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☺�� From Peppers & Rogers Group

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Topic: Contact Center Evolution

Moving at the Speed of Business Meeting the expectations of today’s connected customer requires an agile and responsive approach to customer service via the cloud. Just the Facts: Business is moving at lightning speed. Busy, de“The use of analytics in the contact center offers a great deal of manding customers are often the catalyst for that competitive rush. promise because it can tell you why customers are calling and it can Customers today interact with companies through multiple channels, be tough to get that data from the reams of reports that are availincluding voice, Web, email, chat, mobile, and social. able,” says Mariann McDonagh, Chief Marketing Officer at inContact. For companies to keep pace with customers and Such scenarios are effective because, as McDonagh the changing business environment, they need a notes, cloud-based contact center services offer far “The use of analytics in contact center infrastructure that’s flexible and agile greater agility and flexibility for adding functionality the contact center offers enough to respond to customer requests across all on the fly than premise-based software systems. a great deal of promise because it can tell you why touchpoints. Increasingly, organizations are turning Forward-thinking contact center leaders can levercustomers are calling and to cloud computing platforms for their affordability, age other tools and techniques to identify and respond it can be tough to get that accessibility, agility, simplicity, and reliability to help swiftly to changing customer needs and preferences. data from the reams of keep pace with customers’ changing behaviors. This includes the use of virtualization and other techreports that are available.” Technologies and services integrated and acnologies, which we’ll explore later in this report, to help -Mariann McDonagh, cessed through the cloud can better help decisioncompanies attract and retain highly skilled agents who Chief Marketing Officer, inContact makers understand customers at a personalized can then be matched with the right customers. Pairlevel and predict their future needs, behaviors, and ing the right agent with the right customer can help value to the business. strengthen the customer-to-company relationship and “Smart businesses aren’t just keeping pace with their customers; help provide outstanding customer experiences that lead to improved they’re staying a step ahead of them,” says Cheryl Nolan, a director customer satisfaction and loyalty. at Peppers & Rogers Group. “Today it is practical, as well as possible, to engage customers with differentiated experiences and to know our customers on a one-to-one level.”

Adjusting to Spikes in Volume The Flexibility of ‘The Cloud’ Today’s connected customers require companies to act in real time to their questions, comments, and issues. Cloud-based contact center services are proving to be a fundamental component necessary for bringing about these capabilities with speed and agility because cloud platforms can enable companies to quickly synthesize, analyze, and act on customer insights from across an assortment of channels. In addition, cloud-based contact center services allow companies to make changes to customer service capabilities on the fly to meet fastchanging customer needs and preferences. An increasing number of companies are also leveraging cloud services to rapidly ramp up cost-effective self-service applications to help customers quickly resolve issues themselves. For example, decisionmakers may discover through predictive analysis of contact center traffic that a high percentage of customers are suddenly calling in to pay their bills because of a glitch in the online bill-pay feature. The contact center can leverage cloud-based contact center services to rapidly develop capabilities for customers to pay their bills using selfservice IVR or Web self service and avoid overloading live agents.

One of the biggest benefits of using cloud-based contact center services is that they’re able to help companies react quickly to seasonal or sudden shifts in contact center traffic volume across different channels. This chart from a recent Aberdeen Group report reflects the challenges facing workforce management efforts.

Companies with Contact Center Workforce Management Initiatives 48%

44%

24%

Unpredictable customer traffic

Increased customer demand for service

High turnover of high-quality/ top-tier agents

Source: Aberdeen Group, Workforce Management in the Contact Center, April 2012. N=166.

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Topic: Contact Center Evolution

From Peppers & Rogers Group

5 Ways to Optimize the Contact Center via The Cloud From Peppers & Rogers Group

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Cloud-based contact center services can provide companies with greater agility and responsiveness in customer service. Here are five ways that the cloud can help companies move at the speed of business:

F R OM P EP P E R S & R O G E R S G R O U P

1. Add new functionality on the fly. One of the biggest strengths of cloud-based contact center services is that clients automatically receive system upgrades as they occur. Companies also benefit from the ability to quickly add new functionality as customer needs and preferences change. For example, a retailer that experiences higher-than-expected response rates to an email promotional campaign can quickly add new email support features while the campaign is at full throttle.

“Smart businesses aren’t just keeping pace with their customers; they’re staying a step ahead of them.”

