Mitch Lieberman

The Contact Center of the Future

by Mitch Lieberman, on December 16, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

* The future of customer service is agility; the ability to adapt to the changing needs of your customers
* The future of service excellence is differentiation, the ability to create personalized and engaging service experience
* The future of service process is contextual optimization; the capability to coordinate and/or collaborate, internally, while staying focused on supporting customer jobs
* The future of the service desktop is an intuitively designed, content rich, positive user experience
* In the future (now actually) your team needs to provide a faster, superior, efficient service experience every day, to every customer on every channel

A responsive organization is an integrated organization. The simple recipe here is 2 parts people 2 parts process and 1 part technology, all very important ingredients (after all what would fish be without the chips?). I am not convinced that an integrated organization equates to a social organization; but they are kissing cousins and my social business peers might be able to convince me if they believe it to be required. An integrated and coordinated organization are table stakes in order to service the ever more sophisticated, demanding and complex customer. Again, this might equate to be the social customer, that is TBD – but I do not want to get stuck on social this and that. For better or worse, each customer has the expectations of a preferred premium experience.

I started this post with the thought that I was to write a bit of a prediction post for 2012. Thus, it seemed natural to write about the Contact Center of the Future. But, I have two major struggles with the task at hand:

  1. In the Future, there will not be a ‘center’ there will be sets of roles logically aligned and systems physically connected; the people will be everywhere, the data here and there.
  2. The future will obviously include 2012, but it also includes 2013, 2014, etc.,… The point is that 2012 will be part of the journey, but not the endpoint (we are only scratching the surface).

A well-structured, modern contact center allows for the emphasis to be properly placed on helping and engaging with customers; past, present and future. With each type listed, your organization needs to show value and establish trust. The contact center of the future will allow agents to more easily add that human element to each interaction, fostering relationships, and pushing the needle in the right direction. No matter what needle you look at!

A Scenario

As I am writing this, at least in part, on Cyber Monday, I am of course influenced by the latest and greatest of tech toys. I am not yet a fan of 3D viewing in my home, but I suppose all it will take is one grand experience at a friends house and then I will be sold. That of course got me thinking about how video will make its way into the contact center -err, communications hub, or customer service area. There will be a dedicated team for certain industries, where video will begin to make a big impact. Think business to business for auto-manufacturers or heavy equipment. As devices and technology get more complex, it will take better visualization techniques than we have currently to make things work.

Multi-channel and Cross-channel complexities go well beyond simply the scope of customer service, the contact center or marketing – these are company wide issues.

  • Fact: Customers expect to be able to make a purchase using a mobile device
  • Fact: Amazon allows anyone to scan a bar code in a physical store to compare a price
  • Fact: Displaying something in a store is more expensive than storing it in a warehouse
  • Fact: If you are planning to compete on price alone, you will lose

Here is the scenario

Customer A does some research on Google for a new television (the new 3D version I was talking about above). The customer notices that is available at the local Best Buy, around the corner. Since the new 3D glasses are involved, there is some hesitation to simply ‘pull the trigger’ online, as the glasses need the ‘will my wife actually wear these things’ question answered. Customer goes to the store, looks at the unit, tries the glasses on and begins to wander the store to ‘think things though’. Remembering the scanner application he downloaded last week, the customer scans the bar code sees that it is available at Amazon and also reads the reviews. The dilemma: The TV is available on Amazon for $200 less and it can be at the door in 2 days….

Amazon might be cheaper, but do they also have geek squad? Is Customer A confident that when he gets home he is able to mount the television on the wall, connect the wires to new fancy Dolby surround sound and internet devices. What will Amazon do when Customer A sends an email, rings the phone, looks for a forum or post the question on Twitter? Truth be told, I am not sure of those answers, but I do know that Best Buy has all of the these things as well as a contact center. I am not saying Amazon does not, I am just less familiar.

One final thought, the phone is part of the contact center of the future – just sayin’

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Mitch Lieberman

The Phone, It Still Matters in this Social, Cross-Channel World

by Mitch Lieberman, on November 16, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , .

First talked about in 1844, written about again in 1854, patented in 1876, argued about for another 10 years, connected across the US in 1915: The Telephone. We cannot forget the importance of Alexander Graham Bell (and many others, to be fair), a native of Edinburgh, Scotland a short trip from the Ciboodle HQ outside of Glasgow. So, here we are nearly 100 years from that first cross country call and the phone remains relevant, even more important than many communication channels which have come on the scene since.

