Business White Paper
Cross-Channel Front Doors:
Table of Contents
Customer Segmentation...................... 2
Cross-Channel Customer Behavior.... 3
Customer Service Strategy................ 4
Containment...................................... 6
Engagement...................................... 6
Value-Based Resourcing................. 7
Cross-Channel Front Doors................. 8
The Web Front Door......................... 8
The Phone Front Door..................... 9
Cross-Channel Front
Door Strategies.............................. 10
Conclusion........................................... 11
Recommendations for Success.... 11
References........................................... 12
December 2008
How companies can leverage value-based segmentation
and resourcing to grow valuable customer relationships
across the Web and phone channels
I
n the current tough economic climate, companies must make hard decisions about where
to invest their limited funds and resources. An important strategy for success
is to leverage value-based customer segmentation and resourcing to win and retain
cross-channel customers.
The reality is that too many enterprises that implement this strategy take the approach of
applying value-based segmentation to high-value, high-cost customers only, and not also
to the majority of their customer base. This is an unsustainable business practice, however,
because companies that don’t match cost and service to value across all segments risk over-
servicing low-value, frequent-contact callers, and/or neglecting some of their affluent
customers — who tend to cross channels during multi-stage sales and service inquiries.
In fact, companies need to be able to segment customers, offer differentiated services, and
prioritize interactions in real time across channels such as Websites, phone, and IVRs
(Interactive Voice Response systems) based on value and cost.
Therefore, today’s industry leaders are pursuing:
a. A differentiated customer service and engagement strategy,
b. Delivered by a cross-channel front door approach, and
c. Supported by value-based resourcing.
The bottom line is that the success and survival of today’s companies depends on the
alignment of organization-wide goals, people, processes, and technologies that can
orchestrate value-based segmentation and resourcing across “front door” channels to
optimize business outcomes.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 2 of 8

Customer Segmentation
In most businesses, a minority of customers yield the majority of revenue and profits. Realizing this
phenomenon, companies have long invested in retaining and growing their relationships with their
elite (high net-worth/high-spend) customers by offering them specialized or differentiated services.
For example, a dedicated service representative — such as an account executive, a private banker or
broker, or a personal shopper — may be assigned to an elite customer to provide more exceptional,
personalized service. This high-touch approach is obviously more expensive, making this customer
segment both high-value and high-cost, but this differentiated service typically pays for itself
ten-fold.
However, there is often no clear segmentation strategy for the remaining majority of the customer
base. Some companies employ complex customer demographics and product propensity
categorizations, but mostly for traditional marketing campaigns, and less so for service prioritization
and resource alignment.
A simple, useful segmentation strategy can be based on a two-by-two model evaluating customer value
and cost. What constitutes “valuable and costly” will vary depending on industry and business model.
A high-value customer could be a high-net-worth customer, a high-spender, or a loyal customer
whose purchases may be small but provide a cost-effective revenue stream and significant lifetime
value. A high-cost customer might correspond to a frequent-contact customer (as the largest propor-
tion of service costs is staff-related), a customer who is regularly delinquent paying bills or fees, or a
customer who purchases but then often returns products.
With the exception of the elite segment, companies
often (unintentionally) adopt a philosophy of “Equal
Service for All.” Systems and processes are not instru-
mented to properly identify and segment customers
and align limited resources based on customer value
and costs. As a result, all customers are equally encour-
aged to use self-service on the Website and within the
automated phone IVR system. Also, many contact
centers adhere to uniform service level goals across all
interactions, such as minimizing Average Handle
Time (AHT). Increasingly, customer satisfaction and
sales targets are also included but, again, these metrics
are often applied across the board regardless of
customer segmentation.
This uniform approach results in two key areas of
unrealized opportunity. First, companies routinely
under-serve affluent time-starved customers (high-
value, low-cost) who tend to self-serve and with whom the company has few chances to interact
directly. Most organizations are not able to effectively differentiate their affluent customers from their
lower-value core customers and vary treatment accordingly. As we will explore in the next section,
affluent time-constrained customers are more likely to exhibit cross-channel behavior, requiring
proactive engagement at the moment of opportunity.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 3 of 12

