High Availability: A Must for Customer Contact
by Chris O'Brien on March 15th, 2012
Like a finely tuned symphony, the success of complex contact center operations depends upon the flawless performance of many moving parts – from the way calls are routed through your ACD, to the way each agent interacts with your customers. Every piece must function with precision and also adapt to changing conditions.
Regardless of how finely tuned your organization is, it only can only take one system outage or power failure to bring customer-facing operations to a halt. That’s when a next-generation, high-availability solution becomes vital.
The importance of high availability
We’ve talked in-depth before about how high availability is virtually synonymous with disaster recovery from an operational perspective, as well as a customer experience perspective. Particularly in industries such as finance, government, health care and other high-touch fields, the critical demand for continual uptime is an all-too-familiar refrain. Agents must maintain active, ongoing conversations with customers even in the event of an outage. Customers in the queue need notification of their status. And supervisors and agents need to be alerted to any changes in system functionality that could affect customer interactions.
As I said, lots of moving parts.
Unplanned network outages, power failures and unscheduled downtime all have the potential to impact your customers by limiting availability. While the terms reliability and high availability are sometimes used interchangeably, the difference between a so-called reliable system and one that meets high-availability standards is its ability to maintain operations and quickly recover normal functioning following a failure – limiting downtime to hours, or even minutes, over the course of a year.
Miercom Performance Verified
Recently, we asked Miercom to conduct a full evaluation of Aspect® Unified IP 7® to verify that it delivers the mission-critical high availability demanded for today’s customer contact environment. The critical factors for a highly available system that Miercom identified as part of its evaluation included:
- Maintaining active conversations between customers and agents
- Preserving contact statistics
- Continuing to initiate recordings
- Enabling supervisors to maintain management capabilities, such as viewing agent status and information
- Alerting supervisors and agents of any changes to the system status
In response to the battery of simulation-style tests Miercom conducted, Aspect Unified IP 7 earned Miercom Performance Verified certification. The solution proved to be resilient, providing the mission-critical high availability demanded for business telephony and customer interaction.You can view the complete summary of Miercom’s test report here.
Maintaining contact center uptime
On March 27, experts from Aspect and Miercom will be hosting an informational webinar on High Availability for the Contact Center: Ensuring Customer Service Continuity to share their insights on meeting evolving customer expectations, with advice to help you limit or eliminate the experience of downtime for customers interacting with your contact center.
The Value of Listening to What Your Customers are Telling You
by Chris O'Brien on February 16th, 2012
Among the many classic episodes of Seinfeld, one of my favorites is when Kramer becomes the MoviePhone operator, though without any of the tools he needs to provide good customer service.
Once he exhausts his ability to provide the right answer, his fallback is to ask, “Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see?”
Many companies that are struggling with customer service are desperate for someone to just tell them how they can make their interactions with consumers more effective. It’s not hard to understand why. As fast as the customer experience landscape is evolving, it’s difficult for even the best organizations to keep pace. However, the information and answers to enable better customer service are often closer than you think.
At Aspect, we’re big advocates of harnessing the information that customers are already providing to improve their experience. On this blog, we’ve shared a number of approaches for optimizing customer experience.
Data analytics. As we’ve noted previously, companies are sitting on a wealth of insight in the form of data they capture through customer interactions in the contact center. So the key is to implement the capabilities and processes to extract the value from these data
Social media monitoring. As consumers have adopted social media channels to express their feelings about companies and products, business leaders are struggling to understand how to track and address issues from these sources. It’s clear, however, that social media and what it can tell companies are too valuable to ignore.
Expert voices. One of the most difficult challenges with customer experience is to take a step back and understand the larger trends shaping the industry. With the benefit of these perspectives, companies can gain a comprehensive understanding of how to react to rising customer expectations in a strategic and sustainable way.
In an effort to practice what we preach, we’re holding the Aspect Customer Experience (ACE), on June 19-22. Over the past few years, we’ve found that part of what makes this event so valuable—to our executives as well as attendees—is that the agenda is developed in part based on feedback and surveys from our customers. So if you allow me to channel my inner Kramer, why don’t you tell us what you’d like to see?
