DragonCall

Customers Need Web Chat

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 06:22:00 GMT

An emerging channel that still doesn't seem to have been picked up over the years by organisations is web chat or commonly referred to as online chat.

Quick definition: web chat is a channel for customer interaction where a customer can chat with a customer service representative in real time over the web, without using instant messaging, either through the company's website or by opening up a new web browser.

Currently approximately one in five organisations have implemented a web chat technology, however web chat interactions only make up less than 1% of total interactions for an organisation.

Is this a lack of demand issue or is it because web chat has not been done well by organisations?

From our research, we know that web chat is a high effort (in terms of time and energy) channel, however customers are willing to use the channel in the future with one in ten customers indicating that they will regularly use web chat in the next 1-2 years to contact an organisation. Hence it is important to make the web chat experience as enjoyable as possible for the customer.

How can this be achieved?

Here's a handy guide I found from Firstsource... the 7 guidelines for a best practice web chat service include:

Set Chat Programme Goals
Monitor Your Site Activity
Place Chat Buttons Prominently
Dedicate Time to Your Chat Programme
Reach Out to Your Potential Customers
Make Chat Part of Your Sales and Service Processes
Learn How to Sell and Provide Service via Chat

The only thing I would add here is to ensure that web chat is proactively offered rather than just sitting in the corner of the web page somewhere. It is important to note that web chat shouldn't be randomly offered, but offered based on rules such as a period of inactivity especially at the pages where the customer is purchasing the product or service.

Now that we're all excited about web chat, just a word of caution, web chat is not for everyone or every interaction – it is vital to understand the needs and preferences of your customers prior to looking into web chat.

Revolutionary Customer Service Analyst Market Reports

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:57:00 GMT

Last week saw the official launch of Fifth Quadrant's Asia Pacific Customer Service Analyst Practice

Of course we have been conducting Research and Benchmarking in the region for 15 years now but the launch of the Customer Service Analyst Practice incorporates all our work in the past 15 years... and MORE.

What's more?

A greater focus on customer service as a whole, including a wider coverage of all service channels including Online, Voice, Face to Face, Social Media, Mobile Apps and Correspondence
A wider service offering including Service Industry Market Reports, Analyst Briefings, Best Practice Models, as well as Benchmarking

For me, the most exciting service offering that comes with the Customer Service Analyst Practice is this...

Our revolutionary Market Reports.

These Market Reports will now capture perspectives from three different segments, namely:

Industry
Consumer
Vendor

This triangulation of results is truly magnificent, because we can now identify what the industry is doing versus what consumers want, identify gaps and shape the future by closing these gaps and also gaining insights from the vendor community about upcoming trends for any particular Market Report topic area.

The full list of Reports to be published in 2012 is as follows:

Customer Self-Service Industry Report
Enterprise-wide Service Strategy Report
Social Media and Mobile Apps Customer Service Report
Customer Experience Research Best Practice Report
Service Industry Technology Report
Service Industry Human Resource Management Report
Service Industry Analytics & Performance Management Report
Service Industry Workforce Optimisation Report
Outsourcing Management Best Practice Report
Telecommunications Industry Customer Service Report
Banking, Finance & Insurance Customer Service Report

If any of the above is of interest to you or if you would like to learn more about the Customer Service Analyst Practice please contact us on +61 2 99273347 or info@fifthquadrant.com.au

Home is where the heart (and work) is...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:52:00 GMT

The last few weeks have been quite busy for me, juggling tight deadlines at work with the stresses and struggles of buying my first apartment...

Well, the work deadlines and the apartment are sorted now, but I couldn’t have done it without the flexibility my employer offered me during this period.

This flexibility I am referring to is working from home... and I truly believe that you will not fully appreciate the benefits until you need to work from home yourself. I was able to save the travel time to work, sort out what I needed to do with regard to the apartment and complete the projects required at work by the deadlines.

Working from home not only benefits the Employee, it also benefits the Employer.

Some of the commonly reported benefits of having a Home-Based Agent programme include:

Access to a wider resource pool that you would not usually access (e.g. work from home parents, regional/rural communities)
Improved staff morale and retention
Improved productivity of staff
Improved service response to customer needs
Reduced travelling times for employees
Improved work-life balance

With so many benefits and proven cases of the concept working across the world, it puzzles me as to why only one in ten contact centres in Asia allow agents to work from home.

Western countries such as the US and Australia have higher adoption rates of Home-Based Agent programmes and this looks set to continue to grow and attract increasing support from senior executives in 2012.

