CRM - April 2008 - (Page C3)

Sponsored Content April 2008 3 Customer Experience through Self Service “I called my phone company to disconnect my line, and they said it was taken care of. But then a month later, I got another bill! I called again, and they said the cancellation request hadn’t gone through. But why is that my fault? I shouldn’t have to call twice to get this straightened out.” Good customer care doesn’t end when the customer hangs up. This customer was billed because his cancellation request had never been sent to back-end billing and provisioning systems. But shouldn’t there be an automatic process that will take requests from front-end channels such as contact center agents and make sure they get to the back-end systems? And if something goes wrong with the request, shouldn’t the system let the agent and the customer know? Microsoft Customer Care Framework 2008 (CCF 2008) was designed to help the many parts of a customer service initiative talk to each other—in short, to keep customers from falling through the cracks. Every company has different customer care needs, but Microsoft has developed an extensible solution that can be custom-fitted to the needs of your organization. Redefining Are your customers falling through the cracks? Depending on the needs of its customers, a company may have many customer touch points: a contact center, self-service websites, kiosks, automated service agents (ASAs), interactive voice response (IVR) systems, retail sites, or branch offices. Microsoft CCF 2008 is an innovative, flexible platform that lets sales, marketing and service operations integrate existing systems and applications into a dynamic front-end solution that directly enhances the customer experience. But most importantly, it works along with your business as it grows and changes. SELF-SERVICE PORTALS The Self-Service Portal capabilities will make it easy for customers to find locations worldwide, interact with an automated service agent, access FAQs, or log in and access their account information and manage requests online. All these services can be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and be fully integrated with back-office systems. Based on the power and universality of Microsoft SharePoint 2007, this self-service portal will be ideal for: ■ Maintaining user account registration, authentication, and authorization ■ Presenting user account and service profile information ■ Generating targeted alerts and promotional information based on customer profiles ■ Providing access to billing information ■ Offering service order, trouble-ticket generation, and status checking “I called my credit card company, and was connected to an automated message that asked me to enter my account number. After a long wait on hold, I was connected to a real person, who again asked for my account number! She said she didn’t know why I had to enter the number before. Then I had to repeat the number three times before she got it right.” Companies often implement voice response systems and automated agents to save themselves time and money, but they also add to customer frustration when not tied to the rest of the system. A recent approach is the self-service portal. Self-service channels allow the customer to directly interact with your company. For example, an airline check-in kiosk can be a much better experience than waiting in a long line to be processed by a single airline agent. WHY A SELF-SERVICE PORTAL? So why would a company provide a self-service portal to serve their customers? We found three common reasons. Optimize Contact Center: Traditionally, when customers have a problem with a product, they pick up the phone and call the company that makes it. However, even though many U.S. companies outsource their call centers abroad, the cost per call is still very high, and language can be a problem for companies whose target customers’ native language is not English. More importantly, companies today do not just use the contact center to resolve issues for their customers, they also want to use it as a channel to cross-sell and up-sell other products and http://www.microsoft.com

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

CRM - April 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point A Tenancy of One’s Own The Rebirth of Taxes destinationCRM Dashboard Labor Disputes Reach The Contract Center The Plight of the Wirelines Required Reading The 2008 Service Awards The 2008 Service Leader Awards Customer Self-Service Microsoft Genesys Oracle eGain Astute Solutions The 2008 Rising Stars The 2008 Service Elite Awar Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - April 2008

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