Business White Paper Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Be Where Your Customers Are: The Need for a Multi-Channel Strategy...2 Recognize and Remember Your Customers and Customize Your Service to Meet Their Needs...5 The Benefits of Using Web 2.0 to Enhance the Customer Experience...6 Conclusion: The ROI of Web 2.0... 7 May 2009 Introduction Customers today expect the companies with which they do business to be able to interact with them through an ever-greater number of channels. These channels while still dominated by voice increasingly also include SMS (texting), e-mail, live chat, and Web self-service. Many companies have already begun adopting these emerging Web-based channels to give customers service choices that transcend traditional phone interactions. Allowing customers to use the channel of their choice not only increases their satisfaction, but it also decreases churn and results in a significantly lower per-interaction customer service cost. But you might want to think about pushing the envelope even further when leveraging the Web to support customers. Today, Web 2.0 technologies are making possible entirely new forms of customer engagement. By intelligently integrating both phone and Web-based support channels with the robust communications capabilities made possible by Web 2.0, you enable the delivery of a new kind of customer experience one that can transform customer service activities from line-item expenses into profitable, even revenue-generating, interactions. Web 2.0 encompasses the set of tools that allow people to leverage the Web to build social and business connections, share information, and collaborate on projects. These tools include rich Internet applications, blogs, wikis, mashups, social networking, and other online communities; use of virtual assistants or avatars; and virtual worlds. Although initially driven by 12-to-17 year olds, Web 2.0 tools are now considered completely mainstream across all demographics, and are permeating consumer-to-enterprise interactions in addition to typical consumerto-consumer interactions. According to Forrester, the global enterprise Web 2.0 market will reach US$4.6 billion in 2013, which represents a compound annual growth rate of 43%. 1 1. Forrester: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013 (04/2008)
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 2 of 7 Over the next year, customer service will fuse with marketing to become a holistic inbound, outbound campaign of listening to and engaging with customers that will rewrite the rules of the game. Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media, by Brian Solis Web 2.0 technologies enable new ways of delivering customer service throughout the enterprise, thereby accomplishing two things: First, they make possible easier communications between: a) you and your customers; b) the customers themselves, and; c) your own internal customer service employees. As these different conversations take place, the interrelationships between all stakeholders deepens, and customer service becomes intertwined with marketing, sales, new product support, QA, and, indeed, every aspect of the business. Secondly, the portable applications and widgets you can create using Web 2.0 technologies allow you to deliver online services to customers without requiring them to download any software to their desktops or alter their established ways of working. This, in turn, creates a more seamless customer experience. These two factors, taken together, have the potential to transform customer interactions from activities that cost your business money to ones that are actually profitable. Not only are these non-traditional customer service channels less expensive to operate than traditional voice channels, but they also let you mine all the interactions for optimal business value. For example, each customer interaction represents an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell products and services; gather intelligence about your market; gauge customer interest; and generate ideas on future product development. In the best of all possible worlds, your customers actually become evangelists for your company or products, and virtual extensions of your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. In essence, when Web 2.0 technologies are well integrated into your workflow, each service session can become an opportunity to generate revenue. By integrating multi-channel customer service with Web 2.0 technologies, your business can improve the quality of your non-voice customer interactions and in the process reduce service costs, increase the possibilities for transforming service sessions into sales opportunities, increase market intelligence, and improve your bottom line. Be Where Your Customers Are: The Need for a Multi-Channel Strategy Most enterprises today utilize voice as the primary way they communicate with customers, and some also have started using e-mail and chat to supplement voice support. But increasingly, your customers want to interact in other, Web-based ways as well: co-browsing, SMS (texting), Web self-service, and Web callback, just to name a few. At the minimum, you have to be where your customers are, and moving beyond voice to these other, Web-based channels is a critical first step. But today, with Web 2.0 technologies, you can enrich customer conversations even more.
