CaaS

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Chief Operating Officer of FACE IT Corp. ("Putting a Pretty Face on Customer Service"). Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation.

Will the Web Kill the Phone?

No. The death of the phone - oft-touted as being just around the corner - is pure hyperbole. The web's been around for over 20 years. The phone over 100. The phone represents a temporal experience, the web a spatial one. And now there are hybrids. Neither one will be going away. That is, unless humans decide to stop speaking altogether.

Still wrong after all these years

In the early days of the World Wide Web, customer service executives and contact center managers prayed the web would "carve off" a chunk of callers and relieve their agent load and IVR ports and be the salve for a labor-intensive process.

They were dead wrong, and--strangely--some people stubbornly refuse to understand that the web is not the answer to reducing transaction load. If it were, we wouldn't have such popular hybrid modalities represented by Smart Phones and IPTV set top boxes. In fact, call volume in most serious enterprises has only increased in the face of the web, and contact centers continue to struggle to handle the transaction volume. This, despite the pleading and begging of phone callers who often hear: "please go to our web site for fast service."

There are still some enterprises who think it makes sense to pester phone callers with robot messages with instructions to use the web instead. Consider this: phone callers are on the phone for one of two reasons: 1) They were already on the web and could not find what they wanted; or 2) They prefer to use the phone.

History can be our friend

Several years ago, I was completely immersed in a special human factors and customer service behavior project that was sponsored by a major California electric and gas utility. The company was launching a "Web Bill-Pay" feature to augment their snail mail, call center, walk-up counter and kiosk options. The big hubbub amongst the execs was the hope "Web Bill-Pay" would KILL the expensive phone calls coming in to the call center and IVR.

We conducted video-based usability testing on pilot project customers. This involved recording the keystrokes, mouse movements, facial expressions and verbalizations of customers as they were using the system. After a month of interpreting the output, we made recommendations on what to change in terms of functions and the user interface. With those improvements made, users reported a satisfying experience. After months of stabilization and bug fixing, the spike in call volume from initial questions tapered off. But guess what? The new "baseline" of calls increased. They were perplexed. How can our calls go up after we have bent over backwards to supply our customers with so many modalities and options to avoid the phone calls?

What they learned--that so many of their colleagues don't want to hear--is this:

The more modalities you offer, the more transactions in the aggregate. The whole is simply greater than the sum of its parts.

Online Americans: Big Phone Users

Arguably, customer service functions garner the bulk of transactions. Take, for example getting your bank balance. Asking for a credit increase. Or asking for an extension on your utility bill due date. Or checking flight status. There are many ways to do these things, ranging from web sites, IVR, call center agents, iPhone apps, etc.

But there is now some formal research that supports the observation we made at the California utility company. According to a survey by ATG (Art Technology Group, Inc.), speaking to an operator over the phone is still a preferred modality amongst online Americans. And it seems multi-modality is a treasured form of communication: "...two-thirds (67%) of US consumers say they would value the option of having both a live text chat and a live voice conversation to get the help they need when making online purchases." see: http://tinyurl.com/yjvq29c

The data suggests that maybe it's not about modality as much as it's about the need for a personal touch. Let's face it, the desire for customer service is simply a desire to be treated well. And it seems people are willing to satisfy that need to be treated well in whatever modality they can get it.

The Intersection of Emotion and Complexity

In the world of web transaction conversion, click-through and IVR containment, it's all about guiding people towards task completion and ostensibly doing so without the intervention of a "live" operator. In my own research and analysis of self-service transactions, I have often plotted the relationship between the complexity of the task and the level of human emotion that goes into the completion of the task. For example, getting your checking account balance from an IVR is both simple and non-emotional. On the other hand, checking into a medical insurance claim rejection is both complex and often fraught with emotion.

It stands to reason then, that the lower the complexity and the lower the emotion, the higher rate of conversion or containment. This is where modality in fact has influence on the behavior of the user. For example, for a person to speak to an IVR machine over the phone, that's a strictly temporal modality. The user must listen and process information serially and must hold choices in short term memory without simply glancing at a page. This modality adds complexity merely because of the additional cognitive load the user is forced to deal with. Remember, the more the complexity, the lower the success rate for self-service.

But on the other hand, maybe the reason the person is on the phone in the first place is because that person could not find satisfaction in the spatial modality offered by the web site. So being on the phone is a downgrade from a complexity standpoint, but a potential upgrade in terms of "being treated well" by a live agent. So it's easy to contemplate how customers are willing to make trade-offs in modality in order to be "cuddled."

