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.

• Proactive messages that pre-empt inbound calls
• Proactive messages that increase the utilization of products and services

Since we have already highlighted how companies in developed markets are using these two kinds of value-added alerts in our research, I thought it’d be interesting to see similar execution in emerging economies. Here are my favorite three uses of value-added messages from India.

1)      Cellular Operators’ International Roaming Notifications: Most Indian consumers travelling internationally tend to switch off their cellular data plans or don’t take calls on their local number since they’re wary of a hefty bill. To counter this trend, cellular operators in India are planning to offer real-time proactive alerts to customers providing updates on usage in terms of money, airtime, and bandwidth consumed while roaming internationally. Operators in other Asian markets such as China, Japan, and Korea have already started using this solution.

I like it because: Customers and business both win. The value-added usage alerts allow customers to use their local numbers but still remain in control of costs, while the businesses benefit through increased use of international roaming.

2)      HSBC India’s Proactive E-mail Messages:  HSBC India is increasingly focusing on driving Internet banking penetration and utilization. A component of the strategy includes using proactive notifications to turn dormant internet banking users into active users. HSBC sends targeted e-mails to those customers who have not used Internet banking in a defined time period. The e-mail—the subject of which is simply ‘We Miss You Online’—provides phone banking contact numbers to allow customers to retrieve forgotten usernames and passwords, as well as a convenient link to learn about Internet banking features and benefits.

I like it because: HSBC ensures that the value-added message is meaningful to customers using analytics. The bank sends the message only to identified customers whose Internet use is dormant, instead of sending the same message en masse. I also like the fact that the value-added message is not something ‘extra’ or ‘good-to-have’ but an important component of its strategy.

3)   Ferns N Petals’ Proactive Problem Solving Pre-empts Calls:  And finally, here’s a personal example that blew me away. A few days ago, I was placing an order for a bouquet of flowers to send to my mom on her birthday on the website Ferns N Petals, a popular flower retailer in India. I added my bouquet to the online shopping cart and filled in the details of when and where the flowers needed to be delivered. I was on the payments page, entering my credit card details, when my phone rang. The call was from Ferns N Petals: the lady on the other end of the line knew I was trying to place an order, but there was a problem with the payment gateway. Since the order wouldn’t go through online, could she take the order on the phone?

I like it because: Ferns N Petals stepped in to solve my problem — even before I knew I had an issue! Given my past purchasing experience, I know I’ll be logging on to the site for my future purchases too. The benefit to the company? Ferns N Petals created tangible value for itself by pre-empting inbound calls, and—at the very least—prevented lost business from abandoned shopping carts.

So, how are you leveraging value-added contact to create value for your customers?

Related CCC Resources

• Proactive Value-Added Contact
• Mechanics of Implementing Proactive Contact
• Proactive Contact to Pre-Empt Initial Calls and Callback

Rep scorecards.  

Let it begin:

Pete: Issue resolution absolutely belongs on the rep scorecard.  Why?  Well, for one thing, the most important thing to a customer is issue resolution.  It’s more than twice as important as ASA or AHT and, when you think about the primary role of a service rep isn’t it to provide answers to customers’ questions?  I know you’re nodding your head right now, so go ahead and admit that we should include resolution on our reps’ scorecards.

Lauren: I can concede that we should measure issue resolution—and that it is the most important thing to customers.  But, I think that before companies can make the leap in holding reps accountable, they must evaluate all of the things that are currently in place that hinder frontline ability to achieve FCR.  For example, handcuffing reps with AHT restrictions or the inability to truly solve ALL customer problems means that companies are (unintentionally) putting up roadblocks on the path to FCR.  As a result, how is it fair to hold staff accountable to a metric that isn’t fully within their control?

Pete: So you wanna play the ‘fair’ game, huh?  Well, agents could hide behind the ‘fair/unfair’ question forever, but let’s not do that; let’s work with what we have, which is definitive proof that customers want issue resolution above all else, so we should be measuring them for FCR (and holding them accountable, too!).  And I agree that service leaders should stop holding reps accountable for AHT, but let’s not let that prevent them from holding reps accountable for what really matters: issue resolution.         

Lauren: So maybe the question is not “if”, but “how” then.  Companies that want to hold reps individually accountable for FCR should first assess what is within the control of the rep—and measure those things.  And part of it would certainly include the customer’s opinion.  Maybe the best thing to do is to ask the customer, “was the rep committed to resolving your issue?”  This way, rep empowerment (or lack thereof) is not an issue.  That said, the one downfall I see here is then we may find reps hiding behind company policy. 

