It’s officially 2012, and, again this year, we’re hearing “2012 is the year of mobile commerce“. We heard it in 2011 too. Did we hear it in 2010? Yep. In fact, as far back as 2007, pundits and observers have been prophesizing that the days of whipping out our phones to pay for all sorts of retail sundries are just around the corner.

First, I think it’s probably important to get some definitions right. As the Forbes link above says, I think it’s fair to say that mobile-enabled e-commerce does not equal mobile commerce, at least strictly speaking. When you buy a book from Amazon on your iPad, you’re not engaging in mobile commerce per se – you’re using an e-commerce portal adapted for your mobile device. “Mobile commerce” is probably best described as shopping that takes advantage of unique properties of mobile devices.

So, why doesn’t it ever seem to happen – and when it does, why does the development in the space seem to happen so slowly?

VentureBeat took that subject on a few days ago. They posit that there are two big barriers to widespread adoption of mobile payments and commerce:

• The lack of a developed, recognized standard. There is an industry-wide standard for credit cards, and processors work such that almost any credit card can be swiped at almost any retail point of sale, and the transaction will go through. The same is absolutely not true for mobile payments, at least not yet: retailers wishing to accept mobile payments have to guess what kind of phones their customers use, and potentially install multiple pieces of hardware to handle the transactions.
• The significant cost of updating retail infrastructure. Hand in hand with the lack of certainty around a particular processing standard is the big cost retailers face in upgrading their infrastructure to handle mobile payments. Big retailers often use purpose-built or highly-customized point of sale software, designed to integrate smoothly with inventory and payment processing systems – positive qualities that make implementation of a new payment method prohibitively difficult and expensive. Included under this heading is the cost of training new staff to use the equipment – no small feat.

To this, I’d add one more: consumers just don’t seem to be interested. And I can’t entirely blame them. I might be being small-minded here, but it sounds like there’s no inherent advantage to whipping out one’s phone to pay for a retail transaction vs. whipping out one’s credit card.  (Notable exception: the Starbucks Card Mobile app enables customers to load gift cards into a single app and then simply scan their smartphone to pay the cashier instead of keeping up with multiple gift cards.)

In the development of other forms of e-commerce, there was a real sticking point – the need to get up and go to a store to get books and other items, for instance – and there doesn’t appear to be one here. Unless it’s possible with mobile payments to walk out of a store without checking out – and it sounds like that day is very, very far in the future – I just don’t see the draw, at least in a retail setting.

So, I won’t go the easy pundit’s route, and say 2012 is the year of mobile commerce. I think 2012, and 2013 for that matter, will be years of mobile-enabled e-commerce – a series of incremental innovations designed to make the buying experience easier for mobile users. There’s real growth in that – maybe not whiz-bang growth, but growth nonetheless – and it’s something worth pursuing.

For example, a recent New York Times article positioned Siri as the latest public nuisance in the cell phone revolution.  It outlined several scenarios of people using Siri in less than desirable situations (e.g., public transportation) for things as mundane as sending an SMS message wishing a friend a happy birthday. 

One of the particular sticking points that many raise when complaining about Siri’s public presence is that users must speak punctuation and emoticons—along the lines of “happy birthday smiley face” or “how are you doing question mark.”  Certainly not what we are used to hearing on the street corner or subway.

What caught my eye, however, was this part of the article (emphasis is mine):

When talking to their cellphones, people sometimes start sounding like machines themselves. Jimmy Wong, 24, was at an after-hours diner with friends in Los Angeles recently when they found themselves next to a man ordering Siri to write memos and dictate e-mails. They found the man’s conversation with his phone “creepy,” without any of the natural pauses and voice inflections that occur in a discussion between two people.

The light bulb in my head said: “Eureka! It’s the same way customers often speak to speech recognition IVRs.”

Let me explain.

One of our member companies realized during the implementation of their speech recognition IVR system that customer-to-rep utterances are actually quite different from customer-to-machine utterances.  Most companies, however, often must use customer-to-rep utterances as a first step in launching their speech IVR, which will slowly ‘learn’ to get better as customers use it over time.

