Role Reversal: Microsoft’s Skype Acquisition Will Transform the Contact Center
by Mike Butts on January 25th, 2012
About this time last year, I wrote a blog titled “Will video transform the contact center? Don’t believe the hype.” I was very skeptical that video is everything and stated emphatically that it would not replace voice in the contact center. While video may not replace voice in the contact center, my thoughts were radically changed last May.
Little did I know at the time that Microsoft was in the midst of making an $8.5 billion investment acquisition of Skype. No company makes that kind of an investment unless they are playing to win and win big.
(Skype’s revenue was only $860 million at the end of 2010.) This acquisition brings Microsoft 700 million consumers that use Skype technology for their voice and video calls. As we know Microsoft has not officially released details on how it plans to integrate Skype into its product stack, but we do know that Skype will play a key role in Microsoft Lync, Office including Outlook, Windows Phone, and Xbox.
Once Microsoft integrates Skype video technology into its product and hardware (phones and Xbox) stack, it will bring consumers even closer to companies. Forward-thinking organizations will have new opportunities to seize customer loyalty and wallet share. In the near future, consumers will use Skype via the Web, Windows Phone, or Xbox to communicate with businesses. As a result, companies that deploy a Microsoft Lync unified communications infrastructure will have the right tools to collaborate with customers across the same Skype video stream.
All B2C companies have a short window of opportunity to prepare their organizations to use video as a service differentiator, productivity booster, and revenue generator. Companies need to act now to gain a leadership position in customer service before their competitors leap onto this emerging communications channel. Doing so will allow your company to take customer service, communication, and collaboration to the next level because people who use Skype (850 million and growing fast) will want to communicate via video.
Microsoft Lync will provide the perfect integrated platform to allow your contact center (and the rest of the enterprise) to collaborate using Skype video and the rest of the UC capabilities such as presence, instant messaging, screen sharing, remote desktop access and more. These 850 million consumers are opening a new frontier for your organization.
Here are a few thoughts for how video can be used in the contact center:
Create a personal relationship with your agents and company. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like my challenges are going to be resolved faster if I can see and make a personal connection with someone who is taking my order or assisting me in some other way. Video allows this to happen without traveling from location to location.
Increase collections. I wonder how much collections would increase if you can look a debtor in the eye when he makes a payment promise? I have to think that collections would increase significantly because of this direct, more personal interaction. This goes back to creating a more intimate relationship.
Enable opportunities to up-sell. Have a new product or campaign? Use an on-hold video to inform customers about additional products and services. Get really creative by pushing a relevant video based on a caller’s purchase history. The potential here to drive revenue is unlimited. Your marketing department is going to love this.
Facilitate troubleshooting. Push a video to a caller that instructs them how solve their current challenge. Video can also help reduce call volume by allowing your contact center to push visual installation or assembly instructions to callers.
Support learning and agent development. Record and capture videos in your contact center to educate current and new agents on best practices and supervisor to agent training.
So how do companies prepare? At a recent conference, Microsoft proclaimed that “60 percent of enterprises are going to make a unified communications decision in 2012.” I encourage all CIOs and customer experience decision makers to investigate and deploy the Microsoft Lync platform now. Get your contact center and enterprise personnel comfortable using the vast array of unified communications capabilities now so video becomes a natural extension once Skype is incorporated. Implementing Lync in your organization is not that difficult, and in many cases you can recover your investment within six months. And last but not least, your employees will absolutely love the new capabilities.
Till next time.
Mike
Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.