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Service ELITE [Customer Relationship Management](Customer Relationship Management Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) PROVIDING CUSTOMERS with easy access to your company via their preferred channels is key to improving customer service, as our Elite Service Award winners have proven. Our first Elite winner, a video game developer, followed the direction of its customers and successfully transferred 80 percent of support inquiries to the Web. A major airline company upgraded its IVR and noticed a few soft and hard ROI benefits, such as the ability to tailor interactions based on a caller's phone number and the ability to predict the reason for customer calls. Our third Elite winner, a musical instrument and equipment retailer, added a social component to its customer service efforts, enabling the company to respond to tweets and log the interactions in customers' case records. Delighting customers, via their preferred channels and personalized service, has made these three companies winners in the customer-service game. * BY THE EDITORS OF CRM MAGAZINE Game Developer Answers the Social Call ACTIVISION GAINS CUSTOMER INSIGHT AND FLEXIBILITY WITH SALESF0RCE.COM SECOND ONLYTO NINTENDO in the worldwide video game publishing and interactive entertainment sectors, Activision Blizzard is ratcheting up the competition. The $4.7 billion company, which has millions of gamers as customers, has built its gaming empire thanks to several popular products, such as Guitar Hero, Call of Duty, and, most recently, Diablo III and World ofWaraajt Mists of Pandaria. The video game developer creates entertainment for online, console, handheld, and mobile devices. Activision's many gamers stay connected to their games and each other through social networks and mobile applications, inspiring the company to update its service model. Just one year ago, Activision Blizzard still managed its call center in what Melanie Marceli, the company's senior manager of Web strategy and support solutions, calls "a very traditional model." With very little Web site support, gamers were, essentially, forced to rely on telephone support. And, Marceli adds, "what that meant for the company was a very big bill at the end of the year." But beyond the general cost per call, the company also knew that forcing such digitally savvy consumers to wait in telephone queues could easily disenfranchise them. Activision began to explore solutions that would give it the flexibility it needed to service its gamers in the channel of their choice. Last March, the company selected Salesforce.com Service Cloud and was able to roll out the product globally and across three of its contact centers within 90 days. But Activision didn't stop there. In the past, the company had been plagued with lack of connectivity between its multiple sites. For instance, if a customer accessed Activision through a marketing site and then clicked on "Support," he would have to go through the trouble of logging back in. As a result, the company overhauled its Web site, enhanced its self-service experience online, and integrated the primary Activision gamer database with its Web site to have easy access to gamer profiles. "We wanted to know who [our customers] were the moment they clicked on Support," Marceli maintains. "We wanted to know the challenges they were facing and lead them down a path where they could find the answers they need, check on their cases, or chat with an agent." Since deploying Service Cloud, Marceli says Activision's Web site traffic numbers have doubled. Of all of its support channels, the Web site now accounts for 80 percent of customer service traffic, whereas the telephone used to make up that share. After deploying Service Cloud, Activision handled more than 509,000 customer cases online in 2012, and saw its Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with 13 million page views. Activision integrated social media customer service platform Radiano into its support mix, and is expanding the integration to tie social customer support issues back to Service Cloud to keep customer service cases in context Marceli says that Service Cloud has been paramount to improving agent performance, and gamers are getting support in the language they speak. "Now that there are options, customers are going to the self-service channel," she says. "A lot of our gamers either prefer social or the Web." Internally, Activision support agents began using Salesforce.com's enterprise collaboration tool Chatter as a way to team up on support issues. In the past, agents would rely only on static, knowledge-based articles in a database, but now, when customer support issues are identified, they are shared collaboratively and then "shared with development studios, which is fed into the product development cycle," Marceli remarks. With Activision's customer support solutions more finetuned for its customer base, the company is eyeing ways to deepen its community footprint. Online platform Call of Duty Elite was launched with both free and paid subscription features. The community platform allows gamers to "join competitive