If you own a smartphone, tablet, or laptop computer (okay, that should cover just about everybody), then you’re likely familiar with the slick video-recording capabilities that now come standard on these gadgets. And if you’re like me, you’ve been wowed at the ability of face-to-face video conferencing to bridge physical limitations, seemingly bringing people much closer together, even if only in a ‘virtual’ sense.

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. Read More »

Have you ever been browsing the Internet for self-service answers or awaiting an e-mail response from customer support, when instead you decide to turn to your social media chat platform of choice (e.g., Facebook, Google Chat, AOL Instant Messenger) to find a real-time answer from (who else)—your online friends! With the technology’s popularity expected to grow to 1.7 billion users by 2013, companies too are exploring (and, in many cases, already trying out) web chat as a customer support channel to save on phone and e-mail costs while capitalizing on the customers’ growing comfort with online chat in general.

And while chat can be a great tool to interact with friends, does it truly fulfill its promise of cost-savings and improved online customer experience as a service and support channel? Read More »

Anyone else curious to know what those squiggly box things are?  Yeah, me too.  Turns out they’re called QR codes (that’s, Quick Response) and they’re origin can be traced to the mid 90s Japan when they were used for internal tracking of materials.  Since then the QR code technology has been opened to the masses and is most commonly used today for marketing purposes.

But can QR codes effectively be used in service?

Read More »

E-mail is commonly used by customers for a plethora of reasons–general inquiries, account information, escalations, and much more. It is also considered an essential support channel by many companies today. But is e-mail really helping us provide good service to our customers?

Complaints about long e-mail chains, delayed responses, and unclear (or worse, scripted) information are earning e-mail a reputation of being ineffective in issue resolution. Indeed, CCC data shows that customers lack confidence in this channel’s issue resolution capabilities when compared to other channels such as phone or web self-service.

That said, with almost 1.9 billion e-mail users worldwide and 480 million new e-mail users added in the period 2009-2010, e-mail is a high potential customer support channel. So why are companies struggling to crack the channel? In fact, is it the channel the culprit at all or simply the way companies use it for issue resolution?

CCC’s new research helps companies rethink their e-mail support strategies by focusing on three considerations: Read More »

During my recent search for a new bank, I discovered that several banks now offer a mobile feature that allows customers to make deposits by taking a picture of an endorsed check and sending it to the bank using a smartphone banking app.

And that’s not all.

Banking customers can also use smartphones to pay bills, receive updates and take actions via text message, make transfers, and easily reach service reps.

And although the global mobile banking industry has doubled in recent years and is projected to reach 1.1 billion customers by 2015, sources point out that customers are still very reluctant to adopt mobile banking apps.

A Javelin Strategy & Research report outlines two specific reasons for this:

1. customers don’t see the full value in these apps and
2. they have concerns around information security.  (In fact, between 2009 and 2010, the number of customers who rated mobile banking apps as “unsafe” increased by 54%.)

Does this mean that mobile banking apps are doomed?  Not necessarily.  Banks just need to change the way they position apps to customers to ensure that they give customers what they want.  After all, it wasn’t so long ago that we doubted the staying power of online banking – but the 60% of consumers who now bank on the Web prove that self-service shifts are inevitable.

Read More »

By Gauri Subramani

This post is the second in a two-part series on bill formatting and paper bills versus online billing.  Read part one here.

When we last left off with billing, we had considered the complexity of changing the format of a paper bill and steps companies can take to make the transition to a new bill layout painless for both customers and contact centers.

With the increasing popularity of self-service and adoption of online platforms for routine processes, many companies have reconsidered channels of bill distribution in addition to bill format and have moved from paper to e-bills.  After all, the Web is the first place that 56% of consumers look to find answers to their customer service questions, and as more people manage their bank accounts and credit cards online, the move from paper to online billing feels like a natural progression.

There are a number of benefits to switching from paper to e-billing.

