customer care solutions from Nuance an executive briefing paper :: Nuance Solutions for Telecommunications Carriers Making the Complex Simple carrier challenges Telecommunications services providers all over the world face similar issues. Technology, common infrastructure, and parallel business models have made global carriers look more alike than different. Most carriers are now diversified communications businesses that may have a mixture of landline, wireless, Internet, and possibly even cable or satellite television divisions. Common challenges for these diversified carriers include: 1. Increasing competition with less loyal consumers higher churn 2. Downward price pressure as customer switching costs decrease lower average revenue per user (ARPU) 3. Increasingly complex product and service offerings that are difficult to support decreased customer satisfaction and higher support costs 4. Redundant backend and support infrastructure across business lines increased support costs and inefficiencies 5. Growing need to use business units as channels to upsell and cross-sell services across the entire carrier drive towards higher ARPU 6. Higher new customer acquisition costs cost per new acquisition growing 7. Dilutive branding across business units and resulting customer confusion reduced customer loyalty In other words, carriers are contending with an increasingly competitive environment where it is more and more difficult to meet demands of today s consumer while managing the integration of diversified brands and infrastructure required to deliver complex offerings. In this environment, holistic solutions are critical in trying to address problems that are interrelated.
NUANCE :: customer care solutions creating a compelling experience for the consumer Large carriers are complex businesses that manage numerous backend systems, multiple network infrastructures, and countless products and services. Critical to being successful in meeting the stated challenges is making this complexity simple for consumers and cost effective for carriers. Despite being complex, a customer s interactions with carriers should be simple. By providing world-class speech, web, and mobile interfaces, Nuance makes complex interactions simple and intuitive for consumers. This type of experience translates into brand loyalty, reduced costs and increased upsell activity because it feels relevant and personal to the consumer. Nuance drives its approach to solutions from a consumer perspective. Specifically, it approaches the solutions as they impact each part of the customer lifecyle with the carrier. Acquisition Applications Activate Provide Care Customer Care Applications Fulfill Demand Nuance Automated Solutions Compelling User Experience Generate Loyalty Mobile Storefront Generate Demand Intelligent Offer Management Multi-channel automated customer interactions for the entire subscriber lifecycle Impacting All Key Carrier Metrics Reduce Cash Cost Per Call (CCPU) Increase ARPU Raise Customer Satisfaction Reduce Churn Reduce Cost Per Gross Acquisition Figure 1: Carrier Customer Lifecycle Working with countless carriers on nearly every continent in the world, Nuance has developed the customer lifecycle view of developing solutions. In the lifecycle, customers are acquired, cared for, bonded with, and upsold to with an eye toward optimizing key carrier performance metrics along the way. Telefónica España For example, Telefónica España successfully routes over 20 million calls per year using Nuance s Call Steering solution, providing an accurate, cost-effective method of directing customers within its call centre. Nuance has helped Telefónica achieve an automation rate of over 88%, a 10% reduction in misrouted calls, a 10% increase in customer satisfaction levels and service quality marks averaging 96%. 2
T-Mobile Germany T-Mobile Germany serve their 31+ million customers with an award winning self-service application which fully automates over 400 business processes by allowing callers to interact with the system using natural, conversational language. T- Mobile Germany has reported a 10 million savings per year, a 75+% increase in automation, and successful automation of over 36 million calls per year. Vodafone Spain Vodafone Spain uses Nuance speech solutions to automate customer service for its customers. Since deployment, customer satisfaction rates have jumped 14% compared to the previously used touch-tone technology. Even more compelling: customer satisfaction rates are 8% higher with the automated system than they are with live agents. By piggybacking promotions onto the automated speech system, Vodafone Spain was also able to increase sales of additional services, achieving a 25% to 26% success rate among those customers receiving the special promotions. Vodafone Spain achieved a return on their investment in less than one year. Nuance software, which ships on nearly 800M devices each year, has been responsible for making consumer s lives easier with such functionality as voice search and predictive mobile phone text entry. In addition, Nuance mobile software has helped extend care to the handset resulting in automation rates as high as 76% for European carriers. But Nuance s impact extends past these few examples. 