Jon Arnold TOP 6 TIPS FOR SHAPING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN 2016
Steve Morrell CROSSED WIRES IN THE CONTACT CENTRE?
Henrik Nordmark DOES DATA SCIENCE EXIST?
Business in Real-Time PART 2: REAL WORLD USE CASES FOR REAL-TIME DATA
g n i m o c In
Andrew Miller ARE ORGANISATIONS COPING WITH RISING CYBER SECURITY RISKS?
Martin Kuppinger WHY SECURITY IS AN ENABLER OF AGILITY, NOT AN OBSTACLE
Rob Bamforth ENTERPRISING SMARTWATCHES – IS THE TIME RIGHT?
Welcome
Happy New Year! 2015 flew past didn’t it? We don’t believe it is an exaggeration to say that technology innovation has accelerated in the past couple of years with organisations becoming savvier about collecting data and putting it to use in ways that were previously unimaginable. Talking about speed, I’m obviously referring to the rise in real-time analytics; in sport, contact centres, and IT integrated AV to name a few. This new-found agility is now becoming a necessity for the enterprise to remain competitive and meet increasing customer expectations. Read on to hear stories from analysts and companies who are witnessing
SWIPE DOWN
this change as they make their predictions for an even faster 2016.
▲ ANALYTICS
Mastering your Big Data beyond Hadoop
FEATURE
Roger Gaskell
DATA
Zoom-in: Global Data Strategy, Ltd Donna Burbank
ANALYTICS
Real world uses for real-time analytics Abdul Montaqim
ANALYTICS
6 1 0 2
Infographic: Where will Big Data be in 5 years? 1 2 0 2
Kognitio
DATA
COMMUNICATIONS
Perspective: Does data science exist?
Crossed wires in the contact centre?
Henrik Nordmark
Steve Morrell
COMMUNICATIONS
Exemplary customer experience starts with the right ingredients
FEATURE
Interactive Intelligence INTERNET OF THINGS
Enterprising smartwatches – is the time right? Rob Bamforth COMMUNICATIONS
The future of enterprise communications as a service
CYBER SECURITY
Information Security: A liability or a benefit? Alexei Balaganski
Enzo Signore CYBER SECURITY
EVENTS
The data breach blind spot
Let’s AV IT Mike Blackman
Adam Boone
INTERNET OF THINGS
Thinking in promises for an Internet of Things
FEATURE
Mark Burgess
DEVOPS
Demystifying DevOpsC and Bimodal IT Eddy Pauwels
CYBER SECURITY
Why security is an enabler of agility, not an obstacle Martin Kuppinger
CYBER SECURITY
How are organisations coping with rising cyber security risks? Andrew Miller
INFRASTRUCTURE
EVENTS
7 Reasons to keep applications & data on premise
Top 10 key upcoming events
Chris Tucker
Recommended by EM360°
COMMUNICATIONS
Crossed wires in the contact centre? Steve Morrell, Founder and Principal Analyst at ContactBabel @ContactBabel
Do you have the right channels open to satisfy your customers on their first point of contact? Recent research by contact centre analyst firm ContactBabel shows that many organisations are missing a trick by frustrating their customers with unsuitable support. Steve Morrell, founder and principal analyst, discusses the surprising results of this research below, discovering that customers are increasingly preferring non-telephony contact methods over the standard call centre approach. Through ContactBabel research with over 2,000 UK customers, we have found that 36% of customers prefer to communicate with the business via email, with only 12% initially preferring to pick up the phone and talk to a contact centre agent. Figure 1: Customers’ preferred method of communicating with a business Social media 3% Mobile 6% Web chat 9%
Letter/fax 2%
Email 36%
Contact centre 12%
Website 15%
Face-to-face 17%
However, the reality is that around 70% of two-way communication between businesses and customers is still done through contact centre telephony, with an average of only around 17% through email. While the following chart shows that the proportion of customer support via telephony has dropped from 90% in 2006, this relatively unpopular method of contact is still by far the most important. In line with what has been happening in the US, a further drop in both the live and self-service telephone channels can be seen, as more customers choose an online option as their primary channel, a view further supported by web chat jumping from 1.7% to 2.7%. Figure 2: Contact centre inbound interactions by channel, 2006-2018 Telephone Email Web chat Social media Self-service Letter Fax SMS Other
90.0% 80.0% 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 20.0% 10.0% 0.0%