But here’s the catch: the company saw a “chicken and egg” problem…natural-language IVR improves with each customer interaction, but customers will not use the system unless it is already working well.

So to launch with a successful set of utterances, and thus successful first encounters with the system, this company had to understand how customers talk to machines—not reps.  CCC members, read more about how the company captured these specific utterances before launching—very successfully—the speech IVR.

Maybe Siri’s programmers should have tried this approach too?

This Siri story is just one of the new batch of Iconoculture insights recently posted to the CCC site.   You can also read about:

• A happy hour-finding app in France
• A television remote that is revolutionizing channel surfing
• A new e-book soundtrack service

Admittedly, this is a relatively generic framing, but supplement it with data around rapidly increasing contact complexity, far more nuanced products and solutions, and complicated technology—not to mention customer expectations that now are dramatically heightened—and it quickly becomes apparent at how drastically different the service and support function of today is from that of even a year or two ago.

In fact, in some recent research, CCC highlights the function’s shift to what we call the “Quality 2.0 Era,” which is characterized by both complex issues and heightened customer expectations.  This is a long way from the “Productivity Era” of the late 1990s, early 2000s, when fast resolution of simple issues was sufficient.  As is it distant from the “Quality 1.0 Era” of the mid-2000s, where customers increasingly wanted successful resolution of more complicated issues.

Yet these changes have largely happened under the noses of most service and support organizations, many of which have not transformed their organizations to align to the changes in issue complexity and customer expectations.  In reality, many organizations have been caught offguard by how quickly customer demands and expectations changed.

Which begs the question: What does the next era of service and support hold?  And how should we prepare for it?

A few hypotheses, informed by me and colleagues on the CCC research and advisory teams:

I. Service and support increasingly becomes a learning/teaching function.

As companies continue to work to make it easier to self-serve on simple issues, and the number of live or assisted contacts decreases, companies will increasingly look to help customers optimize their use and knowledge of products and services.  This could happen either on a 1:1 level or even 1:many level and could entail teaching about functionality and integration.

This is not to say that the service and support function will go away entirely, but it will have an altered mission.  This trend has immediate application to the business-to-business world but you could also imagine consumer customers engaging to learn more about products and services as well.  Self-service and multi-channel tools would be very relevant here.

II. Service and support will create greater focus on enabling customers to solve problems as opposed to the company always providing the answer.

In a world where issues are rapidly becoming even more complex, customer knowledge can actually outpace that of organizations, which means service and support cannot always give customers an answer (or the right one).  Furthermore, social media has in large part led to customers enjoying and desiring to connect directly with each other.

Social media, networking, and collective problem solving could well become not just another channel or nice to have, but really a philosophy and focus for the organization—and the olden days of staff solving problems will really give way to communities solving each other’s problems.  We’ve seen similar changes happen at technical support organizations where companies enable customers, and it’s quite probable that this could transcend to the service world as well.

III. Service and support becomes a very narrowly focused organization.

Too often today service and support ends up taking on one too many new responsibilities—generating revenue, differentiating the customer experience, collecting and analyzing voice of the customer—with the organization’s mission constantly expanding and often leading to “scope creep” and potentially hindering organizational performance.

As organizations gradually learn the “jack of all trades is the master of none” philosophy, there is a good possibility that the organization will shed some of its excess responsibilities, or at least start to prioritize its efforts (something that remarkably few organizations do).  My hunch is that revenue generation (not just cross- and up-sell, but also lead generation and qualification) and/or process improvement (largely through voice of the customer) will become the top priority.

What is your prediction about the next era of service and support?  Where are customers and the service and support function headed?

With technology enabling the world to better capture, store, and share video content, we’ve certainly seen a rise in the number of organizations wondering how they can use video to serve their customers—we’ve even blogged previously about the idea of using self-service ‘how-to’ videos and customer-generated content.

