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Self-Service: The Secret To Champagne
Customer Service On A Beer Budget
By Christine J. Holley, Interactive
Intelligence, Inc.
'By 2005, more than 70 percent of customer service interaction
for information and remote transactions will be automated.'
-- GartnerGroup, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2001, Oct.
8, 2001
In a world where products are ubiquitous, excellent customer service
has become the distinguishing factor among competing companies. Of all the
technologies designed to enhance customer service, self-service
technologies are at the top of the list. Self-service technologies such as
interactive voice response, fax-on-demand and e-mail response management
services promise reduced costs and increased efficiencies. Perhaps most
important, they also promise increased customer loyalty due to added
convenience. Considering the average business has lost more than half of
its customers during the past five years, resulting in earnings that are
nearly 100 percent lower than what could have been achieved with a
five-percent improvement in customer retention, self-service technologies
are like the Song of the Sirens from The Odyssey ' fraught with
some dangers but incredibly tough to pass up.
These dangers, like the danger of any technology, have to do with a
lack of foresight and poor application. How many times have you been stuck
in IVR hell ' wading through mile-long menus to access your account
balance only to discover that it's incorrect but you can't access a
live agent to find out why? Have you ever been surfing on a Web site that
offers an interactive 'frequently asked questions' option? You enter
your question and are rewarded with a completely irrelevant response. No
customer would consider these options a convenience and customer loyalty
is sure to suffer.
For a company to enjoy the benefits of self-service technologies, it
must carefully answer the following questions:
- What are the business objectives?
- What type of self-service technology best suits these objectives?
- What process best supports these objectives?
To ignore these questions is the business corollary of ignoring the
dangers of the Song of the Sirens: a loss of customers, profit and,
ultimately, the downfall of the company.
The Business Objectives
Before cost can be used as a measurement of self-service, business
objectives and client needs must first be addressed. Companies should not
assume that all clients are ready, willing or even able to use
self-service options. It's a good idea to survey clients first and find
out if, for instance, they have e-mail or Web access and if they would use
it to supplement direct service options.
Certain verticals are structured such that their business objectives
are more likely to be supported by a self-service initiative than others.
For instance, the financial sector is a prime industry for self-service
technologies, as customers increasingly take a hands-on approach to
financial management and monitoring. Retailing is perhaps the most mature
industry when it comes to self-service, especially Web-based options, as
they have the advantage of decades of experience selling online through
shops, catalogs and contact centers. Keep in mind that 'e-tailers' are
perhaps the best candidates for these technologies because customers
desire convenience from online vendors above all things ' including
discounts.
Insurance and government are fast catching up in their adoption of
self-service technologies, particularly government, spurred by public
pressure to increase efficiencies and improve customer service.
All companies, regardless of their vertical market, must also ask if
their products or services are conducive to being delivered using a
particular self-service channel. For example, companies will likely find
that a product or service that is very personalized or requires sensitive
information to process might not be best delivered via the Web.
An often overlooked question is how much value is associated with
interactions on a particular channel. In general, return-on-investment is
higher on sell-side transactions where self-service options replace
order-taking models that are labor-intensive, such as call center and fax
transcription, or where they promise to streamline interactions between
sales representatives and customers, such as product configurations.
Many companies take a phased-in approach to self-service deployments by
making these options available for certain transactions only or sometimes
by rolling them out internally as services for employees, partners,
distributors and suppliers. This can be useful as it enables companies to
more easily measure return on investment and also address any issues, such
as poor IVR interfaces, before they become problems on a grand scale.
In addition to measuring monetary savings, companies must also factor
in the cost of poor service. Lowering the cost of service delivery is
certainly important, but without considering the effects of bad service, a
complete cost savings picture will never emerge.
Finally, there does exist an irony about self-service technologies that
takes many companies by surprise. While a primary goal of self-service is
to reduce the need for live agent intervention, as customers have access
to more information through self-service options, they are also more
likely to need direct assistance. So, while the cost savings of
self-service technologies are real, companies should be mindful of the
demand it tends to create for agent services.
The Technology
By first identifying the business objectives, companies will find it
easier to determine the right self-service technologies. To ensure a
successful deployment, however, several technical issues must be
addressed.
The importance of any technology's underlying architecture cannot be
overstated. This is especially true with self-service technologies because
they offer touch points throughout the customer lifecycle and are a
critical component of a company's overall customer relationship
management strategy. If the self-service technology does not integrate
well with existing systems and if it cannot function across communication
channels, a company is likely to spend far too much money and time on
deployment, maintenance and customization.
Primary architectural considerations include the following: Is the
system open or proprietary? Is it hardware- or software-based? Does it
function across communication channels? Does it offer a growth path to
more sophisticated self-service features? In general, an open,
software-based system that offers a central 'engine' for interaction
processing offers the most flexible architecture and one that will protect
a company's technology investment into the future.