Enter the Hybrid

Now take a look at Smart Phones like the BlackBerry, Android and iPhone. Sure, there's a phone function. You can talk to machines over the phone and you can you can talk to people too. And you can use streamlined visual applications that are easier to navigate than a web site. Anyone who's attempted to navigate a native web site on a mobile device will tell you it's a lot harder than using a mobility application suitable for a small screen. It's like night and day.

But the mix of web, mobile apps, and phone on one device carves a new hybrid for customer service. Now, applications can be written to provide visual, less complicated views of self service functions. And with a little work, getting hold of a live person is only a button or voice command away on the same device.

The bottom line is, I don't reckon the web is killing the phone any time soon. After all, one of the most popular devices flying off the shelves is called the iPhone, not the iWeb.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Chief Operating Officer of FACE IT Corp. ("Putting a Pretty Face on Customer Service"). Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation.

A Brave, New Customer Service Model

The Social Networking phenomenon has signaled a sea change in consumer behavior and provided lessons for enterprise purveyors of customer service. And the self-publishing models touted by Twitter, FaceBook and even LinkedIn act as a present-day wake-up call for SaaS and CaaS-based business users who care to learn from the consumer. Here's how it all comes together.

Consumer Zeitgeist and the Power of One

Arguably, the social ramifications of self service automation were manifest in Don Wetzel's first American-born ATM, which appeared in 1968. This was a year after the first one showed up at Barclays Bank in London. But it took until the mid-eighties for the American consumer to validate the technology that would eventually pervade our banking system. Likewise, e-commerce solutions were available on Compuserve even before open internet-savvy solutions appeared a decade later. What took so long?

Social mores and fear had a lot to do with the long tail of these technologies, which set the stage for the wide-open world of Web 2.0 and Social Networking. In the beginning, ATMs and e-commerce were curiosities. And two things stood in the way: 1) The "personal touch" of walking up to a teller and; and 2) the fear of something going wrong. Slowly, the public in general realized that you could still chat it up with bank employees if you had the time and inclination. Slowly, the public realized, even in the face of fraud and security issues, that the chances of your money being siphoned away into the ether were rare.

Today, the casual discourse and social connection to others is augmented by social networking - filling a void once left by ATMs and e-commerce. And new self-service software is imbuing a sense of power to the individual. Twitter lets you tell the world about your experiences, foibles, and run-ins with bad service instantly. Blog sites allow you to singularly expand on your experiences. And photo and video sites such as Flickr and YouTube add a dimension of rich media to your personal observations.

Enterprise Blockers: Childish Fear of Disintermediation

You might wonder, what with the uptake of social networking in the consumer world, what is taking business enterprises so long to embrace the model. With an ear to the ground of Social Networking sites, enterprises can tune-in to the sentiment of its constituencies pretty easily. There are even stand-alone tools to do that in the form of advanced filtering software such as Buzzmetrics (now part of Nielsen Online) and Fizzback. But their use is little more than commercial voyeurism without a proper feedback loop. No, enterprises are still practicing the equivalent of walking up to the teller, and they are just plain afraid to embrace the Social Networking model fully.

Why are they afraid? To put it plainly, they are afraid because of institutional arrogance and the notion that if anyone or anything gets in the middle of their connection with customers - they lose. This head-in-the-sand attitude will doom some of these business if they don't wake up and smell the coffee.

The institutional arrogance we are witnessing will be slowly chipped away as the strategists who work for business realize that disintermediation can be good if there is an instance of value-added. The presumption that Social Networking is just "noise" is in fact a very dangerous. One only has to look at the aftermath of the infamous "A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch" YouTube video to understand the utter power of a single person's "voice." Admittedly, Comcast spinmeisters used the incident as a means to (at least temporarily) establish a more open dialog with consumers.

The instance of value-added in the posting of a single-voice, sarcastic video rant is of course limited. But it speaks to the issue of disintermediation. Here, YouTube acted as a publishing outlet for a consumer who otherwise may have simply been lost in a maze of IVR choices and long hold times in the carriers' contact center.

Value-Added and Aggregated Content

There is in fact a thick vein of value added content that can be mined from the enterprise if they finally learn how to leverage communally shared information. Take, for example, the efforts of GetSatisfaction.com. Here, thousands of consumers can share their own self-generated knowledge base of experiences. They can learn from one another. They can post questions that wend their way into the enterprise in a civilized, formatted way.