With the relevant OH&S and Security measures, working from home makes logical sense and should be the direction that the contact centre industry in Asia head towards.

Dragons and Headsets

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:55:00 GMT

Welcome back everyone to the first DragonCall blog of the new year, the year of the Dragon (how appropriately named is my blog!).

While you recover from the excessive eating and drinking over the new year celebrations, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all good luck, prosperity and health in the year ahead.

Now to other important matters...

Recently I came across a white paper, How Can I Help You?, which talked about how having the right headset can improve agent performance and customer satisfaction.

This is indeed quite interesting because headsets are not really top of mind when organisations think about purchasing technology in the contact centre, typically it is the big items such as ACD, IVR, CRM, WFM and Knowledge Management.

After reading the white paper it makes sense to place a higher level of priority on headsets – the values of headsets presented in the white paper include:

Multi-tasking ability – especially in the emerging multi-channel environment
Ergonomics – assists in ease of hot-desking, posture, and allowing freedom of movement of agents who are on the phones all day long
Noise cancellation – high quality audio and blocking out the noisy contact centre environment
Mobility – allows agents to easily move around the office to access additional information that may help with resolving the customer’s query
Multi-device – ability to connect to different devices such as desktop phones, soft clients and mobile devices
ROI – improved agent performance through the above values

The point that is most interesting to me is how multi-device, multimedia, wireless headsets can enable the coming of the multi-channel agent and contact centre. Agents can be more equipped than ever, allowing them to efficiently and effectively perform their role. When agents are well equipped they will be more engaged and we know from our own research that agent engagement is a statistically significant driver of customer engagement, meaning happy agents deliver a better level of service to customers than unhappy agents.

Holiday Observations

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:58:00 GMT

Welcome to the last DragonCall blog for the year before the Christmas and New Year break.

I have just returned from a few weeks holiday across Asia - China (Guangzhou), Macau and Hong Kong – and I had a magnificent time!

In between the numerous hotels I stayed at, shopping malls I splurged my money in and restaurants that have helped me gain a few extra kilos, I have come to observe that the level of service offered by service staff in these countries is quite different to what I have seen in western countries such as Australia.

Put simply the level of service I experienced was much better than what I've experienced in western countries – friendliness, willingness to help, attentiveness and timeliness were all top notch. This made me feel valued and important, hence I was much happier during my stays in the hotels and was more willing to buy more goods and services than I would have been if I was in western countries.

This comes off the back of recent research undertaken by Australian research consultancy AMR, where Australians were surveyed about their perceptions and experiences of customer service. Results showed almost 3 in 5 respondents felt customer service has declined in the last 5 years, with only 17% saying it has improved.

Understandably, the service experience in Asia is my personal experience but if you take into account that the level of service in Australia is also declining, it is no wonder western organisations are outsourcing their service operations to countries in Asia.

Better service experience = more engaged customers = higher customer loyalty = higher likelihood to recommend and re-purchase = increased revenue.

Simple.

Have a safe and joyous break everyone, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

See you all in 2012!

When the unexpected happens...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:35:00 GMT

In the midst of some global natural disasters, including the Turkey earthquake, US snowstorm, and something closer to our hearts the Bangkok floods, my deepest condolences goes out to all those who have been affected by these unexpected events.

Whilst we’re on unexpected events... quite often contact centres are impacted by unexpected events – these not only include natural disasters, but also controllable events such as marketing campaigns and changes in Government policies that are not communicated to the contact centre beforehand.

As per the FIfth Quadrant Australia and New Zealand Workforce Management Market Report, here are some common ways the industry handle unexpected peaks in contact volumes:

Offer staff overtime/shift extensions/additional shifts (80% of organisations in Australia/NZ use this method)
Minimise off-phone activities such as meetings and trainings (62%)
Multi-skill agents to be prepared for unexpected peaks (45%)
Use off-phone staff (39%)
Call in part-time/casual staff/temps to assist (32%)

A combination of the above methods will assist in handling the extra load.

Now delving into each of the points above...

We wouldn't want to offer too much OT/shift extensions as this may burn staff out

Minimising or cancelling off-phone activities is not ideal as this affects WFM practices in that staff may miss some important training or meeting, and may affect staff morale especially if the training/meeting is cancelled altogether and not rescheduled

Whilst multi-skilling of agents is a good method, there is still a fixed number of agents in this circumstances and additional load required of agents when peak periods kick in

Off-phone staff also have their day job and may not be fully equipped to handle customer enquiries

Which leaves me to the last point:

Use of part-time, casual staff. This strategy would be ideal especially if you have a part-time/casual workforce (work at home, outsourced) that is readily available and trained to quickly ramp up or ramp down when needed. This allows costs to be managed and staff to not feel too pressured or exhausted from the other methods, without compromising the customer experience.

