Social Media Wake-Up Call

What do Proctor & Gamble, IBM, and Wells Fargo have in common? These companies are consciously leveraging social media. For years, social media has been useful for one-to-one communications and self-promotion, but now the customer service implications are too important to ignore.

Social Media: Not Just a Fad

Despite being a charter member of LinkedIn since 2003, I did not instantly recognize the customer service potential of social networking. Most customer service and contact center executives were dismissing social networking as a time-wasting distraction. The collective mindset was "My agents are not going to play around on the Internet - I'm blocking those sites."

It's easy to contemplate how one-to-one sales organizations and small businesses can use social networking. For example, Luxury Insights, an organization for real estate agents, conducted an internal study recently. They wanted to understand the impact social media has on home sales. They found more than 80% of their members use social networks, with over half being LinkedIn or FaceBook users. And 20% say they have either "given or received" referrals via social networks.

But less obvious are how big businesses can use social media. I read with great interest a Harvard Business Review blog called "The Über-Connected Organization: A Mandate for 2010. " Here firms such as IBM and Toshiba are credited with embracing social media as a means to improve employee collaboration.

Change or Become Irrelevant

But what about the contact center? Eric Ken Shinseki, our United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, is a retired U.S. Army four-star general. He is attributed with forward-looking initiatives while serving in the army. He once said: "If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." It seems apropos to consider this notion with customer service.

 Until recently, companies where only on the "receiving end" of social media. That is in receiving criticism. Take, for example, the now-famous YouTube video: "A Comcast Technician Sleeping on my Couch." Comcast, the largest cable company in the U.S., took a lot of heat in the traditional media for its legendary customer service hold times and poor treatment of customers. The YouTube video signaled a call to action. Since then, the company has done a major technology upgrade, hired more agents, and is the proud owner of a Twitter account for customer service.

Comcast is clearly amongst those enterprises choosing to be relevant. So companies are beginning to embrace social media as internal "glue" to foster collaboration with their employees and sales people are using it to swap leads and grow business. And over the past few years, companies are increasingly leveraging social media as a serious outlet for customer service.

Does it Take Embarrassment to Embrace Social Media?

So are companies embracing social media only begrudgingly or when embarrassed into it? Gladly, no. There are some companies who are actually doing it proactively. And more companies are beginning to swap best practices and participate in benchmark studies.

For example, the SMBC (Social Media Business Council) touts dozens of Fortune 500 companies as members. Here representatives from these companies meet frequently, produce conferences and share best practices in implementing social media programs. Some of the more vocal companies are Procter & Gamble, Dell and Wells Fargo.

According to Business.com's 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study, 23% of the time, it is the Customer Support department driving the use of social media. That's runner-up to the Marketing department at 66%. Over 2,900 respondents were part of the survey, so the size of companies represented are diverse. Interestingly, over half of the respondents are C-level or senior management employees, so it is pretty clear that social networking has captured the interest of business leaders.

Grooming Customer Service for Social Media

There are five general areas of specialization you need to contemplate in managing social media for your company. As with multi-channel assignments (i.e. phone, chat, email, etc.) you need to decide how to assign social media channels as well. First, let's take a look at the chief disciplines you will be managing: 1) Monitoring and Filtering; 2) Managing Business Content; 3) On-Line Community and Q&A; 4) Blogging and Micro-Blogging; and 5) Escalation procedures.

Monitoring and Filtering. Monitoring is about "having your antennae out" so you can understand what is being said about your company and your customer service. Common tools available are Google Alerts and Twitter Search which are free. Premium-based services available are Nielsen's BuzzMetrics and Factiva to name a few. You need agents who know how to use these tools and -- just as importantly -- how to filter through the garbage to identify real opportunities to communicate.

Managing Business Content. In addition to your company web site, social media provides an additional outlet for you to broadcast content. For example, you can use YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, and Slideshare to publish video and photos. These can be instructional videos and can be service-oriented. Most content sites have feedback mechanisms, so while your marketing communications department may post the content, your customer service employees can wrangle the feedback.

