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CRM & Customer Service
 FOLLOW THE SUN
Call Centers / Contact Centers
 Customer interaction center or Customer Care are all the same names for Call Centers
 20 years ago consumers complained by letters and waited for response
 Not today, the 800 number has sparked off a revolution
 Real-time dispute resolution has become mandatory
 Even Dell Computers discovered that the customers who order PCs from company’s web site made an average of 2.5 calls to their support center !!!
Knowledge Centers
 These were there even before customer data bases became essential e.g. Walt Disney company and State Farm Insurance in the USA
 Call center hiring involved merely testing how fast a job candidate could type
 Call center operators respond to each call as if unique, but their effectiveness is measured by how quickly they get the customer off the phone !!
 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) can look up similar calls and their resolutions, while a customer is on phone, without repeating research – to enable efficient handling of escalating call volumes
 Software products like REMEDY and CLARIFY enable companies to run statistics on their calls, categorizing them by call types, time-to-resolution, escalation percentages, average call duration, etc.
 This provides forecast of all volumes to ensure adequate call center staffing
 CSR performance is tracked by volume of calls they can support
Call Center Automation
 Usage of Computer Telephony Integration ( CTI ) is done to automate the communication process
 Call Routing done through the “Help Desk” can be made up of several geographically dispersed call centers
 They are segregated on the basis of Location of company’s regional office, or by staff expertise or by product specialization
 Also on the basis of priority for R&D, location of firm’s outsourcing center, or based on escalation levels on the trouble tickets
Follow the Sun Concept
 This concept emerged to enable Call Centers keep open 24X7 like all-night stores
 To minimize customer wait times, “load balancing” is a critical operational objective
 Network routes monitor operator availability, while keeping track of incoming calls in the queue – using switch technology to allocate calls correctly
 Most notably Airlines provide best customer service, with a special number that reaches specially trained service agents
 Precision Call Distribution facilitates call routing to expert agents e.g. Saks Fifth Avenue ensures customers who spend $ 2000 annually reach an operator in one second or less
 Interactive Voice Responder (IVR) is another method for round-the-clock routing and gives time to qualify a caller before helping
 Automated speech recognition avoids multi-layered phone menu
Contact Center Sales Support
 Call center to be a point-of-sale for related products too
 Screen Pop of smaller windows on a Web Site visit displays the complementary products
 Web-based self service has also become very popular e.g. FEDEX service center takes 93 seconds to track a package but the Web site answers in 17 seconds for same information
 Customer self service has much to do with obtaining general information as also tracking specific orders with FAQs
 FAQs ( Frequently Asked Questions )
 Where is the company headquartered ?
 How do I return an item ?
 I’ve moved – how do I update my profile ?
 How do I review my account ?
How do I change my password ?
 More choices of FAQ more satisfaction for the customer
 Touchscape customizes self-service screens for CRM without prioritizing the FAQs
 Unless you are serious about supporting them , do not introduce new products & features
 Electronic surveys can measure customer satisfaction
 Call Scripting
• Such scripts eliminate Agent guesswork by giving the CSR with logical talking points and guiding customer based factors like
1. Reason for contact
2. Customer’s value
3. Cross-selling opportunities & propensity to buy
4. Current product promotions or discounts
5. Past due bills or accounts payable issues
6. Some products provide natural language support e.g. “customers need laundry instructions for flannel sheets” and be shipped with correct reply like “cold water, tumble dry on low”
7. However “canned” response can never replace CSR with deep product knowledge and good disposition
Cyberagents
 Lifelike representatives normally shown on company’s web site as a real person e.g. Compusa’s “Jill” being a typical type of character who provides information to make decisions based on customer request and information
 Workforce management tools that specialize in staff planning and optimization help in many ways
Workforce Management Tools
 Ability to forecast contact volumes to predict busy periods
 Recommend optimal no. of CSRs for peak periods
 Performance tracking by customer value, customer satisfaction, priority level or other metrics
 Employee scheduling based on skills, tenure, or preferred work hours
 Global monitoring for multiple contact centers, for combining findings with single reports for staff or performances fine-tuning
Customer Check-list for Success
 Choose your technologies carefully – makes no sense to offer customers web-based self-services when your site is not linked to inventory
 Use a building block approach to ensure call center technology is ahead of business evolution
Provide CSR with all customer info
 Establish processes for call center staff – no experiments and no guesses by CSRs
 Agree on success metrics e.g. for traditional car brand keep calls brief (avg. 4 mins.) and direct to web or local dealer. For luxury car models encourage to stay on line as long as it takes ( 25 mins avg. )
 Understand the issue of service recovery – customer on the verge of churning will occasionally give the CSR a chance to retain him/her which should not be ignored
 Ensure contact reps are properly trained
 Staff contact center at needed levels
CRM Marketing Initiatives
 Cross-selling and Upselling – mothers buy for kids and themselves is cross-selling whereas motivating customer to buy more profitable products is upselling
 Customer retention – in 1996 Frederick Reichheld said that US companies lose 50% customers every 5 years. Must be able to predict and prevent CHURN
 Behavior prediction – propensity-to-buy analysis, next sequential purchase, product affinity, product elasticity modeling & dynamic pricing, etc.