A contact center manager's guideto integrating self-serviceToday's contact centers are under ever-increasing pressure to providegreat service while keeping costs down. Self-service technologypromises a host of benefits, enabling customers to resolve their ownservice questions without gobbling up agent resources. But deployingself-service technology can also introduce many questions. What typeof technology will best integrate into your existing contact centerenvironment? What best practices will help ensure that the self serviceplatform will be usable and useful for customers, and achieve the goalof reducing costs? And what's the best way to calculate the ROI andestimate the impact of deploying self-service technology? This eBook,appropriate for contact center managers with either an IT or businessfocus, get answers to these and other questions about self service.Read best practices and expert advice to help build a solid businesscase and implementation plan for deploying self-service successfully.

A contact center manager's guide tointegrating self-serviceTable of Contents

Finding the ROI in contact center self-service initiativesThorough contact center training improves customer satisfactionBuilding a multichannel contact centerBest practices to ensure the success of contact center self-serviceResources from inContact

Finding the ROI in contact center self-serviceinitiativesBy Chris Maxcer, ContributorFor years, contact center self-service initiatives were launched simply as a way to cut callcenter and agent engagement costs. Many have since languished under years of neglect. Arecent Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA) benchmark study indicates anumber on the face of this trend: Successful self-service engagements have dropped from48% in 2003 to just 39% in 2011.How can a beleaguered contact center manager turn this trend around for better ROI?The answers, of course, start with a firm grasp of key call center metrics your organization

can use to assess the value of self-service initiatives. Also important is knowing how topropose smarter integration of self-service initiatives to business stakeholders to get thoseefforts on a path to success.

Two key metricsThere are two basic, core self-service contact center metrics that most companies shouldpay attention to, noted John Ragsdale, vice president of research for TSIA. "The first is selfservicesuccess, for example, the percent of customers that attempt self-service andsuccessfully find what they need," he said. Companies can use this metric to determine howeffective their self-service endeavors are."The second is what percentage of total incident volume is being answered -- or deflected --via self-service channels," Ragsdale explained. If a company has 10,000 calls a month butcan deflect 1,000 calls to a self-service application, those costs associated with thedeflections could result in the need for fewer call center staffers or resources

Measuring customer satisfaction"The best metrics are customer satisfaction and contact resolution," said Layne Holley,director of community services for International Customer Management Institute (ICMI)."Tracking call resolution, however, seems to be a bit trickier for many call centers.”Calls fielded by interactive voice response (IVR) are just as tricky. Citing the ICMI 2010Self-Service and the Multichannel Contact Center Report, Holley said “more than one-fifth ofour survey respondents said they do not measure completion rates for IVR-only calls. Sixtyfourpercent of respondents don‟t know if or when a customer has tried to self-serve butthen opted for a live rep.”Overall, recent ICMI research finds that 43.6% of organizations don't measure customerfeedback on centers' self-service channels."When you don‟t measure completion and transfer-out rates, you also can‟t measure theROI of your self-service technologies," Holley said."Customers often transfer out of a self-service transaction because they‟re not easily able toget what they need. You‟re not likely to understand why customers are transferring out orabandoning until you track what‟s happening," Holley said.Computer telephony integration (CTI) systems can enable transactional analysis for selfservicechannels so that contact centers can know when customers have tried self-service

and then opted for a live agent, Holley said. They can also pass customer transaction datafrom self-service channels back to the agent, reducing customer frustration that can occurwhen they have to repeat what they‟ve already said to a live agent.Packaging for stakeholder approvalTo win stakeholder buy-in, contact center managers should start with ROI, followed by themore nebulous customer satisfaction metrics

