Self-service Improving the customer experience

Transcription

1 Self-service Improving the customer experience

2 Complete satisfaction SELF-SERVICE CAN SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCE THE OVERALL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Self-service improving the customer experience Self-service has become an essential part of everyday customer experience. What self-service does for you (and your customers) Self-service has widespread application across all major industries serving both consumers and business customers. It can also be used internally to provide services to employees. Good self-service can help you to: Using a cash machine, filling our cars with petrol and getting insurance quotes are some readily accepted examples. Many customers expect to be able to carry out routine service tasks themselves when they choose. When asked to rate the importance of 24x7 self-service, 72 per cent of respondents rated it as important or vital 1. Self-service helps you extend your opening hours and the scope of your services, increasing choice and convenience for your customers. While cost reduction prompted the first wave of self-service initiatives, many organisations now understand that self-service, or guided-service, can significantly enhance the overall customer experience and help create subsequent revenue opportunities. Compelling research from Forrester Research suggests that great guided service can have an ROI of 200 per cent 2. Consequently, more and more companies are implementing self-service in order to improve customer satisfaction and help generate new income. With some 20 million self-service transactions every year 3 BT is one of the largest practitioners of multi-channel self-service in the UK. Our latest innovation uses hosted self-service solutions to help reduce the need for capital investment while providing the benefits of flexible terms such as pay-as-you-go. Improve customer satisfaction. Many customers welcome and expect to have the opportunity to serve themselves, whether it is carrying out research, requesting information or placing an order. This is equally true in the B2B market where customers want, for example, to check prices or order status easily and quickly, without tying up employees time in making lengthy enquiries. Firms can increase customer satisfaction by 5% to 10% (using self-service). 4 Increase revenue. There are several ways in which self-service can help increase revenues. One is that as you make your goods and services more available, through extended opening times and more channels, you could attract new customers. Second, human agents freed from routine transactions can spend more time with high value customers. Third, great service pays off research 5 has shown that after only one outstanding call to customer service, customers were 77 per cent more likely to pay a premium to do business with that company. These results were just as true for automated customer service as for live agents. Reduce costs. An automated transaction is considerably cheaper than one handled by a human agent. In addition, when you implement self-service you should receive fewer telephone calls and less correspondence from customers and therefore need fewer agents. You can also help reduce costs by transferring routine services to automated channels. Extend your brand presence. Self-service can help you to extend your brand values by offering a consistent quality of experience to customers at all times through all channels. Hosted self-service lets you differentiate your services across multiple brands in a single environment. Understand your customers better. Using self-service to capture accurate information about customers and their behaviour can help improve your understanding of your customer base and can help identify the products, services and channels they prefer. Improve employee productivity and morale. You can use self-service to deliver office resources and HR services to employees, releasing them from everyday administration for more rewarding and productive activity. 1 MORI survey of 1,972 adult respondents based in the United Kingdom 2 Making Self Service Pay Off, Forrester Research, May Making Self-Service Pay Off, Forrester Research, May Vocal Laboratories, November BT Customer Contact Centre