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 3 of 7 Consumers trust a friend or acquaintance who has used a product or service above all other sources, suggesting that peer-to-peer communications are key for brands to succeed in today s marketplace. Data chart of the week: who do people trust? Groundswell, Josh Bernoff, April 28, 2008 Specifically, you can use the following Web 2.0 tools to enhance the customer experience in ways that deliver measurable value back to your business. > Wikis. Wikis are collections of Web pages that enable multiple users to contribute and modify content and create collaborative Web sites and communities. The most well-known wiki is Wikipedia, in which people from around the world create and contribute to encyclopedia entries on virtually every subject imaginable. Wikis can contribute to the customer experience in two ways: First, by creating a customer-facing support wiki for a particular product, you can empower your customer community to develop a knowledge base of FAQs and answers, and thus take some of the support burden off your own employees. Second, by creating an internal wiki among all employees who impact the customer experience in any way, you can capture knowledge and share experiences so that your employees are not constantly reinventing the wheel with each customer support interaction. The wiki serves, in essence, as a dynamic user-generated knowledge base that can supplement and complement the enterprise-created and formally managed knowledge base. > Online communities. An online community is a group of people who interact via the Web using a variety of communication methods from e-mail, to texting, to wikis, to message board posts in order to achieve a common goal. Sometimes that goal is social; sometimes it is professional; sometimes commercial. With regard to customer support, many companies are already actively engaged in creating and managing online communities for their customers. The idea behind this is simple: people are already talking about your company and your products and services in online forums and on business, and on product-rating sites like Yelp. Companies are realizing that they have to be part of this conversation, and that it makes sense to sponsor it themselves, as this provides opportunities to shape or otherwise impact it. In these online communities, it is not uncommon for super users customers who pride themselves on knowing your products, and who get satisfaction from answering others questions and troubleshooting their issues and problems to present themselves. Many companies harness the power of these super users by providing them with special briefings and/or training, and by giving them tools to better navigate through the community. The market intelligence and feedback on the features and qualities of your products that you get from an online community are invaluable. But one caveat: Online communities do not run themselves. They require moderators or community managers to monitor, organize, and take part in user conversations when appropriate and necessary. > Social networking. Social networking consists of Web-based online technology that provides ways for people to interact, including via e-mail, instant messaging 2. The Pew Internet & American Life Project s December 2008 tracking survey
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 4 of 7 The success of user-generated media and the social computing applied in the consumer technology market is setting a new level of expectation for enterprise technologies. 2009 Trends to Watch: Collaborative & Knowledge Management, Data Monitor, January 1, 2009 (IM), and texting. The share of adult Internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years from 8% in 2005 to 35% now. 2 Enterprises can participate in social networks by creating interest groups around products and services, and by allowing network members to subscribe to and endorse these interest groups and help evangelize them. > Widgets. A widget is a rich Internet application that resides on a Web page, usually embedded where it is most accessible to the end user. For example, some companies make widgets available that act as 1:1 portals to bundle and push services to each individual customer directly. Because these portals act as twoway conversation channels, each customer can also use them to interact with the company both in e-commerce transactions and on service issues while getting highly personalized marketing and promotional materials in return. And, because all of this can be done from a user s personalized Web page, in effect you re delivering customer experience directly to each individual customer, rather than forcing him or her to come to you. The widgets help bring about a new simultaneous push/pull interaction channel to your dialog with your end customers one which they can tailor to their specific informational and transactional needs. > Virtual assistants. A virtual assistant is a computer-based video or threedimensional (3D) representation of a customer service face of the enterprise that assists customers by answering questions, offering guided step-based problem resolution, or providing instructions. The virtual assistant can either be the graphic front-end for an automated knowledge system, a live customer service representative (CSR) in your contact center, or both, depending upon the context of the interaction. > Mashups. As a Web application that combines data from more than one source into a single, integrated tool, a mashup is an invaluable way to improve customer service, as it enables companies to take knowledge accumulated in a variety of ways from a variety of channels from community chat boards, to customer-facing wikis, internal wikis, transaction systems, and e-mails and consolidate them in one place. This ability to bring together a diverse assortment of information also encompasses rich media such as video, audio, and graphical elements. For example, a frequent traveler could create a mashup of all of the relevant site information that s/he might need on a specific location or destination such as weather reports, restaurant guides, airline arrival/departure information, government travel advisories, and independent travel advice and have it all intelligently integrated into one screen. > Real Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is a way of distributing a continuous stream of frequently updated content. Users subscribe to news, blogs, or wikis via an RSS feed, and are immediately and automatically notified when updated or new