• Improved cash flow: Electronic payments are faster and thus improve the company’s cash flows and net present value.
• Decreased call volume and improved customer service: Considering that billing questions can account for up to 70% of contact center calls, when customers are able to check their balances and do basic payment adjustments online, call volume drops and reps can spend their time with issues that require their expertise.
• Increased customer satisfaction:  Considering that Generation X and Y-ers think of the Internet as a one-stop shop and perceive paper bills to be relics from another era, online billing is more convenient for them.

The future of billing certainly appears to be online.  So how does your business get there?  Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

You’ve been told that Speech Analytics has the power to mine, categorize, and analyze audio—in turn, helping to boost QA performance, identify opportunities for process improvements, and identify sales leads.

But, does SA actually work?

We recently spoke with CCC members Ann Glover, Director of Business Performance and Quality Global Reservation Services and Customer Care, and Robby Morehead, Specialist in Business Processes at InterContinental Hotels Group, who described how they’ve leveraged Speech Analytics. They offered insights such as:

• Vendor selection: Make sure the vendor offers the right array of functionalities (and this may sound more simplistic than it really is)
• Hidden costs: Have a good sense for how you’re going to use the tool so that you can budget accordingly (rather than deciding along the way that you “need” various add-ons at unanticipated additional charges).

CCC members, learn more about how IHG implements Speech Analytics by reading excerpts from our Q&A with Ann Glover and Robby Morehead.

Related CCC Research:

• Speech Analytics Research Brief
• Vendor Selection Resource Center
• Speech Analytics: Maximizing Your Technology ROI (webinar replay)

On the CCC research team, we’re no strangers to data—in fact, we’re constantly collecting and analyzing all types of data to inform our research studies and help members benchmark their performance. But with more data available today than ever before, companies are increasingly finding themselves in a somewhat ironic position: they actually have more data than they (or more precisely, their systems) can handle.

“Big data”—or data sets so large that they become difficult to work with using typical database management tools—was the focus of a recent report released by The McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

It’s an interesting phenomenon to ponder: essentially, the amount of data we’re collecting is fast outpacing the technology available to analyze it all. We’re reaching a point where the answers to (most) any question are ‘out there’ in the data—we just need to know how and where to find them. Read More »

This post was written by Priyanka Kaushal, a Research Analyst with our broader Sales, Marketing, and Communications research team.

Have you made a substantial investment in Workforce Management (WFM) technology, only to find that your manual forecasts of contact volumes were more accurate than the system-generated forecasts? Or do you find that the rep schedules created through WFM – although efficient – have contributed to staff stress or disengagement?

CCC examined why companies struggle to effectively use Workforce Management technology. Our research found that companies often forecast volumes using WFM with unrefined data inputs, and create schedules to maximize efficiency. Instead, companies need to arm WFM technology with knowledge to increase forecasting accuracy, and create schedules that balance efficiency with employee needs. So how do you get three gears of WFM – forecasting, scheduling and adherence – to work for you?          Read More »

By Corey Stout

We are hearing about the use of wikis more and more at the Customer Contact Council – and it’s not because of Julian Assange and the infamous Wikileaks.

Rather, organizations are looking to leverage wikis to improve their business by fostering greater peer collaboration. (FYI:  Wikipedia’s comprehensive list of wiki software providers.)

And it makes sense. In general, people look to their peers to help address challenges since it’s often easier and faster and people really value and trust peers’ experience.  Thus, live communities, notably wikis, empower reps to provide insightful information about customers and collaborate to share best practices.

Wikis can usefully aggregate the information dispersed in the minds of different people. Just by clicking “Edit This Page,” peers can use wikis to pull together and build on information that can help them do their job – and do their job better. 

Generally speaking, we’ve found that wikis are more useful in larger organizations and in organizations that serve a variety of markets.  In these cases, the benefits of a wiki’s ability to pull in information from across the organization outweigh the costs of staff time needed to curate the wiki.  For smaller organizations or organizations with only a couple key markets, a wiki often isn’t worth the investment required. 

Nonetheless, while wikis can be an effective way to drive organic peer collaboration, they can also be more trouble than they are worth if companies do not use them correctly.

Here are three factors to consider before using wikis as a tool of peer collaboration:

  Read More »