the buzz behind omnichannel

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2017 ICMI TREND REPORT:

THE BUZZ BEHIND OMNICHANNEL: INSIGHTS FOR DRIVING REAL RESULTS Sponsored by:

2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

IN THIS REPORT: About This Trend Report Is a “Good Enough” Attitude Dooming Your Contact Center? What Are Critical Success Factors in Today’s Contact Center? The Trouble with Terrible Tools Case Study: How Did One Organization Begin Their Omnichannel Journey? Delivering Full Empowerment at the Agent Level About ICMI & InContact

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

ABOUT THIS TREND REPORT: Organizations want to deliver great customer service experiences but are often cut short in their aspirations because of budget constraints, technology limitations, or a variety of other factors. When it comes down to it, what an organization wants to do and what an organization can do are often very different things. As a result, it’s not uncommon for contact center leaders to take a skeptical approach to the latest buzz within the industry. What’s one of the most pervasive buzz words in customer service today? Omnichannel. What does it really mean for an organization? More importantly, perhaps, is how can an organization articulate and realize the reported benefits of delivering omnichannel service? ICMI and inContact have partnered on this ICMI Trend Report to provide insight and perspective on the potential benefits and strategic advantages of omnichannel service to contact center leaders. In this trend report, we’ll explore: 1. The symbiotic relationship between agents and customers in delivering true omnichannel experiences and measurable indications of how decisions on one directly affects the other. 2. How to effectively leverage metrics like customer satisfaction, customer effort, and Net Promoter Score® to deliver on the modern-day definition of customer success and measure the true value of omnichannel experience 3. The role of technology in enabling (and disabling) effective service experiences. 4. Lessons learned and the things to avoid from one organizations journey to delivering omnichannel service. 5. Why agent empowerment matters and what it really means to ensure that the frontline can effectively serve the customer.

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IS A “GOOD ENOUGH” ATTITUDE DOOMING YOUR CONTACT CENTER?

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

IS A “GOOD ENOUGH” ATTITUDE DOOMING YOUR CONTACT CENTER? Contact center leaders are in unanimous agreement that the agent experience has a direct effect on the customer experience. It’s a relationship that’s relatively easy to explain and understand. Agents are the front line to customers, so if the agent experience is terrible, it’s a safe assumption that the customer will feel some type of degraded experience. Alternatively, if agents are well-equipped and properly trained, we anticipate that the customer experience will improve. There is an intimate bond between the customer and the agent that’s dependent on trust and a mutual objective: solve customer issues easily and effectively. Here’s the thing though – despite this obvious connection, companies really struggle with providing great service. It’s a bit perplexing to hear companies describe the ideal relationship between their agents and customers and then observe them make decisions that undermine and compromise the very experience they described. Should agents be spending their time navigating multiple systems, compiling a scattered puzzle, and attempting to make sense of disparate pieces? Why must the focus be on making the most of ineffective tools, rather than delivering the best possible customer experience? It’s a shockingly common trend and is symptomatic of a much larger issue; Companies declare that they care about the agent and customer experience, but they permit other factors to claim true authority. The biggest of these factors is cost. But, is cost really the barrier, or is it an easy scapegoat for companies with a “good enough” attitude? That is, they believe that customers have accepted their current level of service as “good enough” whether it’s stellar, dismal, or somewhere in between. More importantly, however, is “good enough” an acceptable strategy for the future of service? Hopefully, for you, the answer to this question is an obvious, “no”. Others in your organization, however, may need to be convinced on the importance of investing further to improve the agent and customer experience. This shouldn’t come as a surprise though, as many organizations are wrapped up in technical debt from multiple point solutions. A key factor is that when organizations first started expanding their channel options beyond voice, no one anticipated the variety of channels to grow as expansively and rapidly as they have. Companies invested in supporting channels one at a time and, as an unintended consequence, built these “Frankenstein” systems that will be unsustainable in moving their service teams forward. Through this Trend Report, we’re providing you with a few perspectives to help make the case for fully empowering your agents through a true omnichannel solution to realize the full benefits of an improved customer experience.

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WHAT ARE CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN TODAY’S CONTACT CENTER?