A Chat With Paul Greenberg

“When push comes to shove, social stuff is still, and even email, is degrees of separation. People are nastier in emails than they ever are in person…Consequently, the real one-on-one interaction is always the telephone” Paul Greenberg

I had a great opportunity to spend a few minutes talking with Paul Greenberg while at the Destination CRM show in NYC. It just so happened that during this time we had a video crew on stand-by and were able to spontaneously capture the moments on film, with excellent lighting of course.

During the emergent phase of Social Communications, the phase we are in right now, the core objective of many social platforms is to go get something done on another platform. To some, this is go read this article, to others; this is please go buy something. In the customer service realm, this is often to shift the communications from a channel that is hard, like email or Twitter, to something synchronous and real-time. It is still too difficult to resolve a personal, complex or sensitive issue on a Facebook wall or in 140 characters.

Multi-channel customer service is the wave the present and we will certainly ride this wave into the future. We will see an increase use of social channels for many different things, but we will hop from one channel to the next (Cross-channel) and make contextual decisions based on many things. In the end, when there is an emotionally charged issue, or an urgent issue such as a service outage, insurance claim, bank issue – in person or face to face communication and the telephone will remain critical to problem resolution for many years to come.

“The phone is ultimately how things will get resolved, if it is big enough”

What do you think? Am I being over simplistic? Too conservative in my approach and thoughts? I invite you to give some feedback and challenge me a bit. If you are bold, take a few minutes and take the survey as part of the research we are conducting with thinkJar.

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Mitch Lieberman

Customer Service Through Social, Is It Worth Doing?

by Mitch Lieberman, on November 13, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , .

It is something many smart people have written about and it ‘feels like’ the right thing to do. Talk about it in a meeting, and you get ‘head nods’ of affirmation. But, we need to ask the tough question to find out where we really stand, as well as ‘why’. I am hoping that you are willing to be part of that process. Along with thinkJar, we are conducting a research project that challenges “Social Customer Service” a bit. Practitioners are invited to participate in the research, first by visiting the Survey (It should take about 10 minutes, tops) and/or participating in a follow-up discussion, if you are ready willing and able.

The research and analysis will help to reveal insights in four key areas:

  • Is the move to customer service using social necessary and beneficial?
  • How to move from ‘traditional’ multi-channel to social multi-channel and cross-channel customer service?
  • Knowledge management and social knowledge must collude, how can they be accomplished?
  • Are communities what make ‘social’ work for customer service? Or is something else required?

Organizations face a variety of challenges, both technical and cultural, when they are considering adopting and emerging customer service processes. Yes, as much as customer service using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Forums and Blogs has been talked about (evangelized, proselytized) on all the aforementioned channels, this is still very much an emergent practice. The survey results, interviews and subsequent analysis will help businesses to navigate the confusing and sometimes misdirected and hyped messages.  Hopefully, if all goes to plan, the results will help the decision making process when it comes to adding and  integrating new social channels effectively. One important debate topic, which the survey hopes to shed light on, is whether or not investments in social customer service is “money well spent.” Everyone’s knee-jerk reaction to this is ‘Of Course’ – but when you ask “why”, the answer is harder, and less consistent.

While Esteban will surely be chiming in with his own thoughts, here is a quick snippet: “We have been theorizing long enough, this is a good opportunity to ask the questions, directly to the practitioners regarding the direction of using social channels for customer service,” said Esteban Kolsky, principal and founder of thinkJar. “Further, this is an opportunity to understand both how the decisions are made and how the outcomes are measured.”  One of the interesting things I have done with the first part of this research is to first isolate the announcement of the survey view email to specific folks and ask my executive peers and account teams to send the request directly. This second wave is view social channels, and I have a theory that the results will be a bit different (we will  be able to segment the data).

The survey will be open for participation through November 23, 2011. If you are not interested in the survey itself, but would like to participate in the research, please reach out and we can arrange a call. Or, if you know of someone else, please take a moment and forward the link above, along. The results will be shared openly in January 2012. Again, the survey link is here we are hoping you are willing to take the time.

