Time for Contact Centers to Enter the Customer 2.0 World

By Nortel

Web-savvy consumers now want much more from customer service than being put on hold for 20 minutes, listening to music, while waiting for an agent. Today's Customer 2.0 expects faster, more proactive Internet-based interactions with businesses similar to their instant information world of emails, blogs, instant messages and social networks.

Market research* suggests that businesses can have a one in three chance of closing a sale when a customer walks into their store. But those odds for success decrease to one in 100 for visitors to a company's web site where a competitor's offering is just a one mouse click away.

With Web 2.0, customers are no longer satisfied with the static company web sites which are little more than information indexes, supported only by a telephone contact center as the main point of interaction. They want access to interactive information from whichever device is most convenient at the moment and they want answers to their questions in real-time.

And, in the Web 2.0 world, customers are talking about anything and everything in a variety of ways that can become a key influencer in the success or failure of a business. If a customer has a bad or good experience with a company, details of it will proliferate through the web like wildfire, finding its way to hundreds of potential customers in a matter of minutes, taking the management of reputation and messaging out of a company's control.

For more than 20 years, telephony-based contact centers have been the central core of interaction between a business and its customers. It was an inside-out approach, where the business simply waited to be contacted and efficiency was measured by how many calls were processed or lost, as well as how long a customer was on hold.

Advances in telephony technologies helped improve the experience through time-saving techniques like menu routing and interactive voice recognition  (IVR) options but ultimately the business still controlled the experience rather than the customer. In today's Web 2.0 world, the power shifts to the consumer, driving the need for businesses to adopt new and unique ways to serve customers and influence their decisions.

The approaches behind new Web 2.0 interactive contact centers – such as instant messaging, discussion forums and blogs – are based on empowering the user. Web 2.0 is immersive. It allows users to proactively participate and make choices about how they want to be served on their terms – anywhere, any time and on any device. The contact center is not going away. In fact, it becomes a stronger competitive advantage over businesses that do not offer flexibility and choice for how the interaction takes place.

For example, a customer interested in purchasing a new plasma screen TV might use the web to research the best features at the best price from a variety of manufacturers. But the opportunity for one company to close the sale over another can come down to which one provided the best Customer 2.0 experience from first inquiry to final installation.

After looking at user reviews and blogs specifically related to TVs, the customer narrows her options to one and visits the manufacturer's web site. If the site is Customer 2.0 enabled, she may initiate a chat session with a live agent. While waiting, the web site presents a video advertisement on why the TV is better than its competitors. When the agent chat session begins, it can be escalated to an immediate voice conversation with one click. The customer is convinced to order the TV and quickly receives an automated email notification of the purchase with shipping details.

But the completed purchase isn't the end of the interaction. If there's a concern around setting up the TV, the customer emails for help. Using presence to locate an available agent, with the right skills, the email is forwarded and within minutes, the customer is contacted and the set-up issue resolved. The result is a satisfied customer – and a likely return customer – who may also be an avid blogger ready to write glowing reviews of her TV purchase experience, influencing the decisions of countless potential customers.

Demographics clearly play a key role in determining the right technology, processes and best practices for each customer segment. Gen-Xers may want to serve themselves quickly and in many instances, through self-service options. Older generations may not have a computer and want to connect with a live agent by phone.

Regardless of contact preference, front-line staff must be equipped with much more than new communications tools like messaging, chat and click to call. They also need a complete view of every current and previous interaction the customer has had with the company. This requires silos of database information like past purchases, warranty claims or pre-sales inquiries to be broken down and integrated into a complete profile of each customer, instantly accessible at the moment of first contact.

The enterprise shift to the Customer 2.0 experience represents a fundamental shift in the way contact centers interact – taking command of a customer's experience and ensuring it works to a company's benefit. In order to leapfrog competitors and ensure companies can gain the wide ranging business advantages of Web 2.0, the time to make the shift is now.