However I will make the observation that “engagement” with customers of financial services is becoming increasingly sophisticated and spread across multiple channels irrespective of the age of the customer. Old and young alike are increasingly exposed to options for engagement in social and work-based situations and they are choosing in increasing numbers to use those preferred means to engage with their financial institution. To meet that need, any financial services provider be they big bank or single branch mutual will need to develop effective channels of engagement beyond the traditional branch and call centre options.

All is not lost! The perception that the investment needed to deploy the technology and processes for these channels “may stretch the budget of smaller credit unions” is not accurate. The solutions supporting these new channels are typically delivered via the cloud with innovative pricing models that permit them to be deployed cost effectively even for a small number of users.

A typical multi-channel approach will include a combination of any of:

• Web Self Service: where customers can find the answers to even sophisticated questions intuitively and quickly 24×7. These interactions can be costly to your organisation when they find their way into the higher value channels like call centres & branches but worse, they impact negatively on the customer experience who’s increasing expectation is seamless self service at their convenience.

• Email management: which enables even large volumes of emails to be “smart-routed” to appropriate resources to answer promptly, productively and accurately even across a distributed branch network. An auto-response to a customer’s email suggesting “we’ll get back to you in 5 working days” is no longer acceptable.

• Social Media management: where monitoring tools enable your customer service people  to address customer issues or questions that are raised in social sites like FaceBook, Twitter or perhaps a financial services blog. Not only can you “nip in the bud” potentially damaging negative sentiment but you can add substantial value through more mass communication to customers with similar issues. (see the Qantas volcano story)

• Live (Web) Chat: either as a “reactive” response to a request from a customer visiting the website  for immediate, personal service or (& this is where it can be really interesting for business growth) in a “proactive” mode where website visitors trigger business rules created by the business that indicate that customer (or potential customer) could do with some personal service eg filling out an online form, visiting an online saver product page. By addressing low value interactions via efficient methods above, you free up limited well trained people to interact productively with customers at critical value-adding crossroads & dramatically improve new business conversions.

As Cooper’s article suggests, it is no longer optional to ignore the engagement preferences of customers irrespective of their generation. However the answer to the challenge is also within the reach of all Mutuals no matter their size.

Chief among them has been the need to communicate the volatile changes in schedules to hundreds of thousands of travellers.

Volcanic ash cloud disrupts travellers

The AFR‘s Brian Corrigan wrote a great piece today. Amazingly, up till this week over 120,000 Qantas passengers alone have been affected by the ash cloud. With that volume of enquiries occurring, as Qantas spokesperson Olivia Worth said “The number of calls going to the phone lines is simply not sustainable.” The AFR quoted Ms Wirth as saying that social media had been vital to the airline’s response strategy because of the number of passengers involved. Qantas added 5,000 (60% increase) new Followers on Twitter since the disruptions began (“it’s an ill volvanic cloud that blows no good”) & an extra 10% Facebook fans. Ms Wirth said “There were many examples of people opening a Twitter account just to follow what Qantas was doing during this time. But it’s not just a way of pushing out information. It was used to interact with customers”. Apparently, Qantas has 3 staff dedicated to monitoring & responding to social media.

Meanwhile Virgin monitored over 10,000 mentions of its brand in the last 2 weeks. It has more than 30,000 Twitter followers.

It’s not just airlines that are discovering the need to manage customer relationships via social media. The speed, volatility & volume of interactions for almost any customer focused business can scale beyond capabilities at a moment’s notice. Whether it be a crisis where negative reactions need to be managed or a surprise positive opportunity (Hire car firms & hotels did a roaring trade during these same disruptions), businesses need to be able to respond efficiently, rapidly & via the channels the customers want. In this case, the social media sign up number tell the story.

1. Make email visible and available
It should be obvious, but our research has found that some companies, particularly in consumer electronics, still don’t allow non-customers to email their customer service team. This is the equivalent of slamming the door in a prospect’s face – make email contact options visible and open to all.

2. Build in workflow
Rather than a generic email, use online forms and drop down options to help route the query to the right place. If customers can select that their email concerns returns for example, they have greater confidence in getting an answer and you can automatically send it to the right agent.

3 . Acknowledge email
Customers fear that emails sent to contact centres will disappear into a black hole. So put in place an autoresponder that acknowledges receipt and sets out the timescales for responding.

4. Give clear timescales – and stick to them
It is amazing the number of companies that set a timescale for response – and then completely fail to stick to it. Once you’ve set an expectation with a customer make sure you get back to them – even if it is to let them know progress to date rather than a solution to their more complex query.

5. Integrate email with other channels

Email isn’t a customer service channel that works in isolation. Integrate it with your overall contact centre infrastructure and share a single knowledgebase that spans all channels.

6. Answer the question!
Some websites seem to favour speed of response over accuracy but there’s no point sending an email that doesn’t answer the actual question that the customer has asked. Make it easy for agents by using the knowledgebase to auto suggest answers and put in place a clear process for new content to be added in response to customer email queries.