Obviously these are reactive methods of handling unexpected peaks. With the controllable events, such as marketing campaigns there is opportunity to work more closely with marketing and allow the contact centre to be involved in planning throughout campaign development. So have a process in place, and reduce the likelihood of unexpected controllable events occurring.

The business will benefit and so will the customer.

How NOT to Motivate Agents

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 06:17:00 GMT

More often than not we always hear about what the customer wants, what the customer needs, improving customer service, etc etc... whilst this is extremely important, a lot of organisations have forgotten about the people on the other end who actually have to deliver the service to your customers... Yes, that's right, your agents!

With over 80% of customer contacts handled via the contact centre channel, agents are by far the most important people to your organisation – they are the 'face' of your organisation, they represent how customers perceive your organisation.

Organisations need to continually look at ways to motivate and engage their agents, which you can search all over the internet to see what works for your staff (obviously aligned with some Employee Engagement research).

However, it is just as important to avoid actions that may de-motivate or disengage your staff... here are some pointers:

DO NOT neglect your staff. Provide guidance and support for them even if you are extremely busy, they are your staff and they need your support. Be approachable.
DO NOT leave staff in the dark. Always keep communication open and transparent. Talk to your staff not just email.
DO NOT just give orders about what to do. Also encourage participation and collaboration from staff.
DO NOT simply point out errors or mistakes. Recognition and praise of performance is always welcome and encourages repeat positive behaviour.
DO NOT stick to one type of reward or reward criteria. It may not work for all staff so vary how you reward people/teams and the criteria for rewarding – it doesn’t have to be expensive – PRAISE is the universal reward.
DO NOT allow staff to settle in their roles even if they are top performers. Always provide a challenging work environment, and provide growth and learning and development opportunities for staff. Talk to staff to see what they want to do in the short and long term.
DO NOT simply focus on meeting hard KPIs and targets. Focus on the customer related metrics as well – first call resolution, customer satisfaction/engagement.
DO NOT forget to have fun. Although it is a work environment, it can still be fun, hold activities that allow staff to have fun whilst at work – games or theme days.

Once you get this right, the benefits are directly transferable to customers. Highly motivated and engaged staff will represent your organisation in the best possible way to customers.

WFM results coming soon to Asia...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 06:17:00 GMT

Last week saw the launch of Fifth Quadrant’s 2011 Workforce Management Market Report for Australia and New Zealand, and as we prepare the report for Asia and the International audience here is a quick reminder of some key stats for Asia based on the 2010 study:

6 out of 10 centres surveyed across Asia have a WFM software solution with India (78%) being the most likely to have this technology
Less than half of the workforce planners across Asia have had training in the competencies of forecasting and scheduling or official training on how to use their WFM software
Many centres in Asia are still not forecasting at an interval level (15 or 30 minute)
40% of centres in Asia do not allow for shrinkage when calculating staffing requirements
62% of centres are using target shrinkage set by management rather than actual shrinkage which helps explain why the average shrinkage used is only 19%.

We are extremely excited about the forthcoming release of the International report so we can see how the Asia industry has progressed since last year with regard to WFM.

Hopefully the industry has realised the importance of WFM to the contact centre and have made investments into WFM software and training of staff and made improvements to forecasting, scheduling and intra-day management processes.

Once the WFM processes, resources and tools are in place, then organisations can benefit from having the right people at the right place at the right time - staff are happy, the business is happy and customers are happy.

Whole of Government Contact Centre and Shared Service Models

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:12:00 GMT

Consolidation has long been a strategy in the private sector to achieve economies of scale. The key benefits are that organisations will have access to a larger pool of resources, which allows for more flexibility in the workforce in order to handle varying levels of contact volumes across different parts of the organisation. Ultimately, consolidation results in streamlining of ongoing operating costs and processes, and allows for the consistent delivery of service to customers.

Nowadays, we are seeing the government sector showing increasing interest in consolidated and shared service models. One of the primary drivers for this is that consumers now have higher expectations of service and no longer differentiate their public sector service experience from their private sector service experience. The level of service consumers expect from anyone is the same regardless of what type of organisation it is! Ofcourse there are other factors that drive consolidated and shared service models, these include the need to operate more effectively and efficiently and for other political related reasons...