A second untapped opportunity lies in extracting costs from the low-value segment, especially the
high-cost, frequent callers. One Genesys client defined their low-value, high-cost segment as customers
who had called more than once a week over the last three months (mostly checking on their border-
line account balances and trying to negotiate a payment extension or fee waiver). Another Genesys
client found that 53% of their contact center calls and 60% of their costs were generated by their
low-value, high-cost segment. And a utility company found that the least profitable 18% of their
customer base (those who were repeatedly behind on their payments and called frequently to request
credit extensions and confirm their power would not be shut off) was responsible for 90% of their
credit and collection calls. Few organizations today are able to segment out these callers. And when
these customers are not properly identified and flagged, agents waste time over-serving low-value,
high-cost segments by attempting to cross- or up-sell inappropriate offers to them or by initiating
outbound relationship calls. Under an “equality” approach, companies are expecting their most
valuable customers to subsidize the service they’re lavishing on very unprofitable customers. These
costly customers are monopolizing agent resources, and constraining the contact center’s ability to
spend time engaging the best customers in proactive needs-based conversations. This is simply not
sustainable in the current economic climate.
Now, more than ever before, companies must realign resources in real time to attract, grow, and
retain valuable customers. In these cost-conscious times, even solid business cases may not justify
adding head count to service the high-value segment. Resources must therefore be extracted from
costly segments and realigned toward more valuable ones. It is not a question of either/or. To succeed,
companies must have their hands firmly on both dials — dial-up the service for high-value, under-
served customers, and dial-down service on low-value, costly ones. The latter must be done carefully,
since certainly not all lower-value customers are unprofitable. Although some customers may not be
as high value as loyal customers who faithfully pay for products or services, they represent a significant
revenue stream for the company long-term. The goal is to effectively separate the wheat from the
chaff by cutting off costly customers without alienating lower-value profitable ones.
Value-based segmentation is only possible to the extent that customers can be properly identified
when they’re at a company’s front door — especially when they enter online via the Web, or by
telephone. Because cross-channel usage is becoming more prevalent, it is also more critical to have
the ability to identify customers as they enter through these front doors and move across channels.

Cross-Channel Customer Behavior

Customer behavior is changing — especially how customers use the online and phone channels — and
this is impacting the role these channels need to play in effectively managing customer contacts. In
particular, corporate Websites and IVRs need to evolve to respond to this new customer behavior.
Customers prefer human assistance — either in person or over the telephone — for all but the most
straightforward sales and service interactions. As call volumes have increased, companies rely on IVRs
to handle more and more calls, and customers are willing to use IVRs for routine tasks and convenient
24X7 service. But in situations where human assistance is required — such as sales and issue resolution
— customers insist on transferring out of the IVR to speak with an agent.
To date, IVRs have provided two important functions:

Current Role of IVRs

Self-service automation (primary function)
Front door to human assistance (secondary function)
Of the two, most organizations concentrate on the self-service capabilities of IVRs, with less impor-
tance placed on their role as a front door to human assistance.
Recently, the Web has been supplanting traditional IVR functionality. Consumers now report using
the Web more than IVRs for self-service, and they are twice as satisfied with their Web experiences
[Tempkin 2008]. Customers who are willing to self-serve are converting from the IVR to the Web
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 4 of 12

as their channel of choice [Genesys client data 2008]. The Web is additionally providing capabilities
that IVRs have never been particularly adept at. For example, more than one-third of consumers now
say that the Web is their preferred sales research channel, second only to going into a branch or store
[Pew 2008, Tempkin 2008]. Corporate Websites are also more useful vehicles for brand marketing and
corporate communications.
Thus, today’s Websites serve the following purposes:

Current Role of Corporate Websites

Self-service automation
Sales research and simpler purchases
Brand marketing and corporate communications