Pete: Well, you just made my point for me!  In truth, measuring issue resolution at the company-level is a challenge for most organizations, so I can understand how reps may feel less than empowered in some situations.  How about an approach where both “commitment to resolve” and “resolution” are asked?  I hate to compromise so early in the debate, but this is the season of giving, after all, right?

Lauren: Yes…’tis the season!  I like the idea of measuring both “commitment to resolve” and “resolution”…but I’d recommend keeping that “resolution” metric a) at a company-level and b) only as one indicator of issue resolution performance.  Using a two-pronged approach to issue resolution measurement—in which customers are asked and companies internally track callbacks—would be ideal.

So there you have it.  Now it’s your turn … what’s the right choice for your organization?  Let us know in the comment section.

Related CCC Resources:

1)      Measure Issue Resolution – Read CCC’s take on the best approaches to measuring Issue resolution.

• Determine which issue resolution metric is best for you | Learn More (B2C) | Learn More (B2B)

2)     Want to Improve Issue Resolution?

• Resolve next likely customers issues during the intial contact | See how Bell Canada did it
• Adapt the service experience to varying customer personality types | See how Bradford & Bingley did it

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 available now on the CCC site.

The rise of location-based daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial reflect an increasing customer focus on local products and services. According to Google, 20% of all PC-based internet searches are local in nature. On mobile phones, the number is as high as 33%.

And that’s not all. From local deals to local food, customers are increasingly using the web to interact with businesses right outside their doorsteps.

This is good news for retailers – many have started to capitalize on the shift to local consciousness. Walmart, for example, recently launched a “My Local Walmart” app that allows Facebook users to connect with local stores. Accessed through the store’s Facebook page, shoppers can input their zip code and “Like” their local store to get promotion details, event information, and region-specific product offers. Walmart is also working on a feature that will let shoppers use the app to interact with area sales associates.

By using social media tools to personalize (and “localize”) customers’ experiences, Walmart is making its large brand feel smaller and more manageable.  The app is also helping the company surface opportunities for value-added contact that can build customer loyalty – specifically by providing customers with local product offers and event information in the hopes of driving them to area stores.

Customer service organizations can learn from this approach. Many use proactive contact to avoid customer calls, but often overlook opportunities to increase revenue through value-added messaging. When used correctly, proactive value-added contact can improve the customer experience and lower customer effort.

Walgreens, for example, recognized that customers who interact with the company in more than one channel were three times more valuable than customers who interacted in just one channel. So, as part of a new multi-channel customer loyalty strategy, Walgreens launched a suite of mobile pharmacy services – including a “Refill by Scan” mobile app, a personalized customer prescription history report, and opt-in prescription text alerts. The company is also planning to launch a pilot to give customers the option to refill a prescription just by responding to a text alert.

Through this strategy, Walgreens successfully incorporates its services in a customer’s life by making local pharmacy services both easy and convenient.

Do you use value-added proactive contact to surface opportunities to increase customer usage of your products?  Tell us below!

Relevant CCC Research

• Proactive Contact for Critical Issues
• Proactive Value-Added Contact
• Social Media Topic Center

Other Recently Posted Insights from Iconoculture:

• Online Banking? Meh. Let’s Talk About Mobile Payments!
• Consumers Can Review Clarimed Ratings Before Making Health Decisions
• Criminals on the Prowl on Social Networking Sites
• Rail Passengers Can Show Cellphone Screenshot of Ticket Instead of Printouts
• Walmart App Helps Facebookers Connect With Their Local Stores

Given the buzz around proactive service over the last few years, it’s easy to imagine that most companies proactively provide information and solutions to customers for critical issues as a minimum service standard. However, CCC’s latest research on proactive contact and alerts indicates that 45% of companies do not leverage proactive contact, even for critical issues. But maintaining a strictly reactive service strategy can cause an influx of costly inbound calls, negative publicity, and customer effort.

So, if you’re trying to move away from reactive ‘firefighting’ to proactive service, what are the things that you need to keep in mind?

Identify ‘critical’ issues for proactive contact
Over-contacting customers is likely to do more harm than good, by either confusing customers and leading to unintended inbound calls, or annoying customers with irrelevant contact.