clans or social groups, track and share thousands of stats with friends, create custom leaderboards, and upload and share videos of their greatest Call of Duty game play moments with friends," said Robert Schmid, Activision's chief information officer, in a statement. - Kelly Liyakasa Key Results BY IMPLEMENTING SALESFORCE.COM SERVICE CLOUD, RADIANO, AND CHATTER, ACTIVISION HAS: * Handled 509,000-plus customer cases; * Doubled its Web site traffic * Grown Web support to 80 percent of its support channel distribution; * Seen Web volume reach 2.6 million unique visitors with 13 million page views; and * Increased collaboration among customer service agents, managers, and product development teams. "We wanted to know the challenges [our customers were] facing and lead them down a path where they could find the answers they need, check on their cases, or chat with an agent. " - Melanie marcell Customer Satisfaction at 30,000 Feet NUANCE NATURAL LANGUAGE-BASED IVR CONNECTS US AIRWAYS PASSENGERS TO BETTER SERVICE US AIRWAYS operates more than 3,200 flights per day to more than 200 cities in North, Central, and South America; Europe; and the Middle East. The fifth-largest U.S. airline, it serves approximately 80 million passengers each year. As a result of various buyouts and mergers, its contact center was using multiple interactive voice response systems. The systems had nine voices and a variety of cumbersome touchtone and speech menus. Its technology offered little insight into call containment, deflection, and average hold time. What's more, an agreement with the Airline Customer Service Employee Association required on-shoring of all reservation agents by November 2011, which would require US Airways to implement a more integrated and cost-efficient IVR. So in July 2011, the airline launched a new IVR system based on Nuance Communications' OnDemand hosted platform. One of the highlights is natural language call steering, which allows callers to state why they're calling in their own words. In addition to offering a faster, easier call experience, using natural language call steering, callers are more likely to finish tasks within the automated system, leading to higher containment rates and freeing agents to focus on more complicated caller issues. The solution offers personalized call handling with proactive information delivery, automated collection of trip information, improved prompting, additional self-service options, and comprehensive performance monitoring and reporting. The system can handle both inbound and outbound customer care interactions and includes mobile care solutions that enable wireless callers to complete self-service requests and transactions using their mobile phones. For the application, US Airways needed a single voice that reflected its brand. "Wally" emerged as the voice talent of choice. Wally 's automated voice features new innovations to Nuance Vocalizer, Nuance's spoken output engine, which help to gracefully morph syllables, words, or phrases into the sounds that precede or follow them. The result is smoother, more natural-sounding audio. New capabilities allow callers to use the automated system to confirm itineraries and seat assignments. The system also distinguishes itself by identifying callers who are members of the US Airways frequent flyer program, called Dividend Miles, based on their phone numbers, and then tailoring the interaction based on that information. The system can greet callers by name, pull up information about their next flights, and even anticipate the reasons for their calls. It also helps shorten the call time with agents when making or changing a reservation by asking callers tailored questions about their trips and then transferring that information to the agent via CTI screen pops. "The more we know about our customers and the reason for their calls, the more efficiently we can provide the assistance they need and allow them to get on with their day," says Kerry Hester, US Airways' senior vice president of customer experience. The switch to the new IVR took place over two days, and the system was handling 100 percent of calls right away. A month later, when Hurricane Irene hit, the system saw a sudden spike in call volume; an assessment of airlines' hold times by STELLAService found US Airways' system had the lowest hold times of the top 10 airlines. Just five months into the deployment, US Airways already noticed a 5 percent increase in call containment, which it expects will lead to at least $1 million in savings every year. The application also comes with a bevy of reporting and analytics tools that give US Airways visibility into many key metrics, including containment, transfers, and task completion. "We have worked with Nuance to develop a service experience that provides an intelligent understanding of our customers and their travel needs. By integrating those insights with cutting-edge speech recognition technology, we are providing our customers with the convenient, quality care they have come to expect," Hester concludes. - Leonard Klie Key Results SINCE DEPLOYING A NATURAL LANGUAGE CALL STEERING IVR FROM NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, US