95% of the world s top carriers use Nuance technology and services today including AT&T, BT, Orange, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile and Vodafone. This unique depth of experience has helped Nuance develop a variety of specific and impactful solutions that address the pressing challenges carriers face today. Nuance services, technologies, and solutions Helping Telcos meet today s business and economic challenges 290% increase in self-service rates -2% Telstra - Australia From the moment a consumer selects a carrier s service and makes their first customer care call, to the moment an agent satisfactorily meets a customer s needs, Nuance has offerings that can improve every step of the customer experience. Nuance is the world s largest consulting, systems integration and solutions development firm specializing in enterprise-level customer interactions. Our services are focused on carrier needs whether business consulting services, application development, systems integration, solution optimization or managed services providing carriers with services customized for their requirements. Nuance s end-to-end customer contact solutions use the latest technologies, leading industry standards and platforms, and leverage carrier backend systems to optimize customer interaction solutions and create outstanding customer experiences. In addition, Nuance has at its disposal an impressive array of technologies in which the company has made significant investments. Nuance s automated speech recognition software is the global industry leader and is significantly more accurate than any leading competitor. Nuance s handset based care application for GSM and CDMA carriers has been deployed by such notable carriers as Vodafone and T-Mobile, and Nuance clients have seen automation rates improve by as much as 10%. 3
NUANCE :: customer care solutions Nuance Services: Business Consulting Services Many of our customers are introduced to Nuance services through our Business Consulting practice. Nuance has the expertise in house to help align your business goals and objectives against sound best practices developed across a long history of speech and contact center applications. Nuance assists carriers looking for a trusted advisor to provide guidance to help focus the organization on the realization of unique strategies for customer interactions that drive down cost, increase revenue and improve the customer experience and loyalty. Nuance s approach is to partner on these business challenges, driving actionable roadmaps that set expectations around timeframes, budgets and relevant technologies within carrier organizations. Strategic Planning Nuance Business Consulting focuses on driving actionable roadmaps meant to illustrate and set expectations around the design, development and deployment of customer interaction strategies across a diverse portfolio of technologies and services. Our customized engagements focus on delivering the proper customer interaction solution for your carrier organization, leveraging cross-industry best practices and proven industry expertise. Business Optimization Experience shows that customer interaction solutions require more care and feeding than other IT solutions in the enterprise. To support this need, Nuance offers optimization services that deliver actionable recommendations driven from deep analysis tempered by our industry expertise. These engagements help your carrier enterprise strengthen and drive additional Return on Investment for currently deployed solutions. Nuance can bring to bear thought leadership found across the telecommunications industry as well as cross-industry expertise honed in on driving expense out of your organization, increasing revenue as well as the customer experience and loyalty. Professional Services Organizations who are committed to delivering high quality, differentiated customer care trust Nuance Enterprise Services (NES) to provide the full range of services required to plan, design, develop, deploy, and optimize their customer interaction solutions. Largest Professional Services team focused on solutions for the contact center 300+ Systems Integrators, Solution Architects, and Application Developers 100 Voice and Graphical User Interface Design Experts 50 Speech Scientists specializing in computational linguistics and acoustic modeling Project Managers experienced in complex, enterprise-level, contact center deployments Terabytes of performance data providing unmatched insight into caller preferences for maximum self-service usage 4
Nuance Solutions: Nuance Mobile Care (NMC) Starting from when consumers dial the contact number for the carrier s care organization, there is nothing more compelling than a mobile operator using a mobile device to empower the consumer to manage their care needs. Nuance Mobile Care delivers complete self-service experience directly to the handset. Without the need for any training or change in behavior, the consumer can leverage a highly intuitive screen interface to automatically resolve common problems such as diagnosing and repairing configuration problems and making account and billing inquiries all through the handset without an interaction with an agent. Consumers simply dial the care number they are familiar with and the Nuance application intercepts the call and presents them with an on-screen self-service option. The consumer can always continue on to complete the call if they choose. Recent research Nuance conducted with Yankee Research indicates that nearly 80% percent of callers would prefer managing care interactions from the handset when given the option. Caller Authentication If the caller chooses not to use the Nuance Mobile Care selfservice solution, they may continue on to the IVR. Knowing exactly who the consumer is can be critical to providing high quality customer care. Nuance Caller Authentication can be used to determine who the customer is using voice print technology which precludes the need for the customer to know account numbers, pins or other information that they may not have easily available. In addition, Caller Authentication technology can deal with issues of fraud. With incidences of fraud on the rise, regulatory agencies are recommending enhanced security and customers are being challenged to remember a multitude of passwords and account access procedures. Companies are re-evaluating their authentication strategies for the voice channel. Nuance s Caller Authentication Solution provides the design, implementation, and optimization of an authentication process to make effective real-time authentication decisions in a call center. These decisions are made through a controlled and auditable process using business rules that are applicable to both IVR and agent interactions. This means intelligently testing and weighing factors such as: voice biometrics, ANI, challenge questions, pattern matching, and agent inputs. Call Steering To address the high call volumes and multiple routing destinations carrier s face, Nuance Call Steering is the premium, packaged call routing solution that provides accurate and cost-effective routing via a single point of access. Unlike touchtone systems, whose complex menus lead to misrouted calls and a bad customer experience, Nuance Call Steering allows customers to describe their needs in their own words and move directly to their destination so that organizations can direct inbound calls more accurately, more efficiently, and with higher caller satisfaction. 5