On-Line Community and Q&A. There are a handful of popular Q&A-oriented sites such as Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, and LinkedIn Answers. All provide an informal means for customers to ask questions or make statements about your company and its service. More sophisticated services are available such as Lithium and GetSatisfaction, where you can get chat, service feedback widgets and software to build-out a social CRM community. The implications for agents are very diverse here, ranging from answers to on-line tickets to live chat.

Blogging and Micro-Blogging. Although most blogging activity is "outbound" these writings nonetheless are a magnet for feedback. For example, micro-blogging with Twitter allows for broadcast, but you can also filter on phrases and get direct responses to posts. You can have as few as one person, or even a part-timer do this, or you may need an entire team depending on traffic and feedback.

Escalation procedures. Regardless of media type, there is always an impact on agent resources and of course supervisors when it comes to escalations. It's my personal opinion that escalation should be media-independent, so you can piggy-back on existing procedures.

Taking the Social Media Plunge

Although embracing social media may be a change for your company, I recommend taking advantage of all of the new research on this subject so you can assess the ways you can use social media to improve customer service. If you have not done it yet, assign a task force to answer the question: "How can we leverage social media to improve our company?" Give them corporate sponsorship and support.

I'd also like to recommend further reading on this topic. Check out Chris Boudreaux, a consultant at Accenture, who has a book-in-progress entitled: "Social Media Governance: Empowerment with Accountability." He blogs intelligently on the subject (http://socialmediagovernance.com/blog/) so he represents another source for you to stay relevant in today's ever-changing business landscape.

 This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, co-founder 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 Worthy Goal

Some argue you cannot cut costs and keep customers happy at the same time. I say that's just a lazy attitude. Resolve to reinvent your customer service in the coming year. There's many ways to optimize your customer service operation to cut costs. You can also do many things to make customers happy. Some initiatives will do both at the same time. Here's a few examples to get you started.

Call the Telecom Plumber

I am amazed by the number of businesses that continue to shell out millions of dollars in 800 so-called toll-free service and continue to hemorrhage money by tying together disparate sites with PSTN trunks.

Now let me explain a dirty little secret. Some LD carriers talk about the reliability and tradition of legacy PSTN connections, but in fact their long-haul backbone is in reality VoIP, not PSTN. What does this mean? It means some of you are still paying too much and the economies of IP backbones are not being passed on to you. I am not referring to voice over the internet. I am referring to digitizing voice and sending it over IP on managed backbones. After all, who do you think owns the backbones that make up the internet?

Practically speaking, there are three simple things you can do to re-assess your basic telecom plumbing: 1) Get competitive bids for inbound and outbound traffic; 2) Find ways to migrate traffic from toll-free to less expensive channels; 3) Consider a merged voice and data network to eliminate expensive tie trunks and LD backhauling.

Regarding competitive bids, you can do that yourself with the help of your procurement department, or you can hire a third party to negotiate for you. Take, for example, ProfitLine of San Diego. They can help you to sort through all the telecom options and save you a ton of money in the process. There's even software that helps you to save money on your voice and data infrastructure from companies like Amtel and TeleManagement Technologies.

The idea of merging your voice and data networks is an old one, but strangely a lot of larger companies have yet to step up. Companies like Nokia and Oracle have done it, saving untold millions each year. The idea is to overlay your voice network on top of your IT data network. You can use VoIP gateways to convert calls into data. You can get gateways from Cisco, Sangoma, and Audiocodes for example. Add to that some call management such as Cisco Call Manager and you're ready to go. I have designed some very sophisticated multi-site IP-based ACDs based on these technologies as an overlay network. Most recently, I was part of a team at Oracle that created a global ACD overlay spanning ten data centers where distributed gateways pump calls to thousands of agents worldwide. The savings are incredible. Commit to understanding more about this and you can be a hero in your company.

What does all of this have to do with re-inventing customer service? Simple. A more flexible telecom infrastructure leads to better and easier ways to serve customers.