The rise of the Web, however, hasn’t stemmed the tide of inbound customer calls. For more
complex sales and service, online customers still require human support for clarification, human
validation of sales decisions, and issue resolution. And when online customers get stuck, they either
call the company for support, or surf away to a competitor’s Website; therefore, time is of the
essence to engage these Web shoppers before they click away.
Two-thirds of online mortgage shoppers and three-quarters of
credit card shoppers complete an application within one hour of
beginning their research [Strothkamp 2006]. If these customers
then elect to call the company to discuss the application, they are
typically greeted by an IVR. However, what they seek is human
assistance, and many of today’s IVRs don’t make it easy to
quickly reach a person — especially an appropriately skilled
agent who can address their specific issue.
Connecting with someone who can answer the customer’s
questions and validate their purchase decision is crucial for
moving the sales process forward and stopping their online
comparison shopping. Providing human assistance in a timely,
convenient way helps customers commit to and complete their
purchases — either on the phone with the agent, or later at a
branch office or store.

Customer types exhibiting this trend in cross-channel behavior include:

Customer Types Exhibiting Web-to-Phone Cross-Channel Behavior

Customer Type
Technology-savvy customers
Affluent time-starved customers
Existing customers who use
company’s Website
Prospects looking to switch brands
or spread wallet-share around
Comments
This behavior is more prevalent with, but not limited to,
younger shoppers. Over 40% of Gen Y, Gen X, and younger
Baby Boomers (age < 51) — and even 11% of Seniors (age
63+) — report the Web as their preferred channel for sales
research [Tempkin 2008].
One of the most valuable customer segments
Key to organic growth and long-term customer loyalty
Vital for new customer acquisition to expand
customer base
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 5 of 12

More and more customers cross channels to buy, and those customers who buy cross-channel spend
more money. Cross-channel shoppers tend to be affluent customers who will pay for convenience and,
on average, spend an additional $164 in the store when they purchase products they researched online
[Johnson 2007]. In fact, cross-channel shoppers tend to spend 30% to 50% more than single-channel
shoppers [Suleski 2007]. In other words, the most desirable customers and prospects are those who are
likely to have adopted this new pattern of cross-channel behavior, and who then seek human assistance
to complete a sale or service inquiry.

Customer Service Strategy

This change in consumer behavior has a number of implications for the roles played by the IVR and
Website, depending on whether a company adopts a customer service strategy that leans more toward
containment versus engagement.

Containment
Companies are challenged to keep pace with the ever-growing demand and increasing costs of servicing
customer contacts with human representatives. As such, under an “Equal Service for All” philosophy,
many contact centers trend toward a containment strategy — whereby they try to “contain” as many
customer contacts as possible within self-service.
Understandably, IVRs have been the primary tool used in containment strategies. More emphasis has
been put on using the IVR for self-service automation than as a front door to reach a human. In fact,
the most common success metric for an IVR is usually its containment rate (also sometimes referred to
as an automation rate) — namely, the percentage of calls contained within the IVR without transferring
out to an agent. Much time and effort are spent on creating extensive IVR menus and self-service
modules, which provide limited or restricted exit routes for a customer who might prefer to opt out
to reach a live representative.
As the Web is supplanting many traditional IVR functions, this containment philosophy is permeating
over to the online channel as well. Namely, the online strategy is to contain customers within the
Website self-service functionality, and not readily offer human assistance while online. In many orga-
nizations, the online channel and contact center are run as separate lines of business. The online
business is measured and rewarded based on the number of customers using the Website for sales or
service. The organization is also sensitive not to drive too many online contacts into the contact center
(via Web chats, e-mails, or calls), since the contact center is often seen as a cost center that’s run under
a separate budget from the online group. Thus, there is pressure from both the profit and cost sides to
contain customers within the online channel. As a result, human assistance options (phone numbers,
callback requests, chat links, or e-mail addresses) are not widely advertised across the Website pages,
leaving online shoppers with essentially no access to customer service assistance.
Clearly, a containment-biased strategy in either channel negatively impacts the cross-channel customer
experience. First, shoppers who are not provided with ready access to human assistance while online
become frustrated and surf away to competitors’ Websites without ever bothering to call into the
company for support. Second, even if these customers do take the initiative to call the company, they
are often greeted by irrelevant IVR menus that over-emphasize containment. (If they had wanted self-
service, a Web-savvy consumer would have used the online channel for this.) Blocking the exit from
the IVR by hiding the agent option, or allowing transfer to an agent only after reaching the end of a
long on-hold queue, just serves to further frustrate customers. If not given priority routing, these callers
will continue to comparison shop online while waiting on hold, jeopardizing the sales opportunity.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 6 of 12

