E-commerce has been called the greatest business development since the industrial
revolution began two centuries ago, and rightfully so; how else can you reach hundreds of
thousands of people with a targeted message at little or no cost than through an e-mail
via the Internet? With all due respect to direct mail, telemarketing, integrated
marketing, trade show marketing, etc., nothing else has been as cost-effective as
marketing through the Web. Having said that, the myopic person might respond, "Well,
maybe that is all I should do" or, "Maybe I should abandon all traditional forms
of marketing and rely solely on e-commerce." The realist, on the other hand, blessed
with proper vision, would look at the opportunity of e-commerce differently, as I will
explain.
First, some facts: If you browse through the Web sites of many corporations, you will
find that many are boring, uninformative and often give you very little reason to call the
companies to purchase their products. Admittedly, I cannot begin to claim that I have seen
even 10 percent of the millions of Web sites out there, but even a fractional sample
reveals that practically 90 percent of Web sites are nonproductive, which indicates a
trend. Many Web sites are using horrible colors (known in the advertising business as
"turn-off" colors). Others simply do not say what the company does or why you
should call them as opposed to calling their competitors.
Perhaps the greatest failing of e-commerce has been the widespread customer abuse
practiced by many companies on the Web. What I mean by customer abuse is the failure to
either answer e-mail inquiries in a timely fashion or to provide a way for customers to
place a call from a Web site to a call center through a Web callthrough or call-me button.
There have been several surveys recently pointing out the abysmally slow responses (or
even worse, lack of responses) to customer e-mail inquiries. Nothing will inspire a
customer to switch vendors faster than the perception that a company does not care about
its customers enough to answer their questions; it?s the equivalent of asking a department
store clerk a question only to have the clerk turn around and walk away. (Tracey Roth,
managing editor of C@LL CENTER Solutions recently performed an informal survey to
evaluate the state of e-mail response of various e-commerce businesses. You can read the
results of her survey in her TMCnet.com "Dot Com Commerce" column
entitled "E-Service: Who's Naughty And Who's Nice")
Akin to this is the appalling lack of the adoption of call-me or talk-to-an-agent
buttons by e-commerce sites. FAQs lists or Web self-help software cannot answer every
customer question and as we are social creatures, there will always be the need for the
human touch and the knowledge that only a live call center agent can provide to reassure
customers and guide them to the solutions they need and as a result, help build a lasting
customer relationship. Obviously, call centers are the only places equipped with the
manpower, routing and customer information technologies (that play such a large part in
CRM [customer relationship management]) and customer service skills to handle large
volumes of direct customer interaction, whether by phone, text chat or e-mail, and should
be developed to their fullest potential.
But, assuming that one day these companies will wake up and realize their problems and
actually enhance their Web sites to encourage potential buyers to inquire about buying
their products or services, then an entirely new opportunity will become available to
their call centers. Unless looking to buy some low-cost, nonsophisticated items such as
napkins or socks, consumers need to know a lot of information about sophisticated and
expensive products such as home entertainment units, digital televisions or cutting-edge
computer systems before they can actually purchase the products.
Among other things, the consumer may request additional information or literature to be
mailed or e-mailed and eventually, when a product is purchased, since this is an online
transaction, a distributor still has to ship the product to the consumer. Given that the
core competency of many companies is not effective marketing, distribution, CRM,
processing e-mail or making the most of inbound calls to feed outbound calls, i.e.,
cross-selling and upselling, then a tremendous opportunity exists for call centers of all
kinds to fill this great void. By turning themselves into experts in these critical
functions, call centers can play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between Corporate
America and the consumer.
If you think about it, if professionally done, the above opportunity, largely created
by the untold millions of calls and e-mail messages generated daily through the Internet
by inquiring consumers, can be perhaps the most lucrative and profitable opportunity
opened to call centers of all types. Visionary call center managers will understand that
the potential volume of business created by this opportunity is simply endless.
Selling Strategy
Should you decide to bring your call center to the next level, and I certainly
hope you do, address your customers decision makers as follows:
Mr. or Ms. Corporate America, as you know, the key to success in todays
fast-paced economy is for every corporation to remain focused on its customers and only
perform services that are within its core competency. Advertising, promotion, fulfillment,
distribution, fielding calls, skillfully and rapidly handling e-mail, building customer
relationships, CRM, cross-selling and upselling are clearly not your core competency. We
want to be your strategic partner and handle these functions for you on an outsourced
basis because THESE ARE OUR CORE COMPETENCIES. In short, you do what you do best and let
us do what we do best.
