Best Practices to Accelerate the Quality, Consistency and Speed of Service. Six Recommendations for Outstanding Service

Transcription

1 Best Practices to Accelerate the Quality, Consistency and Speed of Service Six Recommendations for Outstanding Service

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary...3 Best Practice 1: Consider as Part of the Self-Service Strategy...4 The escalation strategy...4 Creating a seamless transition...5 Using Web forms for escalation...6 Passively de-escalating inquiries...6 Tuning and optimizing the knowledgebase...6 Best Practice 2: Keep the Customer in the Loop...7 Best Practice 3: Effectively Manage Flow...8 Managing lines of business...8 Defining queues...8 Setting up inbound and outbound rules...9 Automatically classifying s...9 Managing with workflow...11 Planning for growth...11 Best Practice 4: Streamline the Reply Process...12 Canned content...12 Auto-suggestions...13 Auto-response...13 Best Practice 5: Answer Properly...15 Improving the quality of response...15 Encouraging feedback...16 Best Practice 6: Monitor and Measure to Improve Service...17 Monitoring...17 Useful measurements...17 Conclusion KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 2

3 Executive Summary There is good news and bad news when it comes to service. First, the good news. continues to be one of the fastest growing customer service channels, enabling companies to reduce their cost per contact by up to 75-80% compared with phone interactions. i Recent research has shown that has become a preferred support channel for many high-value customers. While Web self-service, Web chat and communities receive more ink and visibility, continues to grow with the SSPA reporting a 101% increase in incident volume since ii However, while customers want to use , the reliability and quality of this channel has not always lived up to expectations. The result has been growing customer frustration and higher service costs. For example, Jupiter Research reports that incremental off-line contacts due to failures in online service will grow annually by 18 percent through In 2006, failed inquiries were estimated to drive 71 percent of the incremental contacts. iii Managing the conversation with your customers requires processes that ensure the speed, quality and consistency of response. Through KANA s many years of deploying response management at major companies worldwide, we have developed a series of best practices that will materially aid your efforts to deliver service that inspires customer satisfaction, confidence and loyalty. In this paper, we discuss the purpose of these best practices and outline practical implementation considerations for each of the following: 1. Consider as part of the self-service strategy. 2. Keep the customer in the loop. 3. Effectively manage flow. 4. Streamline the reply process. 5. Answer properly. 6. Monitor and measure to improve service KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 3

4 Consider as Part of the Self-Service Strategy Traditionally, service is thought of as an assisted service channel. But the place to start implementing best practices is within your self-service strategy. It is important to remember that self-service is not always successful, and you want to make it easy for customers to continue to do business with the company, yet do your best to minimize more costly telephone contacts. As a result, should be a primary and seamless escalation channel for self-service. However, many companies still do not incorporate within the self-service experience. For example, in recent KANA IBM research on multi-channel service, only 6% of U.S. financial organizations offered their customers the ability to escalate a self-service inquiry to , while in the U.K., 80% of insurers did not provide any means to escalate from the website to the contact center. Integrating into self-service requires multiple elements: A strategy for when and where to offer escalation A seamless transition from self-service to agent assistance Use of Web forms De-escalation during the escalation process Tuning and optimizing the self-service knowledgebase The escalation strategy The most important aspect of the escalation strategy is to make sure escalation from self-service is easy and simple. Start by displaying links prominently rather than burying them deep within the site. While you want to encourage customers to use self-service, enable them to contact you via the communication channel of their choice. Escalation options can be presented depending on customer type, tier or other criteria. Based on the value of the customer, the problem type or such factors as time sensitivity, you may want to immediately offer a phone number or a click-to chat link. For low-value customers or less time-sensitive issues, you may want to offer only support KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 4

5 T-MOBILE PROVIDES MULTIPLE COMMUNICATION METHODS. IT FIRST LISTS THE SELF-SERVICE LOGIN, IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY A LIVE LINK WITH PHONE SERVICE THIRD ON THE LIST OF OPTIONS. Creating a seamless transition Self-service customers need to perceive the transition to assisted service as seamless. This means that their self-service activities must be visible to the agent to eliminate redundant problem discovery, keep the agent from suggesting solutions the customer has already tried and reduce average handle time. WHEN A SELF-SERVICE SESSION HISTORY ACCOMPANIES THE ESCALATED INQUIRY, AGENTS CAN SEE WHAT PAGES THE CUSTOMER VISITED, WHAT SOLUTIONS WERE VIEWED AND AT WHAT POINT THE CUSTOMER GOT STUCK KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 5

