Insight from Interactions

This year’s NICE annual benchmark study on contact center trends revealed increases in the overall volume of customer interactions, and in the number and variety of channels by which these interactions occur. Neither of these trends is likely to surprise anyone in the customer service industry. What may surprise you, though, is the amount of untapped potential—lower costs, lower churn and more—in all those interactions.

Companies interact with their customers across an expanding and increasingly complicated landscape. It can be chaotic, to be sure—but there’s an upside. More interactions and more channels across which these interactions can unfold more opportunities to forge strong customer bonds, maximize profits and create lasting competitive differentiation. The key is understanding and optimizing the dynamics—the Customer Dynamics—they represent.

Customer Dynamics  is an exciting concept that describes the ongoing, complex interchange between businesses and customers occurring across all customer touchpoints (phone, chat, email, etc.). By optimizing Customer Dynamics, organizations can have both happy and loyal customers and be highly efficient and profitable.

Today NICE announced  a new methodology and tools with which companies can generate tangible business value through Customer Dynamics optimization. This systematic methodology works in conjunction with our NICE SmartCenter suite. We’ll get into the details in upcoming posts. But the basic idea is straightforward.

We help you take charge of the complex interactions you have with your customers by capturing intent (with our multi-channel interaction recording platform), analyzing intent to rapidly reveal meaningful insights (with cross-channel interaction analytics), and then taking decisive actions to impact your business performance (with our new Real-Time Guidance offering and additional solutions). From intent to insight to impact, NICE offers companies a way to understand exactly what’s going on in all those interactions, to see patterns in the chaos, to glean insights and, finally, to act and make a difference for your business.

Which customers call your contact center most frequently and why? How do customers who use self-service channels differ from those who call you? What are customers saying about your competitors? How are customers reacting to your latest marketing campaign? What revenue opportunities are you missing? What is driving customer dissatisfaction? Who are your best-performing agents? How can you promote best practices and enforce procedures across your workforce? Where are your opportunities to reduce handle time? What if you had the answers to all these questions and more?

Customer Dynamics optimization is a new and exciting concept we look forward to discussing with you in the coming weeks and beyond. In the meantime, we want to hear what you have to say. Post a comment. Let us know: How would you have handled a customer situation differently had you understood the true intent of the customer? What insights have you always wished you could extract from customer interactions? What impact do you think Customer Dynamics optimization can have on your company?

Do you remember your local grocery store—the one closest to home when you were a kid? The owner knew you and your family members by name. He knew what you bought and, if you hadn’t paid him a visit in a while, he would ask your mother if you were okay. He knew what you liked and, if he didn’t have what you wanted, he would order it especially for you. In short, you had a relationship. His prices may have been a fraction higher than the larger supermarket, but no one there knew you. You didn’t mind paying a little more for that personal connection.

The bottom-line value of this kind of connection has not gone unnoticed among larger grocery chains. Over the last few years, they have been investing big bucks in innovative technologies to help them get to know their customers as well, if not better, than their mom-and-pop rivals. They issue coupons for the products customers are most likely to buy, based on their previous purchases, invite them to promotional events and more. The supermarket is going head-to-head with the neighborhood grocery store in the battle for customer intimacy.

The battleground extends well beyond grocers. Small to mid-size businesses worldwide face the same challenge. The key asset that differentiated them from large competitors was knowledge of their customers, attained through their customer service operations. But that advantage—a hallmark of the small to medium contact centers that support local and regional businesses—is eroding.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the simple call recording that’s done in the small to medium contact center (SMCC) today is regarded as standard but increasingly insufficient for competitive purposes. With the risk of losing the battle for customer intimacy, more robust applications for SMCCs have become a must. According to the Datamonitor report, “Small and Suite: The Mid-Size Contact Center” (April 23, 2009), “Because large enterprises also seek ways to personalize customer self-service, customer intimacy is a battle that mid-size contact centers cannot afford to lose.”

It’s somewhat ironic that today SMCCs need to invest in business applications to protect the intimacy advantage that once came so naturally. But as IBM correctly states, “To survive, mid-size companies must be agile enough to respond to the pressures to compete on levels not required in the past.” This may mean that SMCCs must explore the kinds of technologies—and price points—once reserved for bigger players. It’s an opportunity for SMCCs and their call recording solution vendors to provide advanced customer service applications that best fit SMCC needs and budgets. It will be interesting to see how they rise to the challenge.

The “digital age”… It sounds so advanced, even though for the most part customer service organizations entered it years ago when we started taking emails from customers. The interesting thing to me is how it’s stagnated since then. Sure, we’ve played around with chat a bit, but is that really a value-add? Not for me.

The point is, people differ in how they want to communicate with businesses. Some prefer phone, while others favor email (like myself). As today’s younger generation matures into mainstream consumers in the “digital age,” what type of communication preferences will they have? Based on what I see, texting is a definite possibility.

According to NICE’s contact center benchmark report, many call center managers agree with that. When asked about which new contact channels they plan to support by 2011, instant- and text-messaging were clearly top priorities.

Being an email-first kind of guy, I remember how frustrating it was when that channel was first opening up. Lack of response, hard to find addresses, no receipt confirmation. Let’s not make those same mistakes when the new wave of digital contact channels rolls out.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on communicating with customers over digital channels. What are your company’s plans for supporting IP- and Web-based contact channels (other than phone and email)? Do you really see value in offering them? What pitfalls do you expect to occur?