"For the most part, it still comes back to the basics of decreasing agent handle time andoperational costs, along with improving customer satisfaction by giving self-service to thosewho want it," noted Drew Kraus, research vice president for enterprise communications atGartner Inc.Although call deflection rates and reducing agent handle time can lead to hard-cost savings,some customers are increasingly looking at self-service as an expected benefit. Forexample, some customers prefer Web self-service options over live agents when they aresitting in coffee shops or are up late at night and don't want to wake sleeping familymembers."For a lot of companies, part of the justification for IVR is to extend the hours they cansupport their customers without having to extend agent staffing … but there is a downside:Surveys show that most customers just think they're trying to reduce costs. So even if therationale is altruistic, the customer impression is, 'Ah, they're just still trying to be cheap,'"Kraus said.Good knowledge management (KM) has the power to mitigate those pessimistic impressionsas long as customers can find answers to their needs. "KM is one of the few areas thatinvestment almost always creates strong ROI. Even a poor KM implementation will pay foritself in a year -- a really good implementation pays for itself in as little as six months,"TSIA's Ragsdale noted.Consider this: "Interaction volumes are increasing year over year by 20% or more for mostcompanies. Since no one wants to fund doubling or tripling the size of support over the nextfew years, self-service is an easy sell,” Ragsdale explained.VMware, a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure technologies recently updatedits self-service efforts. It not only kept customers satisfied with instant access to answersbut also managed to deflect calls from its call center, said Kate Leggett, senior analyst forForrester Research Inc. In 2008, 2.5 million customers accessed Web-based content; in

2010, more than 10 million customers accessed conten

And the results? Since the update, which includes links to a company support blog and aYouTube channel for self-service videos, calls to VMware‟s contact center have steadilydecreased. The rate is now below 4%, saving VMware more than $10 million a year.

Drawbacks and pitfalls"The biggest drawback is that a poorly designed application can end up with customeralienation," Gartner's Kraus noted. "The classic is that you spend five minutes in the IVR,get transferred to an agent and then you have to repeat everything."That's irritating enough, but it becomes far worse when speech-based applications gowrong, he said."A poorly developed speech application [alienates more] customers than a poorly developedIVR touch-tone application because now I'm not just pressing the buttons harder, I'myelling at my phone," Kraus explained. "And the poor agent who gets me after this … I'msure it increases agent churn, plus it increases average handle time because your customeris whining about the application. A lot of companies don't realize the investment and nuancethat's required for speech-type testing and tuning."There are risks with Web-based self-service, too."A poor self-service implementation frustrates customers, who after two-to-threeunsuccessful attempts will likely never go back to your self-service site again. For customerswho prefer self-service -- and that is becoming a large percentage of customers as youngerdemographics age into the primary target markets -- having a bad self-service site meansthey will take their business elsewhere -- it is that important," Ragsdale stressed.One last common pitfall is risking the relevance of Web knowledge management effort

"KM solutions often don't get adequately staffed because companies don't see it as a longtermengagement. They see it as a project to execute so you get executive sponsorship andfunding for that project, but there's no funding for the bodies that's needed to maintain it,"she explained. "As soon as someone accesses information that doesn't answer theirquestion because it's stale, they're going to pick up the phone

Thorough contact center training improvescustomer satisfactionBy Sue Hildreth, ContributorCustomer service today involves much more than the call center. Today's multichannel

contact center may have phone, Web chat, fax, Twitter, text chat, email and self-serviceoptions such as user forums and knowledge bases. Customers may use one, two or all ofthem at one time or another. To manage all these elements, consistent contact centertraining is vital."Not all interactions are a candidate for every technology," said Lyn Kramer, managingdirector for Kramer & Associates, a contact center consulting firm. "I may use IVR[interactive voice response] now, because I don't have access to the Web, but the Web laterin the day, and give them a phone call tomorrow. It's one face to the customer overdifferent channels, which can be a huge problem for some organizations, especially ifseparate groups own different parts of it."A key area that may be overlooked in contact center management is the hand-off of acustomer from one channel to another, said Lori Bocklund, president of Strategic ContactInc. When a customer moves from email to IVR or Facebook to a call center representative,the tone of the exchange may change as well, particularly if different departments handlethem.Worse, all the information about that customer may fall between the cracks, meaningcustomers are forced to repeat their stories and order numbers, increasing frustration.“It‟s pretty jarring when you spend an hour doing research online and you call the supportline for help only to have them take you through another hour of the same research,” shesaid.A major part of the problem is lack of integration among the technologies. “Unfortunately,there are still siloed implementations out there,” said John Ragsdale, vice president oftechnology research for the Technology Services Industry Association. “Social media, forSearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 10 of 22instance, is totally separate from the knowledge base, and there‟s no integration betweenthe two, and no search that encompasses both.”A second problem is lack of consistent policies and procedures for all employees to followwhen dealing with customers. The same support agent who answers the phone is unlikely toalso maintain the Facebook page, but if both are following the same rule book for tone,language and support goals, then customers at least know they are dealing with the samecompany.One support representative doesn't fit all