To avoid this, member companies that we’ve learned from recommend categorizing events as ‘critical’ only if failure to proactively contact customers is likely to cause significant inbound calls and/or significant negative word of mouth. For example, one organization does not proactively alert customers of ALL issues – instead it uses three criteria to identify if proactive messaging is warranted.

In addition to providing critical information, think about how you can proactively help the customer solve the issue, if possible. So, when extreme weather forced Air New Zealand to cancel flights recently, it not only waived fees to rebook tickets for affected customers but also offered a variety of rebooking options. Customers could take the next flight out for free, reschedule their flight, fly to another destination, or ask for a refund or credit. Air New Zealand’s approach helped meet the needs of individual customers, improving the customer experience in an otherwise frustrating situation.

Don’t delay communication of critical messages
After identifying that the critical contact is indeed warranted, ensure that you don’t delay communicating the initial message to customers, or in providing updates. While companies prefer automated channels such as SMS or automated calls since they can quickly scale-up critical messages, our research indicates that companies should also consider size and value of targeted customer segments in determining the channel choice. Use this decision tool to identify the best-fit channel for your critical message.

Be concise, but clear
Make sure that the message is not overly verbose or confusing. But…although concise scripting is a must, you do need to include sufficient details to fulfill customers’ needs and avoid callbacks. Moreover, provide assurance to customers that they can ask questions or find further information via links to self-service (ideally) or via a provided contact number.

So, what’s the bottom line? Don’t wait for the customer to call you, leave you, or tell their extended social circle of their poor service experience. Instead – proactively provide them not only information, but solutions as well.

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 available now on the CCC site.

What if you found out your neighbor spends less money on his energy bill than you? Would you conserve?

OPower sure hopes so. The software company has partnered with several utilities to send homeowners a report card that tracks their home energy use and compares it with that of 100 nearby households. Colorful charts show customers how their energy use compares with the neighborhood’s average, as well as with its most efficient users.  Smiley faces are used as a success measure – so if you get two smiley faces, you know you’re the most energy savvy home on the block.

If you’re underperforming, the report card offers tips, adjusted for peak and off-peak seasons, on how to reduce energy consumption. By encouraging a neighborhood contest, customers have incentive to act on the advice.

Sure, the idea spurs competition and motivates energy conservation. But how does this impact the contact center?

Customers are likely to call utilities providers when they receive their energy bills if the bill is unexpectedly high. These moments may be tense: homeowners may not remember how much energy they used in the last month or they might perceive the bill to be too high. The result? They call the utility company to complain.

Companies can proactively avoid complaint calls by alerting customers at critical moments.  For instance, say a customer’s energy use exceeds a certain benchmark before the end of the billing period. The utility can alert the customer at that moment so the increased consumption doesn’t come as a shock when the bill arrives.  By knowing ahead of time, a customer has time to adjust energy use and won’t be as likely to place a complaint call.

OPower’s report card is, in many ways, a type of proactive alert. It gives customers information about their energy consumption over time so they know exactly how their bill is calculated. It also gives customers control over the process: by following conservation tips and imitating their energy-efficient neighbors, customers are motivated to save money each month.

Can you think of other ways this idea can impact the service organization? Can this story reach beyond the utilities industry?

Other Recently Posted Insights from Iconoculture:

• Hospitals Study Disney
• The Downturn and Service
• The Neighbor’s Power Bill
• Mayo Clinic at the Mall
• India: Personal FS Service

However, our latest research indicates that, implemented correctly, value-added proactive contact can unlock substantial efficiency and effectiveness gains for the business, and also improve customer experience and lower customer effort.  That said, implementing value-added contact is complex, since customer preferences of the right contact reason, frequency, and channel can differ widely.  

Here’s how you can make value-added contact relevant to the customer and profitable for the business:

Identify the right reason to contact the customer
Companies find it hard to identify the right proactive contact opportunities. For instance, one member company that we spoke to identified 60 possible instances in the customer purchase-to-use cycle of a bundled product offering at which they could potentially send proactive information. So…which of these were meaningful opportunities, and which were irrelevant?

Our research found that two kinds of proactive messages are effective: messages that pre-empt calls and messages that increase utilization of products and services.

Less is more…avoid over-contacting the customer
Over-contacting customers can annoy customers or cause them to ignore messages from you altogether. To avoid overwhelming customers, we suggest that you gather customer preferences for recurring alerts, and surface customer receptivity of point-in-time messages by examining recent contact history. Use this decision tree to ensure the right frequency of proactive messages.

