Mobile Users Want to Use Their Own Devices, Want Employers to Bring the Security
by Tim Dreyer on May 10th, 2012
A lot has been written about the influx of personal devices being used in the enterprise lately. And while there are certainly benefits to employee efficiency in allowing the use of the smartphones and tablets to help them remotely connect to the enterprise, there are clearly security risks as well.
An ITWorld piece published this week on BYOD cited some very interesting stats from a recent Juniper Networks survey of 4,000 or so mobile-using IT professionals and several points jumped out at me. 
Many of the mobile users who responded to the survey said that they depend on their network provider for their device and content security. And when they use those devices within their employer’s enterprise, they have the same expectation. In fact 90% of those surveyed felt that their employer should provide personal device security when they use on the company network. The problem is many of these employees go around their company’s device security policy anyway. So there should be no surprise then that about a third of the companies in the survey encountered some level of security issue from non-approved personal mobile devised accessing enterprise data.
Cleary BYOD is not going away so learning how to balance the benefits with the security issues is the task at hand. IT needs to adapt in order to keep up with IT consumerization in order to accommodate the skills and technologies that make employees productive and allow them to leverage enterprise resources. Intelligent, measured management that balances IT device consumerization and the security needs of legacy systems is a big and growing challenge for IT. Meeting in the middle ground is key. It is nearly impossible to construct a policy to allow every personal device onto the network so if departments can identify the phones and tablets they are able to support and employees restrict their personal device usage to conform to those policies, both security and productivity can remain high.
Better, Usable Data Key to Effective Social CRM Measurement
by Jim Foy on May 8th, 2012
Last week, ChannelBiz posted an article noting that about half of the Fortune 1,000 companies will not experience an ROI on their social CRM investment by the end of 2012. The author noted a lack of measurement and defined objectives of the companies’ social CRM activities are creating project failures. So while the global market of social CRM licenses is predicted to be over $2 billion this year, (more than double that of last year), many of the organizations don’t have defined objectives for social CRM initiatives tied into their broader business strategy.
Proper measurement is key to the justification and future success of social CRM but how is this best done?
In order for companies to truly see the ROI on Social CRM investment, better analytics are essential. Acquired customer data from the contact center must be easily obtained and visible throughout the enterprise. Of course the data alone is not enough. It must include context and interaction history in order to get a holistic and reportable view not only of the customer but of the Social CRM as well. When the silos in the enterprise are taken down and a culture of customer data collaboration exists, companies will be better able to measure the impact of their Social CRM investment.
Make Room for a More Social CIO
by Mike Sheridan on May 7th, 2012
In a recent blog post on CIO.com, Michael Hugos talked about how current economic factors, in combination with the rapid growth in social media and associated support technologies are creating an opportunity for CIOs to take a leadership role in bridging these industry trends. Hugos cites a recent Gartner report that in three years, the CMO on average may have a bigger technology budget than the CIO. He also notes that with the growth in cloud and BYOD initiatives, social technologies are quickly creeping into enterprise operations.
The convergence here is really setting the stage for social business. Extending order status, customer service, and the like to where customers are is innovative. However, this model could still end up just being another push of information if customers aren’t offered an opportunity to also engage with the company if they should so choose.
As I covered on my previous post, Social Business is not just social technology in the enterprise. It is primarily connecting the enterprise by providing employees the tools like information acquisition in real time, crowdsourcing, contextual intelligence, and knowledge sharing that they use in their personal lives, in ways that creates deeper customer engagement.
This offers opportunity for CIOs to connect these enterprise applications with the social platforms customers are using to engage the companies they do business with. Because of the growing use of social as a customer service medium and the data and engagement opportunities it presents, it is clear that social media can no longer stand alone in marketing and with the help of the CIO, it needs to be a cultural and technological part of the entire enterprise.
Changes on the Healthcare Horizon
by Amy Wagner on April 16th, 2012
Thanks to everyone who attended our webinar last week on Building Member and Provider Loyalty at Every Interaction. If you weren’t able to join us and would still like to view the presentation, we’ll be posting the recording soon on aspect.com.
As pointed out during our discussion, we anticipate that new healthcare regulations associated with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will bring large numbers of new members into the system. Plans that adopt improved controls, tools and reporting will be better equipped to effectively comply with regulatory changes.