For example, migrating traffic from inbound toll-free to other channels can be done in a variety of ways. For example, you can use web call-back to convert inbound calls to outbound calls. Consider speaking to your ACD, IVR vendors to see what they have in this area. You will be pleasantly surprised how a small investment in callback technology can make a big difference. Or you can go off-channel and use the ANI from callers to send them an SMS or provide an IVR equivalent of SMS. Companies like Agent511 in Chicago are producing excellent results for utilities and local government in this area. You can offer scheduled callbacks and notifications much cheaper than handling expensive inbound 800 calls.

A converged voice and data network makes it easier and cheaper to virtualize your contact centers and provide access to home-based agents. This enables more economical follow-the-sun type service so it may be feasible to provide around-the-clock service.

Get an Interactive Voice Response Tune-Up

Let's Face It. There are not too many fans of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Speech Systems. And the growing sentiment of consumers is discontent. With all of the other channels available (i.e. twitter, YouTube, email, SMS, web sites) you'd think IVR would be a thing of the past. Think again. People still use the phone and the enterprises' first line of defense against "junk" calls is IVR. The trouble is, some communications absolutely require human intervention while others are in fact well suited to automation.

So what's the problem? Simply put, most IVR systems were and are designed poorly, with horribly long menus and too many choices, combined with poorly constructed dialog. The remedy is not as radical as you might think. There are professional consulting firms specializing in IVR tune-ups. Take, for example, Enterprise Integration Group or Vocalabs. These folks will help you streamline your menus, eliminate unnecessary or annoying prompts, and improve error recovery. A lot of improvements can be made in scripting alone and may not require any logic changes to the system.

Be aware that I am not talking about the mainstream IVR makers and providers here. They have little incentive to first of all admit their design is sub-optimal or to work with you on tweaking the system. Most of them have made their killing and just want to collect maintenance revenue. You need an objective third party to really optimize your IVR. Have Speech Recognition already? Who cares. That has nothing to do with scripting a decent logic flow. And as you've already found out, sprinkling speech on top of your IVR is no panacea.

A tune-up can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the number of IVR applications you have and your willingness to cooperate with the "IVR doctors" in the tune-up process. Your savings this coming year could be in the millions. Take my word for it and do this.

Consider SaaS and CaaS-based Services

Let's say you've got a decent web site, but you don't have much of a customer service function on it besides an email form. You don't have a knowledge base, a threaded discussion board, or a feedback mechanism. You've looked into the cost of creating all this stuff and adding staff to maintain, improve and staff it... and your head is spinning.

Maybe you should consider using services from Get Satisfaction or Bazaarvoice then. These companies have created a raft of customer feedback and rating widgets that can link to your web site and provide all of the interactive infrastructure to do a fine job of on-line customer service.

In essence, you can re-invent your web presence and the level of customer service you provide by simply subscribing to one or more of these services. And the good news is there is no capital equipment outlay or development outlay. You can dabble in modern, web-based customer service as a subscriber. Consider carving off some web site traffic maybe for one constituency or customer profile and trying this technology on for size.

Embrace Social Networking

Social Networking is relevant. Now, customers have a loud voice and can post their sentiment to the world. Take the famous YouTube post "Comcast Guy Fell Asleep on My Couch" as an example. So please don't bury your head in the sand and hope that user sentiment broadcast is going to go away. It isn't. And your customers are probably tapping their collective feet waiting for you to "get with it" and fully embrace the reality of their concerns and feedback.

It's not hard to establish and maintain a social networking presence. All you need to do is take a few hours and get yourself a free Twitter, FaceBook or MySpace account. Upload your corporate logo, steal some text from your web site for the corporate blurb, post some photos, start some discussion threads and let it happen. You can post links on your web site and even use the free widgets that stream mentions from the social site.