The ‘right’ channel depends on the situation
The best channel for sending the value-added message is not necessarily the customer’s preferred channel. We recommend considering audience characteristics, frequency of the message and complexity of information, to determine the right channel for not only the customer, but the issue itself.

Use CCC’s decision tool to identify the right channel for different value-added service offerings.

So, are you using value-added proactive contact to create a win-win situation for your customers and your business?  Let us know how in the comments below.

Related CCC Resources:

• Proactive Value-Added Contact
• Mechanics of Implementing Proactive Contact
• Proactive Contact to Pre-Empt Initial Calls and Callback

Now there are many ways to optimize issue resolution and case closure, something CCC has researched extensively: measuring resolution more effectively, improving the knowledge base, and even revising staff incentives, among other strategies.  Admittedly, though, all of these are difficult to change and require investment to optimize.

But we recently surfaced an opportunity we believe most companies have overlooked.  The idea comes from a U.S. operations of a global manufacturing conglomerate, which recently decreased time to resolution 33% and improved issue resolution 26% over one month.  (Yes, you read that correctly.)

What the company realized is that it’s not that staff aren’t motivated to resolve issues, it’s that they don’t always know how to resolve issues.  And even with an effective knowledge base, sometimes it’s hard for staff to know where to start.

Its solution? Regularly gather frontline staff together to collaborate and identify solutions to close unresolved issues, eliminating backlog and defining best practices for emerging issues.  CCC Members, learn more here.

Now the key differentiator here is not that the idea is so new—many companies establish periodic “war rooms” to gather the best minds and resolve issues—but it’s really the execution of the idea.

In fact, the company has discovered a couple of smart principles that really keep staff focused on issue resolution and speed to resolution, something incentives and better knowledge bases alone could never do:

• The sessions focus on recent trends—Leadership selects the topics for discussion based on issues with high rates of non-resolution.  The intent here is to identify emerging topics where there is a demand for answers and be able to immediately apply those answers.
• Peer subject matter experts, not leadership, facilitate the sessions—The limitation of leadership is that it typically does not have the expertise to resolve complex customer issues.  Instead, subject matter experts can create productive dialogue and promote best practice sharing.

And of course the key is that once the sessions end, staff have better information to resolve the outstanding issues, and the new information is fed back to the knowledge base.

The company’s finding is consistent with CCC’s latest research indicating that developing strong peer support networks is actually a primary driver of frontline performance.  CCC Members, to learn more, please click here to read our latest research on peer support.

I’ve shared this idea with many B2B companies, and I can tell you that the interest is substantial.  In fact, we know of several organizations that are working to determine how to pilot this.  This is just one more example of how a couple of tweaks to an established concept can make results go from good to great.

What other simple ideas has your company implemented to improve issue resolution scores?

CCC Related Resources:

• Rep-Led Issue Resolution Collaboration Sessions
• Improving Issue Resolution Performance
• Breaking the Issue Resolution Barrier
• CCC Issue Resolution Measurement Toolkit
• Developing Strong Staff Peer Support Networks

Last year, my colleague Lara Ponomareff talked about how knowledge management processes and people—not just the technology—lead to sustainable knowledge management. She followed up the post with a write up on failure points in knowledge management efforts. A quick recap is that there are four key failure points—

1. poor knowledge generation channels,
2. poor knowledge usability,
3. lack of knowledge-related feedback, and
4. unclear knowledge management priorities.

In today’s post, we’ll examine how Oracle addressed those failure points in their successful strategy to sustain and scale knowledge management efforts.

Historically, more than 80% of Oracle’s knowledge base was accessed on a monthly basis, creating high demands for quality knowledge. However, traditional centralized knowledge management processes didn’t scale well due to Oracle’s large number of products and increasing product complexity. This required the company to decentralize knowledge efforts and make knowledge management everyone’s responsibility. In doing so, Oracle:

• Encouraged frontline staff participation in the “knowledge community” by embedding knowledge management into staff career paths
• Monitored individual involvement in creating knowledge and providing actionable feedback by implementing individual contribution metrics
• Prioritized knowledge management efforts by tracking metrics on knowledge use and value through a centralized project plan

As a result of this exercise, Oracle increased overall “knowledge health” by 20% and individual staff participation in knowledge efforts by 15%. These improvements helped Oracle off-load a significant portion of service volume to self-service knowledge bases, ultimately contributing to an estimated US$195 million in cost savings from avoided calls.