Not all support employees are suited for all channels. While many contact center managershave dreamed of having one team handle everything, in reality that isn't practical becauseof the disconnect among applications and routing and workflow, and the different skill levelsof customer reps, Bocklund said.Staff assigned to social media such as Facebook or Twitter should be good at writtencommunication and comfortable with the idea of social media. They should know thecompany‟s etiquette for providing support that thousands of customers will request. Anaccidental slip is more damaging on Twitter than on a one-to-one phone call.Additionally, the cut-and-paste style of answering questions, which is common with emailsupport, does not work well in a social media forum where everyone can see differentquestions receiving the same answers. Social media is a more manual form of support, atleast when it comes to interaction between customers and company."Many of the people using social media are customers who are unhappy. Companies need toget the necessary policies together [for providing support over social media] and also decideif that is the right place to have a customer support contact," Kramer said.Cross-channel contact center training is keyAlthough support agents may specialize in one type of support channel, they may still beasked to help out areas that receive a high volume of queries. For example, when aSearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 11 of 22customer calls about trouble downloading a knowledge base article, the contact centeremployees have to know how to help.Unfortunately, call center staffers aren‟t always educated on their company‟s other supportoptions. In fact, often a completely different department has responsibility over the selfservicewebsite or the mobile support application, and nobody thought to train customersupport on these technologies. What you wind up with is a contact center that appearsclueless, Bocklund said.“Say I‟m walking my dog at 5:30 am and doing some online banking on my iPhone, but I hita snafu and need to call the bank. What may happen is the call center management has noteducated the staff on what goes on with the IVR, mobile apps or website, and instead ofhelping me, the call center says, „Oh, we have a mobile app?‟ We really need to make surethat the call center people have a clue about things the customer is using,” Bocklund said.One approach that some organizations are taking to provide better coordination of customerservice policies and people is to create a new C-level position for it. The position of chief

contact officer is emerging, Kramer said. "It takes a concerted effort to put everything intoa single voice. We see a lot of organizations going to a chief contact officer to help pullthings together."SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 12 of 22

Building a multichannel contact centerBy Sue Hildreth, ContributorProviding customer support over multiple communication channels -- known as multichannelcontact centers -- is standard operating procedure these days for contact center managers.Customers are increasingly less inclined to pick up the phone and talk to an agent and moreinclined to email, post to a user forum or go on Twitter to get help with a problem.By 2013, at least 35% of customer service centers will integrate community or socialcapabilities as a part of the contact center solution, according to Gartner‟s Magic Quadrantfor CRM Customer Service Contact Centers 2010.Others customers prefer to do their own research and expect companies to have a goodsearch engine and plenty of product information on their sites. Increasingly, customers alsoassume they can receive this support over their smartphones while shopping or walking thedog.“There is much more emphasis on mobile devices, and we are seeing more vendors doingiPhone apps or Blackberry apps,” said John Ragsdale, vice president of technology researchfor the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA).While the interactive voice response (IVR) remains a core feature of almost all contactcenters, its use is gradually declining as other types of customer service become available,according to Lyn Kramer, president of Kramer & Associates, a call center consulting firm."We see the IVR declining, just a little, over the past few years, and more pervasive use ofemail and Web chat integrated with email and co-browsing where an agent helps a personwith detailed things on a form or webpage," Kramer said.Taming multichannel contact center chaosFor most companies, buying a new contact center system, or upgrading the old one everytime a new communications channel or capability is identified, is overly burdensome. OftenSearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 13 of 22the next best thing for these companies is to purchase a new technology separately, usually

