Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) An Altivon White Paper Altivon

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1 Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) An Altivon White Paper 2014 Altivon

2 Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Look around just about anywhere and you will see people interacting with mobile devices. Tablets, smartphones and various handheld devices now dominate the landscape. Mobile apps have changed how people communicate with each other and the companies they frequent. What s in your wallet? Most people maintain some sort of relationship with different companies. Take a look at all the companies and organizations you patronize. Banks, insurance companies, lawn care, grocery and retail stores, airlines, hotels, utilities the list goes on and on. More and more, these companies rely on mobile apps as the primary point of communication between themselves and their customers. This is a reality the contact center must acknowledge and can leverage to great advantage. By the numbers Attention Sales & Marketing Customer experience is not just the purview of sales and marketing. It needs to be part and parcel of every interaction between you and your customer. Imagine a customer that is showrooming in your appliances department. If an agent can intercede to offer advice and details about the product of interest, you have a better chance of completing the sale. If they see a competing promotion for a new service and can instantly connect to your customer service to find out if you offer something similar that fits with their existing plan, they will have higher brand loyalty. If you are defining a mobile app for your organization, be sure to include the contact center in your list of stakeholders. Just in case the evidence in your own personal experience is not great enough, experts and pollsters have collected data that is unequivocal. Billions of people own smart devices. There are 1.5 million Android activations every day 1. In the second quarter of 2013, smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales for the first time 2. Half of all PCs shipped in 2014 will be tablets, including 185 million Android units, according to researchers at Canalys 3. The next generation coming along will be even more accustomed to using mobile devices in their everyday lives. Elementary school students now use mobile devices to scan QR codes Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 1

3 during treasure hunts. They use Google to research and gather material for show and tell time. They search for photos online to illustrate their book reports. They use social media applications like Edmodo to chat with other classmates and post questions about their homework. And for fun they still watch Bugs Bunny, but now they can sit in a treehouse and stream live video to their tablets. The drive to mobile interaction is just beginning. The rise of self service The desire for independence and self sufficiency has been part of the national character since the first settlers arrived in North America. Mobile devices enable greater self sufficiency and have been embraced to a large degree based on that quality. Nobody need ask directions if they have a GPS application handy. Shoppers can check competitive pricing while showrooming in a store. Coupons can be retrieved and used at the point of purchase. Fully 40% all in store purchases at a large DIY retail store start with a web based interaction, and the majority are on mobile devices. 4 When questions arise about a product or service, mobile devices are increasingly used to search for answers. Solutions can be found just about anywhere, from YouTube, social media, Wikipedia, forums, or other sources including information directly from the company providing the product or service. Early customer facing mobile apps were 100% dedicated to providing self service options. Banks allowed customers to review their accounts online and process transactions. Airlines allowed The Busted Toilet Imagine one of your toilets is running on. You are not a plumber, but hope that you can fix the problem with some assistance. You use your mobile device to access the Home Depot mobile app. The app knows from your preferences that you speak English. You answer a series of short questions that focus your request for help to plumbing problems. Your request is routed to the nearest Home Depot, based on the GPS location provided by your device. A specialist walking down Aisle 11 answers and asks for more details. You point your device at the toilet and show the plumbing specialist live video of the problem. He identifies the part you need and sells it to you through the app. He then sends a link to a video on how to install it. Later that day you pick up the part at the customer service desk without having to wait in line. Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 2