All areas of the healthcare sector should be preparing now for the changes the new law will bring. Here’s an overview of what to expect:
Physicians’ offices
With the expansion of coverage, doctors will have a larger pool of prospective patients, theoretically increasing revenues. If many of those patients are on Medicare or Medicaid, low reimbursement rates could offset those revenues. Under the Sunshine provision in the law, doctors must disclose every payment from drug and biotech companies over $100, including drug samples. This could add complexity to office accounting. The law gives precedence to primary care doctors, which could put specialists at a disadvantage. The law also effectively prohibits doctors from having an ownership interest in a hospital.
Hospitals
Hospital emergency rooms could see a drop-off in uninsured patients as the requirement for health insurance coverage kicks in. As emergency room care is the most expensive form of care, this could result in cost savings for hospitals. Non-profit hospitals will be required to submit a community needs assessment. They will also need to tread carefully when billing patients on financial assistance; hospitals must first limit charges to such patients and then avoid extraordinary collections actions. Medicare and Medicaid patients account for more than 50 percent of the care provided by hospitals. The expansion of these programs and the government’s cost-cutting initiatives may impact hospital revenues.
Nursing Homes and Assisted Living Facilities
Nursing homes receive the bulk of their revenues from Medicare and Medicaid, and the PPACA will cut reimbursements. At the same time, the new law encourages patients to receive care in their homes, which is less expensive, creating additional competitive pressure. To remain profitable, facilities may have to raise prices for private-pay patients.
Managed Healthcare
The PPACA requires all Americans to have health insurance, either through their employers or through health insurance exchanges. This will have the effect of increasing the eligible pool of customers, but may also increase the number of high-risk individuals. MCOs will not be allowed to place lifetime limits on coverage for individuals and cannot deny coverage for a pre-existing condition of a child. Adults with pre-existing conditions will be covered under a temporary national high-risk pool. Coverage for dependent children will be expanded to age 26.
I’ll be keeping an eye on the case currently with the Supreme Court to bring you any updates on policies and regulations as they take effect. Until next time!
Health Plan Hopscotch: How back office optimization can help
by Amy Wagner on April 5th, 2012
According to Peter Cunningham and Linda Kohn’s article in Health Affairs, current economic conditions have forced many consumers to be increasingly focused on their out-of-pocket premium cost in evaluating plan options offered during annual open enrollment periods. From the plan perspective, this annual “plan hopping” leads many to conclude that lower cost, no-frills offerings are of greater value to employers and members. These tend to be the plans that generate the most attention, although they may be potentially less lucrative. Of those reporting a change in plan, 31.9 percent were made due to a job loss or change while 15.9 percent of changes were made to a lower cost plan – generally to an HMO.
Enrollment and membership numbers are just one of the many ways in which health plans’ needs can shift rapidly, unleashing the brunt of this impact on back office and fulfillment staff.
The back office, while typically hidden from members’ “view,” actually has a significant role to play in customer service and satisfaction. According to ICMI, back office processing issues (such as data entry errors, workflow delays, billing mistakes, etc.) can comprise 10-20 percent of the entire inbound call volume for a contact center. Up to 60 percent of the sources for customer dissatisfaction can be traced to the back office, says TARP Worldwide, a firm known for its customer experience fulfillment work. It’s also worth noting that Forrester Research has reported that 17 percent of a customer’s loyalty is a result of operational efficiency, which ties directly to back office quality and processes.
Forward-thinking organizations are finding ways to meet these challenges by examining — and in some cases transforming – their end-to-end processes in order to meet member and provider expectations. This can include:
- Aligning front and back office customer engagement strategies
- Training and ongoing coaching to improve fulfillment adherence
- Providing full visibility into outbound customer contact strategies to anticipate increased fulfillment activity
- Aligning staffing to high cycle times
- Increasing collaboration between the call center and back office
- Generating proactive communications with members/providers/employers alerting them to milestones to the fulfillment process – reducing call center activity seeking follow up information
- Limited automation for the less complex communications with member – apt reminders from case managers, prescription reminders from pharmacy benefits managers, etc., save the agents for the activity that matters – i.e. generating revenue, new member solicitation, etc)
An optimized workforce
One Aspect client, Transcom, implemented an advanced, scalable workforce management solution to solve many of the challenges faced by its contact center environment, one that must handle calls in 20+ languages and remain up to date on the government labor regulations of almost 30 nations. Their solution efficiently and effectively schedules a large pool of agents and back office workers, aligning staffing with high cycle times. It facilitates a comprehensive staffing plan across the front and back office, using accurate forecasting to anticipate strategic business needs and reduce costs. They are also able to manage back office processes more effectively using the capabilities of Microsoft SharePoint such as application integration, forms, workflow and workforce optimization. Any bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the staff and processes are quickly identified and resolved.
