Touchscreen Self-Service: How to Transform the Self-Service Customer Experience. By Dr. Natalie Petouhoff on Twitter

Transcription

1 Touchscreen Self-Service: How to Transform the Self-Service Customer Experience By Dr. Natalie Petouhoff on Twitter

2 Analyst Rankings: Dr. Natalie s Background Customer Service & Customer Experience / CRM PWC Management Consultant Chief Strategist for Social Media & Digital Communications PR & Marketing Agency Top Forrester Customer Service, Social Media, CRM Analyst Instructor at Center for Entertainment, Media and Sports Summer Institutes at UCLA Anderson

3 I ve Written Books or Chapters In Other People s Books

4 Quoted in the News

5 The Agenda Origins of Self-Service Technology The Evolution of Self-Service Technology How Touchscreen Self-Service is Transforming the Customer Experience

6 Setting the Stage for Evolution: 1939 New York s World Fair Attendance: 206,000 Speech was on: Radio Television

7 The 1939 World s Fair s Theme Building The World of Tomorrow

8 Can you imagine needing a brochure to explain TV? The brochure answered FAQs TV was one of the hot, new technologies

9 The questions back then were -- so basic. Will a TV receiver purchased in one city receive programs in another city? How many people can comfortably see a TV broadcast?

10 Along with the brochure, people at the Fair who saw themselves on TV were given a certificate to prove what they saw was so Even back then, companies were counting on word-of-mouth

11 Average TV audience was 8,000 people Dramatic shows most popular Program production costs are $10K-$15K/ week

12 Another important technology that contributed to the IVR technology we have today was at the 1939 Fair: the Voder It synthesized human speech by breaking it down into sounds & reproducing them electronically

13 And at the Fair, the Voder Machine was used for the voice of a robot Elektro (by Westinghouse) This was the beginnings of speech technology later deveioped into speech recognition & IVRs

14 Technology continued to evolve Another key component of IVRs was DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) Allowed customers to be routed without a human operator Before that answering, connecting & transferring customer to the right person required a switchboard operator Each key has certain tones or Frequencies assigned to it

15 Other technologies continued to evolve The first interactive touchscreens Nearly 30 years after the Voder, the first touchscreens started to appear This is the University of Illinois Plato IV, used in a classroom Allowing students to touch the screen to answer questions.

16 TV Shows like Star Trek paralleled the advancement of touch screen technology Star Trek Bridge Touch Screens IBM & Bell South: Simon Personal Communicator Apple s Touch-capable Newton PDA

17 Touchscreens are now everywhere Homes Retail Cashier Machines Food Menus In Restaurants

18 Technology continued to evolve from Automated Attendant to Voice Response Units to Interactive Voice Response Along with that came Very long IVR scripts And prompts

19 Why not Customer Service? Customer Get Frustrated With Push-Button Phone IVRs Requires customers listen & remember the phone tree menu

20 Not much has changed IBM Self-Service Study % experienced technical difficulties with self-service % of customers still feel IVR systems provide either: No benefit at all or Only a cost savings to the company 67% still prefer live-agent service The problem: Agent-assisted service is the most costly option of service

21 THE PROMISE OF SELF-SERVICE Self-service proposed benefits Offer a user-friendly, practical, self-service channel Lower agent-assisted call volume Improve call center efficiency and capacity Free-up Customer Service agents to handle more complicated cases Lower average handling time (AHT) Minimize holding time Drive more accurate routing: Direct customer to the right agent, the first time Reduce costs: Downsize telephony training costs Agent frustration, stress and hence attrition.

22 Gen X, Y Z are the largest group of customers 40M aka Silent Generation or Golden Generation 80M 140M aka Millennials 20M

23 While most people do still use the phone, people are migrating to other channels, web, social text Part of that is because they know the phone works Part of it s because the other channels are new Or need improvements 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% Older Boomers & Golden Gen (56+) Gen X & Younger Boomers (36-55) 20% 10% Gen Y & Younger (18-35) 0% Phone Web Social SMS

24 Generational Differences are Driving New Preferences in The Device they receive service on

25 Self-Service Couldn t Deliver on the Promise Customers: Hated trying to remember lengthy call menus to know which button corresponded to the service they needed Didn t bother listening and zero-out System randomly disconnected them Frustrated, customers hang-up

26 Testing IVR for Great Customer Experience Often only best-in-class companies tested their IVRs: Validate the scripting The prompts Confirm menu options were helpful to customers So the IVR didn t result in customers opting to speak to an agent The result? IVRs were designed to reduce agent-assisted call length But when the customer experience was poor, IVRs didn t lower agent-assisted calls Agent salaries: one of the biggest costs Self-service failed to deliver on the promise of greatly reducing costs

27 The B.I.G. Question is What s the best IVR strategy & technology? Simple Easy to use User-friendly Become customer s preference over calling Contact center doesn t need to do a rip & replace of the current IVR

28 Evolution: Push-Button IVR????? Before Press 1 for Press 1 for Press 2 for Press 3 for Press 0 for Operator

29 What if Customers Could see the prompts on their phone Didn t have to try to remember what each prompt said Didn t have to move the phone from their ear to look at the key pad & recall which number to push Might make customer satisfaction go up. Among other things..