With this information, we’re looking forward to a stimulating program that directly addresses some of the issues and challenges our customers face in delivering excellent customer service and improving the performance and effectiveness of their contact centers.
I’ll be sure to share the customer insights that emerge from ACE in a future blog.
Measurable Results from a Customer-Centric Strategy
by Chris O'Brien on February 8th, 2012
The decision to refocus or restructure an organization in favor of a more customer-centric model is a bold move, but it’s one that is becoming more common as customers consistently demonstrate how much of the power they now wield in today’s social marketplace.
This was the goal of India’s largest paint company, Asian Paints. With customers
in more than 65 countries and a 25,000+ dealer network, most of Asian Paints’ direct interactions took place with its dealers. Therefore, the company not only needed to respond to evolving consumer demands and expectations for better service, responsiveness, consistency and knowledgeable consultancy, it needed to provide exceptional, convenient phone service to its dealers.
The only way to realistically achieve these goals was to focus on becoming a truly customer-centric organization. To do that, Asian Paints needed a next-generation customer contact platform capable of managing both customer and dealer communications, and optimizing agent productivity and responsiveness.
When selecting a solution provider, Asian Paints did its research. Mr. Deepak Bhosale, Chief Manager, Systems, explained the company’s decision:
While we were researching different vendors and getting references, the best remarks and kudos were given from customers using Aspect to organize its customer interactions. Since we wanted a cost-effective way to have several solutions in our contact center, Aspect was the right choice for us. We needed a little bit of everything, improved quality interactions, dealer interaction and high operational efficiency.
Working with Aspect to implement a next-generation customer response and dealer management system, Asian Paints made it easy and convenient for both dealers and customers to do business with the company – from placing quick and convenient orders, to consulting with an expert on paint color choices.
As a result, Asian Paints achieved measurable successes:
- 80% increase in dealer satisfaction, as well as improved customer satisfaction
- 40% drop in average call handle time, due to increased visibility into caller’s information and history
- Improved contact center agent productivity
- Reduced wait time resulting from access issues
- Increased service availability window, leading to an effective 40% reduction in workforce
By improving customer interactions and organizational productivity, Asian Paints hopes to reinstate customer confidence and build customer loyalty, particularly among customers who had moved to competing brands during periods of poor customer service.
Read the full Asian Paints case study.
Companies can no longer afford to think customer service doesn’t matter. In many markets, the customer experience is the competitive differentiator.
Have you found this to be the case in your industry? Tell us about it in the comments.
“Inbound, Outbound, Successbound”
by Chris O'Brien on January 23rd, 2012
In a tug of war between resources and customer service, nobody wins. Organizations experiencing this uneasy push-pull may be struggling through periods of rapid growth, budget constraints, rapid turnover, or a change in roles brought on by a new strategic direction. Whatever your challenges, today’s consumers are unrelenting in their expectations of a consistently superior customer experience.
Businesses that continually put the customer first are those that manage to successfully
command consumer attention in the crowded marketplace, and are rewarded with long-term customer loyalty.
One such organization is Germany-based contact center outsourcer, 020-EPOS. Urged by its high-profile clients to proactively engage with customers in a more targeted and personalized manner, 020-EPOS needed a solution that would help it maximize outbound and lifecycle management strategies, while taking advantage of optimal choice and flexibility.
020-EPOS conducted an exhaustive review of all potential solution providers before selecting Aspect to develop its integrated call center solution.
One of 020-EPOS’ key requirements was the ability to reliably support, integrate and route multichannel contacts. At the same time, the solution needed to offer comprehensive, state-of-the-art dialing, callback and call blending capabilities, in order to ensure a smooth transition between inbound and outbound operations.
Another key consideration was 020-EPOS’ desire to route callbacks and returned emails to the same account teams that had initiated those contacts. As Georg Jansen, Managing Director at 020-EPOS explained:
“Outbound campaigns generate inbound contacts and inbound calls gather information for outbound. In order to be successful, both have to be managed professionally, that is why we act upon the maxim Inbound, Outbound, Successbound.”