Tools are even available to link "Satisfaction Widgets" between the enterprise and its consumers - all with a third party in the mix. So is this third party "in the way" or are they adding value? Clearly, they are adding value by providing disambiguation, communal content, and a means to funnel critical communications that otherwise may have never occurred.

Customer Service Mediation manifests in other content-rich sources as well. For example, consider how open source communities augment the knowledge bases of companies like RedHat. Take, for example how Hackitn0sh.org has garnered over 100,000 participants in its forum. Sure a lot of what these consumers do is swap unsupported "jailbreak" tips for iPhones, but many offer one another support tips not as easily forthcoming from Apple itself.

In publishing, the rallying cry has been "Content is King." Now if the enterprise will finally realize the emperor has no clothes in that regard, they will really get somewhere.

Custer's Last Stand: Traditional Contact Centers

Admittedly, and even though I embraced Social Networking tools personally over five years ago (I use LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook and MySpace religiously), it took me a while to "connect the dots" between Business and Social Networking. Sadly, I believe my traditionalist roots in contact centers kept the blinders on for a while.

My initial approach to contact center managers, architects and strategists on the subject of social networking has conjured some of the most protectionist, and unfortunately ignorant retorts. To sum it up: "The last thing I want is for my contact center agents to be hacking around on social networking sites when they are supposed to be concentrating on First Call Resolution."

This protectionist mindset presumes, of course, the default fear of not only disintermediation, but also the prevailing notion that all knowledge, all help, and all resolution springs from the all-seeing font of the enterprise itself.

That's not to say that the contact center industry is lacking the gumption or the creativity to try out new technologies. Some companies have in fact embraced the idea of on-line user forums and a more open-door policy when it comes to problem resolution. But they're missing the point. The point is Social Networking in its more pure, non-corporate-sponsored state is a bastion of consumer empowerment and dignity.

Can Contact Centers Leverage the Cry for Dignity?

Let's face it. Social Networking has helped to set a much higher "expectation bar" in the area of immediacy and dignity. It is just plain undignified to be asked to converse with a robot instead of a human being. It is just plain undignified to be told you must wait in line to talk to someone if you have a problem. Do Social Networking models force a robot dialog? No. Are Social Networking models based on a many-to-few ACD queue and thus force a long wait time? No. Social Networking models leverage a yearning for immediacy and collective communications that are much more dignified. There's a lesson to be learned here.

Communications as a Service to the Rescue

Although hosted models are no salve for everything, enterprises would do well to embrace the customer service mediators who provide Communications as a Service capabilities for customer contact and problem resolution. Hosted models are not capital equipment intensive and are relatively painless from a buy-before-you-buy standpoint. Outsourcers and BPOs in the contact center field can and will be a great seed bed for this new "Web 2.0 Customer Service" landscape.

But it all starts when the strategists and business leaders of today's enterprise make a fundamental decision: To be inclusive instead of exclusive in their approach to customer service. Just plopping your logo on the face of a stand-alone iPhone application - fighting for mindshare amongst all the other iPhone applications - isn't going to transform your company into a true Web 2.0 Customer Service company. That's just another disintermediation play. Instead, think consumer dignity. Think immediacy. Think consumer-driven content.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, Senior Director, Product Management CRM Service Products at Oracle. Margulies is a telecommunications architect, usability expert, inventor, and the author of 17 books on telecommunications, contact centers and service automation. The views expressed in this blog are Margulies' and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.

CaaS: A Big Telecommuting Enabler

Communications as a Service is the right concept for at-home and remote workers. With applications ranging from contact center, customer relationship management and content management, thousands of job functions can be virtualized. In fact for some workers and even some companies, virtualization is quickly becoming a standard way to run companies. This accounts for both small and large companies.

Common Access Standards and Help Desk

Besides the more obvious issues of human capital and how to manage a remote workforce, it is a best practice to standardize on access methods and a means to troubleshoot those connections.

As a starting point, it is a good idea to establish a basic broadband connection standard. Increasingly, this can be done with wireless connections for a mobile workforce and economical cell phone and data broadband services can be negotiated with your favorite carrier. For at-home workers, a standard for DSL, satellite or cable connection is all you need. But it is easier for your IT Help Desk staff to support remote workers if everyone is using the same basic service. If this is not possible, you can still standardize on access packages. For example, you may want everyone using a connection that is at least 256 to 500Kbps and be willing to pay for whatever package allows that connection speed.

