The PhaseWare Files:
Articles, Observations, and Ideas
about Customer Support

There are several key elements of successful multichannel service.

First, in order to achieve truly integrated multichannel service, all service departments should be united under the leadership of the service executive. If the information from management is not the same for all channels, the integration of all channels will fail and customer satisfaction will go down. Once this management is in place other elements can be implemented.

An accurate and up-to-date, cross-channel customer history is necessary so there is a smooth and seamless experience across all touchpoints. This means that all channels must share a common and frequently updated customer database with the correct information on a customer no matter which channel is requesting it.

There must be unified knowledge and processes to arrive at consistent resolutions. This means all channels must be able to use a common knowledge base so that the same workflows, processes, and resolutions are available for all channels.

When a new channel is integrated into the system or when a multichannel service solution is implented it must be capable of scaling further than the current volume. As the business grows or when new products are launched, higher volumes can occur. A system limited to the old numbers will be unstable.

Performance must be tracked across all channels with comparable metrics as well as tracking specific channels with metrics best suited to the channel.

There must be an invisible and real time integration across the channels to provide the same high level of support. And the backend systems such as CRM, ERP, or SFA must also be integrated to all channels and available to self service.

The above actions will help your multichannel service succeed. These actions will also empower all stakeholders with real time information access. It is important to educate your customers on the availability of non-contact center channels such as self service to continue to improve customer management. 

Implementing new systems is never easy, but to keep momentum continue to think about the impact of improved customer service on revenue and customer loyalty.

We have all had what most of us call "one of those days."

You know the kind of day where everything goes wrong from the minute your alarm goes off in the morning? Or rather doesn't go off which ends up being the catalyst for the rest of the waking nightmare. The rest of the morning includes missing breakfast, spilling scalding hot coffee all over your brand new white shirt that cost a fortune, a flat tire even though you just replaced your tires, then you finally get to work and the boss yells at you for being late!

Everything rolls down hill and over the cliff, and there you stand at the summit listening to echoing squeal of your day falling to pieces. After all that mess, you don't want to call customer service about something that broke, waiting forty-five minutes for the next available agent only to be passed around like a football moving towards the end-zone. None of us enjoys that experience, so why do we in the business community waste our customers' precious time by putting them through it?

The best avenue to customer satisfaction in any instance is first-call resolution. First-call resolution deals strictly with live phone calls which are resolved with the first agent, so the customer isn't passed around like a football.

A couple of ways to measure it:

• the agent checks a box after the call saying that the issue was resolved, or
• the customer gives a glowing review in a post-service survey.

A high first-call resolution rate is often an indicator of how well a company trains and educates their agents. A business that spends more time training their call-center and help desk employees will have a higher rate of first-call resolution along with a higher rate of customer retention.

Having a low FCR places your company at risk for losing customers, and if a customer has been passed around so much or has called back enough times that they can recite their story word for word in their sleep, more than likely that customer has already chosen to defect to another company the minute that their issue is resolved with yours.

No one likes making calls to customer service because they expect the worst, especially if it has been "one of those days." When your company gets those calls, be the one who salvages the customer's day by fixing it right the first time.

Here is a link to a post from the blog Service Untitled describing a customer experience by the writer. The post would have been very different if the service had been spectacularly bad. It wouldn't have existed at all if the service had been so-so or simply "the expected".

But the experience was exceptionally good. And that earned the company a mention from a third party that was not paid to do so.

How's that for the impact customer service can have on your business.

Leave Competition Behind with Excellent Customer Service

Randall Nelson, CEO of PhaseWare, appears in Business Week.

His words of advice: Be tenacious!

And we are. We are tenacious about bringing you informative blog posts with useful content about the practice (and art) of bringing superior customer service and support to your customers.

Whether you use our solution or someone else's I hope what I put in this blog has helped you succeed in providing your customers best-in-class support. In the next post I will continue with my series about multichannel support. There are increasing amounts of information about multichannel service. I hope to dig out the essentials for you to have as you contemplate whether or when this will be a direction you need to go.

