Can Customer Service Ride the Downturn?

In a bull market and, indeed, in the current business environment, where every business decision is mulled over twice before any action is taken it can often be the softer benefits of working with an organisation, such as its customers service, which can encourage new business or, at the very least, help to retain existing clients.

Just twelve months ago businesses would trade even mediocre customer service for good financial returns but when times are quiet and profits are lean customers start to look at the value – beyond the pure financial - that they receive from their partners.

In a recent European survey by Avaya nine out of ten senior decision makers said they were prepared to pay a premium for 24/7 customer service. With business value increasingly determined by the end user's experience, the challenge for companies today is to provide consistent, differentiated services. If organisations are serious about that endeavour, the foundation for this must be an alliance between the IT department, the board and the customer services director; a strategic imperative to deliver an intelligent communications strategy that connects customers to the right people and processes, across locations and business functions.

While the theory sounds very grand the refreshing truth of the matter is that, carried out correctly, it can also be relatively simple in practice and, from a customer point of view, the benefits are clear. A case in point is the call centre industry. Beset by complaints about impersonal customer service the sector is beginning to provide a seamless and efficient customer experience through enhanced communications behind the scenes, via instant messenger, presence and video technologies, which instantly link call centre agents with the relevant knowledge experts, this has the effect of pooling the entire enterprise knowledge and putting it at the disposal of the customer, creating an “enterprise ready to serve.” In addition, end-users can experience new technologies such as natural language voice recognition, or automated video-to-mobile technologies, which enable, for example, a live stream of a particular share price to be sent to their phone before they decide to buy or sell. If this level of behind the scene communication can improve a basic call centre transaction, think what it could do for financial services clients?

At this point it is worth exploring a couple of the technologies mentioned above in a little more detail:

Instant messaging and presence are technologies that will be familiar to many people in their personal life but sadly they are technologies that are still finding their feet in the business world. Users at home are getting more and more used to being able to “see” who is online and instantly communicate with them via simple text messages, in fact a whole new language of abbreviations, acronyms and icons is being born as a result of this. Just imagine the possibilities of a financial services representative being able to instantly and silently communicate with any available member of staff to resolve client questions that would have otherwise resulted in a call back, a case being logged or worse still a dissatisfied customer who has to wait for an answer from an expert. Sounds perfect – right? Well maybe not perfect, have you ever tried to hold a meaningful conversation with an important client whilst typing a message, reading the response on screen and then translating that response to the customer without sounding like you are reading it or loosing your train of thought, trust me, it’s not easy! The other factor to consider is the human factor of a call centre agent always contacting their “favourite” expert, the one who is always available to help, this can create resentment and work overload within the knowledge workers. A better solution would be for the software to instantly locate an expert based on skills, availability, workload and communication preferences and then at the click of a mouse invite that person to join the conversation. This “resident expert” software is the kind of innovative thinking that Avaya believes will transform the way an organisation interacts with its customers.

Of course, the one thing that every IM user relies on when initiating a “conversation” is the presence status of a user. The indication that the person they want to communicate with is logged on and available to chat. The flipside to this is that these same users know that presence is far from 100% reliable, and so when faced with a customer who needs an instant answer, how can you be sure your expert is definitely there? What about the user who is sat at their desk and is willing to assist but has simply forgotten to log on to their IM client, or the user who is logged on and shows as available but has stepped away from their desk for a few minutes. Presence will dictate who you communicate with and ultimately the quality of the answer you receive, it is for these reasons that there needs to be a more intelligent approach to presence. Once you can collect (or aggregate) presence information from multiple sources, for example software applications, telephony services, location based services, electronic calendars, security systems and local area networks to name a few you can really build up a complete picture of who is available to assist you, what is the best way to communicate with them and even instantly invite them to a conversation with the customer to resolve an issue on the spot, now that’s first time call resolution at its best!

Video . Many call centres and indeed many Unified Communications vendors believe that video is the “missing link” between the business and the customer, but has anyone asked the customer if they think that seeing the customer service agent on a video application would add anything to their conversation? Avaya certainly believes that video is a hugely beneficial technology, but for the right applications. There is no doubt that video communication certainly does speed up group collaboration and decision making, so for a group of brokers deciding whether to invest in a large or risky portfolio, or make a business affecting transaction, being able to see the “whites of a person’s eyes” could be the make or break of a decision. Non-verbal communication, remember, makes up a huge proportion of a conversation, but simply turning a call centre into a video enabled call centre simply for the sake of it could actually turn customers off. Video-to-mobile technologies by contrast can add a whole new element to a phone call. With the ubiquity of 3G mobile networks and large screen smartphones, being able to stream video to a mobile device alongside a voice conversation could allow a caller to navigate menus, see their portfolio update in real-time or even read the terms and conditions of a transaction on screen before agreeing to a trade.

The traditional hurdles preventing this level of customer service in the financial sector have now, largely, been overcome. Where previously concerns about integration, security and realising the existing investment in legacy systems posed stumbling blocks, now companies, like Avaya, deliver standards based solutions that work with third party software and services to deliver the benefits of intelligent communications without the previously prohibitive costs or the need for any sort of rip and replace strategy.

What is more, for financial institutions where security and compliance are always watch words, the adoption of mobile and home working has often been hampered. This has made more ridged hours of office based operation essential and the goal of 24/7 customer service prohibitively expensive. Now however, more advanced technology vendors offer the ability for staff to make and receive calls via mobile, or from their laptop, and by routing the call back through the company phone system can ensure security and compliance standards are met, no matter what mode of communication staff, or customers choose.

The generic term for this sort of intelligent communications infrastructure is Unified Communications. Put in layman’s terms, it is the ability to allow a person to communicate without thinking about what medium is best to use, letting the infrastructure worry about the technological capabilities and allowing them to get the job done. Or, put another way, it is simply customer service on the customer’s terms.