(For those who have read my thoughts over the past couple years, you probably know my thoughts on this topic. Even so, it is a valuable exercise to take a hard, objective look to make sure we are headed down the right path!)

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guest-cca

The Connected Customer

by guest-cca, on November 4, 2011, in Guest Blogs and Thought Leadership, about

This is our theme for CCA Convention 2011 but what does it actually mean? One of the biggest changes for organisations to deal with is the reality that relationships are becoming less one-to-one and more one-to-many. For some new organisations built on a blend of social & traditional channels, this may not be such a big challenge. However, for those organisations who have large traditional channel infrastructures in place, providing great service to the connected customer, is more difficult.

A casual glance through some websites about call centres will very quickly lead you to endless views about how things should be improved. One of the biggest gripes is the feeling expressed by some customers, that the organisation is trying to process them quickly rather than solve their problem. When you consider average handling time (AHT) is still used as a measure of performance, then we can understand why this problem arises.

The rise of social and the ability for customers to talk to one another has the potential to be one of the biggest catalysts of change in the way organisations’ structure contact with customers. A difficult issue for many Boards to deal with is that rather than choosing to adopt a strategy of launching social, it is happening all around them. CCA research shows that few organisations have a fully formed strategy to manage and benefit from this new way of communicating. This is in stark contrast to everyday Board decisions where actions & timescales are at their discretion. Of course, Boards can make the decision to capitalise on the opportunity that socials offers them and for many it will be a steep but rewarding journey. Whether they decide to use social to get an inexpensive and instant customer feedback mechanism or more formally, as another sales channel, a strategy for action is critical.

The whole issue of listening to customer feedback is magnified by the advent of new channels and customers talking to each other. Winning organisations will be those who are quick to seize on the opportunities of listening across all of their channels in a consistent fashion and translating the data into useful insights to drive the business forward. There are some great, new technologies in this space and our hope for the future should be that we develop better ways of really listening to customers in order that they feel their contact with us matters and that they trust us with their problems.

CCA Convention is 8-9th November in Glasgow and over those 2 days, 1,000 delegates will take part in the future’s debate, Civic Reception, main Convention and CCA Gala Dinner & Excellence Awards Ceremony. Our venues are prestigious locations around Glasgow, including City Chambers, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and Glasgow Hilton Hotel. Proceedings are being chaired by Nicky Campbell from Radio 5 Live and the Awards Ceremony presented by well-known comedian & actor, Hugh Dennis. CCA Convention prides itself on leading the debate of the future of customer contact and this year’s event is critical to the success of our industry during the most difficult of economic climates.

Anne Marie Forsyth
Chief Executive
CCA – the leading independent authority on contact centre strategies & operations

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Mitch Lieberman

Standardized and Automatic are not the same as Efficient and Consistent

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 31, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , .

Modern customers (aka Social Customer or 21st Century Customer) are demanding, multi-channel and empowered. Your customers, being modern, expect each experience to be positive, efficient and valuable. Finally, there is the desire that the brand experience will be consistent across the different points of interaction. That said, ‘consistent’ should not be confused with “the same” or “standardized” experience. When a customer logs onto a website via their mobile; a 2 inch by 4 inch form factor screen, there is no expectation that the experience will be the same as when this same customer logs on via their 27 inch iMac.

Expectations are funny though, because what this customer expects to accomplish (job to be done) ARE similar across channels. Every business needs to reconcile jobs to be done, customer experience and customer service. Put simply, there is an activity which your customer needs to get done, information to be found or a purchase to be made. Applying business rules and considered processes in front of customer interactions can increase efficiency and add a level of required consistency to each interaction.  Specific to customer service, business rules and process can help a service organization deliver not only consistent communications to their customers, but also personalized ones. The name of the game (if it is a game) is to empower the each agent with the right information, at the right time, in context. In this era, the “360 degree view” might be too much.

Worlds Colliding

In the context of this short article, Business Process Management (BPM) is to be taken at face value.  It is simply what it sounds like; how a business manages processes. Things like how an order happens, how a return happens. When those simple examples are given, you might think about policies and procedures, Visio workflow diagrams and rules engines.  These kinds of activities need to be reproducible and standardized.  But, this view also conjures up visions of command and control and rigidity. Automation might solve your problems, but it may or may not solve your customers problems. Add the modern customer to this discussion; the result is that command and control will not work, it just won’t.  Where is the balance (your balance) between flexibility and effectiveness?