Email may not be making the news as much as social media, but with 107 trillion emails sent in 2010 it needs to be the bedrock of your customer service strategy for the foreseeable future.

Social Media Map

The organisation I work for is a mature strategic consultancy with blue chip customers running $B businesses. To say they’re not sensitive to these new channels is obviously wrong……they are acutely aware & are simultaneously keen to participate AND concerned about how & where to start. Our advice to them is focus on the customer community, think about what’s important to them & use social media to build a relationship with them. If the customer is a mining company they’re concerned about the carbon tax, labour shortages & productivity measured in tonnes of ore in the hold of a bulk carrier. If it’s a self-funded retiree, their concerns & interests might be around cost-of-living issues & travel.

Within each marketing organisation there is inevitably a wealth of understanding of these issues that can be garnered for the benefit of the community. Created & delivered well, the value to that community is invaluable & inevitably leads to new business. Sure you can measure the ROI but it’s also nice sometimes just to know you’re putting something back into the world.

Here’s a great interview with the Director of Digital for BBC Worldwide on the benefits of Facebook for their organisation. Interestingly, it’s carried on Beet.tv which is another good example of emerging media models…..& the subject of my next blog.

A seamless addition to the Eptica Customer Experience Management platform, Social Media Interaction Management enables you to listen, respond and interact successfully with your customers and prospects on Social Media, ensuring the right people in your organisation are engaged in delivering the best response – including marketing, customer service and experts within your organisation.

Eptica Social Media Interaction Management includes:

• Eptica Social Media Observer
• Eptica Facebook Interaction Portal
• Third Generation Customer Interaction Workflow

Let your customers contact you through Facebook. It has revolutionised the way people interact socially, it can also transform how you deliver customer service. Eptica makes it easy for you to make social media a real channel of customer service, where customers can reach out to your service team for answers to their sales or service questions.

With complete end-to-end conversation tracking and interaction management you can now proactively identify customer opportunities, quickly act to solve customer complaints before they become serious issues and ensure your social media engagement strategy is a success.

For more detail about Eptica Social Media Interaction Management contact us at Congex or call on 02 8920 2220.

According to the latest American Express study 60% of Australians admit a bad review or website posting influences their decision to purchase from a shop or supplier, underscoring the importance of retailers needing to work hard to keep customers satisfied over the festive season.

“Our direct experience with customers in Europe & Australia with our Customer Experience Management solutions tells us the same story” said Dean Robinson, Managing Director of customer experience & eCommerce specialist CONGEX, “We know that successful online business models have understood the need to proactively manage the customer experience across all channels and we’ve seen great success for our customers in retail, travel and financial services”.

The American Express Global Customer Service Barometer also revealed 40 per cent of Australian consumers ‘always’ or ‘often’ use an online review, blogs or postings to gauge a company’s reputation for customer service.

“The explosion of the internet and online review forums has created a word-of-mouth system on ‘steroids’,” says Christine Wakefield, VP of American Express World Services in Australia.

“For businesses it no longer means keeping an eye out for the ‘mystery shopper’ engaged to review service levels, but focusing on serving all customers exceptionally well.”

According to the global survey, Australians are more influenced by a poor business review than they are a good one.

“The next generation customer experience solutions like our Eptica suite will incorporate social media channels like Facebook & Twitter in the mix enabling retails to “listen” to customers across their preferred channels” said Dean Robinson, “We’re very excited about the newest Eptica features that support a comprehensive social media strategy”.

CONGEX is delighted to confirm that its Customer Experience Management partner Eptica (www.eptica.com), has been positioned in Gartner’s 2010 Magic Quadrant for Web Customer Service. Eptica, the leading European provider of multichannel customer interaction software, is one of 13 companies worldwide to be included in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Customer Service providers.

Eptica’s inclusion in the quadrant builds upon the company’s third consecutive appearance in the Deloitte Technology Fast500 EMEA as a result of it experiencing 370% growth in the past 4 years.

According to the report, “Looking at the buying trend of the past 12 months, Gartner has once again observed that more than 80% of multichannel product buyers preferred a more comprehensive WCS suite, as opposed to a stand-alone single-channel or point-based product that requires extensive cross-channel integration each time a new channel is added.”

Gartner evaluates vendors based on their completeness of vision, ability to execute and differentiations in the market. Gartner’s market overview states the knowledgebase for self-service is the most important component of the Web Customer Service suite.

Eptica excels in its:
* Self-learning multichannel knowledgebase, which uses every customer and agent interaction to automatically fine-tune the link between inbound enquiries and relevant answers and which can easily be managed by business users
* Ability to provide full track and trace visibility and multichannel recording of every interaction
* Ability to record all cross-channel interactions within a single customer record to provide complete view of customer interaction history

Eptica’s self-learning, multichannel customer interaction software for ecommerce sites and contact centres encompasses Web Self-service, Email Management, Live Chat, Fax-Letter-SMS and Knowledge management for Customer Service, available on premise and as software-as-a-Service.