6 The seamlessness of the experience is further aided by a complete view of the customer, including a universal interaction history of past and pending requests across all channels. A holistic view of the customer helps agents better understand the context of a particular inquiry, can reduce the number of back-and-forth interactions between the agent and the customer and ensures that customers receive answers tailored to their particular situation. Finally, agents need to have the same view of knowledge as customers. By deploying a single knowledgebase across all customer and agent channels, you will create a view of solution content that ensures more consistent service. This seems like an obvious best practice, yet a Jupiter Research survey of knowledge-driven support sites notes that only 37% of respondents had the same knowledge available across all customer touch points. iv Using Web forms for escalation Free-form s are certainly acceptable for escalation, but requiring customers to escalate through Web forms provides specific benefits to both customers and the service organization as follows: For customers, a form helps them ensure that all required information is fully captured, eliminating back-and-forth s between the customer and the agent. The service organization can use the form s data to automatically route incoming requests to appropriate queues and agents, helping meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Form data can improve the quality of reporting so that you can better understand and tune queue usage to meet SLAs. For example, if one queue is receiving the most s based on form data, you may want to subdivide this queue into sub-issue types or allocate more agents to the queue. Passively de-escalating inquiries De-escalation is a way to proactively resolve inquiries before they are escalated to an agent. By incorporating passive de-escalation strategies into of the inquiry process, you can deliver the right answer to customers while deflecting inbound inquiries before they reach an agent. Use the data the customer has entered into the or Web form to automatically search the knowledgebase for relevant articles, and then present those articles before the customer sends the inquiry. Customers can review the suggested articles and, if they still do not answer the question, continue to submit the . It can be tempting to force customers to perform a minimum number of knowledgebase searches, or to view a minimum number of self-service solutions before being given the opportunity to escalate to or live chat. But this practice should be avoided as it simply provokes more phone calls from customers unwilling to try the self-service route. (However, it is always a best practice to promote the use of self-service by including links to the self-service site within replies.) Tuning and optimizing the knowledgebase A comprehensive, up-to-date knowledge base is a key tool for self-service and deescalation. Content maintained in the knowledgebase must be continuously reviewed and improved to increase its value to customers and ensure success during self-service. Optimizing knowledge content is the process of understanding content usage within the 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 6

7 self -service site. This can be done via reporting, a customer feedback mechanism and analysis of failed self-service sessions. Via reports, you can identify: Most-used content and least used content. The most-used content should be optimized, while unused content should be pruned from a knowledgebase so that existing content is more findable, and not cluttered with outdated or unused content. Search terms customers are using. Solutions matching the most-used search terms should be optimized for content as well as placement in a solutions list. Use frequently used search terms that return no content to create new solutions, so that gaps within the knowledgebase are filled. Using a feedback mechanism, allow customers to rate or comment on self-service content. Feedback will help to flag ineffective content so that it can be revised to meet customer needs. Analysis of failed self-service sessions, including the ones that resulted in escalations to an agent, can also be used to improve knowledge content. (For more information about the use of a knowledgebase in customer service and how to optimize content, please see the Six Best Practices for Agent Knowledge Management white paper available in the Resource Center at Keep the Customer in the Loop Keeping your customer in the loop requires that you set expectations up front and keep customers informed about the progress of their requests from the moment of submission. There are several key steps to keeping customers in the loop: Let them know that you have received the with an auto-acknowledgement. Properly set their expectations for response. Offer alternative means for resolving the issue. Proactively notify them of critical issues. The automatic acknowledgement is an effective method for managing the conversation and setting service expectations. When auto-acknowledging an inbound Personalize the acknowledgement with the customer s name and include a friendly greeting, pertinent request information, such as the order number, and your branding Set expectations by letting them know when they are likely to receive an answer within 12 hours, within 2 business days, etc. The shorter you can make the response time, the better as online customers have grown increasingly impatient and frustrated with lengthy wait times. The SSPA notes that many of today s customers now want a response in 2 hours or less. v In cases where you will not be able to meet the SLA you have set, follow up with an that lets the customer know of the delay and for how long. Never force the customer stay stuck with the channel for the duration of the service experience. All replies, including auto-acknowledgements, should offer alternative resources for resolution, such as online FAQ, links to specific solutions 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 7

