CRM - February 2008 - (Page insert14)

14 February 2008 Sponsored Content Customer Insight 2.0: BY LORI ANGALICH, ASTUTE SOLUTIONS Managing unstructured data brings brilliance to Voice of the Customer initiatives technologies is phenomenal. Companies must find ways to capture, analyze and respond to feedback from self-service, blogs, social networking, and product review sites. Unstructured data reveals the true voice and sentiment of customers, employees and partners. Unlike surveys and interviews—that introduce bias into customer responses—these raw, unfiltered comments can reveal implicit and explicit customer needs and wants. MINING AND REFINING It seems ironic: Despite enormous investments in market research, surveys, and interviews, more than 65 percent of new product introductions fail largely because companies fail to understand and meet customer requirements. Some companies have launched “Voice of the Customer” (VOC) initiatives to address this problem. These programs encompass activities and processes related to gathering, understanding, and applying customers’ feedback, opinions and perceptions to improve products, services and processes. Executed properly, VOC programs have a profound impact across the enterprise. In fact, in recent research, the Product Development and Management Association concluded that VOC activities were central to distinguishing the “best” performing product companies, and play a critical role in determining marketplace success. These activities require companies to venture beyond the limits of traditional customer data collection and reporting and into the world of “unstructured” data. This is where they can realize the total value of customers’ insights. UNFILTERED DETAILS ARE DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH Unstructured data can become a “strategic gem” with the right technology in place. New knowledge management (KM), linguistics and analytics technologies are capable of transforming unstructured data into actionable insight. Companies leveraging these technologies are achieving great success in their VOC programs. Best practices include: • GATHERING FEEDBACK AT EVERY AVAILABLE TOUCH POINT, INCLUDING PHONE, POS, WEB/VOICE SELF-SERVICE, EMAIL, AND CHAT INTERACTIONS. VOC program successes. This system captures and analyzes thousands of unstructured, unfiltered questions and “dialogs.” Using advanced linguistics and natural language processing, it automatically organizes, summarizes, and condenses unstructured data into topics for simplified viewing and reporting. This enables managers to quickly identify problems, knowledge gaps, and areas of opportunity. Managers can drill down to the original questions and transcripts to gain extensive insight into customer interaction patterns, perceptions, needs, and feelings. This capability has revealed critical insight such as: • UNANTICIPATED ISSUES AND QUESTIONS • VALUABLE COMPETITOR INFORMATION • IDEAS FOR IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE • NUMEROUS IDEAS FOR NEW PRODUCTS, SERVICES AND ENHANCEMENTS • LEVERAGING A UNIFIED KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ALL TOUCH POINTS. • ENABLING USERS TO ASK QUESTIONS IN THEIR OWN WORDS (NOT KEYWORDS) AND RECEIVE PRECISE ANSWERS. THIS IMPROVES THE EXPERIENCE AND CONVERSION RATES. Additionally, the interaction transcripts provide the direct, unbiased, and detailed information that product and marketing managers need to successfully develop, launch and promote new offerings. LET VOC SHINE ON • CAPTURING AND ANALYZING ALL CUSTOMER, AGENT, EMPLOYEE, AND PARTNER QUESTIONS. Contact centers that are proficient at capturing and reporting feedback still miss valuable details and gather “unstructured” information in a manner that cannot be readily analyzed and reported—such as the myriad notes entered into service records. This is a problem. Studies indicate that more than 80 percent of the data within most organizations is unstructured. Included in this statistic is the growing volume of data from email or chat sessions, call recordings, and voice and Web self-service interactions. Because data from these interactions cannot be analyzed in the same manner as structured data, companies are generally unable to determine the true intent of the customer’s contact, if their issue was resolved satisfactorily, or if there’s some way to improve the customer experience. Companies will quickly lose touch with their customers if they can’t analyze unstructured data. According to Gartner, selfservice will account for 58 percent of customer-business interactions by 2010. Moreover, the growth in usage of Web 2.0 • ENABLING “INTELLIGENT DIALOGS,” ENGAGING CUSTOMERS IN “CONVERSATIONS” TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR NEEDS. • INTEGRATING KM WITH CUSTOMER DATA REPOSITORIES, DELIVERING PERSONALIZED ANSWERS WHILE CAPTURING VALUABLE SEGMENTATION DATA. • INTEGRATING WITH THE CRM DESKTOP, IMPROVING AGENT EFFICIENCY AND REPORTING ACCURACY. • LEVERAGING SPEECH RECOGNITION AND VOICEXML. BY CONVERTING SPEECH AND IVR INPUT/RESPONSES TO VOICEXML (VXML), COMPANIES CAN LEVERAGE THE SAME KM SYSTEM FOR MANAGING, CAPTURING, AND ANALYZING THEIR VOICE SELF-SERVICE INTERACTIONS AS FOR OTHER INTERACTIONS. • ENABLING SEAMLESS ESCALATIONS, WHERE THE ENTIRE TRANSCRIPT FROM A SELF-SERVICE INTERACTION IS AUTOMATICALLY SENT TO THE AGENT AND ADDED TO THE CASE RECORD. Gathering unstructured data is just the starting point for achieving VOC success. Once a company makes a decision from this data, they must determine what information should be applied to each touch point to support the action, as well as how to manage different customers at each of the touch points. Choosing a solution that delegates KM system content authoring responsibilities to appropriate subject matter experts helps facilitate this process, while ensuring accuracy and reducing costs. These individuals can add, modify, and tailor responses, content, and dialogs for all touch points. As with any major initiative, companies must carefully measure the impact of a VOC program. This includes improvements in: first contact resolution, customer satisfaction and retention, interaction cost, the product management cycle, and quality assurance. A well-executed VOC program is multifaceted. It’s value is reflected throughout the business in new ways, everyday. To learn more about the benefits of VOC initiatives and Astute Solutions’ RealDialog, please visit www.astutesolutions.com/voc ELIMINATING FLAWS Astute Solutions’ RealDialog™ is behind http://www.astutesolutions.com/voc

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2008

CRM - February 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Loyalty Riddle CRM Drives Down-Market Out of the Gate: Marketers Rate ’08 Traits The Pulse Consultants Adapt to CRM’s Changing Landscape Required Reading Cover Story: CRM Gets Serious Contact Center Solutions Always On Rumble in the Office The Smallest Slice Tying Up Cable’s Loose Ends Burning Up the Paper Trail Sunny Skies for Knology No More Bumps for BlueRoads Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2008

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