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

WHAT ARE CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS IN TODAY’S CONTACT CENTER? With all the hype around omnichannel, some organizations will try to sell the idea that an entirely new or different set of metrics are necessary to measure success. The metrics that best measure success today will only heighten in their effectiveness in a true omnichannel environment. Even more importantly, many of these metrics are indications for the current business to go omnichannel. According to a 2015 ICMI metrics research study, the shifts in customer expectations and how organizations approach the delivery of service will affect many common contact center metrics in new and different ways. In some cases, popular metrics are less and less effective in helping leaders manage the contact center. In others, metrics are evolving in meaning and what was once a negative indicator may now be signs of positive improvement. Today’s contact center leader must know which metrics will align with their success, and which are ineffective and overused. The least effective metrics for managing today’s contact center are: Abandonment from queue or shopping cart Without knowing WHY people are abandoning, contact centers find that they’re limited in their ability to affect change with a focus on abandonment. For this reason, the leading organizations place their focus on achieving service level or response time to understand accessibility, rather than fixating on abandonment as the priority. Cost per contact Outside of the contact center, it’s easy to believe that cost per contact is a good indicator of performance but, increasingly, that’s not the case. In fact, pursuing a decrease in a general cost per contact is misguided, as the cost per contact is rising for many of the agent-assisted contacts. This may sound alarming but there’s a good chance that it’s not a cause for alarm. As more and more simple interactions move into self-service and automation, it’s pulling away those repetitive tasks from the agents’ workload. This leaves the more complex and complicated interactions for agent assistance, which are often a higher cost per contact as compared to the simple and repetitive tasks. Overall, however, the contact center’s cost of service should decrease with the effective implementation and utilization of self-service and automation. Average handle time (AHT) AHT is an important metric for forecasting and planning in the contact center, but it shouldn’t be a leading metric of agent productivity or customer satisfaction. In fact, AHT is shown to increase in omnichannel session handling environments due to the increased complexity of the contacts coming to live agents. In addition, agents are capable of handling more contacts concurrently, which may contribute to increased handling. The increases in AHT should balance out overall, however, as increases in first contact resolution, the reduction of repeat contacts, and an improvement in an agent’s ability to work on multiple contacts simultaneously are to be expected.

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

The critical success factors for the contact center represent metrics that are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely. They are appropriate definitions of what success should “look like” in today’s customer-centric climate. Additionally, delivering omnichannel service benefits every one of these metrics. Because, at its core, the omnichannel movement is about making the customer and agent interaction as easy and effective and possible. The best metrics for managing today’s contact center are: Contact quality It’s critical to have a focus on quality in the omnichannel contact center. These successful organizations have invested in integrating all their customer data into a unified record and equip their agents with the insight and resources to fully understand the customer journey. With agents who have a 360° customer view, the number one thing that they can control is the quality of that interaction. Measuring contact quality determines if agents are using their comprehensive knowledge to deliver on customer expectations and the brands service promise. Customer satisfaction Research by ICMI, Walker, and others indicates that when it comes to competitive advantage, the customer experience outweighs both price and product. Delivering an omnichannel service experience improves customer satisfaction by simplifying the customer experience, eradicating disconnections among service channels, and ensuring that agents have full insight into the customer’s journey. It’s important to gauge customer satisfaction through various channels including surveys, focus groups, and other methods for collecting and understanding customer feedback. First contact resolution An investment in omnichannel is, in many ways, also an investment in first contact resolution. A common driver of repeat, or additional, contacts stems from the disconnected experience in a preomnichannel contact center. By integrating channels and connecting the customers experience, contact centers find that they’re more effective at “getting it right the first time” for their customers. Customer effort Research by Gartner (CEB) finds customer effort to be a strong predictor of loyalty. This corroborates with ICMI research: 82% of consumers say that number one factor in a great customer service experience is having their issue resolved quickly (think “easy”). Customer effort is based on the customer’s perception of how easily their issue got resolved. For this reason, the integration of a true omnichannel experience is critical to reducing customer effort.

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The Trouble with Terrible Tools

2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

of contact center leaders believe that their agent systems and tools could be more effective

What are the Signs of an Ineffective Tool: Built to make the company feel good (it was cheap and easy to implement – what could go wrong?)

Rigid in form and function (Everything is black & white; built for a single purpose. Tools aren’t special snowflakes.)

Limited to one interaction at a time (Don’t get any crazy ideas of helping multiple people at once – customers like to wait!)

Hides, complicates, or withholds important information (A web search of “true science facts” says that people like it when things that should be easy are complicated beyond reason)

71 of contact center leaders cite system & tool inefficiencies as the #1 contributor to an employee’s workplace related stress. Source: ICMI 2016

Forces the agent to focus on the process, not proving great service (If they must work harder to do their job, they’ll just appreciate it more – right?)

Ineffective tools aren’t sustainable and lead to agent burnout, customer dissatisfaction, and increased cost to the organization. Look for

these attributes in your next agent-facing tool:

Built to empower great service experiences (Think usability and comprehensive purpose. Agents get a unified resource that empowers them to address all aspects of the customer journey.)