3 Complete choice BT OFFERS THE CHOICE OF BUILDING YOUR OWN SELF-SERVICE SOLUTION Our self-service resources With up to 95 per cent of contact in European call centres still via the telephone 6, it is clear that the phone remains the channel of choice for the majority of consumers. There are several technologies suitable for voice self-service. In particular, speech recognition has advanced considerably in recent years and may now be suitable for many mainstream applications. It is important to have well-designed voice interfaces, which can help reduce call time by 30 per cent and help cut opt-out rates in half 7. Voice technologies used for self-service include: Interactive Voice Response (IVR) can give the customer rapid access to information or to carry out a transaction without the need to speak to a call centre agent. BT is one of Europe s largest users of IVR. We use it, for example, to let residential customers buy new services or report faults. Advanced Speech Recognition (ASR) lets your customers get information or conduct transactions by spoken commands or phrases. Voice portals let your customers access information and conduct transactions with multiple services on demand. We can integrate voice with Internet communications to provide a consistent and seamless multi-channel experience for the end-customer. Our solutions range from simple call routing through to sophisticated interactive web response and agent assistance packages. Our web and self-service technologies include: Customer Assist helps enable you to build a knowledge base of best practice customer service, which we then integrate with all self-service channels. Smart can provide automatic, intelligent response to and management of inbound . Agent Assist can harness the skills and knowledge of your most informed agents and distributes it to others in the organisation. Web portals can provide each customer with a personalised site. Customer-facing Knowledge Base can provide flexible, dynamic access to information about an organisation, its products and services. How we work with you BT offers the choice of building your own self-service solution on your own site, or using our hosted service. Our hosted service runs on the BT network and can be provided as a totally managed service. Choosing a hosted solution allows you to focus on the design and delivery of the self-service experience for your customers, while BT concentrates on maintaining the most up-to-date and efficient technology. A key benefit of this approach is that you can dynamically expand and reduce your commitment to meet seasonal demand or to respond to unexpected circumstances, helping to ensure that customers will always be able to contact you. Attitudes to the usefulness of automated interactive voice response (IVR) systems are not aligned for example, only 16 per cent of organisations thought automated systems would help their customers make bill payments, while 43 per cent of consumers thought they would help. 8 6 Datamonitor, Evan Kirchheimer, Speech Technologies Ready for Prime Time Forrester Research, April Teleconomy, April 2003

4 Complete partnership BT WILL LISTEN TO YOU AND SHARE WITH YOU OUR EXPERIENCES AND EXPERTISE Why choose BT for self-service solutions? BT is one of the largest users of multi-channel self-service in the UK. We have more than 3m users registered on conducting up to half a million transactions per month, excluding our online directory enquiries that manages an additional 6-7 million transactions per month. 40 per cent of callers to BT's repair service opt for self-service. 9 Our billing self-service gives customers access to their outstanding call charges and lets them inform BT that they have paid the bill. This direct experience gives us valuable insight into the reality of self-service which we share with our customers. The BT network operates to very high levels of availability and security. We are very experienced in integrating multiple channels of communication. In addition, we work with global leaders in self-service technologies and applications to bring the best available solutions together for our customers. We have helped some of the largest companies in the UK to provide the benefits of self-service to their customers. For example: TD Waterhouse is one of the UK s largest execution-only stockbrokers with 500,000 clients. TD Waterhouse has implemented self-service to give investors access to real-time share price information on more than 1000 UK-listed companies quickly and easily. Based on BT s hosted self-service platform, which can handle up to 5000 concurrent calls, customers with simple pricing enquiries can get rapid answers via an Advanced Speech Recognition service. Using self-service for routine enquiries lets TD Waterhouse focus on revenue-generating calls and meeting the needs of customers with more complex requirements. BT the right partner The question is not if, but when, you are going to introduce or extend self-service in your organisation for customers, suppliers and employees. Not only could you save money, but you could make real improvements in customer service and employee productivity. But you want a partner you can rely on, a partner with first-hand experience of the challenges and opportunities of self-service and a solid delivery model that can help reduce the risks and costs associated with new technology implementations. So why not talk to BT? We will listen to you and share with you our experiences and expertise. Call your account manager to request a meeting or visit for more information (and try out our self-service for yourself ). 9 Source: BT Customer Contact Centre

5 Offices worldwide The telecommunications services described in this publication are subject to availability and may be modified from time to time. Services and equipment are provided subject to British Telecommunications plc s respective standard conditions of contract. Nothing in this publication forms any part of any contract. British Telecommunications plc Registered office: 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ. Registered in England No Produced by BT Major Business. Designed by Unigraph Limited 21829/01/04. Printed in England. PHME PHME?????????????/06/03