from a Software as a Service (SaaS) provider. Although that works as short-term solution, itcan lead to fragmentation of functionality and data and can make it impossible to routequeries among channels.A better solution for the long term is to invest in a modular application suite or platform thatallows new modules to be added as needed and as the budget allows. Large CRM andcontact center vendors have contact center applications onto which companies can addmodules such as those for social media, self-service, virtual agents and monitoring.Optimizing contact center ROIThe following are some of the key features call center software should have to optimizecontact center ROI and efficiency:Routing and workflow: Effectively routing and handling customer phone calls, chats andemail is the primary driver of contact center productivity. Picking a good routing andreporting platform enables contact centers to manage calls, emails, Web chat, Twitter feedsand Facebook from the same interface.“Even if it doesn‟t do dynamic contact to agent routing, it will at least let them say, look outof Web chat and start taking phone calls,” said Lori Bocklund, president of Strategic ContactInc.Workflow and business rules enable contact centers to handle more complex relationshipsand transactions automatically based on a set of predetermined rules.Skills-based routing: Manually routing inbound calls takes time and often leads todropped calls. Skills-based routing reduces the strain on the customer‟s patience andincreases staff efficiency. Typically found with multichannel routing, skills-based routingautomatically routes calls to the appropriate agent or group of agents based on theirexpertise and input from the caller.SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 14 of 22Pop-up screens: These screens display a customer‟s name and account information andare perhaps the best contact center feature you can have, Bocklund said. They allow theagents to view customers‟ information right before they get on the call with them. “Thatpop screen isn‟t new but it‟s really the best use of customer information,” she said.Search and knowledge management: Customers can find answers to technical questionsin documentation and frequently asked questions (FAQs) on the corporate website as wellas in posts to user forums, a consultant's blog or articles on external websites. An agentshould have access to the same information as the customer. A good search capabilityensures the agents can quickly pinpoint the right information.

“There is more emphasis on new intelligent search technologies to allow employees andcustomers to access information in different locations, in real time, and allow them toaccess in any format, filter results, work within search, iterative search, to work with thedata instead of old Google approach,” Ragsdale said.Automatic callbacks: Companies can program callbacks to retrieve customers who hangup before reaching a service representative. For example, this feature allows customers toleave their phone numbers when they encounter long wait times. When an agent isavailable, the system calls the customer back. This is particularly useful in contact centersthat take sales inquiries.Automated alerts: Customers who have thresholds set for service levels or pricing canreceive automatic alerts via phone or email if the threshold is reached. If a customerinterested in purchasing a cruise if the price falls below $2,000, then the system can alertthe customer when that price is reached. Alternatively, if a company releases a newsoftware patch or upgrade, an alert is a good way to let customers know about it. Alerts arealso used for flight delays or when a bank account balance falls too low.Virtual agents: These software services help customers find the right answer on companywebsites. Using natural language capabilities and guided by internal rules, the virtual agentsprovide more specific and accurate help faster than a customer simply browsing FAQs orposting to a user forum. In addition, virtual agents potentially take some of the load off ofthe call center if they are easy to use and accurate.SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 15 of 22Operational and real-time analytics: To keep tabs on how successful the contact centeris, managers must track key metrics such as:• Call volume• Length of calls• How long customers are on hold• How long email turnaround is• How many customers post questions or answers to the support forumReal-time analytics is aimed at helping the service representative decide the best course ofaction by, for example, looking at the customer's buying history or the company's refundpolicy. Operational analytics is helpful in looking at things such as call scripts or customerbehavior patterns on a website.The downside of Web 2.0New features are unappealing if they wind up costing more without also increasing customersatisfaction or up-sales. Bocklund noted that while Web chat is a popular feature, it's not