Indeed, the recent and rapid rise of services like Apple’s FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and Skype naturally leads us to think about the potential for service organizations to leverage this technology, and while it’s certainly too early to say for sure, here’s my take on the future of video calling for service:

Employee-to-Employee
Companies looking to at least experiment with the benefits (and limitations) of video calling are likely to first pilot the service internally, using their employees to prove (or disprove) the value in offering video calling to customers. This pilot phase needn’t be restricted to just the call center, though; in fact, the biggest benefits may be found in enabling better communication and collaboration between service and other areas of the organization.  For example, we have heard from a few financial services organizations considering video capabilities between branch employees and call center staff.  In addition, video conferencing often comes up in the context of coaching and engaging with remote reps.

Employee-to-Customer
In my mind, face-to-face video calling between organizations and their customers isn’t likely to become ‘the next big thing’ in the immediate future, but that future is certainly up for debate. With video increasingly becoming a part of people’s social lives, it stands to reason that customers may become more comfortable with the idea of video conferencing as a convenient service option. We needn’t look farther than social media as an example of a recent cultural change that’s had a big impact on the customer service world; maybe video is poised to be the next example of just such a change?

On the other hand, for most customer issues, video calling just doesn’t seem to offer much added benefit to the customer that couldn’t be achieved via today’s phone or web chat interactions. But for certain issues there may just be value in having a helpful rep to talk you—and show you—through the mechanics of the solution to your problem. I can think of at least several times when I’ve called a repairman for something that turned out to be a simple fix—something I could have repaired myself by watching someone who knew what they were doing. Maybe this is taking the idea of customer “self-service” a bit too far, but there’s no denying the potential of video to be valuable for certain customer issues.

CCC Buzz readers – what’s your experience with video applications—in general or for customer service? What do you think about the future of video in the service organization?

CCC Related Resources

• Social Media Topic Center
• Talent Management Discussion Forum
• Technology Decision Support Center

Aptly titled “Watch with eBay,” this new iPad app allows users to combine their television viewing and shopping experience into one. Users simply enter their program information (zip code, cable provider, and channel), and out comes all relevant program-related products in eBay’s current inventory. Want to look like a certain cast member? Just search their name and receive star-specific recommendations.

What this Means for Customer Service and Support

More than just efficient multitasking, this feature serves as an example of extremely smart segmentation. Instead of advertising all product lines to all customers, eBay provides highly personalized recommendations to customers based on their precise interests. The same strategy can be applied to the world of service—similar to differentiated tastes and values, customer service preferences now come in a variety of flavors. As a result, service industries can design segmentation schemes that target the needs of different customer groups and provide personalized service in a scalable fashion. From our research on segmentation, here are some steps to consider:

• Evaluate potential benefits of segmentation for your organization. Segmenting to customer needs can certainly provide a multitude of benefits, but before you jump into a strategy, it’s important to first do the necessary prep work. Understand your customers and products, and really assess if segmentation if right for your organization. Once determined, evaluate why you are segmentation and what you hope to gain. Use CCC’s goal-setting tool to choose SMART goals for your segmentation scheme.

• Select an appropriate segmentation scheme. It’s not enough to simply decide to segment. Most business-to-consumer segmentation schemes fall into five categories based on their impacts on service goals. As a result, it’s important to choose the one that aligns best with your organization’s goals.

• Resource against segment needs. Once segmentation strategies are decided, companies should develop staffing models to ensure effective service delivery. Two leading staffing models are most commonly used by leading companies: the generalist model and the specialist model. Evaluate the pros and cons of each type, and receive recommendations of how best to deliver service given either one.

• Measure the effectiveness of your segmentation scheme. Once your segmentation strategy is in place, be sure to evaluate it against your organization’s goals. Common service goals fall into three broad categories: improving the customer experience, increasing revenues, and reducing costs. Periodically revisiting your existing scheme against these goals can help ensure its efficiency and success.

What are your thoughts? Does your company utilize segmentation to deliver more personalized customer service?  And what would you buy with this new eBay app?

Other Recently Posted Insights from Iconoculture

Mobile payments are ripe not only for mainstreaming, but for consumer protections

NYC sandwich service makes surprise a key ingredient

Louis CK’s direct-to-fan comedy success is no laughing matter

Smart posters use QR codes to sell to German commuters

To help you prepare for the year ahead, CCC’s research and advisory team is putting its heads together to give you some additional perspective on areas of opportunity we see across a variety of companies—fresh ideas on how to enhance the customer experience and improve operational performance.