Another critical decision a company must make is whether to purchase a
suite or best-of-breed self-service solution. While, in the past, the
best-of-breed approach was favored for providing companies with the widest
selection of applications, suite solutions have matured and increasingly
rival best-of-breed solutions with a comprehensive set of applications and
the added benefit of reduced integration.
Companies should be vigilant, however. Although 'suite' implies a
tightly integrated set of applications offered by a single vendor, this is
often not the case. Many vendors offering a 'suite' solution are
actually selling a package of products from different vendors resulting
from acquisitions or partnerships. Be sure to ask the vendor about the
product's architecture ' exactly where the applications come from and
how tightly they are integrated. If it turns out to be a multivendor,
multiproduct solution, it's likely to require a longer implementation
period, increased maintenance and administration and reduced
ease-of-customization.
Aside from architecture, self-service features are, of course,
paramount to a successful deployment. Be sure the vendor offers
integrated, scalable applications that include not only self-service
features like ERMS and IVR with speech recognition, but also features such
as Internet text chat, voice-over-IP and collaborative tools such as
co-browsing. If not, a company will be forced to take a 'point'
solutions approach when incorporating other CRM applications into its
overall customer service strategy, thus significantly increasing cost and
complexity. In addition, based on the trend of consolidation among the
e-service industry, those vendors taking a suite approach instead of a
components approach are most likely to survive the shake-out.
When evaluating features, companies should also determine the level of
staffing expertise required to use them. Some ERMS vendors, for instance,
offer products based on advanced artificial intelligence and linguistic
techniques instead of case-based reasoning so companies need not hire a
dedicated knowledge engineer to maintain the system. Self-service
technologies can also affect staffing quotas, so understanding this in
advance is critical to a successful implementation.
The Process
Often overlooked in lieu of the technology itself, a self-service strategy
is only as good as the process that defines it. Companies must define a
consistent set of business rules for customer interactions ' both direct
and self-service ' across integrated channels and throughout the
customer life cycle. These business rules should be based on the customer's
desire for simplicity, speed, convenience, reliability and accuracy.
One way for a company to accomplish this is to think of self-service
initiatives as proactive processes rather than reactive ones. A good
example of this is offering customers short online or telephony-based
surveys as part of the self-service option. These surveys can be used to
gather feedback from customers about how to improve service and can even
be set up to automatically transfer the customer to a live agent should a
score on a particular survey fall below a predetermined level.
The value of human intervention cannot be overstated as part of a
proactive self-service strategy. In addition to keeping IVR menus short
and simple, companies should always offer an exit path to a live person
' also called 'barge-in' capability ' that doesn't require the
customer to hang up. Likewise, companies should ensure that when using
ERMS, customers have the ability to escalate issues to a live agent. Human
contact is especially important if a company's self-service strategy
spans the customer buying process where high-ticket items are offered.
Giving customers easy access to live help adds the elements of
personalization and trustworthiness to those of simplicity, speed,
convenience, reliability and accuracy. Combined, customer loyalty is
cemented and companies receive an important value-added benefit.
A discussion of the business process is incomplete without raising the
issue of outsourcing. Outsourcing a company's self-service initiative
offers the benefits of increased ramp-up time, reduced overhead and the
elimination of maintenance issues. It also brings with it potential
problems, not the least of which is decreased control over staff and
information.
When outsourcing ERMS, companies can mitigate possible negative
side-effects by working closely with the outsourcer to develop a good
knowledge base. Outsourcers should carefully review the company's
product literature, ask employees what they typically tell customers and
find out what questions they most frequently hear. Companies should also
set up an automated process to regularly update this information so
outsourcers can provide the most accurate information possible.
In addition to a good analysis of the outsourcer's self-service
technology, it is increasingly common for outsourcers to offer a 'lease-to-own'
option, providing companies with the flexibility to bring the self-service
function in-house when they're ready.
The Last Word: Planning For Crisis
While it might not be part of the business objective, self-service
initiatives can also be viewed as a way to safeguard companies during
times of crisis. By providing customers, employees, partners and other
constituents with access to information anywhere and anytime, a company's
self-service strategy can be considered a valuable part of its disaster
recovery plan.
Whatever a company's objectives, the goal of self-service technology
remains the same: to leverage current resources and improve quality of
service while reducing costs through efficiency. With a little foresight
and proper application, self-service technologies can fulfill this goal
without incurring the wrath of the Sirens ' and that's no myth.
Christine J. Holley is the market communications director for
Interactive Intelligence Inc. (www.inin.com),
a communications software company headquartered in Indianapolis. She has
worked in the IT industry since 1994 and began freelance writing in 1992.
She has been published in numerous trade, business and academic
periodicals.
[ Return
To The March 2002 Table Of Contents ]
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