Promotes agility and fosters ownership (Agents should have the ability to make judgement calls and elevate interactions to include additional channels.)

Delivers context with each interaction (The customer journey is often complex and disconnected but, it doesn’t have to be. Look for tools that present customer behavior and preference data in an integrated desktop environment.)

Empowers the agent to move at the speed of business ©2017 ICMI - All Right Reserved

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(For some interactions, in some channels, it would just make more sense to enable concurrent sessions. Effective tools recognize this and empower agents to serve multiple customers, across multiple channels ICMI.com | 800.672.6177 at the same time.)

CASE STUDY: HOW DID ONE ORGANIZATION BEGIN THEIR OMNICHANNEL JOURNEY?

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

CASE STUDY: HOW DID ONE ORGANIZATION BEGIN THEIR OMNICHANNEL JOURNEY? Many organizations talk about needing to “go omnichannel,” but most don’t know how to get started. The team at ICMI recently connected with Webhelp Nordic, an organization that’s just starting their omnichannel journey, to help inform and guide other organizations that are considering making the switch. Here’s what we learned. Specializing in voice, social digital channels, payment management, and sales and marketing services, Webhelp Nordic engineer’s customer experiences for some of the world’s most progressive brands. Through transformational outsourcing, Webhelp Nordic drives performance improvement and delivers lasting transformation in clients’ operating and financial models. We spoke with Jens Andersson, senior expert of Webhelp Nordic’s IT department, and Per Vålvik, the CIO/CTO of Webhelp Nordic and a member of the Nordic Cluster Executive Group. ICMI: What’s driving your decision to go omnichannel? And, more specifically, what are the challenges you’re looking to solve? The objectives you’re looking to achieve? Jens: We’ve always been on the leading edge, empowering our agents with the best tools and technology for daily efficiency. Hence, it’s very important we embrace omnichannel. Omnichannel will enable our agents to be more flexible, serving end users on all channels simultaneously, and maximize the efficiency of contact handling, by empowering the customer to choose the initial contact

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channel and giving them access to other media channels throughout the interaction. This will lead to a better overall customer experience. Per: Omnichannel will be essential to operationalize the customer journey from an “outside-in” perspective. By offering omnichannel, we can be truly strategic going forward. ICMI: What was your process for making the business case? Was the imperative driven from the executive level? How was operations involved? Was there feedback from agents, managers, etc.? Jens: Our executive team strives to provide the very best environment for our agents. The business case has always been clear: to be efficient, we need the tools to move rapidly. Customers are also moving rapidly—demand is increasing rapidly, and customers want more ways to communicate with our agents. Per: There’s big interest in omnichannel at all levels. Right now, we’re at the testing stage, but many of our teams are eager to get going. ICMI: Has it been difficult to get support for investment? Why or why not? How have you articulated the ROI of going omnichannel? Jens: Since we’re already working with multichannel support in many aspect and areas, we’re not anticipating any difficulty getting budget for omnichannel. And certainly, the ROI will be greater than the investment.

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Per: Omnichannel will also open opportunities for new business models that we haven’t seen the effects of yet. ICMI: You’re already working in multichannel, so how did/will you go about defining what the omnichannel experience “looks like”?

ICMI: How was the idea of going omnichannel received by your frontline agents? In what ways have they expressed excitement or uncertainty?

Per: As a BPO, our clients provide a variety of offerings and serve a range of customer bases, so we need to be equipped to handle their unique needs. ICMI: In what ways did you consider customer feedback? How do you know what your customers want? Jens: We have a long history of using variations on omnichannel application support in addition to multichannel. Based on this experience, we’re confident omnichannel is the best way to serve the business, our clients, and their customers. Per: Historically, we’ve used a few customer feedback processes and tools. To manage this, we need to focus more intensely on customer journey tools. ICMI: You’re in the early phases of testing inContact omnichannel. Have you seen any wins or advantages already? What are you expecting from the future of omnichannel?

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Jens: The big wins and gains are in the efficiency inContact omnichannel provides for our agents and the overall customer satisfaction resulting from quickly resolved inquiries. Our expectation is that inContact will continue to integrate omnichannel into their product, opening possibilities for us to adapt our processes further and positively transform our clients’ experience.

Jens: Omnichannel is an expansion of multichannel. The main difference is that our agents will be able to handle multiple interactions on multiple channels at the same time. By removing all the aspects of traditional first-in-first-out (FIFO) sills-based routing, omnichannel provides agents with a multi-skilled, dynamic process for handling interactions.

