This is the second in a two-part series about the importance of web ownership…earlier we explored WHY your support page is important, and here we will tell you HOW you can get that ownership…

I recently blogged about the importance of your support page, and gave you three reasons why you should be showing it a little love. (As a brief recap, the page is important because your customers love online service, there are huge cost savings, and poorly designed pages drive disloyalty.)

We noticed though, in 2009, that the “love” for these pages seemed to be missing, and service teams suffered from a lack of web ownership. But we are wondering now if that trend has changed over the years, and so we asked you about your relationship with the web page today.

And the results seem fairly encouraging. The vast majority (over 70% of our members) say that they have at least a modest level of ownership over the support page, with 31% saying that they have gained that control within the past few years. Only 29% of members said they had little to no ownership over that page because another team is in charge of content and design changes.

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This is the first in a two-part series about the importance of web ownership…here we explore WHY your support page is important, and next we will explore the HOW you can get that ownership…

In 2009 when we asked service teams about web ownership, it seemed that they had very little. Changes made to the content and design of the page fell outside the purview of the service team, and there was a weak relationship between what the service team wanted and what the support page actually looked like.

We dug a little deeper, and found out the reasoning behind this lack of ownership: companies thought that customers preferred phone 2.5 times more to web self-service, and less than 16% thought that customer preferences had already shifted towards the web. As a result, 63% of companies said they had not made any recent web self-service initiatives.

But that was more than three years ago, and over that time, companies have learned a few important lessons about the web. Specifically, here are three reasons why support pages are so important:

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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?

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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.

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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 »