How I Would Design A Customer Service Solution

Image Courtesy of Chandoo.org

If you could wipe the canvas clean and start fresh, how would you design my companies customer service solution?

Not a new question for me, but the answer has been evolving as I have grown up in the call center (sorry contact center) industry.  In the late 90's early 00's my response would have been about cutting costs, and introducing automation to the call to streamline it's support.  In the mid 00's my answer would include self service operations via the Internet, as well as introducing email and web chat as a standard communications platform.  Now in 2013, my answer has evolved to a solution that sounds more like an SAP software solution for a major manufacturing organization who is obsessed with Six Sigma.

So I realized that I need to simplify this painted picture of customer service.  After some very hard work, and internal debate, below is my first shot at what an ideal customer service solution would look like here in 2013 to me.

1. Phone Support: The most expensive, but still the most critical part of any customer service strategy is phone support for your customer.  Unlike years past where my first reaction is to place IVR support on the front end of the call, this year I am taking a page from Discover card and suggesting a live agent answering who can support the caller for any of their needs.  From a training perspective this will require additional time and effort, but the outcome is the ability to create a horizontal career path for agents, which is great for moral and attrition in a contact center.  

Important points for your call center operations:

- Stop managing by Average Handle Time and Average Speed to Answer, and start focusing on First Call Resolution.  What you will begin to see is that your overall call volume will begin to decrease and typically your average handle time may go up a little, but not as much as you would believe.  Dont stop tracking these figures though.  They still tell a story, but they are not the stick, just numbers to use and support mentoring of your agents.

- Empower agents to make decisions in the best interest of the customer, so they can support the call end to end.  In 2012, *26% of Americans said they would switch brands because a customer service department always had to transfer them around.

- Hire agents that match your culture and be open to training the skills they need to support your customers.  So many contact centers look for skills first, and forget that a skill can be taught, but an attitude cannot be changed.  I always look for agents who are willing to go the extra mile and always looking to do things for other people, before themselves.  This is the mark of a great customer service person, that will always do right by your customer.

2. Email: So many organizations set-up forms on their websites, or offer up an email address that goes to some black hole some where in their organization.  Email, though annoying and overused, is still a critical communications channel for customer service.  The trick to supporting email successfully is a good software solution that can intake the emails, and read them and offer up suggested canned responses to an agent.  This allows your team to be efficient and have a knowledge base guiding their responses.  But, make sure you always stress that responses MUST be personalized.  This way your customer knows they are not just getting an auto response, but a response from a company that cares about what they emailed you about.

Important points for your Email operations:

- Do not have your voice contact center agents handle non-voice support!  Agents who are great at non-voice support have very different characteristics that than of a voice agent.  For instance, with a voice support agent you look for strong auditory skills and a gentle voice.  But, in a non-voice agent, auditory skills do not matter, but grammar and word-smithing are everything.  In my experience my non-voice agents are solitary and logical learners, who have amazing resumes and writing samples, and bomb in an interview.  

- I personally treat email response like live calls, and strongly suggest your team looks to do the same.  What this means is rather than the old 100% of emails responded to in 24 hours, I use 80% of emails answered in 30 seconds or less.  Customers hate waiting and it has been found that 75% of customers will call about the same issue they emailed about if they have not seen a response to their email within 20 minutes.  Once that customer picks up the phone, you are basically doubling your cost to support the same issue.

- I mention the use of systems in my support solution above.  My organization uses eGain which has worked great for us.  Other systems available are Salesforce.com, ZenDesk, and Right Now Technology.  All are vetted out in a contact center production environment, and can scale as your customer base grows.

3. Web Chat: Thought to be a fad for so many years, web chat has become a required standard of support today.  If your organization is not supplying your customer the ability to chat with you on your website, you are forcing that customer to pick up the phone and call you, when you could have solved the issue in a much more cost effective manor by using web chat.  The trick here, is to make sure you set-up chatter for success. Similar to email with a great software platform that will allow them to have real time knowledge base integration to help them quickly find the answers to questions they are asked.  Another strong tool I love, is at the close of the web chat to email the customer a copy of the chat session along with links to self service tools on your website that can help support their needs in the future.

Important points for your Web Chat operations:

- Unlike phone and email, I strongly suggest mixing web-chat and email together.  They are a perfect paring as the communications channels are so similar.  Plus since web chat is real time interaction, you will find that it will help your team meet and exceed a service level of 80/30 with email.