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—Cheryl Nolan, Director, Peppers & Rogers Group

2. Scale workforce teams to meet the ebb and flow of customer demand. Companies with seasonal businesses or those that need to respond quickly to an aggressive price offer made by a competitor or high response rates to a new campaign can rapidly add or reduce the number of agents needed for a particular area of customer service. The ability to scale contact center teams promptly and easily is a tremendous cost benefit to companies since they don’t have to purchase overcapacity of contact center software licenses or have costly licenses sitting idle. Nor do they have to purchase additional servers, storage, or add personnel to support additional software. Using the cloud, companies simply pay for what they use.

First Contact Resolution Rates by Channel As evidenced by this chart from Fifth Quadrant, first contact resolution rates vary dramatically across different channels. Customers expect companies to deliver consistent customer service experiences, regardless of the channel that’s being used.

Live agent

71%

Web self-service

67%

Social media

61%

Web chat

59%

Text

59%

IVR

59%

Letter Email Fax

57% 55% 48%

Base: 163 customer experience professionals from companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenues Source: Fifth Quadrant Pty Ltd.

© 2012 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group.

3. Match the right agent to the right customer. Customer interactions across various channels—including the Web, mobile, chat, voice, IVR, email, and social—produce a torrent of potential insights for companies to act on. This includes information about the channels customers prefer to use for different types of support (product, pricing, payments, etc.). Still, it’s often difficult for decision-makers to assemble the strands of customer information that are available to them from across the enterprise. A cloud-based contact center platform can act as a universal hub in a hub-and-spoke approach to gather and funnel customer data for analysis. Contact centers can use behavioral, demographic, and location-based customer information to properly match the right agent to the right customer. This approach can help to drive increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty as well as improvements in upsell and cross-sell rates. 4. Support the real-time contact center. Customers often become frustrated when they start their customer service journey in one channel, such as the Web, and share information online about the nature of the issue they’re trying to resolve, only to repeat the same information to an agent when forced to call the contact center because they didn’t get resolution online. This results in customer dissatisfaction and is a leading cause of customer defection. Using the hub-and-spoke approach, cloud-based contact center services enable agents to follow the full thread of a customer’s journey from one channel to the next. This enables agents to service customers more efficiently and to better anticipate their needs and preferences. 5. Support a flourishing multichannel customer service strategy. Customers typically use numerous channels for customer service. Companies can analyze the ways in which customers use different channels for different types of service interactions to better tailor support. “Every touchpoint is a new opportunity to learn more about your customers,” says Nolan. Companies can leverage cloud-based contact center services to communicate with customers in the channel of their choice while continuing to refine processes for customer service in specific channels without the need to tear out or overhaul premise-based customer service support systems. “The cloud is better suited for the way that customers communicate today,” says Kristyn Emenecker, Vice President of Product Marketing at inContact.



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Topic: Contact Center Evolution

From Peppers & Rogers Group

The Proactive Real-Time Agent From Peppers & Rogers Group

Agents who have real-time information about customers can work more efficiently, be better prepared and self-assured, and tailor the conversation to the customer because they know the customer’s history as well as current activities across channels, explains Nolan. Displaying this kind of knowledge about customers and having the competence to serve them effectively also helps to strengthen customer confidence and loyalty.

“The cloud is better suited ������������� for the way that customers communicate today.” ����������������� —Kristyn Emenecker, Vice President of Product ☺������������� F R OM P EP P E R S & R O G E R S G R O U P

Marketing, inContact

Identifying and Addressing Customer Needs

Customers Want To Feel Their Brand...

Companies can improve the process of identifying and acting on customers’ needs and preferences for service in different channels by using voice, text, social, and other types of analytics tools.

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Agents can act on real-time insights about customer behavior that are funneled to them via the cloud to determine what problems or needs a customer may have reported via the phone or online chat. “For example, if an agent knows that I’ve been completing an online credit card application, but have been stalled on the credit card selection field, a chat agent could proactively intervene to offer help in card selection, thereby raising the likelihood of application submission,” adds Nolan.

Then Brands Must Be Able To...

“Knows me”

• Identify and recognize customers as addressable individuals • Recall transactions and interactions

“Remembers me”

• Anticipate customers’ needs • Focus on the right priorities, balancing efficiency and effectiveness

“Listens to me”

• Be available and accessible, when and where the customer wants • Ask relevant questions • Solve, not pitch

“Helps me”

• Create personalized experiences • Be proactive, preemptive • Facilitate, educate

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Source: Peppers & Rogers Group

Capitalizing on The Cloud The following are examples of inContact customers that have improved customer service while reducing contact center costs through the use of cloud-based contact center services:

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Challenge

Result

An international genealogical service with operations on multiple continents needed a more effective way to quickly route customer calls to the right agent based on his or her language skills and regardless of the agent’s location.

