09 December 2014
By Marco van Biljoen, Executive Head:
Gauteng and Central, The Jasco Group
Contact
centres are often a customer’s only point of interaction with a business and
its brand, and as such service should be optimised to provide the best
experience possible. Many studies have proven that ineffective service, poor
call handling, long hold queues and other contact centre issues can have
serious negative consequences for business. Intelligent analytics is essential
in addressing these challenges and others, assisting contact centres to
maximise agent productivity and value while improving performance and enhancing
customer service.
Customer
service is an essential function of the contact centre, and is also a high
priority for customers. This is highlighted by a number of studies into contact
centres and the customer experience. For example, the Customer Experience
Impact Report from Harris Interactive reveals that 60% of customers will pay
more for a better experience, and that 86% of customers stopped doing business
with a company following a poor customer experience. The same study reveals
that customer service agents failed to answer consumer questions 50% of the
time. The RightNow Customer Experience Impact Report concurs, stating that 89%
of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer
experience, while the American Express Global Customer Service barometer from latest
available data indicates that 59% of customers will try a new brand or company
for a better service experience.
Poor
customer interactions are responsible for a large proportion of lost sales and
therefore of lost revenue. In fact, a McKinsey report indicates that 70% of
buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated,
while the abovementioned studies from Harris Interactive and RightNow show that
the top two reasons for customer loss are customers feeling poorly treated and
failure to solve a problem in a timely manner. Despite the evident importance
of customer service and the vital nature of the contact centre, the Customer
Experience Peer Research study conducted by Forrester Research indicated that
just over a third (31%) of organisations closely monitored the quality of their
customer interactions. Finally, according to ‘Understanding Customers’ by Ruby
Newell-Legner, it takes 12 positive experiences to combat one unresolved
negative experience. Monitoring the quality of interactions and then leveraging
this information to improve customer service is essential.
The
benefit of analytics as a tool to deliver meaningful business insight for
better, faster decision-making ability is something that is well understood and
often results in a more agile company. However, many organisations do not
realise that this same concept can be readily applied within their contact
centre, often using the technology they already have in place. According to the
latest available data from the Ventana Research Contact Centre Analytics
Benchmark Research, two-thirds of organisations view access to real-time as
important. However, of these respondents, only 8% receive the information in
real-time, with 18% receiving the information the same day and the remainder
receiving it up to four weeks later. Intelligent analytics within the contact
centre can address this real-time information challenge and provide benefits
for both inbound and outbound interactions, assisting organisations to deliver
better service and optimise contact centre-related business processes such as
collections.
On
the inbound contact centre side, ensuring optimal service is key. Customers are
often upset by the time they call in, so quality assurance not only after the
fact, but also in real-time during a call is essential. Using intelligent
speech analytics solutions, tools can identify precisely when a call needs to
be escalated. For example, if swear words are detected during a call, this call
can then be automatically routed higher up so that the issue can be more
readily resolved. Speech analytics can also detect if certain required phrases,
such as those necessary for contractual obligations and compliance, are
omitted, and this can be rectified immediately.
When
it comes to outbound contact centres, the collections process is often
challenging and lacks efficiency. Agents often end up phoning customers without
strategy or intelligence as to how, why and when they should be contacted. This
means that customers might not be reachable when they are contacted, resulting
in the need to make repeat calls. Alternatively the agent may call the customer
at an inconvenient time, which has a negative impact on the customer
experience. In order to optimise this process, it is necessary to analyse
historical data around customer interactions. Best time to call analytics
ensures that all available information is used to deliver insight to the agent
as to the right time and day to contact the customer to maximise the value of
the interaction for both parties. In addition, intelligent analytics can be
used to ensure the agent is contacting the correct person on the right phone
number, decreasing the number of connects necessary and maximising agent time
with the right party.
Intelligent analytics enables improved agent
productivity, which is critical to the success of a contact centre, by offering
technologies such as best time to call along with more commonly used tools such
as predictive diallers and reporting tools. In addition, real-time speech
analytics along with reporting can be used to enhance customer service, which
will show direct returns to the bottom line.