In doing a bit of research, I like some of the thinking being done over at Forrester. In bringing the worlds together, Derek Miers begins to talk about business process as practices, not only a set of procedures. If you consider layers of an organization, yes, the further back you go, the more rigid (procedural) the process needs to be. As you move closer towards the customer, more flexibility is required as processes “are goal-centric and guided, rather than controlling”. Put this together with work that Kate Leggett is doing, with a strong focus on customer service and service experience:

“Companies need to queue, route, and work on every interaction over all communication channels in the same manner, following the company business processes that uphold its brand”.

Bringing it together

The future of exceptional experiences, both in customer service and more general brand interactions is about integrating the data, process and carefully considering and respecting your customer’s time as well as needs. Creating a more effective process is about the efficiency required by your customer, not your back-office team. Creating consistent experiences means that data and information access across and between channels meets the expectations of your customers and makes sense. From a customer service perspective, customer service needs to evolve

The parts of the organization that are positioned to support these customers needs to part of the development process (design and implementation) of the business process practice areas. Sharing a final thought: Traditionally, CRM has been data and record centric. More modern systems and practices are pushing towards process centric CRM. Actually, the right answer is the combination of data-centricity and process-centricity; it is called Customer Centricity.

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Mitch Lieberman

Is the Office of the CMO the Right Place to Drive Customer Engagement?

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 24, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , .

Primary sourced research is valuable, adding one’s own interpretations (which I will) is the added benefit of blogging. The most recent IBM research “From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study” (URL) is a good read. Research based on CMO conversations is arguably meant for a CMOs. As usual, I found myself considering this from a different perspective. The question which kept popping into my head was whether the office of the CMO is the right place to drive the call to action suggested by the report. I am not it sure is, there, I said it. The CMO should be part of the team, but not the leader of the team. I believe that the research needs to be read by others within the organization as well.

The three imperatives identified by the report, in no particular order:

  • Deliver value to empowered customers;
  • Foster lasting connections;
  • Capture value, measure results.

Being brutally honest, I agree with the first, not so sure about the second; at least not in the way the company will make it happen. Finally, while I agree results need to be measured, I am not sure what “capturing value” is about (in this context). The message that keeps hitting the reader over the head is that CMOs are more than a bit nervous regarding the new, cool ‘socially’, stuff and are now concerned about the amount of data coming their way; because of all this new stuff. There is a bit of parroting going on as well, talking about engagement, but, in my opinion, not a clue how to actually do it.

Seasoned marketers are having a tough time understanding social media and are concerned with multi-channel initiatives (called channel choice,  just wait until they try to solve cross-channel) and are unprepared for shifting customer communication preferences. I suppose that I should not be too surprised by some of the findings, as the areas of concern are relatively new (3-5 years) and were not top down initiatives; they came either from the bottom up, or from customers themselves.

Some issues and concerns

While I do agree, strongly, with the following sentiment, this is going to be a struggle of monumental proportions to execute solely within the marketing organization:

“The most effective CMOs focus on getting to know individuals, not just markets. They mine new digital information sources. And they use customer analytics to turn data into insights on which their organizations can act.”

Traditionally, marketers look at markets, while Customer Service talk to customers (Figure 6 in the report proves the point). How do you convince a CMO who has “Data explosion” at the top of her list of concerns to speak with and listen to individual customers? Without a doubt, the more customers you connect with, the more insights that can be gleaned. But, that does of course mean a whole lot of data, no? Please, do not get me wrong this is critically important but hard. The CMO cannot do it alone, nor should they try.

In the ‘Tough questions to consider’ area, I cannot help but to think that these are the exact same questions that customer service and multi-channel contact centers have been working to solve for the past 5-10 years (not that we are there yet):

  • How are you gearing your ‘teams’, programs and processes to understand individuals and not just markets?
  • Which tools and processes are you investing in to better understand and respond to what individual customers are saying and doing?
  • How do you safeguard your customers’ data and privacy in a multichannel, multi-device world?

Yes, the intersection of business process, CRM and contact centers is the future of customer experience. The umbrella term is Business Technology. These core elements are the center-piece of the contact center, now and in the future.

Does this map to earlier research?