As a result:
- Forecasting accuracy improved to 90%
- Scheduling accuracy increased to an average of 88%
- Enhanced daily agent efficiency
- Automated agent self-scheduling reduced demands on managers’ time
- Facilitated customer pricing based on forecasting data
Be sure to join our upcoming webinar on April 12 for more on how Aspect can help transform the end-to-end processes necessary to address the rapidly changing needs of health plans to meet and exceed member and provider interaction expectations.
Social Business Part II: From Sociability to Reality
by Mike Sheridan on April 4th, 2012
In my last post on social business, I talked about social business being a powerful global conversation: a conversation that allows us to share information at blinding speed. I mentioned one example of social business being the evolution of contact center to engagement center. But theoretical conversations don’t get us very far without a plan of action, do they?
OK, you want to socialize your enterprise but where do you start? Your organization likely already has a CRM application, but in order to create internal social collaboration, a truly social business environment, we need to expose the connectivity capabilities if they don’t exist already.
Typically CRM applications do:
- Maintain Master Customer Records
- Provide Interaction Tracking through a variety of channels
- Support Process Automation for Case management using workflows and tracking activities
To create an enterprise socialsphere though, we’ll need to be able to save chat, email, and voice exchanges automatically into the CRM without relying on the agent. We should be able to create and present prompts – like upsell – based on a customer’s profile. And we need pass parameters like account information from IVR or Chat context messaging automatically to pop the preferred account screen for the agent on call acceptance
Web 2.0 digital functionalities like these are already pervasive on the Internet, so the idea here is to create an anytime, anywhere access environment with a single, internal routing engine. Doing this will ensure content and context continuity, flexible engagement strategies, and workforce optimization that will harness the social energy of employees, allowing them identify, retrieve and deploy resources in real time for optimal customer engagement.
Companies can do this by:
- Learning from every interaction. Knowledge is everywhere and the ability to synthesize the intelligence about your customers, your resources and your processes from your interaction systems are the metrics that can help you continually improve results.
- Gathering that intelligence. Putting data into context provides a view into your operations can help establish specific KPIs that will allow you achieve better, more consistent performance measurement.
- Putting learning into action. Applied learning is what really creates a social business atmosphere. By putting alerts and notifications in place, identifying, rewarding and cross-pollinating best practices and informing, coaching and influencing how transactions are routed creates active, thriving and intelligent workflows.
Social business success isn’t just about agents, social business also extends to the experts throughout the enterprise, the content creators and all back office resources who play a part in managing the customer experience. A social business platform leverages CRM and incorporates a robust, workforce optimization platform that minimizes customer service disruptions. By helping ensure that an organization consistently matches the right resource to the right customers at the right time, true synchronicity in the agent-expert universe can be achieved.
You can learn more about the architecture behind a social business environment here.
Healthcare Reform? It’s (Still) Debatable
by Amy Wagner on March 30th, 2012
A very wise person I know recently said, “The healthcare system in the US is designed to fix problems after they occur. With few exceptions, patients are accustomed to waiting until something is really painful, bloody, or non-functioning before they seek medical attention.”
Speaking of which… I went rollerblading over the weekend (I know) and not even my pride came back unscathed. I limped home with friction burns and bruises where I didn’t even know it was possible to contact the
pavement. This was days ago, but you wouldn’t believe how much it still hurts! And I have a slowly healing wound on my knee that I’m using to scare the neighborhood children. So am I going to see a doctor? Ha. Of course not.
Wait-and-see legislation
In the wings now is a Supreme Court decision weighing in on several provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), most notably its mandatory individual insurance coverage mandate and Medicaid expansion at the state level. Challenges raised this past week by Florida and 25 other states and business groups have brought into question the constitutionality of these provisions, which, if ruled out of the law, would then require justices to determine how much of the Act could be salvaged without the inclusion of those provisions.