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
In itself, the stated customer desire to use alternative channels should be a powerful reason for companies to look to invest in non-telephony communication channels, but there is also a positive cost driver too Figure 3: Cost per inbound interaction £2.55
Web chat
£2.67
Phone call
£3.55
£0.00
£0.50
£1.00
£1.50
£2.00
£2.50
£3.00
£3.50
£4.00
The most popular alternative channels - email and web chat - although somewhat cheaper than telephony, generally still use low levels of automation, requiring a high level of costly manual agent input and effort. Cost differentials between emails, web chats and telephone calls are not as wide as they could be, so there is a huge opportunity both to align channels with customer demand, and reduce cost at the same time. One of the reasons that email is a popular first choice with customers is that it does not require much effort: there is no queuing time and can be done at the customer’s convenience. ContactBabel research continually finds that customers value ease-of-use and minimal effort when dealing with businesses. However, having their matter dealt with quickly and effectively, at the first time of asking is vital to the customer’s experience. This ‘first contact resolution’ is key to understanding why telephony is still the most important and common channel for customer contact. The following chart shows that first contact resolution is clearly seen as being the characteristic most valued by customers contacting a business, a long way ahead of being helped by polite and friendly agents (which should be a given in any case), and almost 4 times as important as having short queue times, a variable which has always had strong emphasis placed upon it both by businesses and customers. Figure 4: Characteristic most valued by customers calling a contact centre 60% 54% 50%
40%
30%
20%
17%
15%
10%
6%
3%
2%
2%
1%
Short IVR menus
Not having to repeat issues across channels
No call transfer between agents
Long opening hours
0% First contact resolution
Polite and friendly agents
Short queue times
UK-based agents
Without first contact resolution, customer effort is necessarily driven up to unacceptable levels, greatly reducing levels of satisfaction and the promotion of the company to others. With around 1 in 5 customer interactions currently identified as requiring an entirely separate interaction as a result, there is still a considerable amount of work to do. However, this figure of 1 in 5 refers only to multiple telephone calls: of greater importance are the multiple interactions required by customers who fail to get an issue resolved in one channel, and who have to start an interaction again within another channel (for example, not getting a timely or accurate answer from an email, and thus having to call a contact centre). In the vast majority of cases, the business does not count these in their first contact resolution figures, as they are unlikely even to be aware that the customer has tried and failed to resolve the issue using another channel. As multiple channels are part of the wider customer service mix in most businesses, an interest in developing an omnichannel strategy has emerged: a situation where a customer’s request can be dealt with immediately and seamlessly, regardless of the initial channel which they choose to use. However, for many businesses, their underlying business processes and technology solutions are currently holding them back from being able to offer an omnichannel customer experience, and customers are finding that although in an ideal world they would prefer to use a non-telephony channel, the reality is that they still stand the best chance of achieving a relatively painless first-time resolution through the traditional contact centre telephony model. ■
Related reports More information about multichannel and omnichannel customer contact is available in these free ContactBabel reports: ▲
The Inner Circle Guide to Multichannel
▲
The 2015 UK Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide
▲
The 2015 US Contact Centre Decision-Makers’ Guide
They can be downloaded immediately from www.contactbabel.com/reports.cfm after registration.
COMMUNICATIONS
The future of Enterprise Communications as a Service Enzo Signore, Chief Marketing Officer at 8x8, Inc.