NUANCE :: customer care solutions IVR Self-Service Once the customer reaches the self-service portion of a carrier s IVR, they do not want to be overwhelmed with complex menu options. Nuance can help create an intuitive design that lets callers get their tasks completed quickly and easily. Nuance Professional Services offers Automated Interaction Services that span solution design, development, delivery and integration. Companies who want efficient, high-quality service solutions trust Nuance to deliver customer interactions that boost contact center performance and deliver an enhanced caller experience, utilizing any combination of speech technologies, DTMF and SMS. The Nuance team has nearly 20 years experience developing self-service solutions utilizing all leading platforms and technologies. Nuance leads the industry with 5000+ self-service deployments in 23 languages. Nuance is leading the way by integrating SMS capabilities into the self-service experience in order to capture any input or output modality for phone-based self-service, and to provide the optimal experience for the increasing numbers of callers using mobile devices. Our experience is bolstered by the Nuance Deployment Databank, a repository of millions of automated interactions that allow callers from multiple verticals to literally tell Nuance what type of interactions they prefer. Agent Wrap Up After the call is complete, agents will want to make notes with regard to the nature of the call and any relevant follow-up steps. These notes are critical in making sure customers feel they were listened to when the next agent they call has the context and understanding of their previous experiences with the care organization. This process is critical but sometimes costly. Nuance s agent wrap up solution allows agents to quickly dictate call notes 15% faster than through conventional keyboard entry methods. Quicker post call wrap up translates into greater agent effectiveness allowing them to get back online faster. Outbound Solutions Finally, carriers may want to reach out to consumers proactively and before they call the contact center. Nuance Notification Hub is the complete outbound customer lifecycle solution that enables automated, personalized, actionable notifications over SMS, email and voice. It helps businesses reduce inbound call volumes, increase customer satisfaction, and create new revenue opportunities by delivering interactive, relevant communications to customers. The solution can be easily extended to integrate with third party outbound dialers. It can help companies comply with industry best practices and regulations by allowing customers to set preferences for communication channels and times. With Nuance Notification Hub, your contact center can successfully design, develop, launch, manage, and analyze your multichannel proactive notification campaigns. 6
Nuance is uniquely positioned to help carriers Nuance automates more than 8 billion caller interactions each year. Nuance has deployed over 5,000 customer care solutions across many customer-service intensive industry sectors, including telecommunications, healthcare and insurance, financial services, utility, retail and travel. Building upon over 20 years of experience in customer care technologies for contact centers, Nuance is in a unique position to help telecommunications carriers better understand and improve their interactions with consumers. More than two-thirds of the US Fortune 100 use Nuance solutions. From a mobile market perspective, Nuance has delivered mobile speech on more than 250 million devices to date and predictive text solutions on over 1 billion devices. In addition, over 1 billion more mobile devices will ship with Nuance technology within the next three years. The telecommunications world has never been more challenging. The number of services offered is on the rise, consumer expectations are higher than ever and at the same time, pressure to manage costs remains a priority in the face of competitive price pressure. While Nuance acknowledges that sometimes managing these seemingly competing priorities can be daunting, the opportunity to deliver an amazing customer interaction, in an efficient manner while increasing revenue is a reality for those who partner with Nuance. 7
NUANCE :: customer care solutions about Nuance Communications Nuance is in the business of helping companies better support, communicate with and understand their customers while maintaining operational efficiency goals. No other company has as much experience as Nuance in understanding how customers interface with a care operation. Our vision is to make every customer interaction a winning experience. For more information about our customer interaction solutions, business consulting and professional services, please visit www.nuance.com/care. Copyright 2009, Nuance Communications, Inc. All right reserved. Nuance, the Nuance logo, The experience speaks for itself, AccuBurst, Dynamic Language Detection, Grammar Builder, It s Me, Listen & Learn, Say Anything, Speak As One, SpeechObjects, V-Builder, Nuance Verifier, Nuance Vocalizer, Nuance Voice Platform, Nuance Voice Web Server, V-Optimizer, and Voyager are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective companies. WP 021609 NUCC313 NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS, INC. one wayside road burlington ma 01803 781 565 5000 nuance.com