4 customers to book flights. These industries led mobile app development because there was a strong need for self service and a high frequency of customer interaction. Now, to meet rising customer expectations many companies are planning to provide a seamless transition from self service to assisted service. Mobile apps will be fully integrated into the entire customer experience. Self service and assisted service According to Ventana Research, nearly two thirds of customers engaging in self service end up requiring interaction with a contact center agent 5. When that happens, it is critical that there be a seamless link between the self service experience and live assistance. Assisted service usually begins where self service leaves off. At that point, typical user will have already tried several other paths to find a solution. To have a truly effective transition from self service to assisted service companies need to put in place tools that will capture information in the mobile app about customers and what they are trying to do. Then the application must deliver this information directly to the agent. Integration with chat is a good example of assisted service that allows direct interaction via a lower cost channel. It can also provide a greater range of self service options in situations where a chat agent can help direct a customer to instructions or other content that the customer may have had difficulty finding on their own. All of this reduces inbound calls while increasing overall customer satisfaction. The Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) A truly integrated approach to mobile customer experience requires integration of both technology and process. It enables the customer to seamlessly navigate from self service through agent assistance. Customers can transit from service to shopping and vice versa in a streamlined manner. The contact center and its agents interact with the customer using technologies that share data, so that agents are fully informed and efficient. Four guiding principles of IMCx that contact centers should support are: maintain context, improve authentication, reduce transfers and encourage customer feedback. Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 3

5 Maintain Context Poorly integrated self service applications simply provide a link to a toll free number. When customers hit a self service dead end they must call the contact center and start over from the beginning in the IVR. Customers must re enter account numbers and passwords then try to communicate, again, what they are trying to accomplish. From the customer s perspective this is now their second attempt. The ability to deliver first contact resolution is already lost. Well designed mobile apps provide menus that lead to the right agent. Targeted questions establish the customer s intent and facilitate proper routing. There are many benefits to integrated mobile customer experience. Preferences set by the customer through the application can be used to drive both the application and contact routing. For example, the mobile app might already keep track of the fact that the customer speaks Spanish. When the customer clicks on a button to request assisted service from a live agent, the application can pass this preference as part of the request. The call is routed to a Spanish speaking agent without prompting the customer to re enter their language preference. Improve Authentication Because the customer is already identified and authenticated in the application, the agent no longer needs to confirm the customer s identity when the call begins. This can reduce the handle time of each call by seconds and provide a dramatic cost savings to the contact center. Looking ahead to the future, mobile app authentication can offer a much higher degree of security especially for industries like financial services and healthcare where fraud avoidance and information privacy are very important. Technologies like biometrics (e.g., face recognition, fingerprint identification, and voice matching) and Near Field Communications (NFC) can offer multi factor authentication where the app can confirm 1) what you know (e.g. passwords), 2) what you have (e.g. an NFC enabled ID card), and 3) who you are (e.g. fingerprint). With IMCx as the starting point for all contact center interactions, agents can know with certainty that they are speaking with the correct person. Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 4

6 Reduce Transfers IMCx can dramatically reduce call transfers. When the customer places a request for assisted service through the mobile app, the request is routed to an agent. The agent can review the customer s information and contact history along with any notes (or photos or video) that the customer has entered through the app to describe their need. If the customer s problem requires an expert to resolve, the agent may decline the interaction and pass the request along to a different department before the customer is called. The second agent can then review the same information, accept the request, and initiate the call to the customer. From the customer s perspective there was no transfer. The customer didn t have to bounce from one agent to the next. The customer was never told, I can t help you. The customer never had to repeat information to multiple agents to try to solve their need. Encourage Customer Feedback Contact centers need feedback to improve their operation. They struggle to get it, because of the inconvenience it entails for the customer. In a mobile environment, a higher participation rate can be achieved by presenting a simple feedback survey at the end of the mobile interaction. In this context, survey acceptance rates increase dramatically. Customer effort drives behavior. 94% of those with a perceived low effort will buy again; 88% of them will increase their spending. Conversely, 81% of those with a perceived high effort will speak negatively about their experience. 6 Making the business case High customer experience undoubtedly requires investment and innovation in the contact center. It does not come cheap. However, it does come with a high payoff for the contact center. It is common that increased revenue follows on the heels of good customer experience. Reduced hold times and call transfers can lead to increased sales, improved Net Promoter Score (NPS), and increased brand loyalty and customer retention. Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 5