- Again I bring up software as a critical part of this operation and want to share some suggestions here.  Our organization uses many web chat platforms, but have found LivePerson to be one of the best on the market.  Besides chat, it also allows your agent to push the customer to a website and take over control of their screen.  A great tool if you have online self service tools, and your agent just needs to then guide them to help themselves.

- Another reason I love to mix email and web-chat is that the hiring profile is exactly the same.  Please see #2, point 1 for details about the agents I look for.

4. Social Media: Commonly referred to as social customer service, social media has become a customer service channel that is so unique that in some companies I am seeing whole departments being formed to support it.  Breaking it out of traditional support channels, is something I am 100% in agreement with.  This is because social customer service takes a blend of customer service and marketing skill sets.  It is the first time that we are seeing the demand for the marketing team and customer service to work together to help support the customer.  Because of this unique blend, I see this team as a third team in your organization that must have a leader that understands marketing, but has a primary focus of customer service.  To be successful, like email and web-chat it takes a great software platform to support it.  

Important points for your Social Media operations:

- For social media support you can use the hiring profile for email and web-chat, but you need to place an emphasis on their ability to understand analytics.  This is because as much as this role is customer service, it is also marketing.  Everything your social customer support agent does will affect the long term abilities of marketing your company online.  You need agents who get this, and make sure what they put out there helps the customer, but also is in line with your organizations marketing plans.

- Yes, again we have software!  For social media support you really need a combination of support solutions, but the important one to mention here is monitoring software.  Depending on the size and complexity of your organization will depend on the level of investment you need to make.  My two favorite software solutions are Radian6 who is owed by Salesforce.com and Jive Software.  Both are amazing at monitoring social channels, and building custom notifications for your social customer service team.  But, that I will need a full article to talk about...

- Data mining for past interactions.  Knowledge bases are okay for social media, but what you will quickly find is that your CRM and documentation of past interactions with your customer is what you really need to support your social customer service needs.  I strongly suggest to organizations to take every piece of the client record and make it searchable for your social customer service agents because, they will need access to it at some point.  There is nothing worse than when something is mentioned and your agent does not have access to a data point that could stop a negative comment before it goes viral.

- Service levels are something that are not talked about enough in social customer service, because most people have no clue how to support this portion of your customer service strategy.  The reality is that service levels need to be 100% as fast as possible.  This is a big reason why social customer service must be performed by a separate team. Their reaction time must always be N.O.W. (No One Waiting).  Social media is all about instant gratification, and if your team does not support something as it happens, it can quickly spin out of control and cost your company thousands if not millions of dollars.

5. Self Service Tools: No matter how great your customer service is, given the choice I would still take care of something myself, given the ability.  Self service tools are so critical today, and guess what?  They only save your company a HUGE amount of money.  The trick with self service is to make it easy to find, use, and navigate.  Another critical point here is to make sure you update your self service tools regularly.  

Important points for your Self Service tools:

- Not everyone learns the same way, and your self service tools must be able to handle all the different learning styles of your customers.  I hate when I know I have found the answer to my question, but the specific item I need is buried in a 30 page PDF!  This is why when I help organizations design self service tools I always use the initials V.B.S.D. to guide me. (Video, Bullets, Summary, and Detail)  Every question must offer these four solutions.  This way your customer can chose what they need at that time, so they actually use it.

- The ability to search a knowledge must not be limited to keywords or search terms.  It must include the scripts of a video, the bullets in a document, etc...  In addition, it must allow for your customer to navigate to that specific portion of the Video, Bullets, Summary or detailed answer.  That way your customer does not have to waste their time sifting through everything to find the 10 words they needed.

- Make it accessible EVERYWHERE!!!  Just because your self service is on your website does not mean it is every where.  To be everywhere you must include mobile into your strategy, and this does not mean just a smaller version of your website.  I tell my customers all the time, self service is the best app you can make for your customers, and they will love you for it.  Make sure to use a good app developer and don't skimp on cost.  A good app will be great for customer engagement, but a bad buggy app can be the kiss of death.

The main thing to remember this year is that more than ever customers want fast access to accurate, updated information that can help them.  And, when it is not available need your business to act quickly to help them on any communications channel they feel comfortable on.  No longer does your company get to choose the communications channel, it is your responsibility as a good brand/vendor to be every where.  

To Your Success & Prosperity!

*2012 Global Customer Service Barometer, Echo Global Research.