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One of the biggest problems that IT leaders have is in managing all the legacy hardware-based PBX systems. They’re very complex to manage, they’re very expensive to setup and configure and they don’t provide the flexibility that most organisations are looking for. Watch the video to see Enzo Signore, CMO at 8x8, discuss how Enterprise Communications as a Service can enable ogranisations to overcome this issue and get the flexibility they need with their communications, to run their business at customer speed.
Related Case Study: Sky In the EasyContactNow Cloud A Year On 8x8
COMMUNICATIONS
Top 6 tips for shaping the customer experience in 2016 Jon Arnold, Principal Analyst at J Arnold & Associates
@arnoldjon
The term “customer experience” is being heard more often now as companies compete in a crowded market with increasingly similar products. Anyone can cut prices to stay competitive, but that’s not viable over time. For a sustainable advantage, companies are focusing more on creating great customer experiences, but this is harder to do than it looks. To help businesses succeed along this path, I’ve summarised six tips to be mindful of for 2016.
TIP 1 - Focus on the Customer Journey All customer experiences are part of a broader journey, and to understand that, the
“The more that end-to-end journey is understood, the better you’ll be able to keep serving customer needs over time.”
business must get beyond looking at every customer interaction as a standalone event. This may be important in terms of evaluating internal processes and the performance of contact centre agents, but that’s not how customers think. Every customer has taken a personal journey with your business, sometimes going back well before actually buying from you. The more that end-to-end journey is understood, the better you’ll be able to keep
serving customer needs over time. This is what the emerging field of Customer Experience Management focuses on, and as Big Data becomes more mainstream, businesses will have unprecedented capabilities for mapping that journey and extracting rich insights to keep it moving forward.
Tip 2 - Understand Customer Engagement While the journey reveals the big picture, you must also know how customers do
“Going into 2016,
business with you. Thanks to today’s technology, customers can engage in many
companies will have
ways, but that mix isn’t static. Going into 2016, companies will have to be more
to be more mobile-centric, simply because that’s where customers are now.”
mobile-centric, simply because that’s where customers are now. To illustrate, the number of mobile users surpassed desktop PC users in 2014, and they also spend more time there. However, it won’t be enough just to have a new mobile app to engage with customers. You also need to know how they engage with mobile devices, and increasingly they’re using short form text to communicate rather than voice. On top of that, social media is playing a growing role in how they engage with you, other customers and the marketplace at large. Customer engagement is complex and must be constantly monitored, and don’t assume once you’ve figured this out for 2016 that you’ll be all set for 2017.
Tip 3 - Make it Personal More than anything else, customers want to feel valued. They may like your
“Millennials in
products, but in 2016 they also care about your values and what you stand for.
particular want to
Millennials in particular want to feel part of something bigger than just being a
feel part of
consumer, and want to make personal connections with the companies they buy
something bigger than just being a consumer, and want to make personal connections with the companies they buy from.”
from. Social media has a lot to do with this, but businesses have to go deeper to create personalised experiences. This is where we return to Big Data, and the need to establish trust with customers. When trust is in place, you have agency to request personal data from customers – their preferences, perceptions, values, etc. Customers will always be willing to share some of this, provided they trust you and there is something of fair value in return. This is a fine balance to strike, but you can deliver highly personalised experiences this way and ultimately boost the lifetime value of your customers.
Tip 4 - Build the Relationship Beyond the products lie the relationships, and this should always be a cornerstone
“Most businesses
of your customer experience strategy. As cited above, the relationship needs to be
are more
personal and reflect your understanding of their journey. Most businesses are more
successful at
successful at retaining customers and growing sales organically than chasing after
retaining customers
new ones all the time.
and growing sales organically than chasing after new ones all the time.”
This is where the contact centre earns its keep, as agents can focus not just on solving problems, but creating engagement experiences that strengthen the relationship. When that happens, it becomes easier to do business, they buy more, and they refer you to others. Looking to 2016, expect to see this thinking extend beyond the contact centre to all employees. With so many touch points available now, every employee has the potential to directly impact the overall relationship. Not every company will do this, but this is part of having a customer-centric culture where the relationship is the driver for long-term growth.