always beneficial to the bottom line.“Why waste the money on someone like me who‟s used to doing self-service all the time?Unless they can show it actually drives sales, it will increase the cost from pennies percustomer to dollars,” she said, adding that there are some industries, such as insurance,where Web chat might be a valuable addition.Another self-service capability that Bocklund would skip is FAQs made available over theIVR. While some organizations have done that, it‟s not usually popular because few peoplehave the patience to listen to a great deal of information read to them over the phone.Also, although several vendors offer multichannel platforms that include social media, mostcompanies are avoiding this route.SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 16 of 22“I‟d say less than 20% of companies have gone this route,” Ragsdale said. “Channels areadded one at a time, usually as a side project, and done as cheaply as possible. Everyoneadded Twitter as a lark, and less than 10% of member companies using Twitter have itintegrated to their CRM or customer history,” he said.Contact center needs differNot all companies need the same features. Those with high volume and low sales percustomer may want more self-service, while those with high-end products or service maywant to invest in more high-touch services. Generally, the companies that are eager toinvest in new technologies are those with the greatest volume of call center traffic, Ragsdalesaid. If a new feature works well for them, they can save a great deal of money in the callcenter."If you're AT&T, with an enormous call volume, it pays to try new things," he said.Conversely, B2B firms and high-value, high-touch companies with fewer customers tend tobe the least interested in new technologies and services."In B2B world, they're a bit more risk averse because they're dealing with long-termcustomer relationships and not willing to try a brand-new unproven technology,” Ragsdalesaid. "A new technology may work really well, or it may leave them with egg on their face.”SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 17 of 22

Best practices to ensure the success of contactcenter self-serviceBy Chris Maxcer, ContributorWhen companies think about integrating contact center self-service, they tend to focus on

reducing costs and improving agent efficiency, which can lead to short-term gains. Withouta smart plan, self-service initiatives that launch with great expectations can often fizzle out,leaving customers confused, angry and looking for new brands. Fortunately, companies thatlaunch with contact center best practices can ensure sustainable success.The first thing to sort out is which tasks are best suited for live agents and which are besthandled through self-service. According to Layne Holley, director of community services forInternational Customer Management Institute (ICMI), self-service is never going to take theplace of live agents."What you want is to identify the most repetitive, easily automated transaction types oftasks to shift to self-service channels," she explained. “A good rule of thumb is that if youcan do it online in less time than it would take to pick up the phone and complete thetransaction with a live agent, it might be a candidate for self-service."In addition, Holley said there are some common tasks that call center professionals tend torank highly for self-service solutions:• Shopping carts for product and service orders• Order confirmation• Order tracking• Appointment setting and rescheduling• Bill pay and funds transfers• Customer access to personal accounts and account setup and management• Site search• Frequently asked questions or help content• Opening and checking ticketsSearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 18 of 22Although some of these tasks can be completed efficiently over the phone, customersincreasingly expect Web-based self-service options, which represent a prime opportunity fordeflecting calls from a contact center. "Basically, if your question can be answered as a selfcontainedanswer -- and answered completely -- Web self-service is great," said KateLeggett, a senior analyst for Forrester Research Inc. She noted that 80% of questions canusually easily be answered by a straightforward Web self-service offering.Still, John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for the Technology ServicesIndustry Association (TSIA), warned that customers will act in unexpected ways. "Today‟scustomers use every channel for every problem, including reporting 'priority one' issues viachat, email and self-service [applications]. Would they be better off picking up the phoneand calling you? Probably, but you can‟t mandate customer behavior," he explained.The rise of video

Meanwhile, according to Drew Kraus, research vice president for Gartner's Technology &Service Provider Research group, there's a lot of change in the contact center space overwhat types of tasks are best suited for self-service. "Self-service video -- corporate videoapplications that let someone get a visual representation of how to do something -- ischanging things," he explained.While video for self-service is still an emerging space, Kraus said the success of self-servicevideos doesn't have to rely on customers finding them online. Agents can push a Web linkto the customer, saving precious time. "With video, an agent wouldn't have to walk acustomer through a complex task," he noted.There are challenges to connecting video with contact centers, though. "In many cases, thecontact centers don't own the Web-based self-service activity, so it needs some level ofcontact and cooperation between the IT Web center and the call center. It's not that theyare antagonistic; it's just that it's not standard for the two groups to work closely together,"he explained.SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 19 of 22Of course, even video doesn't do a good job at everything. "Live agents are better in placeswhere you need consultative service or cross-sell, up-sell efforts," Kraus said.Arrows to escalationPoorly implemented contact center self-service applications can come back to haunt acompany in multiple ways. Customers might take their business elsewhere, but they mayalso attempt to immediately bypass self-service applications in favor of finding a live agentimmediately. Because much of the point behind self-service solutions is to limit direct agentinteraction, what are some of the best practices to handle escalation?"The best way to handle escalation is to avoid it … but it‟s bound to happen. With selfservice,it‟s critical to have an escalation path," Holley said. "It‟s inevitable that at least afew customers will abandon a channel, but you don‟t want them to abandon yourorganization."Still, what about avoidance?"If you‟re looking to limit escalations, make sure your self-service channels are workingproperly and that they‟re updated with all relevant information -- promotions, new products,new service or product features -- just as you would make sure that live agents are armedwith the latest info," Holley said.While traditional call centers have clear escalation paths built into their processes and