An earlier IBM report, which I also wrote a post about (The Perception Gap), shows that many organizations are missing the point. “Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them”. It is clear to most people that talking is not the same as engaging. Here is what I think is not so clear, listening is NOT the same as engaging. Active listening maybe, proving you heard what was said (by actions and words), now that is engagement.

That begs the question: are the CMOs really the ones who are going to engage? If the objective is really about helping customers to enjoy the products and services they have just purchased and your desire is to collaborate and to co-create new products and services, is the CMO the right person (office) to lead this charge? I would say “No” because marketers are used to looking at markets, not engaging with individual customers! I am sure I will get a lot of flack for the blasphemous comments, but I ask you to consider it for a moment.

In the image to the right, the report suggests “Outperforming” organizations “invest more effort in capturing and using data to foster customer relationships”. Yes, the data does suggest that to be the case. However, they also invest more effort in Segmentation/targeting as well as Action/buy and I am hard pressed to see conclusive evidence suggesting which one of the investments is driving the success. Given what I like to talk about, write about and analyze, I would like nothing more than for the chart to prove a causal relationship. However, it does not answer to the needs of the customer either (this is an inside-out versus outside-in perspective).

The previous IBM research paints a different picture of what the customer wants (or at least what they say they want). Back to my core concern, do you trust the CMO to make the required changes to meet the customers where it will work?  If you are the CEO, are you driving the CMO in the right direction? Or, if you are the CMO, does it make more sense to get a bit closer to the contact center and work together to properly engage with the customers on their terms and offer the real value that they are looking for? (Too harsh?) It is always possible that my comments are also too myopic coming from the other direction, but I am not convinced that is the case.

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Mike Havard

Make multi-channel multi-choice

by Mike Havard, on October 10, 2011, in Guest Blogs and Thought Leadership, about , , , .

There are a lot of ways to communicate with customers that are cheaper than the phone.  But forcing people to use them could cost you more than you think. 

We’ve been taking a long hard look at companies’ multi-channel offerings, and some of our findings might surprise you.  Companies that try to restrict access to the phone and force people to use lower cost channels rarely achieve the cost savings they were aiming for.  And they frequently manage to alienate customers in the attempt!

The message is clear.  If you don’t want to experience damaged revenues and customer back lash, you need to offer channel choice.  Not impose it.

Our research show that customers want to use new channels, but they expect you to provide those as well as (not instead of) more established ones.  They’ll choose how they want to you interact with you, thank you very much.  And they won’t take kindly to being dictated to.

How they choose to contact you will depend on the nature of their enquiry, where they are (home, work or on the move), and the time of day.  They’ll often use several channels to complete a single ‘transaction’, researching a new product online, purchasing it in store, then using forums to discover new features. Oh, and, if there’s a problem, they may just want to phone you.  Fail to provide even one of these touch points and you’re likely to frustrate the customer and lose this sale, the next one and the next!

 Let’s be realistic.  Its unlikely that any organisation has managed, or will manage in the near future, to absolutely predict and influence every customer interaction in every customer journey for every customer or prospect.  As the economist John Kay states, most are “hardly capable of asking the right questions, let alone predicting the right answers.”

So, your best way forward is to provide a range of channel options, signpost them clearly and let the customer decide.  Encourage them to use lower cost options by making them effective, efficient and visible – but don’t force it.  Stay flexible and agile when it comes to channel management and use the power of information and data to predict customer behaviour as best you can – knowing you won’t always get it right.  Life, and customers, are far too complex for that.

And, one more tip… Take the time to analyse how, when and why your customers get in touch.  You’ll likely find that you’re able to predict the causes of costly calls to the contact centre and then pre-empt them with proactive outbound contact – either by SMS or email, for example.  That won’t just cut your costs – it’ll boost your reputation for proactive customer service, too.   I think that’s what we call a ‘win-win’.

Our research has prompted some interesting discussions with large organisations, not least at roundtable meetings hosted by the report’s sponsor, Sword Ciboodle.  We’re interested in finding out more about how companies are using multiple channels and whether their investments are paying dividends.  Tell about your experiences.

And, if you’d like to read our complete research findings, just click here to download them.

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Mitch Lieberman

The Evolution of Customer Service

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 7, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , , .

Customer expectations are evolving and customers are more vocal and willing to share both when something is good and something is bad. Customer service is also evolving, frankly, in order to keep pace with customers; but is the pace fast enough? The pace of the change; driven by customers, is accelerating because the social web (commerce and network) has enabled and empowered customers. Try and think back 10-15 years ago; did you make purchases online? Other than ask friends, did you read online reviews? What levels of service were tolerable, did you accept?  When you needed to contact a company did you consider sending a text? You might have sent an email, but when something really needed to happen, you picked up the phone. You might have even sent a letter, you know, the kind requiring a stamp.

In the chart below, I worked to encapsulate and share my view of the top-level changes within customer service. I intentionally did not assign dates to the past, nor the future; the past could be yesterday or last year, the future tomorrow or 2015. This is a not an all or nothing phenomenon, your organization may have certain elements well within the futures bucket and others stuck in the past.  The chart is a refinement of my Evolution of CRM chart, published about a month ago. I am looking forward to sharing these thoughts and more at the Contact Center Expo next week in London.

Element One – People

The people involved in customer service, historically, had been the people with customer service somewhere in their title, yes that simple. Organizations need to change this, if they want to grow and prosper (survive?). Products and services are becoming more complex, other parts of the organization absolutely need to become part of the customer engagement process. I am not simply talking about transferring phone calls; it is much bigger than that. I am talking about collaboration and knowledge sharing. You might even call it social business, but I do not want to get ahead of myself.

Element Two – Process

Gone are the days of a paper manual with defined processes for as many scenarios as management can think up. Actually, for some those days are not actually gone. Customers are no longer interested in listening to the script, following the guided path nor being pushed towards the efficient route. If the ‘people’ part of the progression is accurate, then organizations will also need a way to coordinate activities with other parts of the organization. Yelling over the cubicle does not count as collaboration and sticky notes do not count as knowledge management.

Element Three – Technology

A technical discussion could be approached from many different directions. With respect to this conversation, the more interesting technical element has to do with the channel match which needs to occur between the desire of the organization and the needs of the customer; i.e. the channels of communication used by each. Not only do organizations need to adapt to the changing channel usage by their customers, they need to realize that customer ‘channel hop’ – changing their mode of communication even mid-stream within an interaction happens. Organizations need to consider active pull, versus push to optimize their channel strategy. Active pull means that the value offered on channels you would like people to use is valuable to them, not just you. Real-time, synchronous channels are more expensive, but studies show that satisfaction rates are also higher on these channels.

Element Four – Duration

Historically, the length of time spent by either side of an interaction was limited to the specific activity performed, or issue discussed. Customer Service metrics are often tied to duration, like average handle time. While not every interaction will take on a life of its own, interactions will create a string of communications and form the basis of an ongoing relationship between customer and organization. Enhanced, more sophisticated activities like co-creation and ideation will now take place as well, during product use when it can be most beneficial. This is not about creating life-long friendships, your customer does not want to be your BFF either, this is about working together to mutual benefit. Take the time required to solve the problem, and make sure the customer’s concerns are heard.

Element Four – Centricity

As noted above, metrics and KPIs have been driving Contact Centers since the beginning of time <hyperbole>. The truth is handle time and concepts such as first call resolution will continue to be used, but they will not be the only driving force. As a matter of fact, these metrics will move further down, possibly even to tertiary consideration. As opposed to simply figuring out how quickly they are able to get the customer off of the phone, customer service professionals will consider more than just the current case and will be given latitude to do the right thing and stay on the phone to help the customer. Insights towards customer need by the agent will be augmented by business intelligence both real-time and in aggregate.

Element Five – Approach

Few people appreciate being caught off-guard, unprepared or surprised. Customer issues are more often than not identified first by the customer. What if the customer service teams could identify potential issues and do something about them before the small issues become very large issues? This can be accomplished simply with operational metrics made available to agents (insights). Spending a few more minutes on the phone with a customer, to really understand the root cause of an issue is worth the time and effort.  Or, how about proactive notifications of outages, or product issues (positive call deflections)? Further, taking the time to collaborate with the internal organization, providing superior value to customers, will also reap rewards in the form of loyalty and future business.

Is it possible to put it all together?

Yes it is. It is going to take work? Yes it will.  I do not believe you can accomplish it all at once, nor should you try. That said, understanding how all the of the elements are interrelated is an imperative. Some of the elements are within the control of the IT department; some are in Sales and Marketing, while you can control some as well. In the end, it not really about control; Customer Service is about doing what is best for the customer. What do you think? Am I way off base?