Tip 5 - Be Proactive Most forms of customer service are reactive where engagement is initiated by the
“There is a fine line
customer, and usually only when there’s a problem. This is the conventional contact
between making
centre model, but going into 2016, it’s not the only one. Building on the earlier tips,
intrusive, sales-focused calls and timely outreach that makes customers feel valued.”
companies now have multiple channels available to engage customers, but they also have a great deal of history about both their products and their customers. As such, they know when products will break down and they know when your next service call is due. All the elements are in place for contact centres to be more proactive with outbound initiatives such as reminders, alerts, opt-in advance notices/offers, post-incident follow ups, etc. While there is a fine line between making intrusive, sales-focused calls and timely outreach that makes customers feel valued, when done right, proactive engagement strongly reinforces all the other tips covered herein.
Tip 6 - Deliver a Singular Experience As a way of tying all these tips together, this is the overall outcome that businesses
“All businesses
should be striving for in 2016. Omnichannel is now a driving force for helping
have complex
contact centres deliver a singular experience, and if you’re trying to build a
processes – or
customer-centric culture, this should be a top priority. The objective is for
worse – but that should be transparent when providing customer service; the experience should be seamless and consistent every time.”
customers to see just one side of your company regardless of the need, rather than dealing with multiple contacts that don’t talk to each other and duplicate effort and waste the customer’s time. All businesses have complex processes – or worse – but that should be transparent when providing customer service; the experience should be seamless and consistent every time. Legacy technologies don’t allow contact centres to do that, and while omnichannel can be complex to deploy, the results will be worth it once you move along the learning curve. Of course you can stay with the status quo, but as you fall behind your competitors, recovering lost ground may prove an even bigger challenge. ■
COMMUNICATIONS
Exemplary customer experience starts with the right ingredients Case Study: Interactive Intelligence
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If you ask a chef the secret to their perfect soufflé, the response always begins with the right ingredients. Developing a mouthwatering, must-come-back-for-more experience for your customers is no different – start with the right ingredients and you’ll end up with a recipe designed for the highest quality customer experience. Watch the video to see how AO.com achieved customer satisfaction by leveraging the right technology.
AO.com, the award winning UK online retailer which specialises in household appliances, was clear on the right ingredients, but it needed the right technology to deliver them to its customers. The first step on this journey was deciding who to buy the technology from, and there started the relationship with Interactive Intelligence.
According to AO.com, the best service is no service. It is not talking about a complete lack of customer service, but instead removing the need for customer service as everything happens as it should. AO.com wants its customers to end their purchasing journey feeling delighted – a big ask when purchasing white goods.
“When a delivery driver leaves a customer’s house, it is important they have a really warm feeling – from placing the order, to call centre interactions, to cheerful drivers, to delivering it where they want in the house and the driver removing the packaging. All these little things should be really, really, good”, said David Wilson, Head of IT Services, AO.com.
Real-time is fundamental to AO.com and keeping its customers happy. AO.com has worked with Interactive Intelligence to understand the customer journey and at what point of the journey a customer is when they call into the company.
With the implementation of the Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center (CIC) AO.com know exactly at which part of the journey a customer is and can interact with them accordingly. AO.com can now detect if a customer is ringing on the day of their delivery. If they are, there is a 90 percent chance they want to find out what time their new washing machine or oven will be arriving. To save the customer spending time waiting to speak to an operator, AO.com automatically tells the customer what their delivery time is. This result in a 50 percent drop out at this point as this information is exactly what customer wanted to find out.
“THE CUSTOMER GETS THE INFORMATION THEY NEED WITHOUT HAVING TO ASK AND IT WORKS FOR US AS IT LEAVES THE AGENTS FREE TO DEAL WITH CUSTOMERS WHO DO NEED TO SPEAK TO SOMEBODY.” David Atherton, Head of Customer Service at AO.com commented “It is a great service, as the customer gets the information they need without having to ask and it works for us as it leaves the agents free to deal with customers who do need to speak to somebody. It is a self-service programme to empower the customer to have access to as much info as they can without having to wait unnecessarily.”
