CRM - February 2009 - (Page 33)

THE Recession ISSUE Ensuring agents are informed isn’t the only way to keep them in the seats, though. Empowerment—giving agents the ability to take actions to solve a customer’s problem that mere empathy can’t cure—is another lowcost way to continue to innovate in service. “Giving CSRs the power to make decisions that there aren’t necessarily business rules for, the exceptions in which the customer relationship may be most at risk, is important,” McGeary says. “They then have the power to exceed the customer’s expectations or make good on what may have been a bad or unfortunate experience for them.” Inova Solutions’ Hubbard agrees, adding agents are a contact center’s largest expense. Consequently, any investments in technology should help empower your most expensive asset. “If you can add a bit of technology to optimize these folks’ performance, you’re way ahead of the game and being proactive as opposed to firefighting,” she says, explaining optimizing agent desktop technology to publish real-time information about the callers can make a great impact. “Create a real-time communication system where agents understand call queue and then the second step, that many call centers need now, on reader boards, desktop, and digital signage,” Hubbard adds. “Develop a culture around the real-time information, one of execution. Then, you walk into the call center and feel the buzz…people are really going for it because everything is in alignment.” “The economy itself shouldn’t really change the way things should have been done.” IF IT’S BROKE…FIX IT While many industry analysts, vendor executives, and contact center executives agree budgets are being constrained to a point, they don’t all believe that customer service will be the first to be chopped—or even cut the most. Nonetheless, they do reach a consensus by stressing optimizing the existing technology is a small investment that can go a long way. “The mindset should be, ‘How do I do more with what I have?’” McGeary says. “That doesn’t necessarily mean new technology. It’s an opportunity to…fall back onto deploying best practices.” To McGeary, this means looking into proper workflow, call routing, queuing, looking at transition points from the interactive voice response (IVR) system to a live agent transition point. “I think companies generally have had difficulty figuring out where to begin even when there wasn’t a recession,” McGeary posits. “If you fix those high-level things it can reap great rewards in terms of efficiency.” Tom Smith, senior manager of contact center solutions product marketing for Basking Ridge, N.J.–based enterprise solutions provider Verizon Business, also sees his clientele looking at ways to boost efficiency and tie up loose ends with existing technology. He explains there is continued interest in first-call resolution due to its twofold benefit of cost savings and customer satisfaction. Consequently, companies are revamping and fixing skills-based routing and CRM integration capabilities. This way, calls can get to the right agent and the information needed to successfully complete the call is at the CSR’s fingertips. “We have taken the approach from the outset that ripping and replacing solutions will be extremely hard to justify economically,” he says. WHEN THE BOTTOM LINE IS THE TOP PRIORITY Here are some low-cost or no-cost CRM strategies for when money is tight—plus counterintuitive approaches to spending your way out of the recession. 1. Sit down with agents and explain the rationale behind certain company decisions. 2. Optimize current technology. 3. Develop a process/culture around utilizing equipment to its fullest potential. 4. Trim the lowest 20 percent of your performers/agents. 5. Empower agents to author knowledge articles in real-time to keep answers current. 6. Pursue proactive messaging outreach that’s automated (or hosted, if cost is a factor). 7. Deploy speech self-service applications (which, though often costly, provide a high value). 8. Utilize workforce management tools to increase agent efficiency. 9. Intensify training initiatives for agents (also potentially costly, depending on the technology). 10. Move CSRs out of the contact center, either through offshore outsourcing or to a home-agent model. Verint’s Alban explains that contact center solution vendors feel the same pain their customers do when it comes to underutilized technology.“It gnaws at me when I see this happen,” he admits. “The reality is people buy technology but only use a portion of it.” To try and counteract this, Alban explains, Verint is www.destinationCRM.com CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | FEBRUARY 2009 33 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2009

CRM - February 2009 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Express Service CRM on Twitter Breaking Customer Service Tradition Outsprinted That’s (Not) Entertainment Running on Empty Required Reading Up Against the Downturn The Numbers Tell the Tale Make Marketing Your Megaphone! Hold Onto Your Customers! Spend Your Way Out! Constructing a Virtual Customer Experience Next Customer, Please! It’s Showtime! From A(erospace) to Z(oology) Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2009

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