Also, agents who receive cross-channel calls typically aren’t trained, incented, or enabled to support
online sales leads. Common obstacles agents face in handling these types of calls include:
> Lack of information regarding who the incoming caller is or what they may have just been
doing online or within the IVR.
> Training, tools, and incentives which over-emphasize servicing calls quickly; little or no
emphasis placed on sales opportunities.
> Limited or no access to the Website from the agent desktop, so agents are blind to the online
functionality and customer experience.
- The solution doesn’t necessarily have to employ full co-browse (allowing an agent to view and
potentially co-control the customer’s actual Web session); instead, it could be as simple as
giving agents access to the company’s Websites so they can log on using test account data to
view a dummy account that closely mirrors a customer’s online experience. In this way, the
agent can have a contextually coherent dialog with the customer while looking at the general
Webpage layout and online functionality.
The result is the cross-channel customer experience breaks down, causing missed sales opportunities
and increasing the likelihood that online customers will click away. Web, IVR, and contact center
strategies that are fixated too heavily on containment can end up driving customers straight into the
arms of competitors.

Engagement
Rather than uniformly trying to contain all customers in self-service (via the Web or IVR), an engage-
ment strategy embraces the idea that companies need to have more human interactions with the right
customers and prospects to deepen customer relationships and grow organically.
Certainly not all customer contacts can or should be handled by a human: The volume of interactions
is far too vast, operational costs need to be effectively managed, and some customers may prefer self-
service for certain tasks. So, self-service (Web and IVR) will continue to play a vital role even in an
engagement-based approach. But corporate goals need to shift to put more emphasis on the front door
capabilities of these channels, in order to identify and engage key customers.
One of the main challenges companies face is that their contact center staff spend too much time
talking to customers they don’t want to speak with (e.g., lower-value costly customers), and not
enough time talking to those customers they do want to speak with (e.g., affluent time-constrained
customers). The service goals and resources should be aligned around high-value customers from
whom companies make their money. However, proactive engagement, sales leads, and relationship-
deepening conversations are often sacrificed in periods of high contact center activity. This,
combined with the inability to identify customers at the front doors (especially high-value ones at
the Web front door and low-value ones at the phone front door), effectively means that contact
centers move agents from proactive engagement with high-value customers to serving low-value,
high-frequency customers.
Some companies believe they need to focus first on perfecting their containment strategy, and then,
after service levels and cost containment are under control, the organization can explore ways to
engage key customers. But, like waves crashing on a beach, customer contact volumes continue to
increase year-over-year, and contact centers are always being asked to do more with fewer resources.
If you don’t get in front and ride the wave to where you want to go, the rising tide of customer
contacts will crush you. So abandon “Equal Service for All,” and start engaging your valuable customers
now ­— lest they leave for your competition.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 7 of 12