This works so well because CIC integrates seamlessly with AO.com’s CRM and other existing technology across multiple geographical locations.
AO.com has the right recipe and the results are reaping benefits for brand recognition and sales as the company continues to grow. For those still perfecting the right recipe, the following five ingredients will ensure you are on the right track for a great customer experience.
1 - Define your objective Define your objective. The first step in customer experience is to define your objective. What is the intended outcome? If you don’t define this quickly, then others will do it for you. Your customers will set expectations and find a competitor if you fail to meet them. This is often the toughest step, but it’s the most important one. 2 - Ensure cross-functional alignment Make sure that everyone who is responsible for delivering the product or service clearly understands the strategy, objectives, and their role in the execution. It is essential to communicate cross-functionally to ensure everyone’s executing on the same strategy, with the same goal in mind. 3 - Design from start to finish Take the time to observe your customers and your target market, listen to your frontline employees, map the customer journey from the moment customers recognise that they have a need, to their final solution. Then design every last detail of the experience from the ground up. 4 - Plan for growth Ask yourself: Can you deliver this level of service for 100 customers, for 1,000, for 10,000? If not, what is your game plan? 5 - Measure and adjust Once you have defined your experience, you can establish criteria for measurement. The point of measuring is not to pat yourself on the back, nor should it be used solely for compensation. The real purpose is to understand what’s working, what needs tweaking, and to identify red flags quickly. The right ingredients are foundational to a high-quality customer experience. Define your objectives, clearly communicate them, take into account the entire customer journey, plan for the future, then revise the plan as needed based on results. The measurements help ensure you meet your objective, the ingredients are essential to success. ■
EVENTS
CUSTOMER INSIGHT & ANALYTICS EXCHANGE Hosted by IQPC
London
27-28 January
With over 6 years of experience the Customer Insight & Analytics Exchange is the invitation only meeting that gives you the possibility to hear from the best companies on how to perform in a digital and customer centric world.
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DEVOPS SUMMIT BRUSSELS Hosted by Unicom
Brussels
4 February
This one day programme is designed to connect a wide range of stakeholders and provide an informational and educational experience. The expert practitioners and thought leaders will help you to develop your business case and build the foundation towards getting significant return on investment.
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STRATA + HADOOP WORLD Hosted by O’Reilly
San Jose, CA
28-31 March
O’Reilly and Cloudera have recently partnered to bring Hadoop World to all Strata Conferences worldwide. Doug Cutting, Cloudera's Chief Architect and founder of Apache Hadoop, joins Roger Magoulas and Alistair Croll as chairs of Strata + Hadoop World to help shape the content.
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ECOMMERCE SHOW USA Hosted by Terrapinn
Atlanta
30-31 March
As the newly branded Ecommerce Show USA this concentrates on helping retailers innovate their eCommerce platform. The event also focuses on presenting new opportunities across omnichannel engagement, customer experience and consumer data analytics which are driving the way brands interact with their customers.
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The leading digital IT solutions magazine. Right at your fingertips
Jon Arnold TOP 6 TIPS FOR SHAPING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN 2016
Steve Morell CROSSED WIRES IN THE CONTACT CENTRE?
Henrik Nordmark DOES DATA SCIENCE EXIST?
Business in Real-Time
The ieratisation
DATA
REAL WORLD USE CASES FOR REAL-TIME DATA
ing m o Inc
Andrew Miller ARE ORGANISATIONS COPING WITH RISING CYBER SECURITY RISKS?
Martin Kuppinger WHY SECURITY IS AN ENABLER OF AGILITY, NOT AN OBSTACLE
Rob Bamforth ENTERPRISING SMARTWATCHES – IS THE TIME RIGHT?
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