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Sponsored by inContact

Jens: Our agents are all enthusiastic about the new omnichannel capabilities. They’re looking forward to being able to work even more flexibly with clients and customers in the future. The uncertainty we’ve encountered primarily relates to the stress of having multiple interactions “popping” at the same time. But, since we can control the number of concurrent interactions an agent receives, we’re confident this will be a minor obstacle that our agents will overcome once omnichannel has been introduced to the production environment. ICMI: In what ways do you expect agent performance to change because of implementing omnichannel service? What impact do you hope for on agent satisfaction and engagement? Jens: We’ve always focused on our agents. Introducing omnichannel is just one more step towards a more flexible environment that we expect to improve agent performance (reflected in resolution rates and financial incentives)

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Per: We also expect simpler work to be handed off to bots and AI, enabling our agents to focus on more sophisticated, challenging projects. ICMI: What challenges do you anticipate as you go through the process of becoming omnichannel? How are you preparing to address and overcome those challenges? Jens: The biggest challenges we expect to encounter moving to omnichannel will be securing our internally developed applications and adapting them to a new way of routing interactions. We’ll also have to adapt our extensive reporting to align with the new omnichannel data collection paradigms. We’re already conducting testing in these areas, as we believe they’re essential to successfully adapting and deploying omnichannel. Per: The other challenge is that BPO agreements are often a bit “old school.” But as said earlier, it also opens possibilities for new business models and a more strategic approach, cooperating with multiple departments with an outside-in perspective on our clients and customers. ICMI Do you expect to face any challenges with agents accepting the change to omnichannel? How will you overcome those challenges? Jens: If agents are engaged in the process and well trained, we believe the migration from multichannel to omnichannel will be successful. If we do face any challenges, we believe that information, education and a common goal will resolve such challenges. We succeed because we always work together.

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ICMI: How do you expect omnichannel service to positively affect the customer experience? Jens: Our clients are being pressured by their customers to decrease resolution times. This is just one of the aspects of the more digital world we’re moving towards, and as omnichannel addresses customer demands for efficiency, it should therefore be the next step for all companies that are on the “digital rollercoaster.” ICMI: What advice do you have for organizations who are thinking about going omnichannel? Jens: Be sure you’re using most of the channels you already have, since this is where you’ll really notice the benefits of omnichannel, once your agents are able to use channels concurrently. Don’t underestimate the changes you may have to make to your reporting; review your current reports and the processes around reporting the metrics you’re currently using, and consider how you can/ must adapt them for the new omnichannel paradigm. Also, involve your agents and other productive Contact Centers early in the process to discuss the changes associated with going omnichannel, and make sure you prepare them with good training to manage their stress factors as much as you can. Managing as many anxieties as you can ahead of migration will certainly make the transition both smooth and successful.

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DELIVERING FULL EMPOWERMENT AT THE AGENT LEVEL

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

DELIVERING FULL EMPOWERMENT AT THE AGENT LEVEL Omnichannel has been talked about a lot, and there are many ways in which people choose to define it. To inContact, Omnichannel is the ability to see the customer journey across all channels and across all moments in time. There is a live and free flowing movement between channels as customers interact with an organization and it’s critical for both the agent and customer experiences to be seamless across these channels. Beyond that, it’s about empowering the agent with those insights on a platform that enables them to handle multiple channels with multiple customers simultaneously. The agents are the most visible representation of an organization’s service strategy, so it’s critical for them to have the tools and resources to assist and direct customers to the best path for resolution, driving better customer satisfaction and higher first contact resolution. If an organization isn’t fully empowering their frontline, they’re making a deliberate choice to deliver a subpar experience. It seems counterintuitive that organizations wouldn’t fully empower their frontline, but it’s often a blend of policy, process, and system constraints that hold them back. The historical paradigm that the contact center was really a “cost center” contributed to many organizations investing minimally in this part of the organization. But, this is all changing as companies increasingly focus on “improving customer satisfaction and streamlining the customer experience, while at the same time increasing agent utilization”, according to Annette Miesbach, Senior Product Marketing Manager at inContact. Executives are realizing that to improve the customer experience, they must invest in improving the agent experience, and it’s for this reason that the idea of omnichannel has gained so much hype. The organizations who can achieve an omnichannel experience will improve agent satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and first contact resolution. With omnichannel, agents are not bound to a single channel, or even to siloed co-existent channels. Instead, agents navigate through these intertwined channels, with full customer context, and the ability to nimbly meet customers where they are, versus the customer exerting additional effort. The value of omnichannel should be obvious, but organizations still demonstrate a reluctance to implement omnichannel. One of the common roadblocks is the use of multiple point solutions for each channel. Migrating from several disparate solutions is often a daunting and seemingly complicated task that, from some perspectives, may appear as too difficult to overcome. That said, these multiple systems may be causing a burden on the agents that is simply too much to realistically handle and are never a good idea for contact centers who want to deliver great service. In addition to multiple systems, the agent’s resulting complex workflow can create something that’s known as cognitive overload. In other words, creating more work than a person can realistically process at a given time. Causing a negative cognitive load on agents because of bad tools is always bad for organizations but, if you can eliminate it there is a big payoff to productivity and customer satisfaction. The goal is to find the optimal point of productivity and, for many organizations, this may require an iterative process until the ideal cognitive load is determined. It is at this point that organizations may realize that their multiple point solutions are the root cause of diminished agent