Conclusion
For those of you who think of the Web as an enemy, may I suggest that you think
again: You have no better friend than the Web. If you think about it, there is nothing
more enormous in terms of market size or potential profitability for the call center than
what I have proposed above. As always, I welcome your opinions.
Sincerely,
Nadji Tehrani
Executive Group Publisher
Editor-in-Chief
ntehrani@tmcnet.com
|
Choices
In Your Call Center Whats In It For You? BY ED KMETZ,
CALL PROCESSING SOLUTIONS
(Editors Note: We received the following article in response to a sidebar we
ran in the September
1999 Publishers Outlook. That article, Removing Complexity And
Cost From Your Call Center Strategies by Marcus Heth, vice president of call
center and telephony development of the Customer Relationship Management division at
Oracle, addressed the benefits of using a single set of pre-integrated applications to
address the intricacies of customer relationship management.)
Customer self-service is an admirable goal, and customers are increasingly
letting us know thats what they want. Some want the ease of pressing a few keys or
looking at a Web site to find the information they want, when they want it. They want to
be able to do this at 9 a.m. or at 8 p.m. or at 2 a.m. Customers want to be able to
choose whats best for them.
The call center manager or vice president of sales and marketing is no different. These
sophisticated buyers of state-of-the-art call center hardware and software are no longer
willing to be held in thrall to youll take what we make and youll like
it suppliers. They want the best information available, the best solution, the best
pricing, the least aggravation, the best service, the most convenience when they
want it, which is almost invariably right now.
So how are they getting there? Purchasers of systems (whether that system is a
computer, a PBX, an IVR or any of the other systems that comprise a call center) are
making it clear they want open systems.
Whats an open system? Ask any of the computer mainframe manufacturers of the
1970s. They learned in a painful hurry that an open system called the personal computer
would revolutionize the way business is done. And the trend continues with no sign of
letting up. Linux is now the fastest-growing computer operating system, currently with
about 30 percent market share among Web servers. Why has Linux achieved such great
success? The reason, which you may have already guessed, is that Linux is an open system.
Open systems promote multiple manufacturers, countless programmers and efficient
distribution, sales, and support channels.
Why all the interest in open systems? Heres why.
- Open systems foster competition. At first glance, you might think that a manufacturer
would want to steamroll all his competitors and rule the world. But in the
end, that would be a very poor result. Indeed, competition is a good, healthy thing for buyers
and sellers alike.
- Competition validates the market. If youre the only manufacturer in the world of a
particular widget, you probably arent selling very many of them, and if you are,
youre probably absorbing losses.
- Competition forces manufacturers to continually improve their products.
- Competition validates pricing by allowing purchasers to see for themselves the range of
available pricing. If a particular solution is priced way above or way below the others,
at least ask why?
- Competition keeps pricing structures reasonable. If I buy a range of proprietary
solutions from a single vendor, how long will it be before I start to experience price
hikes from that vendor?
- Competition keeps manufacturers on their respective toes from a service standpoint. If
Manufacturer A doesnt provide outstanding service, the customer should have the
option to call Manufacturer B.
- Open systems ensure that the customer always has access to the most advanced technical
solutions available. It is impossible for any manufacturer to be best of breed
for every application across an entire spectrum. Manufacturers of open systems can afford
to specialize, gaining depth and expertise in focused areas, confident that their
solutions can be easily integrated into other companies solutions. ODBC (open
database connectivity) is an ideal example in our industry. Databases that are
ODBC-compliant are designed from scratch to communicate with one another.
- Open systems mean the customer always has somewhere else to turn if he or she is
dissatisfied with the pricing or service provided by a manufacturer. He or she does not
have this option if locked into a proprietary, closed system.
- Most important, open systems allow the customer a range of choices every step of the
way.
What about the argument that selecting just one vendor that supplies a proprietary
system, but nevertheless promises to provide a soup to nuts answer for every
one of your problems, is the best way to go?
Theres an Asian saying that states: When your only tool is a hammer, every
problem is a nail. Customers must be permitted to select the best tool for the job.
Manufacturers build the tools, knowing that their open systems will talk to other open
systems (even those built by their competitors). The supplier of each part of the answer
brings a particular strength to the table, and presumably makes a fair profit doing so.
And in the end, the customer wins with a superior overall solution at the
best-possible price.
Ed Kmetz is director of channel marketing for Call Processing Solutions. He may be
contacted at 973-361-7770, ext. 209 or at [email protected].
|