8 within the self-service knowledgebase, live chat or even the phone for high-value customers or time-sensitive requests. You may want to use an acknowledgement for marketing purposes, but approach this with caution. Avoid over-selling, particularly in a service environment. A small postscript with an offer of the day is non-intrusive and acceptable in service interactions. Including an offer within the context of a service can be a good idea as consumers will open a service-related message more often than a marketing message. Proactively notify customers of issues of interest to them, such as important product updates or recalls. Ensure the notification offers a resolution to any issue. These targeted s help to manage the conversation with customers in ways that build trust and loyalty. Effectively Manage Flow Efficiently managing volume requires defining of a set of queues, rules and workflow in order to meet SLAs for contact resolution and handle times that ultimately affect customer loyalty and retention. Efficient management can also be greatly aided by planning for volume growth and using a classification engine to streamline message handling. Managing lines of business Start by deciding if you want separate lines of business (LOB) in order to segment agents and s within your service operation as well as enforce security of content within an LOB. All content within a LOB can be hidden. For example, agents can see a list of LOBs, but none of the sub-departments, content, queues, rules or agents associated with that LOB are visible. Defining queues Queues help the service organization to: Answer prioritized messages first. Organize people into workgroups so that incoming messages can be routed by rule to groups with expertise in specific areas. Monitor queue volumes to ensure that queues are correctly matched to issue types and that the right number and quality of agents are assigned to each queue. When setting up queues: Review the types of issues in each mailbox and then map the queue structure to those issues. For example, suppose you have the following mailboxes: support@acme.com marketing@acme.com sales@acme.com Define three queues and assign agents to each mailbox, and then monitor the types of issues that are coming into support@acme.com to further refine the queue structure. Determine the level of importance attached to various categories (issue prioritization), such as time-sensitive issues that need to be addressed quickly or platinum status customers who should have shorter SLAs KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 8

9 Assign agents to queues based on current staffing and skills distribution, and closely monitor SLAs to adjust staffing levels and skills as needed. Monitor queue volume and SLAs to ensure that queues are properly tuned on an ongoing basis. Setting up inbound and outbound rules service requires both inbound and outbound rules to determine how messages from customers will be routed (inbound) and what further actions are required when the agent sends the reply (outbound). Using rules to route messages to the most appropriate queue can be done manually, or the process can be automated via a classification engine. (See Automatically classifying s below.) Inbound rules can also be set up to determine when an auto-acknowledgement will be sent to a customer. KANA Classify is adept at the classification process because it uses natural language processing combined with unique concept modeling to understand the intent of each inquiry, categorize it and suggest replies. KANA Classify can also manage messages with multiple questions as it can return several matching solutions to answer all the questions being asked. Outbound rules are used to ensure the quality of replies. For example, it may be appropriate to create a rule that a supervisor always reviews any reply by a new agent, or that every outgoing message has an issue type associated with it for reporting purposes. Outbound rules can also be used to establish the conditions under which auto-responses will be sent. Automatically classifying s Rules are most effective when they are coupled with a classification system that automatically parses the content of an inbound and establishes a confidence level for the categorization. The rules engine can then use this confidence level to manage the message. For example, classification can assign a 96% confidence that the message is an order status inquiry, 82% confidence that it is an account balance request and 32% that it is a complaint. Rules use these confidence levels to determine the next best action, such as assigning an inquiry to a queue of highly experienced agents and suggesting the best response to the inquiry or sending an automatic response. (See Streamline the Reply Process below.) 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 9

10 A CLASSIFICATION ENGINE CAN BE COUPLED WITH RULES TO REFINE AND AUTOMATE THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS FOR ROUTING AND MANAGING INBOUND S. The classification engine must include several key capabilities: The engine needs to combine sophisticated natural language processing with concept modeling based on text analytics to understand the intent of each , categorize it and suggest a response. In this way, hard-to-classify content can be effectively managed, such as messages that are noisy, ambiguous or contain multiple questions. The classification engine must capable of being trained on already categorized s. Real-time self-learning should feed corrections to the classification engine as agents answer s. All agent actions whether selecting a suggestion from the classification engine, removing or adding categories, choosing an alternative suggestion or navigating through the category tree to find a different answer should be understood by the engine and immediately applied to future inquiries. Bulk classification and real-time learning are required so that the classification engine can continuously learn with no administrative involvement KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 10

