Impact of UC on Customer Interactions
Impact of UC on Customer Interactions by Don Van Doren
Customer interaction capabilities are changing, and customers are welcoming the change. Many of these changes incorporate UC capabilities, and frequently involve more self-service and less (or different) contact with traditional contact center staff. Interestingly, customers prefer these new methods, if they are implemented in ways that reduce overall customer effort.
In the past, UC functionality has had disappointingly modest impacts on how contact center staff do their job. The biggest example of these results relates to finding immediate answers to customer queries. “First call resolution” has long been a standard for great customer service. (Whether it should occupy such a vaulted position or not is a different question.) And one of the things that UC potentially does well is to understand the availability of an expert to answer a question. Yet, relatively few companies have deployed UC capabilities to support this opportunity. There are lots of reasons for this, including the fact that the experts have other things to do than talk to customers; contact center management is reluctant to turn over calls outside their centers (loss of control; uncertainty of how the calls will be handled); and senior management hasn’t understood the potential impact (positive and negative) of contact centers on meeting business goals.
But there are hurdles even for enterprises that want to incorporate expert-finding solutions. UC systems are deployed with presence capabilities. Yet presence links are typically provided for a user’s “buddies”, usually a list by name of individuals known to the user. A name list is not very helpful for finding an expert whom the user may not know. What’s needed is to have the system organize the buddy list by skills, not names, and enable efficient search capabilities based on that characteristic. Most UC suppliers can’t set up their systems to do that. And most systems that enable experts to store and update their expertise, or systems that mine company information to extract likely expert capabilities aren’t linked to presence systems. The systems that can exhibit these capabilities haven’t been broadly used in contact center applications.
There are, however, new capabilities emerging that will bring UC concepts into broader use for enhancing customer interaction. One trend prompting the change is a combination of the expanding capabilities of mobile devices and companies’ developing understanding about how to use these capabilities to meet customer needs. Early mobility solutions were little more than a speed-dial button back to a contact center number. Now, mobile apps deliver far more information and much richer self-service opportunities. Examples range from easier authentication of the caller, to visual display of IVR verbal menus, to mobile user access to self-service applications. Moreover, these solutions help the customer who is interacting with a mobile app and needs to access an agent for further assistance. The information already completed and the place where the customer was in the process can automatically be communicated to the agent, making for a much smoother and easier interaction.
As larger displays become more available on smartphones and tablets, enterprises are discovering that customers welcome the opportunity to use well-designed self-service functionality, especially when linked to UC capabilities. For example, some enterprises are rolling out “customer portals.” Customers log into these security-enabled sites. There, they can access information about their interactions with the company, similar to applications available through the company’s website. Order status, claim information, policy updates, and many other interactions can easily be accomplished. In addition, when logged into their portal, customers can see presence information of company staff with whom they interact on a regular basis. This facilitates IM, email, or a voice or video connection directly to that staff member.
The key question is how to organize for such interactions and to accommodate such direct connections efficiently. For some businesses, especially in sectors requiring high customer touch, this functionality can dramatically improve the customer’s perception of the ease of working with the enterprise. But success could mean a potentially significant decline in the number of contacts going through contact centers. Customers will bypass the center and interact directly with the individuals best able to help. This will cause disruptions for those accessed in this way, unless there are policies and processes in place to accommodate such access.
New capabilities such as WebRTC will also have a dramatic effect on how customer interactions work. Easy customer access from any browser connection will make assisted service much more readily available. In addition to facilitating immediate connections, WebRTC will enhance assisted service applications. Many customer interactions are best served when the customer completes some information in a self-service mode, and then transfers to an agent to complete the transaction or request. WebRTC simplifies such connection to a contact center agent.
The result of these new capabilities is going to be a shift in the way that contact centers need to be designed and staffed to best meet evolving customer preferences. Company management responsible for customer interactions need to rethink how they are providing contact center functionality, and prepare to provide new approaches to meeting these changing preferences. Many studies have shown that customers prefer to work with companies that are easier to do business with; they will take their business to companies that meet those preferences (and tweet about it!).
UC tools and functionality can help, and management needs to understand how their vendors’ product capabilities will support these new customer interaction modalities. Then, plan carefully to design the processes and organizational changes needed to take advantage of these growing opportunities.