You can staff these social networking outlets with the same people who do your marketing communications and public relations functions. Or, just like many people do with call center agents, you can outsource them. Clearly you must lay down the basic rules, protocols and guidance for your staff to avoid problems. Of course, you will want to consult with legal to make sure there are no missteps along the way. But don't be afraid. Look at it this way: If Ford Motor Company and Wachovia Bank can send out corporate-sanctioned tweets, your company can probably figure it out.

Ride the Smart Phone Wave

The number of applications available for iPhone is about 80,000. Analysts are saying that number will easily top 100,000 within months. Google says Android is at 16,000 apps and growing quickly; and BlackBerry has about 2,500. Smart Phone users account for no less than 15% of the adult U.S. population, and that number is growing.

Besides silly beer drinking games, flashlights and card games, there are dozens of productivity applications. Bank of America, FedEx, Bloomberg, Salesforce.com, Oracle and other mainstream companies have already taken the plunge. They are providing useful, easy-to-use alternatives to their web sites and IVR by providing cool iPhone apps. What's nice is you can build iPhone apps for much less than it takes to build a web site. And they don't take that long to develop. Take a hint from the social networking companies and ride the wave. Your customers will love you for it.

A Promise to Yourself

In conclusion, there are no less than five easy ways to reinvent your customer service as a new years resolution. Go ahead and call in the experts to overhaul that expensive telecom infrastructure. You can provide some new services to your customers in the process. It takes little investment to call in the IVR doctor to do some quick fixes on your IVR. You can dip your toe into the Web 2.0 Customer Service space by trying out new widgets and services as SaaS and CaaS-based offerings. You can take advantage of the phenomenon we call Social Networking and ride the Smart Phone wave. Sure, this is just a start.  Now that you're on your way, you and your colleagues can probably come up with a dozen more.

This blog entry was posted by Ed Margulies, co-founder 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.

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.

Raging Against the Machine

What good sport to it's been to dissect, criticize and bemoan the state of customer service. There are not too many instances in which you can navigate conversations at a social or business event without someone recounting their latest customer service fiasco. "Gee whiz, their Voice Response system is just the worse" or "I don't believe how they ask me to repeat what I already told the machine." In fact it has become so popular to complain about customer service, entire initiatives and web sites are dedicated to it. Take the MSN Money-Zogby International, Customer Service Hall of Shame and Get2Human.com.

The Shameful Link

I have a particular interest in making a difference in customer service. After thirty years of designing, tweaking and auditing self-service systems I feel almost obligated to "make it all better." But I'm a little scared about something... In the MSN Money- Zogby Hall of Shame, a full HALF of the worse customer service offenders are communications companies: AOL, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, Sprint and Comcast. Worse, NONE of the top ten companies that "treat you right" were Communications as a Service company. I don't think it's a coincidence. Half of the most loved are in the retail business where the customer service is "walk up."

This begs the question; "Are communications businesses doomed to the Hall of Shame?" Well, maybe not. Take Apple and NetFlix. Neither has a strong face-to-face presence, yet they both garner high points on the customer service side. OK they don't get the same transaction volume as the Communications as a Service companies, but they do what they do mostly in a long distance context.

Choice and the Handcuffs of Service

Could it be that when you sign up for local cable service there are not too many options? I mean you have one dominant cable TV provider and the other choice is Satellite. Incidentally none of the TV players, IP, Cable or Satellite make the top ten companies that "treat you right."

Of could it be that when you sign up for cell phone service you get locked in to a contract that costs hundreds to break - and therefore you have no choice but to choke down bad service? Yes, choice or the lack of it must be a factor. Let's face it, not having a choice puts you in a bad mood. And that bad mood lasts for the whole relationship.

Sheer Volume Cop-Out

Some argue that Communications as a Service companies, Travel, Financial and Insurance sectors all have huge call volumes and therefore automation must be used to handle the onslaught of transactions. I don't think so. It's a matter of policy. Take Southwest Airlines. They actually made it in to the top ten companies that "treat you right." As a carrier, they get millions of calls a month. But talking to a voice robot is only an option. Southwest seems tickled pink to offer humanized service over the phone. Not to mention how the flight attendants regale you with cheesy jokes. I mean they're all pretty bad jokes but almost everyone cracks a smile because they are so sincere about spreading a little joy.