The intent here is not to increase your workload, of course, but to give you additional perspective on continuing to improve your service and support operations in the year ahead.

So let me start here with the recommendation of a relatively simple tweak: Ensure that all staff know how to navigate your company’s website.

It is a basic idea, but conversations with numerous service and support organizations reveal that most companies—both B2C and B2B—have not properly taught staff to use their own websites.

And this is becoming an acute problem as forecasts indicate that self-service increasingly is a preferred channel of resolution (CCC research historically has found that the preference for self-service is equal to live service, if not higher).  And we’re continuing to work on new research on customer expectations for self-service, in which I would be highly surprised to find the trends reversing.

This change among customers—but lack of change among service and support organizations—inevitably leads to a well-intentioned but ultimately unhelpful customer interaction along the following:

Frontline Staff: “After next week you’ll be able to check your account online to make sure that the changes have been updated.”

Customer: “OK.  Thanks for the tip.  And where do I go online to find that?”

Frontline Staff: “You’ll need to log in and you’ll find it on your account page.”

Customer: “I’m looking at your web page now and don’t see that option.”

Frontline Staff: “Unfortunately I’m unable to pull the web page up, so I can’t give you any more information right now.”

Customer: “OK….  I guess I’ll just call back if I can’t find the information next week….”

So what can be done to avoid this all-too-common situation?  A few ideas, arranged from least investment required to most:

1. Ask supervisors to do a coaching session on website navigation—Put out a memo to supervisors and coaches and ask them to spend some time orienting frontline staff to your company’s website, particularly the service and support functionalities.  A general introduction can be helpful, but also navigate the site based on a few issues customers commonly call about.  At a minimum, supervisors should do this once a quarter either in team or 1:1 meetings.

2. Tweak new hire training to focus on navigation—An entirely new curriculum isn’t necessary, but even creating a short module orienting new hires (and tenured staff, too) to the website, basic navigation, and important functionality to know about is a good start.  Supervisors and coaches can supplement this on an ongoing basis.

3. Integrate self-service steps into the knowledge base—It is helpful to have training and coaching on discrete website functionalities, but to truly ensure frontline staff can effectively advise customers on what to do on the web, knowledge bases should incorporate this information.  CCC members, learn more about effective knowledge management design principles here.

4. If staff do not have access to the external Internet, at a minimum grant access to your organization’s website—All sorts of historical reasons exist why some frontline staff have no access to the Internet (if you missed it, CCC’s latest research explains why this isn’t such a wise idea from an employee performance and engagement perspective).  Given the trend toward more customers going online and the large number of customers calling because they can’t find information on the web, this would be a good issue to put on the agenda for your next leadership meeting.

In the coming weeks, stay tuned for additional 2012 Resolutions to consider from colleague Rick DeLisi on why using the term “THE CUSTOMER” is not a good idea, and from Brad Fager and Judy Wang as well.

Happy New Year.

Our research is finished, resulting in a number of new tools and resources for CCC members.  And while surveys are not the most glamorous of research topics, there were a few interesting points that are, indeed, “need to know.”  So without further delay:

1. You need to know…traditional channels are still king.  Most companies (more than 80%) still survey through traditional phone, web, and IVR channels, despite the introduction of non-traditional channels such as social media and even web chat.  Within the traditional channels, however, we do see a shifting preference toward online channels.  This shift is due to two reasons—the change in the way customers use channels and the evolution of the channel itself.
2. You need to know…surveys are getting shorter.  The percentage of surveys with more than 10 questions fell by 24% in the last six years.  In fact, 75% of surveys are 10 questions or less.  While this may sound innocuous, I think that this is a remarkable achievement on the part of survey writers.  Knowing that there are many parties interested in gathering data via customer surveys and a seemingly infinite number of possible questions to ask, it is hard to limit oneself.  One way to make this task easier is to clearly define—and stick to—a survey goal at the onset (see below for how CCC can help you do that).
3. You need to know…surveys are becoming more immediate. Maybe this is a window into the on-demand, need-it-now nature of our modern society—the percentage of companies surveying customers immediately after the service interaction has increased by 153% in the last six years.
4. You need to know…CCC has a lot of new tools ready for you to use.  Specifically, I’d encourage you to take a look at our:
   1. Survey Goal Identification Guide—Leading companies don’t survey just for the sake of asking questions.  They establish a survey goal and proceed with a purpose.
   2. Post-Contact Customer Survey Audit—How does your current survey measure up?  And how well are you avoiding the most common survey pitfalls?
   3. Survey Channel Evaluation Table—Once your survey is written, how will you choose the best channel for its deployment?
   4. Sample Survey Compilation—We collected 28 surveys from our member companies to demonstrate current survey practices in use across the service industry.

Let us know which of these tools you like best…and how you plan to use them to effectively measure the customer experience in 2012!

Related CCC Resources:

• New Topic Center: Prepare Your Survey (including how to write it and which metrics to track)
• New Topic Center: Deploy Your Survey (including channel-selection tools and FAQs regarding survey frequency)
• New Topic Center: Benchmark Your Survey (including metric benchmarks from CCC’s customer loyalty research and our new survey compilation)

In its flagship store, shop assistants are armed with iPads to help customers with all product inquiries from anywhere in the stores. In addition, shoppers can bypass the long cash register lines, and simply make their purchases directly from the iPads for home delivery. This service, only introduced a week ago, has made up 20% of all sales in that time. As a result, shoppers are able to avoid much of the stress that come with in-store shopping.

In the customer service world, we’re unfortunately no strangers to long queues. Peak times and holiday seasons indicate spikes in call volume and demand, and while call center reps can do much to enhance the customer experience, customer effort can begin much before they are even connected. So, what are some creative ways for organizations to manage lengthy queues and mitigate the ensuing customer effort?

-          Communicate and manage customers’ expectations. One of the more frustrating aspects of waiting is just simply not knowing how long the wait is. As my colleague blogged earlier, transparency is key; customers want to know how long they are being made to wait. As a result, organizations should actively communicate this information with their customers in the queues. Steps like telling customers how long their estimated wait time will be, or telling customers they will be next in line, can do much to reduce customer effort in the queues.

-          Take advantage of the wait time. While it’s never a good idea to make customers wait intentionally, organizations should use this time wisely. Instead of playing repeat music clips—which can quickly get annoying for customers—companies can play messages or alerts that help communicate effort-saving information for customers. For example, take this opportunity to introduce new company services, or proactively alert your customers about upcoming changes. But be careful: don’t make these messages repetitive to customers—find out how long the average wait is, and play each announcement only once in that time.

-          Utilize virtual queue technology. Virtual queuing makes waiting even easier for customers—companies can give customers an option to wait for a callback when the wait is over. This shifts the wait obligation over to the companies, but the downside is that customers may view the callback as intrusive to their schedule.

What do you think? What are some things your company is doing to manage queues and reduce customer effort?

Other Recently Posted Insights from Iconoculture

UK Shoppers Cut Queue

Kindles Now Rent Books

Gap Shoppers Choose Songs

Holiday Shopping Up a Bit

I can’t believe 2011 is almost over.  Seems like just yesterday Lauren was blogging her predictions for 2011 customer service trends…and here we are again.

So, I polled the research team and chatted with a few members to get their perspective on what 2012 has in store for us.  I noticed a few topics that came up several times – some of which are ongoing over the past few years – and others that are newer, including:

• Investment in Technology (especially knowledge management, CRM, and workforce management (WFM))
• Organizational structure changes (primarily from B2B companies as they move from a service organization to center of excellence model)
• Expanding into new service channels (including mobile apps, Facebook, web chat, Twitter, and discussion boards)
• Sales (focused either on increasing cross/up-sell in the service organization or having a closer partnership with the sales team)

As I thought more about these things that service organizations are doing, I wondered to myself what could be driving all of these initiatives.  And I began to see some trends emerge that I think will be crucial in 2012.

