Industry best practices

Serviont Global Solutions marketing@servion.com

Industry best practices Vol 8 Web enabled Call Centers (viii)

While surfing the website of Xanadu Airlines

I would like to be seated on 26A. How do I know if the seat is available? I am a vegetarian. W ill I be served an Asian vegetarian meal? There is no personalized service on the website to obtain this information. I would like to talk to someone from the Airline

These are just few of the routine queries that customers have while initiating transactions on the web. The irate customer then frantically calls up the airline and conducts the same transaction over the phone all over again.

The airline loses, because they paid for the transaction twice once the Internet and again at the Call Center. The solution is a marriage of the Internet and Call Centers that provides W eb pages with an interactive option.

A web-enabled Call Center is one that integrates Internet and voice applications. By doing so, an organization improves customer service by combining the ease and convenience of a web site with the personal service capabilities of a Call Center. The end result has the potential of providing the customer with an optimal level of service at a reasonable cost.
W eb-enabled Call Centers provide a combination of both consumer and enterprise businesses. Just about any business can benefit from them. The list of businesses that reap benefits include: A web-enabled Call Center can provide a competitive advantage over businesses that use only static W eb pages. The web is also an extremely scalable communications channel, allowing companies to handle spikes in customer queries without having to temporarily add operators or phone lines. Businesses with products that are complicated or that require the buyer to see before buying can combine the power of the W eb to change these dynamics. For example, a business could provide pictures of their product. If the customer needs to see a diagram while being walked through a procedure, the web-enabled Call Center agent can have the customer look at a Web page or pages while they talk the customer through the procedure. If a problem is encountered, the agent can immediately pull up another W eb page that addresses that problem. A business that wants to reach the new Internet consumer - This type of business will find that having an Internet Call Center is critical to the success of their efforts.. It is not enough to have just a W eb page. Consumers, including business customers, need to ask questions before they are willing to buy. Potential sales may be lost if you dont have a web-enabled Call Center.

Preface

Industry best practices Vol 8 Web enabled Call Centers (viii)

A primary quantifiable goal of any web-enabled Call Center is to maximize the percentage of customers who find answers for themselves on the company web site or through agents. Here are some best practices that can be followed to improve the efficacy of your web enabled Call Center: Best Practice #1: Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) as Content Drivers CSRs will sometimes encounter a new and/or emerging customer service issue when they answer the phone. W ithout the appropriate processes in place, each of these successive incidents will have to be handled again and again by phone. It is thereby important to empower CSRs to author new knowledge base content when they handle new service events. This way, whenever they handle a new service issue, the web knowledge base will quickly respond to changing customer needs. This substantially improves self-service rates. Best Practice #2: Continuous Improvement An initial self-service rate of 60%-70%, may deliver rapid payback on a project investment. As a result, many companies enter a period of complacency soon after their online self-service system is up and running. However, as valuable as a self-service rate of 60%-70% may be, a rate of 85%-95% is even better. The web channel can itself provide the feedback necessary to increase the effectiveness of content and site navigation. By taking advantage of these feedback mechanismswhich range from customers own comments about content to site traffic statisticsdiligent managers can increase their ROI by 200% and more Best Practice #3: Minimize Clicks The faster customers can get to helpful knowledge items, the better. The optimum solution is to clearly identify service-related links on the home page. This is typically done with navigation buttons labeled Customer Service, Need help? or something similar. Such a link should take customers directly to a list of the top 10-20 active service/support issues. In many cases, these top 10-20 topics will cover more than 50% of customers questions. Best Practice #4: Letting Your Customers Know A large percentage of customers are actually sitting in front of their PCs when they call you on the phone. So its a good idea to put a suggestion about using the web on Call Center hold messages. That way, users can start finding answers to their own questions even as they wait to speak to a CSR. In many cases, theyll actually solve their problem while theyre still on hold. CSRs can reinforce the self-service message by politely showing customers where they could have found the answer to their question online. Best Practice #5: A Way Out W hile its important to not direct customers to phone channel before they first check online content, the converse is also true. Once a customer responds to the invitation to try using the web, he or she must not feel trapped in a dead end. This creates a disincentive to use the web in the future. So personal contact with a CSRby phone must always be available as an option within the web site. In a true web-enabled Call Center, CSRs will be able to view the same complete customer history regardless of which channel the customer opts to use. Best Practice #6: Leverage Knowledge Items Across both Channels W eb knowledge bases can be further leveraged by using them as canned answers for customers phone queries. By using these knowledge items as scripts for their verbal replies to customers calls, CSRs can ensure the accuracy and consistency of their answers. This best practice is especially useful for making new trainees productive as quickly as possible

Best Practices

Industry best practices Vol 8 Web enabled Call Centers (viii)

Technology Track

The Call Back button (left) and Call Me Button (right) on the websites are the key features of a W eb based Call Center ensuring agents communicate to customers. W eb enabled Call Centers assure prompt and efficient customer service at the click of the button.

Common Support

Benchmark your W eb-enabled Call Center with the following features:

Benchmark Zone

Online Agent: Customers can easily interact with a live Call Center online agent using advanced online agent W eb call via their W eb browser. Customers can obtain live online agent help, services and product information as well as purchase products and services online. Call to Agent Facility: Call to Agent allows customers who are working with Call Center online agents to include a phone conversation along with the online agent W eb session. Agent Call Back : The Agent Call Back feature allows customers who are browsing a company web site to request a call back from a Call Center agent at a specific day and time. This is a tremendous convenience feature since customers are provided with the freedom to select when they want to do business and when it is most convenient and appropriate for them. E-commerce and E-care Solutions: The web-enabled Call Centers should be capable of meeting the needs of every customer and should include the following e-commerce and e-care solutions : Single source customer Call Center with full integration of Internet, inbound, IVR and outbound services, Agent integration into your W eb site, Transaction processing, W eb site development, W eb application hosting, Domain name registration and management, Single data source to support your fulfillment activities, Real-time W eb-based monitoring to view your program and, Business/consumer profiling and updating.

Industry best practices Vol 8 Web enabled Call Centers (viii)

The Call Center interaction is scheduled from the web site, it does not require the communication to occur over VoIP: in fact, most users will not be properly equipped. Unique options to call the user back on a regular phone, either immediately, or after a delay if the user needs to drop his internet connection first. Statistics reveal that this option is selected by over 90% of users. The cost saving potential of employing a web-enabled Call Center is extremely high. A travel business, for example, the cost per transaction for an airline reservation can shrink from $8 to $1. By moving a banking transaction from the teller to the W eb, the cost shrinks from $1.05 to one cent. According to a study conducted by Booz Allen & Hamilton, insurance companies that employed web-enabled Call Centers as opposed to traditional telephone transactions reduced their costs by 58 71%. The study also found for banking, cost saving was 98%. The maket for web enabled Call Centers will bring in more than one billion dollars in revenues by 2006, a significant increase from the $111.8 million reached in 1999 (Frost & Sullivan) More than 2 billion people will use Internet voice portals, voice-enabled W eb sites, and W eb-based IVR systems by 2005. (Davidson Consulting.) There will be 71 million voice portal users by 2005, up from 4.4 million users in 2001. (Allied Business Intelligence.)

Fact Finder

This report is brought to you by Servionts Cross-Functional-Team, which works round the clock to bring you updates on industry best practices. Should you require more information, write to us at marketing@servion.com