020-EPOS was able to articulate its forward-thinking vision for customer experience through Aspect’s next-generation customer contact solution. This led to achievement of a number of specific benefits:
- Improved agent utilization due to soft blending capabilities and Workforce Optimization, which enables managers to adjust outbound/proactive activities when inbound call volume is high.
- Higher closing rates, resulting from inbound calls being routed back to the same teams that initiated the contact.
- Higher productivity through the use of skill-based teams rather than channel teams.
- Comprehensive, measurable quality assurance by applying defined quality criteria to all sequences of the customer dialogue.
Read the full 020-EPOS case study.
Aspect helps great organizations do what they do well, even better. What are the obstacles to your achievements right now? Are you in the middle of a tug of war between resources and customer experience? Tell us about it in the comments below.
The Right Tools for Next-Generation Customer Interaction
by Jane Hendricks on January 17th, 2012
Certain jobs require specific tools. For instance, if you see the cable guy coming and he doesn’t have his special bag of wire cutters, cable splitters, and signal testers, you’re probably not going to be watching your stories in HD tonight.
In the business world those tools are changing all the time. As new tools enter the consumer domain―for example, mobile devices and social media―the tools used by the business follow suit. This consumerization of IT is seen in the rapid adoption of the mobile devices, web-based communities, and even instant messaging within the walls of the enterprise.
The force that drives consumer adoption of new technology is a thirst for instant, real-time information and engagement. This anytime, anywhere access to information and people defines Consumer 2.0. As the tools that we use to connect to one another get smarter, our tolerance for slow, ineffective customer service, while already low, drops even further. As a consumer, I expect that if I am able to access competitive pricing and relevant suggestions for complimentary products while standing in line at a store, I will receive the same level of sophistication and intelligence when I have a question or issue.
The contact center has become the option that consumers tap only after all others have been exhausted—the last best hope for issue resolution. So after an individual has spent time on product pages, consumer forums, and the FAQ page of the company website, she is banking on the contact center to provide her with some information that she didn’t turn up on her exhaustive search and to be cognizant of what she has already reviewed.
This environment raises the bar for service agents and what they need to deliver to keep customers satisfied. That’s why some recent figures caught my eye.
Forrester released research findings on the adoption of customer service technologies in the contact center. According to analyst Kate Leggett:
“Our data shows that 55% of companies surveyed use knowledge management; 35% use real-time decisioning and another 40% are actively considering this technology; and, 34% use unified agent workspaces.”
While these numbers are moving in the right direction, they show that a large number of companies are sending their agents into the customer engagement space without the necessary tools. Some thoughts:
- Without knowledge management tools, agents don’t have the benefit of information generated by customer engagements. In practice, the result is multiple agents searching for the same answers to recurring questions—or worse, inconsistent answers to recurring questions—not exactly the model of productivity.
- Nearly two-thirds of companies aren’t using technology to route calls to the best agent based on expertise, performance, and other factors. When agent skills and customer needs are misaligned, you are gambling, and customer experience is the currency. In today’s environment, one negative interaction can irreparably damage the company-customer relationship, so why not lower those odds?
- Last, the majority of companies don’t give agents the benefit of a unified workspace or access to the same kind of tools they enjoy as consumers. Having to switch between screens, rely on phone calls and notes to pass information within their team, and use clunky interfaces not only increases handle times but severely reduces the likelihood of first-call resolution.
Over the past year, we’ve seen a growing number of companies awaken to the realization that effective customer engagement can deliver long-term benefits—happier consumers who spend more money on products and make recommendations to friends.
While the adoption of necessary functionality is lagging behind consumer expectations, the right technology can transform contact center operations. But there’s no time to waste.
Recommended Reading: Be Our Guest (The Disney Customer Experience)
by Chris O'Brien on December 28th, 2011
Interestingly, when you overlap three black circles in just the right way, a large percentage of the global population will associate this symbol with a mouse-eared icon by the name of Mickey. The Disney brand is among the best at connecting with its target market on a significant, emotional level. And that market is not just children. Adults also answer Disney’s seeming siren-song of dreamy Princess magic and animation-themed escapism, routinely setting their sights on Disney’s highly rated hotels and parks as vacation destinations.
