Let’s make service personal!
The technologies are now in place to make Service Personalisation a reality, however Adam Faulkner argues that it’s only going to work if you look at the issue from a customer perspective
It’s all too easy for organisations to invest in new technology because it might speed up a process or take cost out of a business operation, so contact centres up and down the country are often equipped with the latest technology – but are their customers really happy? Of course a new CRM system is a powerful tool, and voice recording can help to ensure that your business is compliant with the latest regulations, but do they really help the customer who’s making the call in the first place?
Organisations often talk about putting the customer first, but let’s not just talk about it – let’s actually do it! And this time let’s not confuse customer segmentation with customer service. Segmentation may help an organisation divide their customers into groupings and work out how to deal with them profitably, but as a customer that’s your problem and not mine. I may not be your highest value customer, but I’m still an individual and I’d prefer to be treated like one!
From a technology perspective, we’re now seeing that all the different components are now in place to make such a Service Personalisation approach a reality. However, it’s not just about the technology – you need to address the people and process issues that support such an approach, and it’s got to be done from a customer perspective.
In process terms, this means treating customers as individuals. Knowing who they are when they ring in. Knowing about all their previous interactions with your organisation, and then tailoring the service you offer to better meet their requirements. Although everyone would like to offer such a level of service, in reality most contact centres don’t come close.
That’s probably because it’s not easy, and it also relies on the intelligent integration and deployment of a wide range of different technologies. It also requires a step change shift away from the standard customer service experience for the majority of UK call centres. You know the one, where you call up, immediately get placed in an auto-queue for two to three minutes, and then get routed through to the first available agent where you have to start all over again. Invariably that leads to frustration, with the interaction often going downhill from there.
Moving towards Service Personalisation
As individual consumers, we all know how much better we feel when we’re acknowledged as customers. It’s good to be recognised when we go into a shop – it’s even better when the retailer remembers what we bought last time and asks how we’re getting on. Better still, if they relate our previous purchases to their current special offers, and maybe offer a discount based on our loyalty. This is what retailers always used to do, and is the foundation of a high quality, personalised service. It’s what the consultants mean when they talk about one-to-one relationships.
So how can we move towards this sort of model in our contact centres? Often it’s about doing the simple things right – quickly recognising who a customer is when they call, matching their identity to a customer database, and then transferring that information to the right kind of agent. At any given point, such a transaction could involve a range of technologies including speech recognition, voice ID, integration with CRM, dynamic skills-based routing, effective WFM and quality monitoring, along with associated training and reporting requirements. That’s a lot of technology to get right!
Once you’ve got that basic process in place, it can start to get interesting. It’s no longer enough just to answer the call quickly and connect the customer with an agent, there’s an opportunity to go much further. For example, when your ID is confirmed, a dynamic routing system queries your CRM database, recognises that the customer calling has a propensity for being up-sold to, and instead of the call being transferred to the first available agent it is instead transferred to the agent with the skills that best match the customer’s requirement. Even better, don’t just go for a skills match, how about transferring the call to the appropriately-skilled agent who’s really on form at the moment and is closing the most deals right now.
This sort of approach is clearly complex from an internal technology perspective, but actually very simple if you’re the customer who’s just called up, been recognised, and had their query dealt with professionally and successfully. This is the kind of first call resolution we’re all looking for.
Once you’ve got this kind of infrastructure in place, a whole range of opportunities open up – take credit cards for example, where a lot of customers take out a 0% offer for a three month period, then switch to another similar promotion when the rate is about to rise. So when a customer calls in to close a credit card after three months, don’t treat it as a credit card call, instead look at is as a loan conversion opportunity! Looked at this way, an investment in a technology infrastructure that can support such a Service Personalisation approach can contribute directly to your organisation’s bottom line performance.
Making the process more conversational
So let’s look at the first bit of the process – caller identification. The initial challenge here is to get away from the industry’s traditional auto-attendant mindset and actually develop a customer ID approach that doesn’t result in three minutes of dead time. With today’s latest speech applications, identifying customers via a natural language speech-based application is proven technology and can work really well.
The key is to make the process less linear and more conversational. If you’re a financial service company, for example, the chances are the customer would be calling about one of your financial products. So when I call, I don’t mind being greeted by an application that says: “Hi Mr Faulkner, are you calling about your car loan or your mortgage?” providing the process is relevant to what the customer needs.
Turning traditional routing upside down
The next challenge involves how you route the calls to the right agent. It’s important to ensure close integration with your CRM system – for example, there’s no point in an agent offering a customer a direct debit option if they’ve already refused it on their last two calls with your organisation. Similarly, this can also uncover commercial opportunities. If a customer is calling within 28 days of the end of a contract, it’s more likely to be about a cancellation rather than a service issue. This should trigger the agent to be aware that this is probably going to be a customer retention call.
These are examples of dynamic call routing where there are no standard or pre-defined call types, and the routing engine is always looking to match call components with agent skills, performance and capability criteria. Instead of looking only at the current status, this allows the router to deal in terms of ‘sliding windows’, for example if an ideal agent for a particular call (maybe the agent who the customer dealt with last time) isn’t currently available but is likely to be in two minutes time, then the customer might prefer to wait.
This kind of scenario turns traditional predictive routing on its head, and allows you to start working with what’s best for the customer. In many ways it also provides a framework to allow your customer service to become less constricted by standard information flows. However, it’s also important that you give your agents a desktop environment that allows them to take advantage of such a routing approach.
Enabling agents to support Service Personalisation
None of this can really succeed unless agents really are in a position to put your customers first. Agents can provide a more personal service if they have the right information in front of them, and if their own individual skills are more closely matched to customer requirements. It’s therefore important to ensure that agents are integrated into the world of Service Personalisation. This might involve giving them self-service options, giving them the flexibility to schedule their own shifts and breaks, and also acknowledging their own skills and career development.
If, for example, a customer is calling with a complaint it makes sense not to route that call to a new agent who doesn’t have the experience to deal with such a situation. From an agent’s perspective, however, this should also translate into recognising where an agent does have that capability, using it where necessary and rewarding them accordingly. By tracking these skill sets, and by giving agents the ability to take more control of their own work environment and shifts, organisations provide a far more positive environment for real Service Personalisation for their customers.