11 Managing with workflow Workflow is needed to determine the path of s through the management system. Workflow needs to take into account: Escalation paths. Escalation should be designed to effectively manage internal SLAs. For example, it is desirable to specify timeouts for queues, so that if a message is not downloaded into an agent s inbox within a specified time period, it is escalated to a higher-priority queue. This ensures that even low-priority messages are answered in a timely manner, and that no message is ignored or gets mired in a low-priority queue. Priorities. Determine if requests from certain customers or partners should receive higher priority in queues, such as high net-worth or long-term customers. As part of setting priorities, decide if specific highly experienced agents or supervisors will be responsible for resolving high-priority inquiries. Agent collaboration. In cases where agents can collaborate with other agents, subject matter experts and partners outside the system, manage the collaboration process as part of the workflow. For example, when an agent asks for assistance from a subject matter expert, establish timeouts for response to ensure the initial request is answered within SLA. Forward and track. Account for customer inquiries that are forwarded outside the management system so that they are always tracked and maintained as part of the customer s record. If an request is forwarded to the call center to be resolved through phone contact, continue to follow the request within the workflow to ensure SLA compliance. Follow-up. Allow agents to send an initial response to a customer and follow up with one or more messages pertaining to the initial message at a later time. Consider the customer who sends three questions, two of which can be answered immediately, but the third requires research. The agent can send a response with answers to the two questions first, and then send another response at a later time to address the third. Each of the messages retains the same case ID which allows an agent to understand the full context and content of the conversation. Planning for growth With volumes rising year over year vi, make sure your system is capable of scaling to many times your current support volume. By monitoring both the total number of s received and sent as well as the average handling time for s, you can more effectively predict future needs. If agents start complaining about increased times for basic agent functions downloading s, finding canned responses, sending s, etc. the solution may have reached capacity based on the number of concurrent agents using the system as well as the number of s being handled. To ensure that you have chosen a solution capable of managing current and expected volumes, look for an response management vendor who can: Demonstrate proven vertical and horizontal scalability. The vendor should have published scalability reports available. Offer customer references of and agent volumes that approximate current and projected volume in your operations. Ask your vendor for examples of successful deployments at least 10 times your current volume. Provide customer references with up-times greater than 99.99% KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 11

12 EBAY USES KANA RESPONSE, KANA S HIGH-VOLUME RESPONSE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION TO MANAGE OVER 100 MILLION INQUIRIES PER YEAR. Streamline the Reply Process Meeting the SLAs you establish for service requires the ability to speed up the process for delivering an appropriate answer. Three techniques can help you reduce the time it takes to reply: Canned content pre-built answers to common questions that can be inserted into replies. Auto-suggestions most likely replies suggested to agents through automatic analysis of message content. These are presented for consideration when the agent starts to review the inquiry. Auto-responses automatic replies sent to inquiries without any agent intervention. Canned content Canned content represents the different types of issues and inquiries the organization receives. By categorizing these content types, you can better organize incoming messages and respond to them with more consistency. Canned content also facilitates detailed reporting. Create canned articles for not just for the content body of the , but other parts of a message as well, such as headers, footers, greetings and signatures. Ideally, an agent should be able to simply mix and match available canned segments and not create new content while answering s. Add tags into canned content, such as the customer name, products purchased, shipping and billing data, account balance, order history, etc. These tags facilitate a high degree of 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 12