Those in the customer service industry would argue that Disney’s long-term success and enthusiastic customer base – who interact online in every way from fan blogs, to podcasts, to planning sites – is no mere accident of product popularity. Based on Walt Disney’s firmly held tenets of customer experience, the company has effectively institutionalized processes for creating “magical” experiences.
This, in fact, is the case Ted Kinni of Disney Institute presents in his new
book “Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service.”
Relatively simple keys to success are often overlooked by businesses in their rush to market. Develop the best product you can. Train your staff well to deliver exceptional service. Learn from your experiences, and celebrate your successes. This is by no means a magic formula, but it does set up a framework that begins to feel a little bit like magic when executed effectively.
Much has been written about Disney and customer experience with an eye toward capturing and replicating the secret sauce that Disney liberally applies in its management and business best practices. “Be Our Guest” provides a valuable, insider’s look at the business processes Disney Institute teaches, which for me was reason enough to pick up this book.
As Disney has demonstrated, customer experience can be a key competitive differentiator in a marketplace that must continually lobby for consumers’ attention. Creating magical, memorable experiences at every point of service effectively edges Disney ahead of the competition in terms of customer loyalty.
We saw this principle succeed with one of our clients, Asian Paints. Asian Paints had identified substandard customer service as a potential factor behind lagging customer loyalty, with customer experience being a key differentiator among its competitors. In response to increasing demands for better service from both its customers and dealers, Asian Paints implemented a next-generation customer contact solution through Aspect that enabled the organization to focus on becoming truly customer-centric.
Asian Paints’ results speak for themselves, including a remarkable 80% increase in dealer/customer satisfaction. You can read more in the full case study.
If there is a secret sauce in the Disney way, it lies in the magic that happens when organizations are inspired to elevate the customer experience. As the man behind the mouse said, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
Social Shopping
by Amy Wagner on December 20th, 2011
The holiday season is again upon us, and many of us are in full-court-press holiday shopping mode. This phenomenon prompted me to examine the way we, as consumers, shop and select the retailers and vendors who we feel deserve our business.
In my youth, I remember dressing up and going “downtown” with my grandmother for special buying trips. We would visit the retailers available to us in the form of storefront shops. If we wanted something special ordered, we had no way of researching the item we desired unless we talked with friends and family or “heard it through the grapevine.”
Then, once we decided an item was worthy, we waited six to eight weeks for it to arrive. If it turned out to be less than expected, we hoped for a phone number or address to which we could address concerns, complaints and, if necessary, the return process. Honestly, we pretty much were at the mercy of the retailer or manufacturer. We played the customer service game according to their rules.
For example, in the 1960s, just how would you have returned or complained about a damaged lava lamp?
Of course, an alternative option when considering a purchase was to write the retailer (yes WRITE – through snail mail), receive a product description and possibly some testimonials. Seriously, how reliable are testimonials? If we wanted to know the customer service history of the retailer, we perhaps contacted the Better Business Bureau.
In my 20s, buying from catalogs such as LL Bean, J Crew, and Land’s End became easy and cost effective. According to Kevin Hillstrom, database marketing enabled companies to tailor catalogs to specific audiences, increasing profitability.
During the 1990s, retailers established e-commerce websites and used catalogs and e-mail to attract customers. However, it was mostly impossible to reach out to the customer community to compare such things as quality, order delivery history, and customer experience with the retailer, not to mention customers’ experiences with specific items.
Fast forward to today. As consumers, we can not only access the plethora of data on retailers themselves, their parent companies, and their vendors but also research their community, national and global activism, how they treat their employees and customers PLUS we can also, with very little effort, access most of their dirty laundry. Most important, we now can interact with their customer community and compare specific customer experiences, with the company or a single, specific item. The customer community actually is presented to the consumer with a few quick clicks of their keyboard.
Consumers are empowered and can decide if they want to do business with a particular company. It matters little whether it’s a $10 transaction or a $10,000 transaction; they are now able to make an informed choice with a few keystrokes.