If I simply wrote the word proactive on a blank sheet of paper, some of you might think, “Oh, that’s an acne treatment line of products,” which it is. Their slogan is to stop acne before it ever starts.Prevent a problem before it ever becomes a problem, which is a trait that we in the business world should adopt. Think of all the frustration, time, and effort we would all save if we fixed problems before our customers ever knew there was a problem? We would make our customers happier, and if they are happy they easily become repeat customers; but how do we actually implement a proactive customer service?

First, track your product. Track the sales. Figure out who is buying your product, and then find out how they use your product. If you know who is buying your product, then you will have an easier time trying to cater to their individual needs rather than sitting back trying to guess how to best service an unknown entity. Also, once you find out how your customers are using your product, post the information on your website, e-mail it to your other customers, or better yet, give the customers a place to discuss how they use the product. Company discussion boards and forums are wonderful tools, and just so you know, PhaseWare’s Self Service Center software includes an online forum.

Secondly, track the social networks. Millions of people are on Facebook and/or Twitter and they are always posting updates about everything, including the good and bad qualities of whatever they just bought. What customers write about your product on their Facebook page or in their tweets is often information that they would not give directly to you in one of your customer suggestion boxes. Those social networking sites are viral in the way they spread information, and that can be good or bad pending on what the customers are saying about your product, so keep an eye on their posts.

Finally, communicate with your customers. Let them know what is happening in your business. If you are putting a new product on the market, let the people know. If you are having a sale, let your customers in on it. It is not enough that you just keep tabs on them, but let the consumers know what your business is up to. Let them see what you do when they aren’t watching. The more open you are with your customers, the more likely they are to return for more of your services.

There are certainly far more ways to implement proactive customer service, but these three can get you started; so let’s go stop some problems before they start.

Definition of Multichannel Service: The availability of several communications channels for customer service such as phone, email, chat, and online self service.

The Aberdeen Group recently published a study called "Delivering Customer Service via the Contact Center and the Web". They give over 30 pages of information on how best in class companies provide multichannel customer service and what level of service is provided versus industry average and what they call laggards.

First of all, 91% of Best in Class Companies give their customers a way to track issues online. And 57% of them track call center performance across all channels.

More stats:

• Their current First Call Resolution Rate is 75%  
• Industry Average: 62%
• Laggards: 53%
• They sustain a 24% increase in productivity
• Industry Average: 5%
• Laggards: 1%
• They had a 21% reduction in total support costs over the past 12 months.
• Industry Average: 3%
• Laggards: 2% increase in total support costs over past 12 months
• Most telling: their service margins (profit/revenue) was 24%
• Industry Average: Almost half that of best in class at 15%.
• Laggards had one-third of the best in class service margins at 8%.
  

Best in Class companies are also more than twice as likely than the average to leverage service management systems with contact center functionality and  twice as likely to provide agents a standard escalation process or protocol and give those agents frequent training. They are three times as likely to give their customers issue resolution scenarios and multiple avenues of service.

Pretty powerful numbers. What does it take to make these kinds of numbers? Management commitment. If the support from the top is not there, the contact center cannot hope to achieve these numbers in isolation.

With the number of call coming in through other channels than phone and email estimated to increase by 3-5% as phone and email service requests go down anywhere from 3-10%, now is the time to start analyzing what channels your customers prefer to use, determine a path for implementing that channel, and start interacting with your customers as they wish.

Marketing is not the only area that is taking advantage of the multiple communications channels available to both customers and businesses. Customer service and support is quickly becoming multichannel as well, responding to customer pressure to offer different ways to engage them in the way they desire.

Right now only a few companies offer more than a channel or two. Many are struggling with how the available channels can be used in their businesses. Still others have committed to using multichannel support but have run into difficulties with integration and consistancy of service.

I am starting a series of posts about multichannel customer service and support. I  define multichannel service and support. I offer statistics about best in class businesses that give multichannel support, success guidelines, some potential pitfalls during implementation, benchmarking, and tips for the different channels.