13 personalization by fetching data in real-time from back-end systems, yet take advantage of standard templates with canned answers for efficiency when responding to a customer. Structure canned content into a hierarchy that agents will perceive as intuitive and easy to navigate. For example, if you are fielding order inquiries, the following subcategories for the root category Orders may be appropriate: Root category: Orders Subcategory: Order problems Subcategory: Back orders Subcategory: Order shipping Pay careful attention to the category taxonomy in order to increase findability. It is important to use a consistent structure throughout the taxonomy and flag frequently asked questions, perhaps in a separate category called FAQs. To increase agent productivity, you can assign shortcuts or hotkeys to categories, which makes them easier to retrieve. It is also useful to create categories for messages that do not need to be answered, such as SPAM or customer thank-you replies that do not require a response, as these can be useful for reporting purposes. Auto-suggestions Use automatic suggestions to provide recommended responses to agents. By suggesting specific responses, the amount of time and effort the agent needs to respond can be significantly reduced. Rather than needing to decipher the request and search for an appropriate answer, the agent can simply review, modify as needed and send one of the suggested replies. Auto-suggestions provide the additional benefit of ensuring the accuracy and consistency of replies to reflect corporate branding and communication style. (See Improving the quality of response below.) Auto-response Automatic responses have the value of solving the customer s inquiry more quickly and eliminating the need for any agent involvement. Auto-response is best suited to simple and repetitive inquiries as, for example, a question about the price of a particular item, current car loan rate or simple service issue, such as how to set up a voic account or return an item KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 13

14 A GOOD AUTO-RESPONSE, SUCH AS THIS ONE FROM JETBLUE, PERSONALIZES THE MESSAGE, PROVIDES LINKS TO RELEVANT ANSWERS AND OFFERS OTHER OPTIONS FOR MORE HELP, INCLUDING A CONTACT PHONE NUMBER. When an auto-response is appropriate: Let the customer know it is an automated response and why this type of response is being used (faster answer to your question, most complete information available, etc.) Recognize that the auto-response may not answer the question and provide alternative channels to escalate the issue. Include a simple survey in the asking if the response answered the question. This feedback will help the service organization determine what responses are proving successful and where improvements are needed. Continuously measure the results of auto-response to determine what types of requests can be effectively handled in this manner and to fine-tune content. Effectively using auto-suggestions and auto-responses requires a classification engine to analyze and categorize message content as we discussed under Automatically classifying s. Using the classification engine incoming s can be analyzed to pinpoint repetitive questions which can be answered in a consistent manner via auto-response and autosuggestion. (These answers can also be incorporated into the knowledgebase and used during passive de-escalation.) 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 14

15 Answer Properly Answering a customer s inquiry correctly and appropriately seems a given for effective service. Yet, in the KANA survey of US financial companies, only 33% provided satisfactory answers to s, while 17% failed to respond to an inquiry at all. According to a Forrester Research study, 6 in 10 customer service s do not answer the customer s original question. The key to answering properly is to start with the simple rule of respecting the customer and the question. You can do so with several techniques. Immediately communicate value. Keep in mind that the average US consumer receives more than 100 pieces of unsolicited every week. Distinguish your company and communicate the value of the in the reply s message header. For example, messages titled Your inquiry or Re: your inquiry communicate little value. A message header that better responds to the customer s concern is: Re: your inquiry about our credit policies. Explicitly acknowledge the initial question in the first two lines of so that the customer is immediately aware of the context. For example, This is in response to your inquiry dated February 5th, 2008 regarding our current credit policies. Format for easy scanning. Use bolding, highlighting and color to make it easy for the reader to find the most important information. Answer not just the question, but any implied questions. For example, when a customer asks if you have shuttle service to the airport, not only answer Yes, but also provide details about the service such as: Yes we have 24-hour shuttle service. It is free and leaves our front door on the hour. Set standards for language, etiquette and content. Templates and canned phrases will aid the professionalism (and consistency) of replies. Take advantage of automatic spell checking and profanity blockers to ensure agents are meeting corporate standards. Use style guides and training to ensure that agents know how to write s properly. Improving the quality of response You can enhance the quality of response by enabling consistent and personalized answers across channels. Consistency Consistency requires that customers can be sure of getting the same answer to their inquiry no matter which channel they are using. Consistency demands integrated knowledge management so that agents are working from the same body of solution knowledge as phone and chat agents as well as self-service customers. Knowledge management that is seamlessly woven into the resolution process can prove highly beneficial at increasing response consistency across channels KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 15