So, in 2012 – I think that:

1. You’ll Have More ‘Competitors’ Than Ever Before: Your competitors (in the customer service realm) aren’t just your direct competitors anymore.  Now, your service is being compared to every other customer service interaction the customer has had.  And, many suspect that the customer is developing a ‘gold standard’ for customer service from their best interactions at some of the most progressive companies – and now expect all others to meet this new standard.
2. Your Customers Will Find Even More Advanced Ways to Game the System: Over the past year we have increasingly heard that customers do things like ask for pre-emptive escalations, using Twitter to simply get attention, expect near-instant response times, want to side-step regulations – the list goes on and on.  As customers get increasingly savvy, they’ll continue to find new ways to put you on the defensive when handling their requests.
3. You’ll Need to Proactively Get Ahead of Your Customers: Given these customer expectations, staying one step ahead of the customer will be crucial.  In calls, this means taking the lead to actively guide the customer to resolution – instead of simply reacting to customers.  It can also mean proactive alerts that can educate the customer or eliminate their need to call us.
4. You’ll See A Need for Transparency: As information is more readily available in general, customers will have access to all of the data and information – and they seem to like it.  So, they also want more of it.  Customer can now interact with companies in social media platforms and through other mediums, bringing the customer closer to the company.  And that often means that customers will be looking for transparency and information into your internal processes and workings too.
5. And…Your Reps Will Have the Key to Success: Besides your website, your reps (whether via the phone, web chat, e-mail, or social media) are your customer’s main touchpoint.  They not only need to have a different skill set for this more complex and demanding world, but they also have customer voice that is invaluable to success in the future.  Tap into what they have to say.

So, what does 2012 hold for you?  Share your thoughts!

CCC Related Resources:

1. The Next Frontier of Rep Performance
2. Voice of the Customer
3. Anatomy of a World-Class Contact Center
4. Keeping Pace with Today’s Demanding Customers

CCC has partnered with Iconoculture to bring you the latest in global consumer trends.  Below is our bi-weekly update featuring the latest Iconoculture insights

Mobile apps reach a new level of convenience for users, as Commonwealth bank now launches an app to allow customers to pay “anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

Named Kaching (like the sound of money), this app makes peer-to-peer payments instantly and remotely. Customers of the bank can send money to anyone’s email address, mobile number, or even Facebook account. The recipient then has to get a unique code to complete the transfer, and unclaimed funds will be refunded to the payer after two weeks.

This app is just the latest innovation in mobile, and as this technology evolves, consumers are looking to it more than ever for ways to save time and hassle. So of course we wonder– what does this mean for customer service? What implications will mobile technology have on for customer and companies? Here are some of our guesses:

For the customer:

Customers likely will rely on mobile for even more instant service. Instead of waiting to speak with a reps or logging onto a web’s chat service, customers might want to be able to use their mobile device to text and receive instant support. With companies like ChaCha responding to customer texts with live agents, the future of customer service might mean getting immediate support and assistance—all with a simple text.

Customers may also have more privacy concerns. While location-based services offer convenience, many customers are wary of sharing too much. In fact, a survey by Iconoculture discovered that only 10% of consumers had prior experience with location-based services, and 41% of participants expressed zero interest in using location-based services. So while mobile might be offering a plethora of new services, it seems like many customers are still having hang-ups with privacy.

For the company:

Lots of questions are still unanswered, as companies think about entering this terrain. How will customers use mobile as a service channel, and what does it mean for volume in other channels? Will backend coordination change, and do front line reps have to be trained to a new skill set? And what about the service itself– will customers have set expectations going into this space, or should companies actually manage and change them? These—and a few more—topics will be explored in our research in the coming year, and I think soon we’ll be having some answers to these questions.

What do you think? Will improvements in mobile technology bring significant changes to the customer service world? What predictions do you have for this channel —and what will your company do to prepare?

Related CCC Research:

Migrate Customers to Self-Service

Cost Savings Customers Want

Customer Channel Preferences Survey

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UK App Simplifies Buying

EU online shopping law

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