You also need to set up your corporate data network to allow remote access to your data stores. This will require separate tunneling or VPN software available from most networking vendors. It is important to make sure all of your remote workers have the ability to log on to this remote access software with regularly-changing passwords. Your IT Help Desk staff needs to be well-versed in basic PC troubleshooting, home networking, broadband modems, access services and VPN technology. If your staff is not set up to do this, consider outsourcing that capability so your remote workers have somewhere to turn when something goes wrong. This is crucial because every hour of down time for your remote staff is an hour work is not getting done.

I recommend doing a small, workgroup trial of both "remote worker beta testers" and also the Help Desk staff who would be their lifeline. This will help you to get all the kinks out before rolling the remote technology out to the whole workforce.

Social Apps and the Virtual Water Cooler

Nowadays, there is no reason why remote workers should be segregated or cut off from the rest of your employees. There are simple and direct ways to keep them in touch with one another to keep the social bond between them active. For example, you can set up your own social networking site or use sites that are available on the internet. You can encourage members of each time to interact by posting information about their projects (security allowing of course), asking for feedback from customers and readers, and by posting blogs.

In addition to non-real-time social networking sites, you can also encourage employee-to-employee communication with internal or public Instant Messaging (IM). While there is certain utility in sending short messages to one another, it is also useful in replacing the emotional gratification once supplied by chats at the water cooler. IM can be the "virtual water cooler" for a whole new generation of remote workers.

It is a best practice to encourage social interaction amongst your remote workers and to publish basic guidelines for these types of communications. These guidelines can point out issues dealing with company privacy, ethics and general on line etiquette. Of course, workers' personal productivity will dictate how much water cooler activity is appropriate. One thing's for sure, you cannot cut people off from socializing or it will hurt morale and generally cause a lack in productivity.

Remote Peer Review

Consider bolstering your peer review procedures to benefit remote workers. You can use file sharing, white boarding, email and web sharing applications to facilitate peer review, so there is little in the way from a technology point of view. What matters is a regular, and frequent review of one another's' work from co workers. This helps to engender not only a spirit of teamwork, but also encourages high-quality output.

For example, consider the development of an outline for a user guide. Before getting started on the rich content of such a document, the author can host a working session on line and with a conference call where one or two co-workers can brainstorm the table of contents and chief topics. In some cases, this may be all some people need to get on the right track. This is also useful for a project manager to establish key milestones for a complex project, or for synthesizing input for a sales pitch or a product demo. It doesn't matter what the nature of the project is. What matters is a standard way to approach, define, and solicit input at crucial steps along the way. It is a best practice, then, to put together simple guidelines for the approach and kickoff of virtually any project. You can build more examples as your remote workers begin to participate in remote peer reviews.

Weekly Cross-Team Meetings

Cross-Team meetings are a great way to develop trust and interactivity between remote workers. For the remote worker, having transparency with their work product as well as others also engenders a spirit of accountability. A basic cross team meeting is hosted by a facilitator - usually the same person each week. It is a best practice to establish a 'same day - same time' schedule for these meetings so there is no misunderstanding about who is supposed to show up when.

A common and effective best practice is to agree on a common template for presentation materials so each department has one slide or one graph to present each week. A remote file locker can be set up for each participant to upload their part of the presentation ahead of time.

Content-wise, it is best to limit each department's contribution to one slide. For example, the sales team can show a grid of hot prospects and needs they have for other teams to fulfill in helping to close deals. The support department might have a slide that addresses customer satisfaction issues or support newsflashes. Development may have a slide to show the status of a new feature release. The idea is to give each department a few minutes to present their part and have enough time after each mini-presentation for questions and answers. Any big issues requiring more discussion can be handled in breakout sessions for the stakeholders involved.

In summary, you can enable a productive and well-adjusted workforce by following a few simple principles. Make sure you establish standards and basic nuts and bolts support services so everyone can be connected. Encourage electronic forms of social interaction. And encourage regular and standard ways for your workers to review one another's work products and share ideas in cross-team meetings. By following these simple principles and providing guidelines for appropriate use, you can develop a strong and productive telecommuting workforce.

A Common Thread

On this page, experts in the industry contribute their insights into Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS), best practices, trends and hot (or cool) features, products and companies.  Feel free to reply with comments to a particular post--get in on the action yourself and be an integral, valued part of the CaaS Community.  Visit regularly to view new posts, respond and communicate--using CaaS tools and to stay on top of the wave!