The company’s use of an automated call distribution solution has led to $60,000 in annual call optimization and professional services savings.

A marketplace for self-storage units wasn’t able to track call and hold times, the number of calls in queue, agent performance, or to record outsourced contact center calls to manage customer experience using a hosted solution.

The use of integrated cloud-based contact center services has enabled the company to improve its contact center management, reduce call times, and improve its operational efficiency while increasing customer satisfaction.

A global provider of GPS, laser, optical, and positioning technologies had trouble segregating calls between resellers and end customers and handling seasonal spikes in call center volumes among agricultural clients.

Centralized customer support across regions is saving the company $20,000 per month by eliminating manual processes. Meanwhile, the use of a proxy call-back feature has enabled agricultural customers to keep their place in the call queue while tending to other business and receive a callback from an agent once one is available.

© 2012 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group.



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� Topic: Contact Center Evolution

From Peppers & Rogers Group

Getting Started: Preparing for the Future From Peppers & Rogers Group

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F R OM P EP P E R S & R O G E R S G R O U P

The Multichannel Mix Customers often use multiple channels when engaging customer service. •2  5 percent of consumers use 1 or 2 channels •5  2 percent of consumers use 3 or 4 channels •2  2 percent of consumers use 5 channels or more Source: Ovum

The future is fraught with uncertainty. Having access to the cloud means that companies can better anticipate how customers will want to interact with the contact center going forward. For instance, Web-enabled cloud-based contact center services are ideally suited for meeting the expanding digital communications preferences of today’s consumers. By blending the use of cloudbased services with predictive and other types of analytics, companies can better understand and respond to the needs and behaviors of digitally minded segments like Millennials and other customer segments. In addition, cloud-based services are able to future-proof the contact center by providing companies the wherewithal to quickly add support for new communications technologies and channels as they emerge. Because many customers still prefer to speak to a live agent to resolve particular issues, companies can leverage solutions like virtualization and Web-based videoconferencing to help connect customers with agents who can offer the optimal mix of interpersonal and problemsolving skills to help resolve specific issues, Nolan explains. These types of technologies

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are becoming increasingly important for contact centers to utilize as companies strive to reduce turnover among agents and improve their efforts to retain and attract highly skilled agents who prefer to work from home. McDonagh points out that this will continue to become increasingly important as more qualified contact center candidates choose to work from home. “In the future, a 250- or 500-seat contact center at some downtown location will become less relevant as companies rely more on virtual agent teams that can be mapped with customer needs and preferences,” she says. Ultimately, these tools and techniques, when leveraged through the cloud, can enable companies to more rapidly evolve and better anticipate and meet customer needs in order to create and sustain more rewarding relationships with customers. “Companies no longer have to compromise and provide customers with mediocre experiences due to the inherent constraints of legacy contact center systems,” Emenecker says. “The use of cloud-based contact center services is a way of starting over from scratch and providing customers with the types of experiences they deserve.”

inContact helps contact centers around the globe create profitable customer experiences through its pow­erful portfolio of cloud-based contact center software solutions. The company’s services and solutions enable contact centers to operate more efficiently, optimize the cost and quality of every customer interaction, create new pathways to profit, and ensure ongoing customer-centric business improvement and growth. For more information please visit www.inContact.com

Peppers & Rogers Group is dedicated to helping its clients improve business performance by acquiring, retaining, and growing profitable customers. As products become commodities and glo­balization picks up speed, customers have become the scarcest resource in business. They hold the keys to higher profit today and stronger enterprise value tomorrow. We help clients achieve these goals by building the right relationships with the right customers over the right channels. We earn our keep by solving the business problems of our clients. By delivering a superior 1to1 Strategy, we remove the operational and organizational barriers that stand in the way of profitable customer relationships. We show clients where to focus customer-facing resources to improve the performance of their marketing, sales, and service initiatives. For more information please visit www.peppersandrogersgroup.com

1to1® Media is dedicated to helping organizations across the globe realize the greatest value from their customer base. We provide resources that help senior executives to drive change and make customer-based initiatives the centerpiece of their growth strategy. 1to1 Media’s custom publications explore the best practices, trends, and developments from companies that are using customer initiatives to drive bottom-line impact. Backed by Peppers & Rogers Group, the globally recognized leader in customer strategy and relationship marketing, 1to1 Media combines thought leadership, field experience, and editorial expertise to deliver the content needed by our audience of more than 130,000 decision-makers. For more information please visit www.1to1media.com

© 2012 Peppers & Rogers Group. All rights reserved. 1to1 Media is a division of Peppers & Rogers Group.



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