7 In addition, good experience for customers usually leads to good experience for agents. The old adage that smile and the world smiles with you applies here. Happy customers generally have friendlier interactions, which lead to improved agent morale and retention as well. Hard cost savings associated with IMCx include reduced telecommunications costs and agent efficiency. Every time a customer dials a toll free number for the contact center, there are roughly 2 4 cents per minute in telephony charges for that call. A typical call includes 2 3 minutes navigating the IVR and waiting for an agent. When a company implements IMCx, there are no telephony charges associated with the time that the customer spends making a request for assistance through the mobile app. The clock does not start, and the telephony charges do not begin, until the customer and the agent are connected on a call. This may not seem like much, but these costs can really add up. A large bank spends $50 million or more every year in toll free telephony charges. 7 A large utility in Canada has 1,000 agents handling 6,300,000 calls per year. Labor costs are $1.05 per minute. Telephony costs are $0.02 per minute. This company identified potential savings in three areas: RBA for Mobility A great way to understand where you are in customer experience management is through a specialized Rapid Business Assessment (RBA). This quick strategic audit provides real insight into your operation what works well and what can be improved. It can also review how connected the contact center is with the rest of the organization and offer best practice advice. The RBA delivers a quick evaluation of the current state of the contact center and related processes. Altivon will be on site with you for approximately 2 3 days to gather information and insight. The Altivon consultant assigned to your assessment will work with your team, which will likely consist of an executive sponsor, business liaison, strategic leadership team, call center senior management, frontline management, agents, workforce/qa teams, reporting analysts, and IT. Recommendations will be presented to your key stakeholders in both an interactive session and report form. Telephony charges for time spent in IVR Labor and telephony costs for AHT Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 6

8 (reduced through app authentication) Labor and telephony costs reduced by increased self service The total savings depends on adoption rate. For this utility, the annual savings anticipated was between $1,744,459 (for 25% adoption) and $6,977,837 (for 100% adoption). 8 Getting started Mobile devices are not going away. In fact, they are fundamentally changing the way companies interact with their customers. Contact centers that embrace both the devices and the new paradigm that they enable will have a competitive advantage. Well designed integrated mobile customer experience has the potential to revolutionize the contact center. Every company contemplating how to move into mobile support will be best served by building a plan reflecting the needs and desires of everyone touched by the customer including marketing, sales and the contact center. Successful deployment depends on careful planning and involvement by all stakeholders. Part 2 of this series provides specific advice on how to build your plan. Part 3 follows with an outline of how to execute against the plan. About Altivon Altivon delivers high value, high impact contact center solutions that enhance contact center operations, elevate the customer experience and evolve as customer and center needs change. Altivon handles all aspects of solution design, deployment, support and ongoing improvement. These are the words we live by and the methodology we use in everything we do. Founded in 1989, Altivon is headquartered in Arizona and operates across North America with deployments internationally. Altivon has delivered contact center solutions based on the Interactive Intelligence CIC platform since 1997, is their fastest growing value added reseller partner, received their Chairman s Award and has reached Platinum Elite status their highest level of partnership. Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 7

9 References [1] Graziano, Dan. Daily Android Activations Grow to 1.5 million, Google Play Surpasses 50 Billion Downloads. BGR, July 20, [2]. Gartner Says Smartphone Sales Grew 46.5 Percent in Second Quarter of 2013 and Exceeded Feature Phone Sales for First Time. Gartner.com. August 14, [3] Lunden, Ingrid. Canalys: Half of all PCs Shipped in 2014 Will Be Tablets; Android 65%, Apple 30%. Techcrunch.com. November 26, [4] Private notes from a recent meeting between Altivon and a large retailer [5]. Research Perspective: Mobile Apps Advance Customer Self Service: Innovations Can Meet Changing Customer Expectations. Ventana Research [6] Dixon, M., Freeman, K., and Toman, N. Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers: How Two Companies Drove Loyalty by Reducing Customer Effort. Harvard Business Review, July [7] Private notes from a recent meeting between Altivon and a large bank [8] Private notes from a recent meeting between Altivon and a large utility Altivon White Paper: Integrated Mobile Customer Experience (IMCx) Vision (Part 1) Page 8