Certainly PhaseWare solutions make it possible for any company to use any or all other these channels effictively and efficiently, but whether you use our solution or not, I think now is the time to start learning about all this while you still have a chance to think and learn. If you wait too long, catching up will include making mistakes in implementation and service that have been resolved already by other businesses, meaning customers will no longer tolerate them.

See you back here as the series unfolds.

A multi-illness epidemic seems to be starting up around here so I don't have time to write what I originally wanted to for this post, but I did find an excellent resource for getting your customer service and support in tip-top shape.

The Consortium for Service Innovation has a process called Knowledge-Centered Support, or KCS (which is a service mark of the Consortium). I thought you might like to take a look at the premise behind it to get some ideas about service improvements. This page on their site has an overview, case studies, links to other resources, papers and presentations. All of the material has been published under Right to Use with Attribution, which simply means to credit the original document creators if you use their information in any of your own documentation, presentations, or other media.

I hope this is helpful information. If anyone has other helpful links, please let us know about them.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we recently celebrated, had a famous speech, "I have a dream". Mr. King's dream was far-reaching, inspiring, and historic. As I thought about this, I realized that I too have a dream, although certainly not in the same league as his.

I have a dream that PhaseWare's software will revolutionize the customer service industry and no customer will cringe at the idea of dealing with customer service departments. I have a dream that one day customers and businesses will discover the benefits of online self-service centers. I have a dream that customers will experience the joy of reporting issues at their convenience and not waste their precious time and cell phone minutes waiting for a company representative to talk to them at the company's convenience. I have a dream that businesses will be more cost-efficient because of less call volume and reduced service handling time.

I have a dream that all companies everywhere will turn to PhaseWare's Event Engine which allows nothing to be forgotten, where incidents are automatically sorted, and the right people are sent notifications at the right time. I have a dream that those businesses will see that Event Engine increases productivity and decreases errors as does the new Tracker On-Demand. This is my hope, that businesses are more effective because they can track of every issue, analyze recurring incidents, and keep tabs on customer information without having to reload the page every time.

This is the day that the dream can be realized. This is the day we say that customers can be free from frustrating call-waiting and businesses can be released from inefficiency. Now is the hour to discover liberation in PhaseWare software.

Today, I have a dream.

Great customer service is meant to be dripping with generosity and positive attitudes. Most customers who contact customer service, whether by e-mail, in person, or (heaven forbid) by telephone, are not happy about a service or a product that they have received so they are not in the best of moods. Dealing with company representatives who are cranky at worst and lethargic at best will not present an adequate solution. In fact, it will only create more issues by making the customer more agitated which in turn will create bad press.

Seeing as this is January, the month for resolutions, let us in the business world make a resolution to keep that positive, generous spirit, which was so contagious in December, and show that we are proud to be helping our customers, that we truly appreciate their business and that we will do everything in our power to make their experience with the company and its products a beautiful one.

However, simply making that resolution isn’t enough. Like weight loss, you actually have to do something to make it happen.You can stand in front of a mirror all day long wishing those love-handles away, but they won’t go anywhere until you start doing something about it. In the matter of customer service though, here are a few ideas that will help keep that new resolution.

First, let your information be easy accessible. Whether the customer is looking for basic FAQs or who to send their issue to, the information should be easily obtained on the company website.

Second, give the customer options on how to report their problem. Don’t just let an automated voice on a phone do your customer service work for you. Allow the customer to start an incident ticket through the self-service center or talk to a representative via Live Chat, both of which are contained in PhaseWare’s arsenal of software.

Third, keep the customer in the loop. Keeping the customer updated lets them know that they aren’t forgotten and that the issue is being resolved. PhaseWare’s Event Engine software does this task automatically, which helps you do your job better.

Finally, do a follow-up with the customer. Give them a week or so and then check-in to make sure that the problem stayed resolved, not to mention, it shows customers how much you truly appreciate their business.

All in all, just remember what kind of business we are in and who keeps us in it—the customer.