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

productivity and the performance gains realized through a unified omnichannel solution may be justification enough for an investment in the solution. Beyond the tool improvements and measuring the appropriate cognitive load for your environment, another great source of information for justifying omnichannel can be found from your agents themselves. “I absolutely think agents should be involved (in the decision to implement omnichannel)”, said Miesbach, “…they’re the ones most exposed to what’s really going on.” By capturing agent insights, contact center leaders can learn about disconnects in the customer journey, places where processes unnecessarily complicate the experience, or situations in which contacts often move from one channel to another. Feedback like this from the frontline could be useful indications of where omnichannel would benefit the organization by addressing common gaps and closing the loop on the customer experience. Outside of the contact center, shifts in customer behavior are another key indicator of why omnichannel would benefit organizations – especially to the extent of delivering full empowerment to the front-line agent. There is a clear lack of customer patience and an organizations ability to serve their customers quickly and accurately is paramount to success. It’s also a core part of the omnichannel value proposition. Annette Miesbach notes, “we’re all being trained to get things done immediately; without delay. We all do something and expect the outcome instantaneously… And, the expectation of customers to reach out to companies via any channel that they use for their own purposes…certainly plays a role in how organizations are using channels.” It’s not just about instantaneous gratification, though, as any organization could achieve that today by overstaffing. Omnichannel assists agents with personalizing the experience; gone are the days of contacting an organization who has no idea that you emailed them yesterday, renewed your contract, etc. This plays into an organizations ability to improve critical metrics, like first contact resolution, as it empowers and equips agents to serve customers in the channel of choice, without delay or the requirement for the customer to exert additional effort. A solid service strategy shouldn’t be about being great in one channel; it should focus on delivering a great, unified experience across all channels. Imagine that an agent spent fifteen minutes with a customer over chat, only to discover that they need to complete the service interaction over the phone. In a nonomnichannel environment, that type of experience could be incredibly disruptive, disconnected, or downright impossible. For an agent empowered in an omnichannel environment, however, it’s easy to pivot the conversation to the new channel and retain the full context and integrity of the interaction. Truly, this was the intention for multichannel service all along. Organizations should enable customers to contact them through their channel of choice, while empowering agents with the ability to pivot to the best channel to serve the customer needs, which need not necessarily be their channel of choice. The time is here for organizations to truly embrace omnichannel as the norm for service and, for many companies, they know that it’s the future of their customer experience. The benefits to the customer, the agent, and the organization are clear and now, the technology is here to enable companies to make it a reality. If you’re ready to learn more, connect with the team at inContact to discuss the possibilities.

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2017 ICMI Trend Report: The Buzz Behind Omnichannel: Insights for Driving Real Results

Sponsored by inContact

ABOUT ICMI & INCONTACT About ICMI The International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) is the leading global provider of comprehensive resources for customer management professionals—from frontline agents to executives—who wish to improve customer experiences and increase efficiencies at every level of the contact center. Since 1985, ICMI has helped more than 50,000 organizations in 167 countries through training, events, consulting, and informational resources. ICMI’s experienced and dedicated team of industry insiders, trainers, and consultants are committed to helping you raise the strategic value of your contact center, optimize your operations and improve your customer service. ICMI is a part of UBM plc (ubm.com), a global events-led marketing services and communications company. About NICE inContact NICE inContact is the cloud contact center software leader, with the most complete, easiest and most reliable solution to help organizations achieve their customer experience goals. inContact continuously innovates in the cloud and is the only provider to offer a complete solution that includes the customer interaction cloud, an expert service model and the broadest partner ecosystem. For more information, visit: www.inContact.com

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