CRM - May 2008 - (Page 10)

REALITY CHECK BY MULTICHANNEL CRM A SPECIAL 2-PART SERIES PART 2 BARTON GOLDENBERG Is Your Contact Center Built for Multichannel Customers? The boom in self-service doesn’t mean your agents are off the hook I N M Y P R E V I O U S column (“Multiplicity SCENARIO B: CONTACT CENTER INQUIRY When a Digital Client has a question or service issue after making a purchase—via any number of channels (e.g., at a store, or via a salesperson, kiosk, or the Web)—she may prefer to call your contact center for a quick answer rather than search online. Needless to say, she expects your agent to know that she has purchased the product via another channel! To help ensure an optimal experience, contact centers are deploying the latest customer-driven self-service tools, including natural-language speech recognition (one of the more successful telephony-based, self-service applications). A CUSTOMER MAY START AT YOUR WEB SITE, BUT SHE ALSO EXPECTS TO BE ABLE Up to 75 percent of all contact center phone interactions can be successfully TO SEAMLESSLY MOVE FROM THERE TO YOUR CONTACT CENTER CHANNEL. handled by these natural-language systems. A successful scenario is win-win-win: The environment. In fact, most Digital Clients insist on self- Digital Client is content because she is able to self-serve, service—it’s just part of how they grew up—and their you’re happy because you’re able to drive up first-call resneeds go far beyond a Frequently Asked Questions page. olution while driving down contact center cost-per-call, and your contact center agents are pleased because they now have the time to concentrate on high-value-add customer SCENARIO A: WEB INQUIRY Prior to making a purchase decision, 90 percent of all Dig- service issues. Cellular telephone companies (e.g., Verizon ital Clients access Web sites—so you’ll want to make sure Wireless) and financial services companies (e.g., USAA) that your site provides comprehensive, easy-to-understand have led the way in optimizing the contact center scenario. Under both of these scenarios, the contact center is at (and easy-to-use) marketing and sales information based on what customers have asked for. A Digital Client may the core of the Digital Client experience. Some cusstart an inquiry at your Web site, but she also expects to be tomers will reach your contact center only after a Web able to seamlessly move from there to your contact center inquiry, while others will turn to the contact center first. channel if she decides she’d like to speak with an agent. At To accommodate all these customers, your multichannel a minimum, those agents need access to the internal-use CRM initiative must be built around a strategy that both knowledge bases that help drive high first-call resolution— acknowledges the central role of the contact center and the key to customer satisfaction. Agents then provide this is supported by appropriate customer-facing business processes and technologies. information to the Digital Client via the phone or email. Even better, the Digital Client can self-serve her own Barton Goldenberg (bgoldenberg@ismguide.com) is president and founder of ISM inquiry resolution online if you provide direct access to Inc., a CRM real-time enterprise consulting firm in Bethesda, Md. He is the pubyour knowledge bases—though those repositories may lisher of The Guide to CRM Automation and author of the new CRM in Real Time: first need to be cleansed for external use. Cisco Systems Empowering Customer Relationships (Information Today, Inc.). 10 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | MAY 2008 www.destinationCRM.com Means More,” February 2008, page 8), I suggested that true multichannel CRM requires proactively implementing customer-facing processes and technology to facilitate the sharing of real-time customer information across multiple channels; I also noted the financial impact of a well-executed multichannel strategy. What we haven’t discussed is why the contact center is at the core of every successful multichannel CRM initiative. The simple answer is this: because the Digital Client increasingly demands it. Organizations are having difficulty keeping up with the growing demand for selfservice from today’s Digital Clients, who feel completely at home utilizing selfservice capabilities within an integrated, multichannel for many years has led the way in Web-based customer self-servicing via the use of sophisticated knowledge bases; this has helped Cisco to substantially reduce its servicing costs while driving high customer satisfaction. http://www.destinationCRM.com

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

CRM - May 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Is CRM Too Hard for Microsoft Vendors Go Virtual For Feedback Sense-sational Marketing How UGC Can Benefit CRM DestinationCRM Dashboard Price Check, Aisle 5 Required Reading The Moving Target The Excellence Myth Seven Steps to SOA Success And They're Off! Are You Ready to Party? Skin in the Game The Right Numbers Secret of My Success Re: Tooling Connect Pint of View

CRM - May 2008

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