The Innocence of Machines

Some argue that the bane of customer service is the machines themselves. I say it's not the machines but the poorly designed programs that go on those machines. I am constantly surprised at the many obvious human factors violations that glare at you from both web sites and voice response systems. Take for example, too many choices on security challenge drop-downs, captchas that you just can't read, or 7-choice voice response menus that are impossible to remember. Is it any wonder why so many people bail out to speak to an operator?

But in the end, it's not the machine's fault. It's the people who program and maintain these machines. Read the excellent book: "It's Better to Be a Good Machine Than a Bad Person," authored by my old friend Bruce Balentine, a long time human factors and service automaton expert. Here you will see how machines get a bad rap. I say it's the people who ruin these machines. People who stubbornly program the machines not to easily give up the Operator. People who bury the contact information on web sites so you can't call. People who decide if you have a two year contract, you are not worth keeping happy.

Time to Salt the Earth and Start Over

So the soft, chewy center of the Communications as a Service enterprise is the human flesh and bone that can give comfort (read Customer Service) to consumers. And we've put full body armor on this soft, chewy center in the form of web sites, kiosks, and voice response systems. Why? To reduce the number of people who have to talk to people. Why? To cut costs. Why, to eliminate customers?

We need to start all over. It's the consumer who deserves the screen pops. And agents should be the ones waiting in line, not customers. Consumer plainly need a more unified, predictable, and dignified experience.

In summary, my belief is that it is in fact possible for enterprises to offer good customer service. Even if the call volume is high. Even if the choice to over-automate is there. It comes down to who's hungry. Southwest chooses to be competitive. Nordstrom's chooses to put the customer first. For the "Hall of Shamers," we need to figure out a way to force them into submission. And I'm working on that full time now. Stay tuned.

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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

Comments on this Entry:

(Matt Edic on Nov 6, 2008 11:32 AM)

CaaS connotes greater integration of available services and end-user control beyond the PBX or Class 5 switch…and at a lower cost. It also means more than offering just “voice”.

In some cases, a single product vendor may provide the various communications applications(PBX, IVR, ACD, A/V, XYZ, etc.) within one system. In other cases, a best-of-breed style approach may be taken to integrate the various components across voice, video, and data. To the end-customer it’s expected to be “packaged” and “seamless”. The customer expects to connect-and-go without having to worry about integration of systems and vendors.

A traditional hosted play (e.g. Hosted PBX) tends to be aligned to specific technology component and typically offers only a limited programming interface to their customer. Capabilities are often bundled around roles like “Knowledge Worker”, “Call Centers”, or “Mobile Users”. Out-of-the-box mixing and matching capabilities on a per individual user level is not common, with an awkward bundling of packages to try to “customize” the user’s needs. Integration with existing systems can become an expensive professional services engagement.

With CaaS, there is an expectation of having the communications platform be open to the end-customer. Features and capabilities are desirable in an unbundled or all-in approach, with flexible controls provided. When coupled with web-based technology we see “mashed-up” applications that have been cost effectively developed to support a specific business process like Customer Relationship Management or location-aware notification services. Rather than having a communication “system”, CaaS customers see communications as an integral part of their workflow with increased automation and integration into their existing data-oriented systems. In these process flows, information doesn’t sit in an inbox or “work queue” waiting to be acted on. These systems are time-sensitive and reach out for a response which may include an interactive phone call using text-to-speech and IVR technology, a 2-way text or IM message, or connecting one-party to another via phone to keep the process moving forward.

While the underlying technology may be similar (if not the same) between a hosted and CaaS model, the difference is in the expected level of sophistication within the service itself, and the simplicity of customization afforded to the customer.

(Tom Keating on Nov 6, 2008 11:58 AM)

Just a test comment.

welcome to the TMC blogs, Ed.