There are many successful examples of Whole of Government Contact Centres and Shared Service Models in the public sector. These include Singapore’s “Vital” shared services department, the UK’s Single Non Emergency Number, France’s “Allo 3939”, Spain’s single number for ‘administration’ services, the US 311 non emergency number for calls to government, along with various State government initiatives in Australia (Smart Service Queensland, Service SA, Service Tasmania), and many more.

And, just on Singapore’s “Vital”, it has recently been recognised for its customer service at the annual Asia Pacific Shared Services Excellence Awards. Well done!

So there you go, consolidation and shared service is not all about cutting costs, it is also about improving the customer experience.

Local Presence and Outsourcing

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 05:45:00 GMT

Last week some of my colleagues attended an event in Sydney held by a Philippine outsourcer SPi Global where the purpose was to educate Australian businesses about the benefits of outsourcing to the Philippines, namely the westernised culture, English language skills, high level of university education, customer service culture, lower wages and lower attrition to name a few...

But what was more impressive was the fact that SPi Global had set up presence in Australia to form partnerships with local companies for their contact centre and other outsourcing needs. Now this is what I call proactive!

Local presence is a classic International Business market entry strategy, where an overseas company sets up presence in the target country – this is a significant investment but brings about benefits such as having the advantage of being treated as a local company and a shorter learning curve about the local market. This is particularly useful in a country like Australia, where mate-ship and support for local businesses is strong – thus having a local presence can only do your international business good and will help differentiate you from the competition by showing you have a genuine interest in the Australian market as seen through your investment into Australia.

Whilst you may have set up local presence in Australia, it is also important to understand the market’s attitudes towards outsourcing… based on the most recent Fifth Quadrant Australian Contact Centre Outsourcing Market Report 2011, we know that 24% of organisations consider outsourcing as one of their top 10 initiatives. Organisations in Australia believe outsourcing will help them overcome challenges related to maintaining operational costs, upgrading or implementing new technology and increasing productivity … to learn more about the attitudes and perceptions of Outsourcing contact us here to order a copy of the Fifth Quadrant Australian Contact Centre Outsourcing Market Report 2011.

Multi Channel CRM

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:11:00 GMT

Increasingly we see organisations offering additional service channels, including social media and online technology. Whilst this is good in the sense of service availability and accessibility for the customer, it is critical that an integrated customer relationship management (CRM) is implemented across all available service channels.

According to data collected in the Fifth Quadrant 2010 Asia Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking Study, four in five organisations in Asia (79%) have implemented a CRM system of some kind. But how many of these organisations actually have an integrated CRM across ALL service channels? Perhaps less than half, as the majority of organisation’s CRM systems we have seen are antiquated and obsolete.

However, we know this is changing, recently the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) (with their expansion on delivery channels to social media, online and mobile) have indicated that they will apply CRM across all channels. TAT's Thapanee Kiatphaibool said, "Good CRM will help us collect data to create more targeted marketing campaigns in future." Fantastic!

Other benefits of CRM include data that provides a better understanding of your customers, cost reductions, improved and customised levels of experience (engagement, retention, loyalty, repeat business), ultimately leading to greater revenue and profit for the organisation...

So what are you waiting for? Go on... Review your CRM > Upgrade/Replace > and Integrate. And continue this cycle regularly...

The Ideal Contact Centre Agent

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 06:06:00 GMT

There is much debate about what makes an ideal contact centre agent...It is indeed extremely important for organisations to get it right at the front line as most often agents are the ones who directly interact with customers at the first instance and represent the organisation’s image to customers.

So what makes an ideal contact centre agent?

Is it the older mature female? Or is it the tech-savvy multi-tasking Gen-Y? Or is it someone else??

Huge generalisations here:

With older mature females you get the softer skills, the empathy, the understanding and listening skills, along with a more stable workforce giving you longer tenure and lower attrition
With Gen-Y’s you get the multi-tasking ability to handle multiple channels and tasks along with good computer and technology utilisation skills

So ideal, is perhaps a mash-up of the above two types of staff: Someone with good soft skills, mature minded and is capable of efficiently and effectively handling multiple channels at tasks at the same time – now this is perfect!

In reality, how many of these type of people are there in this world? I’d imagine they’d be pretty hard to come by...

Obviously every organisation is different – products/services, values and behaviours, culture – with this the types of staff suitable for each organisation will be different too. It is perhaps good to have a mixture of staff characteristics, this may allow you to get the best of both worlds. Also mix it up within the teams as well, this will allow sharing of individual skills and knowledge and hopefully a merging of skill sets – one day everyone will be perfect ideal contact centre agent...

