip of paper with the confirmation number in my right hand, and in my left hand I have my mobile phone at the ready in case the shuttle doesn’t show up.

At 3:55 p.m. I see the shuttle coming around to my location. A small smile of relief took away the epic frustration I had for the shuttle being five minutes late. (Type-A? Me? Never …)

That smile was quickly turned upside down — again — as the shuttle slowed down slightly but didn’t bother to stop. The shuttle drove away, much to my chagrin and despite my waving frantically and yelling, “Right here!”

Read the rest of this entry »

The recent news of President Barack Obama calling for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks is just the latest in several initiatives to push jobs back to the United States to try and stem rising unemployment.

This time, Obama wants to go after companies that have operations or subsidiaries in tax havens like the Cayman Islands – the New York Times article I linked to in the previous graf specifically names companies including Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Procter & Gamble, that would reportedly be affected greatly if this came to fruition.

Essentially, the tax laws were originally intended to prevent multinational corporations from being double-taxed by the U.S. and foreign countries — but now Obama wants to repeal them.

According to Obama’s estimations, this would raise $210 billion over the next decade and help offset tax cuts for middle-income taxpayers and a permanent tax credit for companies’ research and development costs, according to the New York Times piece.

From a contact center perspective, it makes me wonder what the fate will be of the business process outsourcing space, one that utilizes offshore locales including — but certainly not limited to — India, China, and the Philippines. I partially covered this in a recent news story about Datamonitor’s five key outsourcing trends to look for in 2009.

When I spoke to analyst Peter Ryan for that story, one of the hot spots had to do with the potential resurgence to bring back outsourcing onshore. That said, Ryan was hesitant to definitively say it would work. In that article, he said: “Even if President Obama is able to do this, how do you find people to work in them? Unemployment is a bit higher, but it is still challenging to find workers for these contact centers.”

It seems his thoughts rang true. In February, a Senate proposal to give multinational companies a big tax cut if they brought profits back to the United States was defeated handily.

Circling back with Ryan, he says the latest news from Obama might be posturing more than anything else. “I think that its being rolled out in 2011 speaks to the fact that it is possible window dressing, and it gives Obama enough time to rescind the proposals, if need be,” he says. “Also, from an electoral perspective, 2011 runs up to the 2012 presidential cycle, which could be convenient for a president wanting to appear to keep jobs at home.”

If Obama does get his wish, though, Ryan says it will not be good news for contact center outsourcers selling offshore delivery for several reasons:

• increased price points;
• reduction in operational flexibility; and
• significant tax disadvantages in relation to other Western countries.

“There can be little doubt that the Obama administration is doing its best to make good on campaign promises to encourage U.S. firms to limit offshoring as much as possible,” he says. “In the case of the recent changes to the tax code, outsourcers should examine the implications for their operations prior to the 2011 implementation point, so as to determine what impact it will have on their ability to deliver high-end and cost-effective contact center services.”

For companies involved in outsourcing in offshore locales, what are your thoughts about this latest push from Obama?