service-level commitments, Ragsdale said that many companies are missing ways to easilyescalate from unassisted to assisted support. To fix this, do not hide access to live agents sothat your customers have to spend 20 minutes searching for contact information, he said.Next, look to Web chat options. "Web chat is hugely popular in consumer support and nowhas growing popularity for enterprise and B2B support," he explained. "Chat is a great wayto offer customers a quick connection to an agent from the Web, and it preserves wherethey are on the Web page so the agent has context."SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 20 of 22Some smart companies know when it's time to initiate escalation themselves. "You canproactively reach out to customers who have been on your self-service site for a long timeor who have performed multiple searches and ask if they need help," Ragsdalerecommended. "A great thing about proactive chat is you can choose to only offer it wheninbound volume is low, to keep your idle agents as productive as possible."Of course, managing escalation remains a delicate balance for contact center managers."Customers always want easy escalation paths but not all businesses want it," Kraus noted."Sometimes they really want to encourage you to use self-service -- some businesses arehappy to lose a customer rather than have high call center costs."Measuring self-service satisfaction"Unfortunately, nearly half -- 43.6% -- of the contact centers represented in our researchdon't measure customer feedback on their centers' self-service channels," ICMI's Holleysaid. "So the first recommendation is measure, measure, measure!"The best way to measure customer satisfaction is to ask the customer to rate theinteraction they had with the channel they used. Were they able to find the information theywere looking for? Short, direct survey questions are best, and they should focus on theservice transaction and include channel-specific questions -- as opposed to generalquestions about the company or its products and services," Holley explained.In addition, ICMI recommends that organizations deliver customer surveys using thechannel the customer used. "For example, if the customer comes to your organization viayour interactive voice response (IVR), offer them an IVR survey," she said.Accurate measurement is not without challenges, though."The response rates for [survey] prompts are often less than 3% -- sometimes less than 1%-- so you don‟t gather enough information that way," Ragsdale noted. "The next approach isemailing a survey to everyone who uses self-service. In the B2B world this is easy -- users

typically have a logon or password for self-service in B2B. But for consumers, with noSearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 21 of 22authentication needed to access self-service, you don‟t know who they are to follow up towith a survey."One way to measure potential self-service success online is to look at search patterns,Forrester‟s Leggett said. Many clicks or abandoned pages might point to a higher likelihoodof dissatisfaction in self-service engagements or potential problem areas to enhance.Regardless of what a contact center manager measures, Leggett recommends thatcompanies find ways to put their survey and measurement information to use on anongoing basis. "To have a continuous improvement cycle," she said, "you need to route itback to the right people to act on it."SearchCRM.com E-BookA contact center manager's guide to integrating self-serviceSponsored By: Page 22 of 22