30 It s always been true The Contact Center is Like a Canary in Coal Mine

31 Most everything the business needs to know What s working What s not working What would be better if Can be seen by evaluating customer conversations But it s been difficult to get senior management to understand that

32 Today Customer s Post Comments online On review sites like Yelp, Amazon On Facebook On Twitter In Forums & Communities Just because a company is not listening online, doesn t mean that customer s are not posting What is wrong in a company often is posted in social networks

33 Word-of-mouth in social media tends to be very direct & authentic Most everything the business needs to know What s working What s not working What would be better if Can be seen in social networks

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35 Technology Evolution: Offer a Better Customer Experience with Touchscreen IVR Customers can: See the prompts on their phone Don t need to remember what each prompt said Don t have to move the phone from their ear Look at the key pad & recall which number to push

36 How a Visual IVR works: Customer Chooses: All Reservations Then Chooses: Change Reservation

37 Customer Enters the Confirmation Number

38 Or the Customer has the choice to Talk to an Agent who has all their information All the customer interaction data is preserved so customer doesn t have to repeat to agent what they did

39 The same visual IVR on the phone works on the Website, too!

40 The customer reads the menu choices picks the item they need

41 Easily follow the options and the choices

42 They can identify themselves Its all so easy.

43 Using Touchscreen IVRs Take Less Time

44 No Need to Retire the Current IVR Technology, i. e., Rip and Replace Just Evolve The IVR s Interface

45 Takes Your Current IVR The Technology Interprets the IVR Renders a Visual IVR with enhanced features for Your Website & Mobile Devices

46 Changes Within One Channel are Immediately Duplicated to All Presences IVR Script Editor

47 Deployment Schedule Is Short

48 Let s look at a website: Old Way to Reach Out To a Company: Contact Us Form number , fill out form Static FAQs Static Links Static Helpful Links

49 New Way to Reach Out To a Company: Contact Us Form but Click on Visual IVR Website button

50 Customer Experience: Customer Touches the option to get help

51 Customer Experience: Customer Answers the question

52 Contact Us Becomes An Interactive, Visual Touchscreen With Easy to Read Options Visual IVR Menu Opens Up Customers can: See the choices Touch the screen to get what they need

53 Answer is presented If the customers wants to talk to someone, they can Call Chat

54 Chat box opens Not sure how to integrate chat to your website? Now you can save yourself the cost of figuring that out! All customer interactions can be seen by agent So agent is not starting from scratch Customer experience across all channels is perserved Customer can get specific questions answered quickly

55 Customer can navigate backwards Traditional IVRs force customers to listen to a whole menu Often going backwards is difficult or impossible or The IVR hangs up on the customer

56 What s on the website is exactly the same mobile devices Don t have a mobile app? Now you can save yourself the cost of creating one!

57 You can get your customers started by sending them a Text Message

58 One Click and the Visual IVR Menu Opens Up on the Mobile Device

59 If customers don t have smart phone While web, mobile web and native ios and Android are very popular, there are large sections of customers who do not have smart phones The Visual IVR can support non-feature rich phones through the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) protocol USSD is supported across most GSM carriers and Provides an alternative mechanism for rendering a visual IVR interface to these types of customers

60 The Business Case For Visual IVR*** Decreasing the number of zero-outs or agent-assisted calls Knowing more about the customer and why they are calling if they opt to talk to an agent so you can: Decrease Average Handle Time Increase First Contact Resolution and Eliminate asking a customer to repeat their interaction history and details of their story / issue when they connect to an agent Providing a consistent experience regardless of which channel the customer uses ***Upcoming white paper on all of this

61 The ROI of Visual IVRs 23% Reduced Call Volume 4% Reduction in Call Transfers 73% Minutes Deflected

62 Signs Your IVR is Not Meeting Customer Expectations IVR zero-out rate is greater than 7% Percentage of call transfer within contact center is high Your company s website is listed on sites that show customers how to zero-out to reach an agent Grumpy customers Often customers who use an IVR still reach out to an agent, and are even more frustrated than when they first tried to reach the company

63 Sample Questions To Ask Customer s About Your IVR Ask your customers if they feel: Forced to listen to long, introductory prompts? Are the menu options so long that they have a difficult time deciphering or remembering which option to choose? Is the navigation path clear, i.e., is it easy for them choose the right option to get their answer as well as to go back to the main or previous menu? Does the IVR system hang-up on them when they don t respond fast enough or go down a IVR path that is a dead-end? When picking an IVR menu option, does the agent receive the information about the customer or does the customer have to repeat it all once connected with an agent? (I.e., is the agent desktop computer telephony integration (CTI) delivering all customer interaction data to the agent?) When using your IVR, especially on mobile devices, do customers become frustrated, and just zero-out vs. navigate the IVR menu tree?

64 THANK Q&A