Value-Based Resourcing
The solution lies in value-based segmentation and
resourcing — determining which customers should be
proactively engaged and prioritized for human assistance,
versus those who should be encouraged to self-serve,
placed in a longer queue, or routed to a specialized team.
Specifically, elite customers should be provided with
differentiated service and dedicated personal representa-
tives. In many industries, less than 20% of the top customer
base accounts for 80% of the profits. (You can’t afford to
lose these customers!) Affluent time-starved customers —
with whom companies desire more frequent contact for
growth opportunities — should be proactively engaged.
These time-constrained customers willingly use self-service,
so engage them while they are online or in the IVR by
inviting them into a conversation with a human service
representative who can deepen the customer relationship and explore hidden needs and sales oppor-
tunities. Next, for the bulk who fall into the low-value, low-cost core customer segment — and who
represent a solid, recurring revenue source if handled efficiently — organizations should manage
service costs and sell reactively to this group.
Finally, low-value, high-cost customers should be deflected and retention strategies for this segment
should be eliminated. Push these unprofitable customers to use cost-effective self-service options, give
their calls lowest-priority routing (longer on-hold times), or route them to a separate quick-handle
team. Train these agents to not spend time cross- or up-selling; to wrap up calls quickly; to be firm
about requiring timely payments; and to professionally and expediently close accounts if necessary.
Many companies are hesitant about limiting customer service to this segment, fearing it will lead to
lower overall customer satisfaction ratings and diminish the brand. However, you don’t want to
encourage this segment to remain your customers, because it’ll cost you. It’s not just that these
customers lack high net-worth, but also that their behavior patterns are incredibly high maintenance
and will unprofitably break the company’s business models for products and services. You want these
people to leave and go to your competitors. (This is one group of customers you can’t afford to keep!)
Instead, redirect time and attention toward investments in the more profitable customer segments.
Should value-based resourcing focus purely on customer segmentation, or can it also take into account
the type of interaction or sales lead? The answer is that, in most cases, customer segmentation should
take precedence. For instance, imagine an unprofitable customer who never pays their bills on time.
If this person happens to be browsing mortgage rates online and dreaming of owning a home (even
though they defaulted on their last loan and have a poor credit score), a bank would not want to
proactively engage this customer, no matter how valuable a mortgage is for the bank. On the other
hand, the value of an opportunity may at times be factored in when trying to prioritize between the
competing demands of affluent versus core customers. For instance, if there are limited resources, a
core customer (lower-value, but profitable) shopping for an especially valuable product could be
prioritized over a lower-value opportunity with an affluent customer (particularly if this wouldn’t
negatively impact customer loyalty and retention).
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 8 of 12

Cross-Channel Front Doors

Value-based segmentation and resourcing require the ability to identify and prioritize customers in real
time as they come through the front door.
Customers may choose from a variety of channels to begin their interaction with a company — such
“Whatever ‘door’ the
as going online or phoning into an IVR that answers incoming calls. No matter which front door a
customer comes in, customer selects, companies need the ability to know who the customer is, how valuable or costly that
[we want] the ability to customer is, which channel they are coming from, what their recent interactions and shopping behavior
have been, and how to intelligently prioritize and manage the next conversation with that customer.
know in realtime [who
The Website and IVR cross-channel front doors must be instrumented to identify, engage, and priori-
the customer is and] tize customers using value-based segmentation and resourcing.
where that customer
is coming from.” The Web Front Door
-CIO, SUPER-REGIONAL While many customers prefer to use the Web for self-service and sales research, most would rather
purchase from a person who understands their needs — particularly for more complex, financially or
U.S. BANK personally sensitive, or expensive products and services. Online shoppers have notoriously short
attention spans and make rapid decisions within split-seconds. If not directly engaged in the moment
of opportunity, they can quickly click away. So companies need to proactively engage online shoppers
by providing them a doorway from the Website to human assistance.
A Web front door is based on three pillars:
• Web Monitoring
- Use real-time Web analytics to monitor online shoppers’ behavior. Based on behavioral analytics,
customer data, value assessment, and resource availability, determine those that are hot leads to
engage while the shopper is online.
• Web Engagement
- Reach out to hot leads by presenting
proactive online invitations that offer a
choice of ways to interact:
a. Chat Online (instant messaging),
b. Call Me Now (immediate callback
to the customer’s telephone), or
c. Call Me Later (schedule a callback).