But seriously, analyse your workforce, work out the types of staff that not only have good performance but also have good team and personal skills, and profile them – this could be combination of technical ability as well as psychological aspects – then go and recruit for this type of person... remember this does not stay the same, as people and organisations change and evolve continuously... continually update and refresh your recruitment criteria.

Even though you may have found your ideal contact centre agent, be sure to provide them with relevant ongoing training in your policies, processes and procedures, contact handling techniques and contact centre technologies to ensure your agents are fully equipped to assist your customers.

The rise of Social Media...?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 03:41:00 GMT

Last week we saw news from Convergys stating that Social Media as a customer service tool is steadily growing in the outsourcing hub of the Philippines, with their non-voice service offerings slowly seeing growth. "We do a fair amount of non-voice BPO (such as) back-office email management, chat processing, coupons processing and claims processing, among others," said Convergys president of customer management Andrea Ayers.

This is great news, considering all the hype over the last couple of years about Social Media with very low take up rates from organisations and consumers...

However, we still understand that Social Media as a channel to contact an organisation is still very low, in fact 6% of consumers across the globe have used a Social Media channel to contact an organisation in the last 3 months (2011 Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index – conducted by Fifth Quadrant).

Social Media may include many things, from social sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr through to social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Ron Jones' Social Media definition captures the phenomenon well:

"Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online."

It is important to bear in mind that although consumers are increasingly using Social Media, they tend to do so for personal reasons and not so much as a contact channel with Organisations.

Other key findings from the 2011 Avaya Contact Centre Consumer Index include:

Social Media as a contact channel for Organisations tends to be lower across Asia than that seen in the Caribbean and Latin America region
Preference for using the Social Media channel is lower than actual usage of the channel (2% of consumers prefer to use the Social Media channel vs 6% that have used the Social Media channel in last 3 months)
Based on consumer intentions, the use of Social Media as contact channel to interact with customer service centres is not predicted to grow significantly in the next 1-2 years

If you would like more info on these results please contact Brydie murphy7@avaya.com.

Service Strategy

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:29:00 GMT

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed callcentres.net has relaunched as Fifth Quadrant... Why? You could watch Catriona's video or in short, due to the evolution and rapid change in the service sector, not only do we know all about contact centres, we now provide specialist consulting, research and training across voice, face-to-face, online, correspondence and social media service channels.

Our aim is to change the way organisations think about Service Strategy and to ensure it has on-going presence at the Boardroom table. Indeed a recent study we conducted in conjunction with IBM revealed that 30% of the senior executives interviewed rated Customer Service as their top strategic priority for 2011.

It is refreshing to see this shift in focus to the Customer where 5 or 10 years ago it was all about business processes and efficiency, and very little about the Customer. Organisations see Service as a key differentiator, good Customer Service leads to happy engaged customers, resulting in positive future behaviour – renew/re-use, recommend, first choice for next purchase.

In fact, a recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by DHL across 10 markets in Asia revealed that no longer is price the only factor in purchasing decisions, many consumers are willing to pay more for better service.

What is your organisation's Customer Service Strategy?

Regional vs CBD

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:32:00 GMT

This week I'd like to explore the topic of contact centre locations and the attractions of rural/regional locations vs. city/CBD locations.

Recently I read that Indian utility Tata Power will expand its rural outsourcing centre at Khopoli in the Raigad district of Maharashtra. The Tata Power centre grew from 47 agents in 2009 to 230 currently, with another 100 agents to be added to the existing team by the end of the current financial year.

Tata Power indicate the reasons for expanding their rural operations is that the centre provides alternative employment for the youth of rural India with the aim of creating self-sustained community development.

Whilst this is an excellent reason to locate in a rural or regional location, there are several other known attractions of a rural/regional contact centre location. Based on numerous regional contact centre industry studies conducted by callcentres.net, we know that in a rural/regional location, they tend to:

Be good at inbound service
Have a more stable workforce
Have a more engaged workforce
Have lower attrition rates and higher retention
Have more mature workers
Have agents that place a higher status on working in a call centre and tend to be more proud of their jobs
Have lower labour costs
Have lower rental costs

However there are also some challenges with a rural/regional location, namely:

Not so strong in sales or technical support
Finding specialist skills such as Workforce Planners and managers
Local IT support

Thus although it may seem attractive to locate a contact centre in a rural/regional location it is important to balance the potential cost savings with the required skill-sets and labour profile and availability.