Service Evolution
“If agents can’t solve customers’ problems it’s like throwing gas on a fire.”
That truism was told to me by Marchai Bruchey, CMO of Kana, last week when we were discussing trends in the service arena. Bruchey was talking about the challenge contact centers face with retention. “Companies need consistency in that channel, but call centers have the highest turnover.” One main reason, according to Bruchey, is that agents feel they don’t have the information they need to do their jobs. When agents can't resolve customers’ issues, both customers and agents become frustrated—often to the point of leaving.
For this reason, Bruchey suggested, knowledge management is a major focus for organizations right now, whether it be for Web self-service or agent knowledge (or, hopefully, both!). Companies are grappling with getting the most from their existing channels, and giving customers and agents the information they need is one big step toward harnessing the power of the service channel.
Bruchey also pointed out that companies are analyzing how best to harness social media for service. Many executives now recognize that the biggest experts on their products and services may live outside their four walls, and they’re looking for ways to take advantage of that customer knowledge. In fact, Bruchey predicts that within five to 10 years the number one place customers will go for service will be a social network or online community. One reason she cites for this is changing customer demographics. Another is that peers tend to talk in layman’s terms, whereas many knowledge bases are written by engineers for engineers, making them difficult for many customers to understand.
One obstacle enterprises are facing in capitalizing on the potential of their channels is competition between them, often caused by the silos they operate in. “Executives today know that they will lose customers if they don’t fix the problem,” Bruchey said, adding that “to take full advantage of technology, companies need to do change management first.” They need to assess the service experience and handle the people and process issues before being able to get the most from the technology their using to support their customer strategies.
How can companies succeed in the service arena? According to Bruchey, the best chance for success is to give service a seat at the C-level table. She cited Wachovia and Sprint as two organizations that have C-level service executives. “How can you link service and corporate goals?” she asked. “You can’t if you don’t have a seat at the table.”
Susan,
You make a great point. I think that the more of an organization's "touchpoints" that see the same customer information the better. That shared knowledge empowers staff to better service customers--a win for everyone involved.
According to this study - http://www.aspect.com/content/Library/report/Aspect_10-Percent-Rpt_SummaryDoc.pdf - about 10 percent of the telephone calls handled by a contact center in a typical day already involve support from a knowledge worker located outside the center.
If that's true, now is clearly the right time for organizations to implement a comprehensive Unified Communications strategy that is driven by the contact center. This can help them empower agents to engage the right resources, and lead to increased first call resolution rates, which would most likely result in happier customers and agents.