- Web monitoring and engagement must be closely coupled with an awareness of currently available
skilled contact center resources.
• For instance, an invitation to chat online about insurance should only be presented if a
chat-skilled insurance specialist is currently available (or soon to be, based on predictive
analytics). Proactively inviting a customer into a conversation which cannot be fulfilled
by the right resource in a timely manner causes customer disengagement.
• Potential customer interactions across channels compete for a limited pool of skilled
resources. An effective value-based solution must prioritize these competing demands
through a universal routing queue, regardless of channel. If a high-value customer is
online and looking to purchase a product, it makes sense to proactively engage with
them at the moment of opportunity, prioritizing this interaction over a reactive response
to a lower-value customer who is calling into the contact center. Value-based customer
segmentation needs to be matched to the right resource to optimize the opportunity.
This cross-channel contact center-wide approach is significantly different from basic chat
or click-to-call solutions that are only linked to a small, isolated pool of agents.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 9 of 12

• Missed Opportunities
- Since it is not always possible to engage all online hot leads in real time (given limited resource
capacity), these missed opportunities should be earmarked as warm leads for potential follow-up
in another channel at a later time. Online activity can be mined for behavioral leads which are
fed into offline channels (contact center or branch/store) so informed cross- and up-sell offers
can be made during subsequent service interactions.

A Website instrumented with proactive engagement thus acquires an additional capability as a

front door:

Revised Role of Corporate Websites

Self-service automation
Sales research and simpler purchases
Brand marketing and corporate communications
Plus as a front door to human assistance

Amongst these capabilities, developing the online front door should receive the greatest near-term
focus. While customers will continue to use the Website for self-service and product research, building
out these other capabilities must not be at the expense of online engagement. Converting online
shoppers to buyers requires immediate human attention. No matter how good online sales tools are,
customers will always need human interaction to validate more complex or costly sales purchases.
Providing online human contact has a direct impact on revenue growth and customer retention which,
in today’s economic environment, is a priority that cannot be postponed.

The Phone Front Door

Recent changes in customer behavior, coupled with adopting a value-based engagement strategy,
require a new approach for the phone channel, and IVRs in particular.
First, the Web — and not the IVR — will continue to grow as customers’ preferred self-service
channel. This means that usage of IVRs for self-service will wane over time.
Second, online customers often call companies while they are still online, or shortly thereafter. An IVR
that not only greets the caller, but also gathers the caller’s intentions, adds contextual information
about the caller’s profile and history (including online behavioral insights), and then routes them to
the most suitable resource that will effectively resolve the interaction is called an intelligent
Customer Front DoorTM (iCFD) (i.e., dynamically adaptive, customer-centric self- and assisted-service
driven by intelligent business rules — see References for additional Genesys white papers on iCFD).
The phone front door needs to identify who the caller is, what they are calling about (by recognizing
what they were just doing online or what they just requested in the IVR), and route the call to the
most appropriate resource according to value-based business rules. It is crucial to spot callers whose
real-time or recent activity is indicative of a high-value customer and prioritize those interactions.
Thus, moving forward, the IVR’s two primary functions will reverse in importance:

Revised Role of IVRs

Front door to human assistance (primary)
Self-service automation (secondary, waning over time)
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 10 of 12

Cross-Channel Front Door Strategies

The table below summarizes techniques for instrumenting the Website, IVR, and contact center as part of a
cross-channel front door strategy to enable value-based customer segmentation and resourcing:

Cross-Channel Front Door Strategies

Segment Online IVR Contact Center
High-value • Prioritize proactive • Don’t route to IVR. Provide • Provide direct access to personal representative.
high-cost engagement, direct access to personal If unavailable, re-route to gold service team within
(elite) offering choice of representative’s phone contact center
chat and callback • Closely monitor and incent customer engagement
now/later to hot and loyalty
leads based on
resource availability • Improve IVR Authentication to • Priority-route to best-skilled available agent, based on
identify and segment callers, customer profile, recent online behavior, and/or request
especially for opt-outs within IVR
• Invite select customers • Screen-pop segmentation and customer data (including
to transfer to agent rather leads) to agents
High-value than self-serve (based
low-cost • Coach and reward agents based on customer engagement
on leads and resource and sales targets to deepen customer relationship
(affluent availability)
time-starved) • Provide agents with Website access and insights into
customer online behavior
• Make outbound relationship/retention calls
• Eliminate product-push cross-/up-selling and
outbound calls