The intent of the PPACA is to protect all Americans as patients. This means providing sustainable access to affordable health coverage, guaranteeing gapless care for the most vulnerable patients and providing new ways to bring costs down while improving the quality of care. To counteract the optimism, there are also plenty of dismal predictions about how PPACA will overwhelm existing programs and coerce individuals into purchasing plans they can’t afford.
If the legislation does go into effect as planned, I’m sure we can all anticipate some bumps along the way. (After all, being Americans, we did wait until the system was really painful, bloody, and non-functioning before attempting to fix it.) But healthcare is a business, plain and simple. Health plans should start looking for ways now to safeguard business operations against upcoming proposed changes so they don’t find themselves at odds with the interests of the patients they serve.
What impact can plans expect?
Currently, there are four widely diverse classifications for health plan members covered by insurance companies and providers:
- Members covered under a current employer plan
- Members covered under a current retiree plan
- Members who were covered under an employer plan and lost their job and need to self-insure
- Members who are currently self-insured and are looking for a better deal
In its current incarnation, PPACA will go into effect in 2014 bringing a fifth classification of “member” into existence:
5. Potential members who were previously ineligible for traditional coverage due to financial ineligibility or pre-existing conditions
With the right planning, advance action and creativity, states should be able to stay ahead of, anticipate and divert much of their increased member service workload.
As I mentioned in my previous post, one of the ways to achieve this will be through cost-effective and operationally efficient member self-service channels. Solutions such as those offered by Aspect provide the ability for individuals to seamlessly transition from online self-service to agent support, without losing track of the interaction.
In addition, some states such as Florida are planning to launch a state health insurance exchange, and others are participating in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs,) care management systems comprised of networks of local healthcare providers.
Of course I’m not going to see a doctor about my knee. I’m being dramatic; it’s actually healing up fine. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that, but I know there are some people with insurance who probably do. That’s the balance in the system right now. If my knee was turning ugly and I didn’t have insurance, then would I see a doctor? I’m not sure. I have a feeling I would wait it out a lot longer if I knew there was no insurance card in my wallet.
We’ll be talking much more in-depth on this topic at the upcoming panel discussion, Tackling the Business Impact of Healthcare Reform at 2 pm CDT on April 12. Be sure to register, if you haven’t already.
Everybody Wants in to the Enterprise Connect Act
by Tim Dreyer on March 29th, 2012
“Everybody wants in ta da act.”
This was the famous go-to line of vaudevillian and golden-age-of-cinema actor Jimmy Durante when some star-struck member of the audience wanted to crowd the stage with him. It seemed metaphorical for this year’s Enterprise Connect event.
Case in point, on day two, rather than a VP of Vendor, Inc. or a high-priced motivational speaker, Tuesday’s program began with an end-user panel of decision-makers who voiced concerns, talked about their organizational challenges and willingly shared their insight on the most pressing issues in the industry: Cloud, BYOD, and interoperability. Among them were:
- Alan Levine, CIO at The Kennedy Center
- Barry Libenson, Sr. VP and CIO at Land O’Lakes
- James Druzbik, VP of Information Systems at Group 1 Automotive
- Stuart Shirai, Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawai‘i
- Donna Zett, CIO at AOT Bedding
They took that stage normally occupied by vendors and gave a rousing performance. End-users want in to the act because when they are, they are heard; they want contact and unified solutions that are designed with their needs in mind. They wanted in to the act. And we welcome them.
And look at everybody wanting in to the Cloud. As Sheila McGee-Smith noted on her NoJitter.com post, a good number of vendors introduced Cloud offerings at Enterprise Connect. More end-users express interest in cloud-based UC offerings in the past year, so vendors have heard the call, unveiling a variety of cloud services at the show. But too many choices make decision making difficult: Public or private? Hosted or Hybrid? And while the Cloud stage seems crowded now, audience members know the talented performers are always asked back for a curtain call.
Vendors want in to the cloud act and the industry seems to be welcoming them with rounds of applause.
And finally, look at Lync. One of the hottest performances at the show was the number of vendors making announcements for Lync-based solutions. It seems the Lync-based UC performance – once just a solo act starring Aspect – is now not only the hottest ticket in town, it’s also featuring an ensemble cast. And the stage is surely set to grow larger as the year goes by, making it big enough for multiple players. But even though everyone wants in to the Lync act, seasoned audience members know… there can only be one lead.
