Call Center Efficiency through Improved Customer Categorization

If you’re an inbound call center manager, you can probably relate to the following customer “types:”

There’s the “Pokey Peruser,” the person who dials into the call center all the time, but never buys anything. This customer poses a serious challenge for the call center because they tend to eat up gobs of agent time with trivial, sometimes even downright silly, questions -- or sometimes just to “chat” with someone -- yet there’s no way to determine whether they will eventually, one day, start buying and turn out to be a worthwhile customer.

 

Then there’s the “Sporadic Spender.” Like the “Pokey Peruser,” the “Sporadic Spender” also tends to dial in with a lot of questions – yet they only buy something once in a blue moon – raising the question, how much costly live service should be devoted to this customer?

 

Then there’s the “Surging Shopper.” This is the customer that buys occasionally, yet based on their demographic could potentially become a very good regular or “premium” customer. You want to provide this customer with prompt and knowledgeable service, because they could one day be one of your best customers.

 

Then there’s the “Champion Customer.” This is the loyal and satisfied customer who always comes back for more. Thus they deserve the highest quality customer service you can provide, so as to ensure they remain loyal.

Then there’s the “Tenacious Talker.” This is the customer that started off strong, with a bunch of “high value” purchases, but they’re not really buying anymore – instead they’re calling in, sometimes frequently, perhaps looking for all kinds of free deals or offers that simply don’t exist, or with a million questions about the product or products they purchased previously. Again, you have to provide this customer with good service -- but for how long -- and to what degree?

The big philosophical question that many organizations must grapple with is: Do each of these customer “types” deserve the same fair and equal treatment, in terms of customer service? The answer largely depends on the type of organization – but most companies are looking for ways to reduce the cost of serving those customers who simply don’t spend, while at the same time keeping them “on the line” and engaged with the brand (in other words, not alienating them).

The challenge for call centers is identifying and “categorizing” these customers so that their calls can be automatically routed to the next available agent best suited to dealing with each “type.”

Helping to achieve this are today’s IVR, or interactive voice response, systems. These sophisticated software applications are playing an increasingly vital role in call center automation – most systems have advanced from simple skills-based routing applications to fully configurable “intelligent routing” applications with even more sophisticated features and more granular control. They also sport much more advanced speech recognition technology: With today’s speech-enabled, self-serve systems, customers can carry out a “natural dialog” with an “automated agent,” thus enabling them to get basic information, such as an account balance or the status of an order, without having to wait on hold for a live agent. Thus they help call centers preserve costly live agent resources for more complex or “higher value” transactions.

Today’s IVR systems identify customers via caller ID. When a customer dials in – whether they are using their cell phone, home phone, or perhaps another phone which they dialed in on previously (such as an office phone), the system identifies the customer and automatically links their phone number to their stored “customer profile,” which is a set of customer data including (but not limited to), name, billing address, past purchase history, credit card info and other information. In general this is achieved through integration with other databases, including a company’s customer relationship management system.

Where things get interesting (and where new efficiencies can be gained) is when additional customer “metadata” is programmed into the IVR system – including, for example, whether a particular customer is a “Pokey Peruser,” “Tenacious Talker” or perhaps a “Champion Customer” (aka “Premium Customer”). The best of today’s IVR systems enable this more “granular” level of customer profiling to take place.

What’s the advantage? Well, for one thing it enables automatic “placement” of particular caller types in the queue: For example, most organizations program their IVR systems to give “Champion Customers” priority in the queue, meaning that their calls get transferred immediately to the next available agent. A customer who has been indentified as a “Pokey Peruser,” on the other hand, might get lower prioritization (or at least be placed into the queue chronologically, meaning they will have to wait their turn).

In a recent article published on 1to1 Media, Terry Saeger, senior vice president and general manager, enterprise services and solutions, and Steve Chirokas, executive director, marketing, for call center solutions provider VoltDelta explain how today’s IVR systems can be used to improve call center efficiency while at the same time boosting customer satisfaction. Through the improved identification and categorization of customer contacts, organizations can not only reduce the need for live agent assistance, they can improve the quality of service they deliver to their very best customers, thus driving customer retention and loyalty.

“…in such challenging economic times, [it] is not just how customers are segmented … it is perhaps more important to determine what can be done to optimize customer retention and care while dealing with limited resources,” Saeger and Chirokas write in the article. “By definition, it is simply impossible to treat everyone at an equally ‘superior’ level. Not a revelation, of course, but what is new are choices within customer care technologies that can be creatively mixed to more effectively serve high-value customers while efficiently (and effectively) working with those prospects or clients that are unlikely to become profitable or loyal buyers.”

The informative article provides some general examples of strategies call centers can use to reduce the impact that “Pokey Perusers” and other customer types can have on live agent resources.

To read the full article, click here.

For more information about VoltDelta’s (News - Alert) Web-based, on-demand call center solutions, including its advanced IVR technology, click here.