Low-value • Encourage online • Encourage IVR self-service • Lower priority route to appropriately skilled agent
low-cost (core self-service • Improve IVR Authentication to • Flag calls so agents know to minimize handle time
customer • Limit proactive identify and segment callers,
base) • Train agents to coach customers to self-serve
engagement especially for opt-outs
• Enable agents to reactively sell based on
(based on value • Limit inviting customers out customer-driven requests
and resourcing of IVR (only for valuable leads
priorities) or critical issues (e.g., fraud • Cross-/up-sell valuable leads during capacity lulls
alerts), based on resourcing • Make outbound relationship/retention calls during lulls
priorities) • Monitor and incent customer satisfaction

Low-value • Encourage online • Encourage IVR self-service • Route with lowest priority (or place on hold) or direct
high-cost (un- self-service • Improve IVR Authentication to to quick-handle team
profitable) • Don’t proactively identify and segment callers, • Reward agents for shorter Average Handle Time
engage especially for opt-outs • Train agents to coach customers to self-serve
• Only invite customers out of • Expect lower customer satisfaction scores and align
IVR for critical issues (e.g., agent incentives
fraud alerts) • Don’t cross-/up-sell and remove sales targets
• Make no outbound relationship/retention calls
• Train agents to professionally and expediently handle
account closures
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 11 of 12

Conclusion
In the current volatile and competitive economic climate, companies must make tough decisions about
where to, or not to, invest limited funds and resources. These assessments need to be across time and
channels. Customers must be correctly identified and segmented, and the right customers must be
engaged and prioritized at precisely the right time in the sales cycle.
Leading companies are leveraging value-based customer segmentation and resourcing to win and retain
cross-channel affluent customers, while simultaneously extracting costs from unprofitable segments.
Websites and IVRs play a pivotal role in this new approach. As cross-channel front doors, they enable
companies to identify customers and dynamically differentiate service in real time. Effectively
instrumenting these cross-channel front doors requires the alignment of organization-wide goals, people,
and processes, as well as technologies that can orchestrate value-based segmentation and resourcing
across channels to optimize business outcomes. The bottom line is that the success and survival of
today’s companies depend on it.

Recommendations for Success

> Adopt a strategy of engagement, not just containment.
• Re-position both the Web and IVR as front doors to human assistance. Proactively engage valuable
online shoppers using chat and callback invitations. Provide adaptive IVR flows for identifying
high-value customers and offering to connect them with an agent.
> Leverage value-based segmentation and resourcing.
• Avoid “Equal Service for All.”
• Prioritize interactions based on customer segmentation, opportunity value, and skilled
resource availability.
• Extract costs from unprofitable segments and apply resources to proactively engage valuable customers.
> Create cross-channel front doors.
• Leverage the Website and IVR as cross-channel front doors to identify, prioritize, and engage customers
in real time.
• Use Web and IVR analytics, customer data, skilled resource awareness and value-based business
rules to facilitate the cross-channel customer experience.
> Don’t design channels as silos.
• If you wait until you’ve optimized each channel in isolation, you’ll never keep up with how your
customers are behaving or catch up to where your competitors are headed.
> Design from the customer’s cross-channel perspective.
• Understand that customers use different channels for different purposes, and valuable customers
are more likely to cross channels.
• Rather than creating functional parity in each channel, optimize channels to match customer
expectations of the primary purpose of that channel. Enable smooth hand-offs at transition points
where customers tend to cross channels.
> Align cross-channel goals, resources, and technologies.
• Align organizational and staff goals and rewards with cross-channel success.
• Involve cross-functional teams from the start of projects.
• Employ industry expertise and technologies to enable orchestration and prioritization of customer
contacts across channels.
Business White Paper: Cross-Channel Front Doors | page 12 of 12

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