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By Oscar A. Alban
As call centers have evolved over the past several
years into multimedia contact centers, companies
have invested a wealth of time, resources and
dollars building a true multi-channel business
strategy. The ability to achieve consistently
high service standards across these mediums -
including the telephone, Web chat and email -
have led organizations to re-think the training,
as well as the processes, they've put in place
to equip their staff for success. Now, however,
a powerful, around-the-clock, easy-to-access channel
is taking companies to a new level in the world
of e-business. The Web, as a service channel,
has been in place for some time in the majority
of organizations, but has never been fully leveraged
for its ability to cut costs, increase revenue
and serve as a one-stop-shop. It's one that many
have been forced to avoid while focusing on other
such evolving channels as chat and email. However,
it holds great opportunities for those who can
use it to their sales, marketing and service advantage
- especially in the areas of increased revenue
and reduced costs. Web self-service continues
to emerge as the most cost-effective customer
touch point available today, averaging $0.35 per
contact.
In today's day and age, more and more customers
want to "help themselves" to research and gather
information, find answers to their questions,
and purchase goods and services. Increased traffic
to this channel has caught most organizations'
attention as customers flock to the Web to "serve
themselves." As a growing phenomenon, analysts
point to the enormous opportunities the Web holds.
In fact, they're already predicting the number
of individuals seeking on-line customer service
will more than double, approaching 70 million,
by 2005.
In essence, organizations must embrace the concept
of "many channels, one customer." Consumers have
a choice in how they wish to do business … and
companies must be prepared to meet their expectations.
This need is already realized by many forward-thinking
organizations. In fact, a recent Yankee Group
study indicates that companies consider the deployment
of Web-based self-service options a crucial priority
in their future customer care plans. In its report,
it cited 47 percent of contact center managers
ranked Web self-service as their top budget priority
in 2002.
Due to increased competition and the fact that
consumers can easily click a competitor's Web
site to fulfill their needs, companies must place
a renewed focus on the power of the Web. Consumer
push, along with the competitive nature of business,
has made it an imperative for organizations to
have a Web presence - and a strong one at that.
For some, the pressures to implement a site quickly
have overshadowed taking the time to really think
out their e-business goals and the measurements
necessary to ensure those lofty metrics were achieved.
What for some may have started out as having a
simple on-line presence has now evolved into a
source that is expected to house vast loads of
consumer information, service options and sales
capabilities. Not all companies are using this
powerful resource to its fullest potential - and
many don't even know how to implement needed change.
Most don't have an understanding of how their
site is perceived and used by consumers - the
true influencers that can drive their revenue
and significantly lower their costs by simply
"serving themselves."
Those in call centers have faced this challenge
in the past - and many have successfully countered
it by implementing a quality monitoring program
to evaluate not only agent performance - the ability
to meet customer needs, demonstrate product/service
knowledge and up-sell/cross-sell to drive revenue
- but also to gauge the impact and effectiveness
of the business processes that have been set up,
and how well their technology resources - like
their CRM system - are being utilized. Capturing
and analyzing actual customer interactions has
proven its value in the contact center. Now, companies
are seeking to extend that very same success to
the Web.
While Web initiatives have historically been
a function of the IT and marketing departments,
increasingly contact centers are taking the lead
in managing the self-service revenue channel to
ensure the Web serves as a profitable, consistent
service media. Typically, calls initiated through
toll-free numbers and Web-based "contact me" requests
are routed to the contact center - making it the
logical choice for management of this touch point.
Who better knows the answers to consumers' most
frequently asked questions that those fielding
the customer requests directly? This alone makes
those in the contact center the best-equipped
resources to help companies determine what FAQs
in scripts, as well as on the Web, should look
like. By applying the quality monitoring principles
used in the call center in a Web environment,
companies can extend consistency and quality of
service to all channels. Just as with telephone
calls, now organizations can use advanced technology
to capture and review samples of actual customer
experiences in order to identify clear steps for
improving Web effectiveness. Taking the guesswork
out of how visitors interact on a site, companies
can improve service through better self-help,
as well as focus on keeping site design and performance
on track.
Capturing samples of customers navigating the
Web and then graphically replaying them can proactively
identify and enhance the customer self-service
experience. Using quality monitoring and its key
functionality, such as advanced "business rules"
recording, companies can pre-determine the types
of contacts they wish to capture on their sites,
and then measure how well they're performing against
customer and business-focused goals, as well as
consistency standards. In some cases, that may
be recording all interactions that result in the
sale of new product or particular campaign. In
others, a company may wish to capture all contacts
that result in the selection of the "call me"
button - an action that is defined by consumer
frustration and driven by the inability to find
the information they need - or the point at which
a consumer abandons his/her loaded shopping cart.
