Is it Possible To Reduce The Cost of Customer Service and Enhance The Consumer Experience?

Is there really a way to "Do More With Less" and increase customer satisfaction?  This is a popular theme within all business verticals in today's economic climate.

We have all experienced the frustrating scenario as a consumer where we seek information for products and services on-line, do not find the answer we need and then call a contact center agent only to be "transferred" and have to repeat the same set of questions with a new customer service channel to find the answer we are looking for. 

This leads to a negative experience, reduced satisfaction and higher cost for the company that is providing the customer service. 

By now we are all familiar with the options to enable multi-channel customer service via email, voice (live agents), live web chat  and self service via on-line search tools or IVR options; but how many companies provide consumers with consistency across all these channels? 

The key to increasing CSAT and reducing service cost is to enable a seamless escalation path across all channels and enable multiple communication channels for consumers to find the answer they are looking for.

How is this accomplished?  First it is important to understand where your consumers typically begin the process of searching for information when making a buying decision or customer service inquiry.

Let's take the example of a traditional company web site.  A typical consumer will start their search for information on the web.  By providing easy to use self service options on-line  the company is able to take the first step in handling the majority of questions via basic FAQ's or key word searches, this is also the most cost effective way to handle these contacts and reduce calls into the contact center. 

But what happens when the consumer does not find the information there are looking for?  Unfortunately for many businesses the consumer is then forced to call into the contact center which results in a higher cost to handle the contact with live agents and results in lost opportunity for those consumers that abandon because they do not want to call for help.

The most overlooked avenue to bridge the communication gap, provide your consumer with increased choice and reduce site abandonment is live web chat.  By providing consumers with the ability escalate from self service to chat companies are able to handle a larger portion of consumer contacts in a cost effective manner and further deflect costly phone calls into the contact center.

In addition, enabling this channel allows companies to collect valuable information on the web site by evaluating chat transcripts to make self service and web site enhancements that increase overall satisfaction and further reduce costly phone calls.

While there are some consumers that would prefer to call the contact center directly, a growing majority prefer to get answers while on the web, providing all three communication channels allows businesses to provide choice to the consumer for how they would prefer to interact with your business.

So what are the keys to a successful multi-channel strategy for your customer service? Aside from providing multiple communication channels that include web self service, live web chat and phone support the most overlooked component is consistent content across all these channels. 

Too often the information at the finger tips of the contact center agent is inconsistent with the content on the website, creating confusion for the consumer.  Consolidating content and answers to questions that is consistent across all channels ensures brand consistency, lower cost and increased customer satisfaction.

This is only part of the customer service optimization process. By tracking the questions that you do not have prepared answers for when customers escalate to a live web chat or a voice agent creates an immediate feedback loop where on-line self service tools can be enhanced to provide more useful and relevant information for your consumers. 

The reason most consumers escalate to an agent is because they did not find the answer they were looking for via self service. 

Thus, the key to reducing the cost of providing customer service and increasing CSAT for your consumers is to utilize the data collected at the agent level and then feed the missing content back into the self service or live web chat response library.  This creates an ongoing commitment to brand consistency, a more satisfied consumer and most importantly reduced cost to provide the service.

Comments

[Tony @ philippines call center]

"Thus, the key to reducing the cost of providing customer service and increasing CSAT for your consumers is to utilize the data collected at the agent level and then feed the missing content back into the self service or live web chat response library. " I agree with you absolutely on this conclusion. The sad thing is, a lot of my colleagues fail to recognize this. Nice insightful post!

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[Inbound Call Centers]

Interesting and well-written article. This makes perfect sense. Customers’ expectations are soaring. Their brand loyalty is waning. Churn is on the rise. The business case for building loyalty has never been stronger.

Operational efficiencies and increased performance is where your savings begins—the impact of increasing retention is significant. You can:

* Reduce the costs of attracting new customers
* Improve marketing and sales efforts at a lower cost by leveraging feedback to optimize products/offerings and understand what loyal customers value most
* Reduce labor cost and boost efficiency as repeat customers tend to make fewer demands on your resources
* Reduce warranty claims, repairs and returns by delivering better information and building loyalty
* Focus resources on the needs of the most profitable and loyal customers, yielding a higher return

Tina

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