AIRWAYS HAS ACHIEVED: * A 5 percent increase in call containment; * A savings of at least $1 million a year, * A smoother,, more natural-sounding IVR; * The ability to tailor interactions based on the callers phone number; and * The ability to predict the reasons for customers' calls. "The more we know about our customers and the reason for their calls, the more efficiently we can provide the assistance they need. " -KERRY HESTER Salesforce Service Cloud Hits the Right Note YAMAHA IS MASTERING CUSTOMER SERVICE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION YAMAHA OF AMERICA has always had an ear for music, but for most of its existence, when it came to customer data, it lacked an eye for detail. For Yamaha, a provider of musical instruments and audio and video equipment, everything was locked in disparate and outdated applications, systems, and databases. Then in July 2011 it rolled out the Salesforce.com Service Cloud and Sales Cloud applications to consolidate customer data across its sales, marketing, credit, operations, and artist relations divisions, as well as service and support. Now communications are integrated across all departments, enabling employees to address customer concerns in a timely manner. The company can also better manage customer profile data, Web behavior, surveys, marketing campaigns, and contracting. "Wow! Look at all this information that we can now do stuff with," says Jeff Hawley, director of the customer experience group at Yamaha of America. "There's a whole new treasure trove of previously latent data." Yamaha worked with Salesforce.com partner WisdomNet to create a security model and customized applications for a wide range of user requirements. It also worked with Deloitte Consulting to bring online a customized integration between Salesforce, Facebook, and Twitter, essentially adding a social component to its contact center and customer service processes. Now, if someone tweets about a problem with an instrument, the software can find it, convert it into a case, and route it to the appropriate person or department for a response. The applications can match the social media posts with information in the customer database and pull that into the case record so that the agent doesn't have to ask for the information again when she picks up the case file. "Service Cloud is the big piece that fell into place so that our social media cases flow in the same way as phone or email does," Hawley says. "Our time per case is down. It's very low now." For Yamaha, the average response time for customer posts on social media sites like Twitter is about one-fifth of the average email response time. The company frequently grabs, responds to, and closes social cases within an hour of the original posting. Social media interactions, Hawley adds, "are now a pretty big chunk of our channel split. . . and will soon surpass email." Social cases have increased from 10 a week to more than 10 a day, and the number continues to grow. The same system has also helped Yamaha with its marketing efforts. The company has benefited from improved tracking and management of customer information and activities associated with sales calls, trade shows, and cross-channel marketing initiatives. And customer service scores have increased because marketers can "look at marketing data to see how to better serve our customers," Hawley points out. The company has seen customer satisfaction with its Web site alone increase by 7 percent. Hawley says that gain is tied directly to new customer connectivity through social media. Previously, Yamaha was getting 20 positive comments through social media per month, according to Hawley. Now they're getting hundreds. Yamaha recognized that customers expect companies to know them and remember their histories. Consolidated customer profiles stored in Salesforce help keep track of customers and their social and nonsocial interactions. "They all feed into Salesforce, whether they go through the phone, are sent through email, or post to one of our social media handles," Hawley says. Yamaha is also working to bring a frequently asked questions knowledge base and user forum online. The expectation is that this capability will lead to a lot more one-and-done self-service cases, where customers post questions and find answers on their own without company intervention. Rob Rose, a principal at Deloitte Consulting, commends Yamaha for transforming its customer support processes and taking advantage of Salesforce to deliver customer support via social media channels. "This new system and approach has really changed our entire view of social service," Hawley says, "and it's just the start." - Leonard Klie Key Results SINCE ADOPTING THE SALESFORCE.COM SERVICE CLOUD SOLUTION, YAMAHA OF AMERICA HAS BEEN ABLE TO: * Increase the number of cases handled via social media from 10 a week to 10 a day; * Increase customer satisfaction with its Web site by 7 percent; and * Increase positive social customer service Web feedback from 20 comments a month to hundreds a month. "Theresa whole new treasure trove of previously latent data. " -JEFF HAWLEY (c) 2013 Information Today, Inc. |