CRM & Customer Service

FOLLOW THE SUN

 Call Centers / Contact Centers
 Customer interaction center or Customer Care
are all the same names for Call Centers
 20 years ago consumers complained by letters
and waited for response
 Not today, the 800 number has sparked off a
revolution
 Real-time dispute resolution has become
mandatory
 Even Dell Computers discovered that the
customers who order PCs from company’s web
site made an average of 2.5 calls to their support
center !!!
 Knowledge Centers
 These were there even before customer data bases became essential e.g.
Walt Disney company and State Farm Insurance in the USA
 Call center hiring involved merely testing how fast a job candidate could
type
 Call center operators respond to each call as if unique, but their
effectiveness is measured by how quickly they get the customer off the
phone !!
 Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) can look up similar calls and their
resolutions, while a customer is on phone, without repeating research – to
enable efficient handling of escalating call volumes
 Software products like REMEDY and CLARIFY enable companies to run
statistics on their calls, categorizing them by call types, time-to-resolution,
escalation percentages, average call duration, etc.
 This provides forecast of all volumes to ensure adequate call center staffing
 CSR performance is tracked by volume of calls they can support
 Call Center Automation
 Usage of Computer Telephony Integration
( CTI ) is done to automate the communication
process
 Call Routing done through the “Help Desk” can
be made up of several geographically dispersed
call centers
 They are segregated on the basis of Location of
company’s regional office, or by staff expertise
or by product specialization
 Also on the basis of priority for R&D, location of
firm’s outsourcing center, or based on escalation
levels on the trouble tickets
 Follow the Sun Concept
 This concept emerged to enable Call Centers keep open 24X7 like
all-night stores
 To minimize customer wait times, “load balancing” is a critical
operational objective
 Network routes monitor operator availability, while keeping track of
incoming calls in the queue – using switch technology to allocate
calls correctly
 Most notably Airlines provide best customer service, with a special
number that reaches specially trained service agents
 Precision Call Distribution facilitates call routing to expert agents
e.g. Saks Fifth Avenue ensures customers who spend $ 2000
annually reach an operator in one second or less
 Interactive Voice Responder (IVR) is another method for round-the-
clock routing and gives time to qualify a caller before helping
 Automated speech recognition avoids multi-layered phone menu
 Contact Center Sales Support
 Call center to be a point-of-sale for related
products too
 Screen Pop of smaller windows on a Web Site
visit displays the complementary products
 Web-based self service has also become very
popular e.g. FEDEX service center takes 93
seconds to track a package but the Web site
answers in 17 seconds for same information
 Customer self service has much to do with
obtaining general information as also tracking
specific orders with FAQs
FAQs ( Frequently Asked Questions )
 Where is the company headquartered ?
 How do I return an item ?
 I’ve moved – how do I update my profile ?
 How do I review my account ?
 How do I change my password ?
 More choices of FAQ more satisfaction for the customer
 Touchscape customizes self-service screens for CRM
without prioritizing the FAQs
 Unless you are serious about supporting them , do not
introduce new products & features
 Electronic surveys can measure customer satisfaction
 Call Scripting
• Such scripts eliminate Agent guesswork by giving the CSR with
logical talking points and guiding customer based factors like
1. Reason for contact
2. Customer’s value
3. Cross-selling opportunities & propensity to buy
4. Current product promotions or discounts
5. Past due bills or accounts payable issues
6. Some products provide natural language support e.g. “customers
need laundry instructions for flannel sheets” and be shipped with
correct reply like “cold water, tumble dry on low”
7. However “canned” response can never replace CSR with deep
product knowledge and good disposition
 Cyberagents
 Lifelike representatives normally shown on
company’s web site as a real person e.g.
Compusa’s “Jill” being a typical type of
character who provides information to
make decisions based on customer
request and information
 Workforce management tools that
specialize in staff planning and
optimization help in many ways
 Workforce Management Tools
 Ability to forecast contact volumes to predict
busy periods
 Recommend optimal no. of CSRs for peak
periods
 Performance tracking by customer value,
customer satisfaction, priority level or other
metrics
 Employee scheduling based on skills, tenure, or
preferred work hours
 Global monitoring for multiple contact centers,
for combining findings with single reports for
staff or performances fine-tuning
 Customer Check-list for Success
 Choose your technologies carefully – makes no sense to offer
customers web-based self-services when your site is not linked to
inventory
 Use a building block approach to ensure call center technology is
ahead of business evolution
 Provide CSR with all customer info
 Establish processes for call center staff – no experiments and no
guesses by CSRs
 Agree on success metrics e.g. for traditional car brand keep calls brief
(avg. 4 mins.) and direct to web or local dealer. For luxury car models
encourage to stay on line as long as it takes ( 25 mins avg. )
 Understand the issue of service recovery – customer on the verge of
churning will occasionally give the CSR a chance to retain him/her
which should not be ignored
 Ensure contact reps are properly trained
 Staff contact center at needed levels
 CRM Marketing Initiatives
 Cross-selling and Upselling – mothers buy for
kids and themselves is cross-selling whereas
motivating customer to buy more profitable
products is upselling
 Customer retention – in 1996 Frederick
Reichheld said that US companies lose 50%
customers every 5 years. Must be able to predict
and prevent CHURN
 Behavior prediction – propensity-to-buy analysis,
next sequential purchase, product affinity,
product elasticity modeling & dynamic pricing,
etc.