Social Business Myth Busting
by Tim Dreyer on March 26th, 2012
Mark Fidelman posted a smart piece last week on the importance of sound social business strategies. His piece focuses on moving from social media tactics to evolving a social media strategy that is broader than just establishing a social media policy and having a corporate Facebook page. He sees the need for a social business strategy that lays a roadmap to fully leveraging the knowledge of employees, customers and partners. Like Mike Sheridan’s his recent blog All Business is Social but How Social is Your Business? the idea of the social business moving beyond a business with a social media strategy to one that makes social practices part of their operating DNA is rapidly gaining momentum.
While Fidelman is talking to the enterprise as a whole, these concepts and principles are even more relevant for the customer contact center, the epicenter of customer engagement. In fact, with the increasing consumer use of Facebook and Twitter and multiplying customer service mediums, you can argue that the contact center needs to be the epicenter of a social business. Consider the following parallels:
1. Make subject matter experts “heroes.” Making expertise available and visible to those on the front line of the connected consumer – in real time – allows the contact center to respond rapidly and potentially resolve increasingly complex customer issues within a single interaction.
2. Build a community. Customer engagement is all about building a community internally – and extending it beyond the walls of the enterprise to customers. Harmonized multi-channel engagement backed by a collaborative organization is the new key to contact center success. Breaking down channel silos opens up the ability for that anytime, anywhere customer engagement. Breaking down departmental walls allows agents to connect with each other as well as with marketing, finance, fulfillment, legal or even suppliers if they need to – without abandoning the customer. By doing both, organizations create deeper, more productive customer engagements.
3. Leverage collective intelligence. This is also cited as a way to create an atmosphere where individual learning can be shared to create a more organic knowledge center. By enabling agents to gain, share and house knowledge, they not only the right information at the right time – and have built-in reinforcement – but this kind of environment reduces onboarding and re-education efforts considerably.
Social business is quickly becoming business as usual. Are you ready?
Health Plan Questions: Is self-service the answer?
by Amy Wagner on March 23rd, 2012
When grocery chains began rolling out self-service checkout stations across the nation in the early 2000’s, consumer reaction was somewhat mixed. Some hailed the technology as an easier, speedier way for busy shoppers to pick up a few items on the way home after work, while others groused that this was clearly a big-business profit grab at the expense of much-needed human interaction and neighborhood jobs.
By the end of 2008, there were reportedly 92,600 self-checkout units worldwide, and at least a portion of shoppers appeared to be holding on to their angst. An excellent point by one blogger: “What’s the point of all of this technology if it only aggravates your customers and makes them unhappy?”
As technology improves, the percentage of those annoyed by self-service
technology seems to be shrinking at a steady pace – and in fact, today’s customers actually prefer to help themselves by as much as 85%.
Whether in the checkout lane, at the ATM, at a gas station, or on a company’s website, it would appear that offering self-service through multiple channels even has the potential to increase customer loyalty.
This is all very good news for businesses, particularly in the health plan industry.
Plans are facing a countdown to 2014, at which time the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will go into effect. This new legislation extends eligibility for healthcare insurance coverage to an estimated 45 million currently uninsured individuals, necessitating that these individuals will be seeking out information on plans and providers. Lots of information. And as newcomers to the insurance arena, you can bet they’ll have questions.
Think about that for a second. That’s a potential influx of 45 million new individuals reaching out for assistance and information from a group of agents already dedicated to full-time member service and fulfillment.
The only realistic response is to anticipate this workflow by implementing self-service channels. Fortunately, this the response most customers want.
And here’s more good news for business: Not only do customers prefer self-service, these channels are also vastly more cost-effective than contact center resolution. Self-service costs on average about ten cents per interaction, as opposed to $7 USD per call.
So in order to optimize your customer experience and efficiency, my recommendation would be to provide both intelligent, self-service options as well as the ability to engage with the right resource to improve first contact resolution and satisfaction. Offer individuals the ability to seamlessly transition from self-service to agent support without losing track of the interaction.
Aspect can help you develop this type of seamless interaction now, before PPACA goes into effect. The closer we get to 2014, the greater the risk of your agents’ workload slipping from “manageable” to “sort-of manageable” to “self-service as self-defense.” Just please… don’t wait until you’ve reached “zombie apocalypse” workload!
I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion on this topic at 2 p.m. EST on April 12, 2012, Tackling the Business Impact of Healthcare Reform, together with fellow RN Sally Bleeks, recently retired from Blue Cross Blue Shield. Please join us!
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.