If you flip this scenario around, think about what it means to retailers, vendors, and corporations: they must now serve their customer and their customer community. How do they do that? With technologies that allow them to reach out to customers, at the customers’ convenience, access data on their customers’ experiences in real time, analyze that data, and act upon it at the exact time the customer is choosing to interact with the company. WOW! That’s what I call Next Generation Customer Contact.
Watch for more about Next Generation Customer Contact coming in future blogs.
Getting a Return on Listening in the Social Enterprise
by Tim Dreyer on December 9th, 2011
Last week, Forbes.com had an interesting piece on the social enterprise titled “When it Comes to Social Media, How Big Are Your Company’s Ears?” In the article, Dave Gardner points out that the social enterprise is not exclusively outbound communications. Rather, it’s really about employee collaboration through social media to listen, connect engage with customers and analyze the data for improvement.
Customers no longer solely rely on the old 800 number standby to voice frustration with a company. Socially advanced organizations know that customers view a tweet the same way they view an inbound call and expect nearly the same level of response.
Gardner cites the example of Dell who, back in 2007, created IdeaStorm as a way to listen to the ideas given by both their customers and non-customers. The concept resulted in over 400 externally generated ideas being implemented into packaging, product development and more. The initiative has inspired Dell to aim for a social enterprise that will connect social media, their customer database and CRM and create quality sales leads out of the information.
However, programs like Dell’s are not produced overnight by the social media fairy.
One of the keys to building a successful social enterprise is the infrastructure behind it. A customer contact solution that combines workforce optimization (WFO) with advanced enterprise technologies can help enable organizations to build a robust and intelligent social enterprise. WFO encompasses technologies and business practices that focus enterprise resources and efforts on customer contact. Organizations rely on WFO to plan, execute, measure and continuously improve customer engagement regardless of where or how customer interactions are initiated.
This capability increases visibility into customer interactions and connects departments across the enterprise and into the partner ecosystem and out into the socialsphere. For example, speech and desktop analytics, social monitoring, and other recording tools capture, evaluate and report customer feedback and workforce performance data in real time which in turn can help identify sales opportunities previously lost.
You can read more in the Aspect white paper, 5 Ways to Optimize Your Workforce for Customer Contact in a Social Marketplace to dive deeper into the subject.
You know your customers are talking. Where are you listening to them?
Communications as a Service – New or just a new name?
by Michael Ely on January 28th, 2011
I’m always intrigued when I read about Communications as a Service (CaaS) as a new entry into the service market, since several of these services have been around for many years, some as old as the telephone itself. Of course the offerings today, including unified communications and IP contact centers, are so much more than dial tone and making calls.
As a recent HP white paper points out, CaaS is still a growing market, with small and midsize businesses eager to leverage the latest technologies with minimal IT staffing and infrastructure costs. Having limited business communications with just basic phone operations or even full PBX capabilities won’t cut it in today’s market where collaboration and customer service differentiate the winners from everyone else.
One of the white paper’s key lines offers advice to potential CaaS providers: “You need to be seen as a trusted advisor with them (SMBs).” Today, when a multitude of companies are offering solutions, finding a partner with the experience, portfolio, and lasting power to ensure your communications choices work— not only today, but into the future as well— is indispensible.
So while CaaS may seem like the same old story, it’s really about making communications seamless and efficient between your customers and within your business, without a huge infrastructure investment. And isn’t that key to the success of every business?
An airline gets customer service right
by Aspect on January 20th, 2011
In “A blizzard brings customer experience front and center,” I shared a negative experience with an airline over the holidays. A colleague of mine recently faced a similar travel challenge but with vastly different results. In the interest of equal time, here’s his story of a positive customer experience with the airlines.
“The morning I was going to be traveling home from a trip, I was awakened early by my phone vibrating on the nightstand. A text from the airline alerted me that my flight had been canceled and directed me to its website to rebook the flight. The message also gave me the option to call customer service to reschedule my flight, but I opted for the website first. …Read more >
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.