CCC Members: We have pulled out the key insights from Oracle’s practice in a more detailed summary here. You can also listen to CCC’s presentation of the Oracle case by accessing the full Webinar replay here.

Related CCC Resources:

• Creating Sustainable Knowledge Management
• Knowledge Management Maturity Assessment
• Knowledge-Base Desktop Redesign

But given limited investment resources, the question remains which channels should be prioritized.  Some colleagues recently discussed the value of social media as a channel, but here we want to discuss e-mail and chat specifically.  In question: If you had to choose just one, is e-mail or chat the better investment?

Below my colleague, Matt Lind, and I discuss our perspectives.

Dalia:

Here are the facts from CCC’s customer channel preferences analysis:

• 5% of customers prefer using e-mail to contact service and support; 4% of customers prefer chat (compared to 52% of customers who prefer Web and 33% of customers who prefer phone).
• 47% of customers are confident they can resolve their issues via e-mail; 38% of customers are confident in chat (compared to 63% who are confident in resolving issues via the Web and 70% who are confident in resolving issues over the phone.

Given this data, and the fact that it is very simple to write an e-mail, one doesn’t have to sit in one place waiting for resolution, and an electronic paper trail exists (one doesn’t have to doubt whether the message was received), I think e-mail is the better investment.

Not to mention that in certain cultures (e.g., Japan) and certain business models (e.g., B2B customers—11% of B2B customers prefer using e-mail to handle requests v. 2% who prefer chat) really demand e-mail, e-mail is very much the preferred channel, if not something that is expected.

Matt:

I really want to believe that e-mail is a more effective channel (I personally love the channel), but we also know that e-mail resolution rates are quite poor—when you look at actual customer behavior, you find that only 36% of customers resolve their issues in one e-mail.  In fact, on average, customers send 2.14 e-mails to resolve their issues.

The benefit of chat is the opportunity to get in-the-moment clarification.  More often than not, customers write e-mails that generally appropriately identify the issue at hand, but the onus is on the customer to know what information is key to include.  If the customer omits something, then staff must initiate a back-and-forth to collect more information to resolve the issue.  With chat, this can be done instantaneously.  With e-mail, it’s a more protracted process.

And that has huge implications on cost to serve (if you want to model this for your company, use CCC’s E-mail Cost Efficiency Calculator) and customer loyalty.

Dalia:

I do agree that chat has the potential to be very effective, but I still think it’s not the e-mail channel itself that is flawed, but rather the management of the channel.  Too often organizations de-prioritize the channel, somehow perceiving e-mails to be less urgent than phone calls.  Ensuring the right technology such as an e-mail management system is in place is important, as is ensuring staff have the right skills for e-mail, but perhaps most important: Are you signaling to customers what is and is not well-suited for e-mail, and are you proactively calling customers when e-mail becomes inefficient?

Matt:

In the ideal world, I think you’re right that companies could call customers back when e-mail is not the most effective channel for resolution, but because of large contact volumes, I think organizations have a hard time making outbound calls for most issues.  This idea would work well in a B2B environment, but potentially becomes impractical in other environments.

And that’s why I think chat is so beneficial—it is much easier to put customers on the right path while they are still in the same channel in the moment—if necessary, you can push relevant Web links to the customer and you can offer click-to-call so the customer receives a phone call in the moment.

Furthermore, calling a customer who has e-mailed is not particularly dependable as it can be difficult to catch a customer in the moment.  Chat is just more efficient from that perspective—both parties are ready to talk.

Dalia:

Relevant points, though a lot of the same things could occur in e-mail as well—staff can include links to the Web site or a phone number to immediately contact someone….

I think the larger issue here is most organizations simply haven’t optimized their use of e-mail, which admittedly is very challenging to do, and they’re seeing chat as a quicker fix.

Matt:

I think that’s true—and we certainly know that chat is not a quick fix.  But companies have offered e-mail as a communication channel for a long time and have had multiple opportunities to optimize it and most simply have not done so.

***

The conversation could obviously continue a lot longer, but What is your perspective?: Is e-mail or chat the better investment?  Why?

CCC Related Resources:

1. Multi-Channel Customer Preference Data

2. E-mail Cost Efficiency Calculator

3. Managing Service Organization E-mail Volume

4. NEW: IVR Resource Center