In this instance, however, the price of the once
cost-effective self-service interaction has now
skyrocketed to the most costly medium - communication
with a live customer sales/service representative
(CSR) by telephone. Moving forward, companies
can avoid this scenario by simply capturing samples
of what their visitors are trying to achieve …
and then taking the actions needed in advance
to ensure obstacles, roadblocks and difficulties
are eliminated.
Quality monitoring for Web self-service is designed
to help eliminate the speculation around what
consumers are trying to do by showing how they're
actually doing it. With a view of how visitors
interact with a site, contact center and enterprise
management can find out first-hand:
- How well customers navigated the site
- What information they were looking for, and
how easy it was to find
- Whether the site housed the right content,
in the right place
- How easy it was to receive service, locate/update
information, fill out an application or make
a payment
- How well the checkout process worked; ? When,
where and why error messages occurred, as well
as broken Web links
- What actions leads consumers to abandon their
shopping carts
- What sequence of events led them to click
the "call me" button, in lieu of continuing
to serve themselves
Companies engaged in e-business initiatives already
have access to Web metrics that provide quantitative
assessments for measuring Web effectiveness, such
as the number of clicks a site receives. However,
to truly enhance the customer experience and ensure
the Web is an easy-to-use profitable medium, companies
need much more analysis.
- What pages did they visit?
- What information were they looking for?
- Which products did they select?
- And in what order did all of these movements
on the Web take place?
- Did their Web user experiences flow well from
a design, content and navigation perspective?
- Is this channel proving to be a profitable
medium for the organization, as well as an easy
medium for consumers to track information, receive
service assistance and purchases products?
All of this information serves as a form of intelligence
that helps an organization react in a positive
manner to consumers' buying patterns. Existing
software provides little perspective into visitor
intent, end user behavior and visual flow - which
is where Web self-service monitoring really comes
into play.
Click stream analysis through Web tools offers
some basic and important reporting. But it doesn't
get to the heart of the customer's experience.
Web activity statistics and the ability to drill-down
and replay a visitor's experience offer two different
sets of data and insight. By monitoring a company's
Web site and storing recorded samples of visitors'
sessions, contact center management can gain powerful
perspective into the content, navigation, purchasing
and IT requirements needed to ensure a successful
customer experience. Coupled with advanced monitoring
technology that enables the contact center to
share this insight with other departments in the
organization, the contact center can work in tandem
with IT, marketing, product development and engineering,
for example, to make necessary adjustments, as
well as enable them to see customer experiences
first-hand. Measuring self-service effectiveness
helps companies eliminate the speculation surrounding
what their customers are trying to accomplish.
Companies need a targeted solution for evaluating
Web site customer satisfaction, a critical component
of Web site effectiveness. Recorded customer interactions
can reveal consumer intentions as they show what
visitors were trying to do when they called the
telephone number provided, selected the "call
me" button, initiated a Web chat, sent an email
or abandoned their shopping cart. As Web initiatives
evolve, measurements must follow suit to include
qualitative assessments pinpointing the customer
experience. This evolution intersects quantitative
data with observed user behavior gathered through
qualitative means.
In addition to meeting customer needs on the Web,
companies stand to benefit significantly from
an effective site and e-business strategy. Moving
potential telephone calls to Web self-service
results in an average savings of $5 per contact
when compared to telephone contacts. Web self-service
interactions average about $0.35 per contact,
whereas calls into a live CSR average $5.50, with
the range spanning to up to $40 per call.
For consumers who can't find what they need when
serving themselves on-line, the result to a company
can damaging - equating to lost revenue. Worse
yet, customers could become so frustrated that
they opt to have their sales/service needs handled
through another vendor's site or center. In the
end, Web-based customer self-service offers tremendous
potential for companies to build customer satisfaction.
In a day and age when the competition is only
a click away, the time to start taking action
to implement and improve self-service channels
into the customer service function is now. Capturing
real-life Web visitor scenarios can not only strengthen
the end-user experience by fine-tuning site design,
navigation, content and ease-of use, it also can
drive company revenue, decrease operational costs
and heighten customer loyalty and repeat business.
To have an effective, efficient and, above all,
user-friendly encounter is unique - but very attainable!
Oscar A. Alban serves as principal, market consultant
for Witness Systems, a global provider of multimedia
customer interaction recording, performance analysis
and e-learning management software that enables
companies to optimize their customer relationships.
This article was originally published in the May
2002 issue of the Customer Interaction Solutions
Magazine.
©2000-2003, Witness Systems, Inc. All Rights
Reserved Worldwide.
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