“2010 has been a pivotal year for Eptica that has seen the company go from strength to strength. Our rapidly expanding partner network and strong customer acquisition rate underlines the strength of our technology and the benefits it brings to businesses,” commented Olivier Njamfa, President and CEO, Eptica. “We believe Eptica’s recognition by Gartner in the 2010 Web Customer Service Magic Quadrant further demonstrates the value of our software and our position as a key provider within this market.”

Through the deployment of effective Web Customer Service, Eptica enables more than 280 organisations – including some of the largest brands on the Internet – to lower their contact centre costs and generate more revenue through enhancing customer service. On average, the company’s clients are able to reduce inbound contact and handling time by as much as 60% and improve first contact resolution to more than 90%. Eptica’s clients also consistently report that less than 5% of customers using Eptica Self-service on their websites need to escalate through to a service agent, pointing to high levels of satisfaction with the system.

CONGEX delivers Eptica’s world-leading solutions in exclusive partnership with Eptica in Australia & New Zealand.

To find out how CONGEX & Eptica can improve your customer service call +612 8920 2220 or contact us here

The growth of eCommerce and other online customer channels is well documented. The online business models offer tremendous opportunities to grow the customer base, increase revenue and reduce unit costs. What is less well known but increasingly on the agenda of executive teams is the impact of this exponential growth on the customer interaction channels…..BOTH online AND traditional.

Contact centres are now experiencing rapid growth in inbound contacts from an ever expanding customer base including calls and emails. These are expensive to address and still maintain the objective of the highest standard of customer service.

As the sales and marketing world has utilised new web-based platforms, so too do you need to harness the power of web-based customer interaction solutions providing advanced functionality to manage the customer experience across multi-channel customer contact points.

The challenge is to make available and communicate the valuable knowledge that customers need to address their requirements quickly and at anytime 24/7. Then, when the customer is ready to purchase, seamlessly guide them through the order process to a successful sale.

CONGEX delivers a class-leading platform combining:

• Web Self-Service
• Email Response Management
• Live Chat
• eCommerce platform & strategy

Get started today and contact CONGEX to learn how to optimise your ROI in Sales & Marketing.

Such was the response from our solar provider before my call was abruptly terminated. This Customer experience is typical of those suffered by many others in NSW recently and is the same as that “enjoyed” by travellers inconvenienced by the volcanic eruption in Iceland earlier in the year or car owners during any of the current recalls.

Today, the speed of communication and the volumes of Customers can combine to cause these Customer interaction flashpoints. Traditional channels of communication like your average call centre just cannot cope with the needs of crises like these or indeed, peak seasonal volumes like Xmas retailing.

To cope, organisations must deploy best of breed solutions to help them manage both the volume and quality of information demanded by Customers today. The core of these “weapons of mass communication” should include a Customer knowledge base that is utilised by;

• Web Self-Service: this first line of defence addresses the low value, common enquiries and reduces the volumes of inbound emails and calls.
• Email Response Management: typically uses smart form to gather the relevant data from Customers submitting queries so that the responses can be accurate, relevant and result in high rates of First Contact Resolution (FCR). Responses can also be repurposed to grow both the quality and quantity of potential answers in your Customer knowledge base, further improving the performance of Web Self-Service.
• LiveChat: should then be deployed for the higher value or urgent issues rather than used as a generic response tool for which it is an expensive option.

CONGEX has partnered with Eptica to deliver a Web Self-Service and Email Management solution powered by an intelligent meaning-based semantic search engine which allows Customers to ask a question, search by keyword or browse content within a dynamic knowledgebase – effectively enabling them to answer their own Customer service questions through your website. It also drives improved agent productivity in responding to inbound emails and correspondingly higher First Contact Resolution rates.

In the recent Icelandic volcano episode, European travel companies that deployed Web Self-Service & Email Management solutions from Eptica experienced far greater Customer satisfaction and required smaller increases in contact centre staff to manage the extreme volumes of Customer enquiries.

With CONGEX, your eCommerce and Customer service channels can work together to improve customer engagement, give customers better information, resolve enquiries faster, improve the customer experience and maximise every sales opportunity.

Without being facetious, of course the obvious answer is…..both together. We see each module as complimentary elements of a comprehensive Customer Experience solution, each contributing to a lower cost to serve & a better customer experience.

However commercial realities can drive budget constraints that require prioritisation and therefore the need to choose which element to implement first.

Assuming your website invites email enquiry & the volumes you receive are significant relative to your contact centre resources then we’d suggest you consider going with email management first for the following reasons:

1. The closer the customer interaction gets to an agent, the more expensive it is to address. Therefore, productivity improvements in email management produces a great, rapid ROI.

2. You can go live with email management with minimal content in your knowledgebase because each time you create a new, unique response to an email you’re adding to the quality & quantity of the knowledgebase. Ironically this then makes it even easier to go live with web self-service.

3. Experience shows that the positive impact of the productivity gains from Email Management generates great buy-in from agents & this drives even better knowledge base content & an upward spiral in performance of both Email Management & Web Self-Service.

Bottom line is that irrespective of which you implement first, it’s the Customer & your Customer Service team that win either way.