NICE Shapes Interactions as they Happen, Prepares for Engaged Customer

Customer service agents are facing a much more complex and escalated environment when it comes to dealing with consumers. Consumers are more empowered than ever before as they are communicating more often and using multiple channels to contact an enterprise.

 In a recent survey, NICE Systems (News - Alert) revealed that on average, consumers are using six different channels for contacting service providers, with the most popular and growing self-service channel being the Web and the most successful channel for accomplishing tasks being the contact center.

NICE is a provider of intent-based solutions that capture and analyze interactions and transactions, realize intent, and extract and leverage insights to deliver impact in real time. It takes interactions that happen and shapes them for either in the moment or for the future. Sometimes the products and solutions associated with that are things such as interaction analytics—from recordings of phone conversations, e-mail, click to chat, any type of interaction you can think of that might happen in customer service -- as well as the preparedness for the employees that customers are facing; scheduling, forecasting, training, coaching and development of those people either before their interaction or in the moment.

So how does NICE prepare to meet the engaged customer – who is savvy, knowledgeable, constantly connected and intolerant of poor service – in any media of choice and do so in a timely, efficient and consistent manner?

Matthew Storm (News - Alert), director of innovation and solutions at NICE, explained that NICE ensures interaction is captured in the moment: whether it’s through e-mail, social media, Web, over the phone or in a branch, that channel is captured and at the same time becomes part of the overall customer journey.

A lot of interactions start in the Web or self-service. NICE’s survey found that nearly 30 percent of respondents consult their providers’ websites at least once a week and more than 40 percent have increase their use of smartphone applications and social networks. Linking those interactions together is key for NICE.

“You probably remember hearing yourself say before, ‘I’ve called about this before and I’m going to have to re-explain myself,’” said Storm. “Many times organizations don’t know about those previous interactions or don’t know how to handle them in context.”

NICE refers to unique identifiers, such as a phone number, e-mail address or account number, at each channel to link interactions together.

Customers also place first call resolution (FCR) as a top factor for ensuring a successful customer service experience. More than 50 percent of survey respondents noted that if they cannot easily achieve resolution, they will turn to the contact center.

To NICE, FCR is important for three reasons: because it’s important to the customers, because organizations know the cost of handling contacts in a repetitive manner is expensive and because FCR has a direct impact on the customer experience.

With the Web as the most popular self-service channel, customer service agents need to be even more prepared once they are on the phone.

“Websites typically provide a lot of information,” Storm explained. “When the next interaction happens, that person needs to be well prepared for an engaged customer that has already done a lot of homework in the Web channel. To be able to do that requires a lot more coaching that in the past. The customers that are calling are not asking the easy questions – they’ve found those on your website.”

NICE adapts to the rise of the engaged customer by focusing on preparing for interactions, shaping interactions in the moment and improving interactions for the future. NICE especially emphasizes shaping interaction in the moment.

A lot of other solutions are preparing, coaching and improving for the future, but only NICE’s solutions, actually during an interaction, can take the best practices from the past and guide an agent through a difficult process, offer an agent a next-best offer presentation for cross selling or possibly indicate in real time turn indicators—detecting if a customer is about to walk away and knowing what to do in order to attempt to save the customer.

NICE’s customer experience solutions empower businesses to harness their customer interactions to deliver a customer experience that differentiates them from their competitors, expands wallet-share and drives customer loyalty.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.

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