16 Knowledge can be also be coupled with the classification engine so that automatic searches based on an s content are conducted during the routing process. A knowledge management solution can use the classification analysis to present the agent with the most likely responses. Agents can then simply review the inquiry, insert links or paste the best solution into the body of the reply, and send it to the customer. Personalization By integrating the management system with enterprise systems, relevant back-end data can be queried as needed as well as automatically fetched into replies to provide information that is unique to the customer, increases accuracy and shortens resolution time for such questions as, "When did my order ship?" Encouraging feedback As is the case for passive de-escalation and auto-responses, replies sent by agents should include a mechanism to gather feedback. Use automated follow-up surveys that allow customers to rate the validity and completeness of answers. Pay careful attention to any unsolicited feedback customers choose to submit, both good and bad. messages containing unsolicited feedback can be categorized and routed to a queue designated to handle such contacts. As most unsolicited feedback tends to be negative, focus on addressing the concerns and take the opportunity to use interactions of this type as triggers for proactive outreach KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 16

17 Monitor and Measure to Improve Service Monitoring Both agents and supervisors need real-time insight into operations in order to take immediate action on s that may be falling out of SLA, adjust resources to account for peaks and valleys in volume and enable agents to benchmark themselves against their peers. Ensure the system provides real-time access to such information as: Total number of messages received Number of completed messages Number of messages not addressed Mean age of messages Oldest messages Average handle time for messages Monitoring is particularly important to maintain SLAs as failing to meet SLAs can be very costly. Jupiter Research states that when customer expectations for SLAs are not met, 60% of users will re-contact by phone, and 33% will send another . vii To ensure SLAs are met: Set agent service levels and time-outs, and monitor the amount of time each spends in an agent s inbox. When an agent or queue fails to meet the service level, immediately transfer the to another available agent and notify a supervisor or administrator. Once notified that service levels are in danger of being missed, the manager has time to reallocate staff, or to send updates to customers letting them know of the delay and providing an updated response time. Useful measurements Measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of your service requires establishing metrics and consistently analyzing performance against these metrics. KANA and our customers have found that the following key metrics are critical to good service: Resource balancing Operations and issue trends Customer satisfaction and loyalty Resource balancing This is a measure of productivity designed to ensure that the right technical resources and the right number of resources are assigned to queues. Resource balancing ultimately affects SLAs and resolution rates as well as agent loyalty and job satisfaction. Operational and issue trends Trends can be measured using analysis of category usage to determine which issues occur most frequently or require the most time to resolve. As discussed earlier, by analyzing the most and least frequently used categories, resolution 2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 17

18 content can be fine-tuned and resources correctly allocated to spend time on developing and revising content for the most frequent or costly issues. Measuring issue trends is also helpful as an indicator of customer concerns with your products and services and can be used to better align marketing, engineering and quality assurance resources. Conclusion Customer satisfaction and loyalty Customer satisfaction is most significantly affected by the organization s first-contact resolution rate viii and compliance with SLAs. By measuring the solve rate for inquiries and the number of s needed to resolve an issue, you can gauge how well your service is succeeding at maintaining and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. KANA Response has long been recognized by analysts and major global enterprises as the standard for response management. In combination with the best practices discussed here, companies have been able to deliver a service experience that has achieved double-digit improvements in agent productivity, operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. KANA and its partners are ready to help you implement these best practices with comprehensive services that can maximize the value of KANA Response to your organization and your customers. To learn more about how the KANA suite of intelligent multi-channel solutions can help you create customers for life, call Additional Resources Please ask your KANA account executive for the KANA Six Best Practices in Agent Knowledge Management white paper. This paper is also available in the Resource Center at Copyright 2011 KANA Software, Inc. KANA and the KANA logo are registered trademarks of KANA. Other company, product and service names may be service marks of their respective owners. 840 W California Avenue, Suite 100 Sunnyvale, CA T F Contact us at Linkedin: Facebook: All Rights Reserved KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 18

19 ijon Anton, Benchmark Portal. Based on average cost per call of $5.50 per interaction, $1.25 per . iideflecting Routine Customer s: Leveraging Response Management Systems to Cut Costs, John Ragsdale, SSPA, June iiithe State of Customer Service: Trends in Consumers Attitudes and Behaviors, Jupiter Research. ivunified Knowledge Management, Jupiter Research, October v10 Best Practices to Increase ERMS Success, John Ragsdale, SSPA Accelerator, July vi Automation Best Practices, Jupiter Research, vii Automation Best Practices, Jupiter Research, viiibreak Barriers between the Contact Center and the Business, Drew Kraus, Gartner September KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA sales@kana.com PAGE 19