ne proven technique for keeping customers happy is providingthem with great service – regardless of the channel theychoose to use. Some customers will gravitate to self-service channelssuch as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Web-based tools,while others may lean toward agent-assisted support.The opportunity for companies lies in determininghow to optimize their service channels in orderto provide great experiences to each customersegment at the right cost.Providing customers with differentiated supportis more important than ever. Global competitionhas ushered in a steady stream of new and differentproducts that consumers can choose from, soit’s become increasingly difficult for companies todistinguish their products from other players. Thedeal-clincher for many customers is whether a company can offerthem distinctive support, explains Zeynep Manco, Manager at Peppers& Rogers Group.Providing customers with a level of support based on the valuethey bring to a company represents a change in mind-set for mostdecision-makers.“Historically, most organizations have viewed support as a onesize-fits-all approach for their customers,” says Tim Harris, Director,Professional Services, at inContact. “However, that type of genericapproach doesn’t provide companies with a way to match the appropriatelevel of support to customers based on their value to thecompany. It also doesn’t offer decision-makers opportunities to reducesupport costs through service segmentation,” he adds.In their efforts to capture and retain high-end customers, organizationalleaders must determine the most effective ways to deliverconsistent support to customers across all channels based on theirneeds while providing premium service to their best customers accordingto their value.It’s challenging to strike a balance between providingcustomers with great experiences across allchannels while ensuring that top-tier customersreceive premium service. One way is by applyinganalytics to help determine the needs, behaviors,and preferences of different customer groups andthen taking action to fulfill those requirements. Bydetermining the types of support sought by different

customer groups, decision-makers can alsobetter determine the cost structure for each channel based on theirpreferences and usage, asserts Michel Naime, a Senior Consultantat Peppers & Rogers Group.It’s also important for decision-makers to remember that valueisn’t simply defined by how much money a customer spends on acompany’s products, either currently or on a projected basis, Harrisasserts. Executives also need to consider how influential a customeris in referring or recommending a company’s products to friendsand colleagues. Here’s where analysis of social media data playsa critical role. It’s critical for decision-makers to never lose sight ofthe importance of understanding and meeting all customer needs.Because ultimately that’s what customers care is about.“ A one-size-fits-all approachto customer service doesn’tprovide decision-makersopportunities to reduce supportcosts through servicesegmentation.”— Tim Harris,Director, ProfessionalServices, inContact

ne proven technique for keeping customers happy is providingthem with great service – regardless of the channel theychoose to use. Some customers will gravitate to self-service channelssuch as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and Web-based tools,while others may lean toward agent-assisted support.The opportunity for companies lies in determininghow to optimize their service channels in orderto provide great experiences to each customersegment at the right cost.Providing customers with differentiated supportis more important than ever. Global competitionhas ushered in a steady stream of new and differentproducts that consumers can choose from, soit’s become increasingly difficult for companies todistinguish their products from other players. Thedeal-clincher for many customers is whether a company can offerthem distinctive support, explains Zeynep Manco, Manager at Peppers& Rogers Group.Providing customers with a level of support based on the valuethey bring to a company represents a change in mind-set for mostdecision-makers.“Historically, most organizations have viewed support as a onesize-fits-all approach for their customers,” says Tim Harris, Director,Professional Services, at inContact. “However, that type of genericapproach doesn’t provide companies with a way to match the appropriatelevel of support to customers based on their value to thecompany. It also doesn’t offer decision-makers opportunities to reducesupport costs through service segmentation,” he adds.In their efforts to capture and retain high-end customers, organizationalleaders must determine the most effective ways to deliverconsistent support to customers across all channels based on theirneeds while providing premium service to their best customers accordingto their value.It’s challenging to strike a balance between providing

customers with great experiences across allchannels while ensuring that top-tier customersreceive premium service. One way is by applyinganalytics to help determine the needs, behaviors,and preferences of different customer groups andthen taking action to fulfill those requirements. Bydetermining the types of support sought by differentcustomer groups, decision-makers can alsobetter determine the cost structure for each channel based on theirpreferences and usage, asserts Michel Naime, a Senior Consultantat Peppers & Rogers Group.It’s also important for decision-makers to remember that valueisn’t simply defined by how much money a customer spends on acompany’s products, either currently or on a projected basis, Harrisasserts. Executives also need to consider how influential a customeris in referring or recommending a company’s products to friendsand colleagues. Here’s where analysis of social media data playsa critical role. It’s critical for decision-makers to never lose sight ofthe importance of understanding and meeting all customer needs.Because ultimately that’s what customers care is about.“ A one-size-fits-all approachto customer service doesn’tprovide decision-makersopportunities to reduce supportcosts through servicesegmentation.”— Tim Harris,Director, ProfessionalServices, inContact