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Mitch Lieberman

A Conversation Retrospective

by Mitch Lieberman, on October 5, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , .

Nothing is the same for everyone

Channel shift, simply stated, is where customers are changing their behaviour and choosing to interact (communicate) with organizations in ways (channels) that are altering the numbers. The web has over-taken phone as the most used communication channel. But, before you jump to making everything web, the satisfaction levels on web are not as high as phone. Some industries are seeing great success with emergent channels, like video and SMS – while others are not quite sure how that would work for them.

We hosted an executive round table in London a few weeks ago with representation from many industry sectors to take this topic to task as well as unveil some new original research we’ve sponsored on the channel shift phenomenon. The research paper, by respected customer management experts Ember Services shares some really great statistics:

  • National Rail Enquiries, has seen customer enquiries grow by 343% over nine years yet still achieved a fourfold reduction in operating cost by migrating 80% of all contacts to the web.
  • Home Depot estimates that it has deflected 15 million potential telephone calls and helped solve 8,500 customer problems via Twitter.

Now, to add some real color to this conversation; the channel conversation really depends upon what industry you are in!  Adoption across industries is not consistent –and I learned this first hand at our executive round table.  Retail is moving faster that financial services – but they do not think that they are moving fast enough. Telecommunications are also pushing the envelope; it is the nature of their business.

There was a fun thread to our round table conversation regarding email, which I admittedly did not drive hard enough (as chief facilitator). For as long as we have had email as a channel, many at the table seemed to agree that it is still an inefficient channel and they wish people would stop using it. My point of view here is that email is a great notification mechanism, telling the recipient to go somewhere else and do something. Some would like to push people off of the email channel altogether. This is an interesting perspective, worth exploring. While I am against ‘pushing’, I am a fan of ‘active pull’. Without getting too complex, active pull is simply making some channels more attractive than others. This can be a delicate operation though. Restricting channel choice should be done at your own peril.

What do you think; can you remove a channel? Should you?

If you want to find out more about the channel shift phenomenon and conclusions the original research reaches that challenges the current approach which many companies currently use to service and identify the channel needs of the modern customer, click here or feel free to get in touch.

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Mitch Lieberman

Evolution of CRM – Where Interactions Matter

by Mitch Lieberman, on September 16, 2011, in Thought Leadership, about , , , , , .

evolution – a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage, often to a more complex form. (various sources)

I recently revisited my own research completed a little over a year ago. I considered then the evolution of CRM to Social CRM. I was convinced at the time that CRM needed to become Social CRM in order for companies to succeed. My updated conclusion, depicted to the left, is that CRM does not need to evolve to Social CRM; CRM simply needs to evolve.

Customers are still customers but they are more social in an electronic and media kind of way. While some buying patterns and preferences have changed, that is only part of the story. The real changes are the way customers interact with you (before, during and after a purchase), your organization and their expectations regarding those interactions.

‘Where’ is about the Location and Context of Interactions

I thought it would be a good idea to highlight the Interaction portion of the diagram:

Interactions, how and where customers communicate with a business, are clearly more complex than they have been (and they will continue to become even more complex). Interactions have evolved in both the number of channels (where), as well as the expectations by customers that your organization knows when they have changed channels and what ‘happened’ on the other channel, they are not interested in repeating themselves. This is called channel shift, and increases the complexity on the systems side, tremendously.

Customers can and will communicate with you any which way they can, it all depends upon their context; where they are, what they are doing, what they need and when they need it. Customers were taught to use the phone, instructed on the finer points of an IVR and coerced into using email and web forms.  Now it is their turn. They not only want to add more channels to the mix, they expect you to be aware of all the other channels and are quite tired of typing in their 14 digit code on a touch tone phone, only to repeat to the agent!

Customers will use multiple channels during a single ‘transaction’ – for example, they might receive an email about a new telcom package, research the package online, along with a new mobile phone, read reviews (online) before purchasing in store (in-person) then use help forums to discover new features. Finally, if there is a problem or issue, they will want to talk to someone – and bypass the IVR. Notice that while some of the examples and thoughts could be considered ‘social’ it is not about social, it is about customer needs and an organizations capability to meet and exceed the needs of the customer.

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