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 5 of 7 content is available. Companies can use RSS to deliver up-to-the-minute bulletins about their products or services to interested customers. For instance, a consumer belonging to a health maintenance organization (HMO) might subscribe to that HMO s RSS feed to get current information regarding health bulletins or holiday operating hours. > Crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing involves taking a task that would typically be performed by a paid employee and outsourcing it to a large, and often undefined, group or community of people. In effect, this is what you do when you engage your customers in online communities or provide them access to wikis you are shifting support tasks that previously fell entirely on your organization into the hands of your customers. Not only is this an extremely cost-effective strategy, but you will also invariably end up with a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of your customers, and how you can better meet their needs in the future. For example, the idea behind Yahoo! Answers is essentially one of crowdsourcing by asking a question of the community at large. Once an answer is provided, it is rated by the community and archived. In the future, anyone with a similar question is provided with the original query as well as the best answers provided for that query. Virtual Assistance Widgets Social Networking Crowd Sourcing Wikis, Mashups RSS Online Communities Line of Business Sales & Marketing Product Development Customer Service Figure-1 The Customer Experience Meets the Enterprise with Web 2.0 Tools Recognize and Remember Your Customers and Customize Your Service to Meet Their Needs Once you enable the multi-channel Web 2.0 conversation, you must capture all interactions with your customers across all channels and media so that you can remember them in each new conversation. This requires integration of all knowledge bases, user community activities, and desktops, which in turn gives you the opportunity to customize service to meet each customer s unique needs. By doing this, you can: Improve service quality. > If you have detailed records of every contact with a given customer, regardless of how or when they ve contacted you in the past, you can reduce
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 6 of 7 wait time in service queues; know customers purchase and service histories without them having to tell you; and easily follow up on support calls to ensure satisfaction was delivered. Because you can aggregate end-user data more effectively, you can apply advanced analytics (Web, voice, and Web 2.0) to this data and gather statistics more efficiently and completely about how customers interact with your company through which channels, at what times, and how often. This will help you better understand what is working well with your customer interaction strategy, and what can be further optimized to improve service. > Streamline internal workflow. All too often, customer service efforts within the enterprise are fragmented into silos that are scattered through various functional departments and lines of business and, because of this, the quality of service delivered to customers can be inconsistent. By consolidating information across channels and media, you can boost the efficiency of all your employees who impact the customer experience by giving them 360-degree visibility into each customer s interaction history with your company. > Enhance the bottom line. Because you know what products/services individual customers have purchased in the past, you can up-sell/cross-sell them on additional ones that they might need, or on those that logically complement the ones they already have or are about to purchase. What s more, you can use customer feedback to develop new products and services that will appeal to the market in general, and to individual customers in particular. The Benefits of Using Web 2.0 to Enhance the Customer Experience Web 2.0 technologies enable internal customer-facing employees to share best practices, and to ensure continuity, collaboration, and consistency when serving customers, regardless of where they are situated within the enterprise including behind the firewall (internal collaboration) and across the firewall (leveraging customer contributions to help other customers). The advantages are that you can: > Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Customers can interact with you on their preferred terms, and the superior quality of the experience as enabled by Web 2.0 technologies makes for a more overall compelling experience. > Cut the per-interaction cost of delivering customer service. The telephone is your single most expensive support channel. By offering a variety of other options and implementing an automated solution that enables you to transform uni-directional communications into bidirectional ones, and vice versa your overall customer service costs will be reduced. > Grow your business. By integrating sales into the customer service conversation, you can increase sales through contextually relevant up-selling and cross-selling, which will subsequently boost revenue. > Improve product development and quality assurance (QA). Web 2.0 also makes it easy to listen to what customers say about your products and services, and to then apply what you learn to the designing and building of new products, and improving the quality of your existing ones.
A Business White Paper: Using Web 2.0 to Drive Exceptional Customer Experiences page 7 of 7 > Enhance market intelligence and, therefore, your competitive edge. By utilizing these richer communication and collaboration tools, you gain much more direct and spontaneous insight into what is happening in your market than any survey or focus group could ever tell you. Conclusion: The ROI of Web 2.0 Customers today want to be able to interact with a company how and when they want. Both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies are increasingly interested in employing Web 2.0 technologies to enhance the customer experience, but many are still struggling to quantify the business value of using these technologies. Customer service is an area where the ROI is clear: First, you achieve a reduction in customer support costs; second, you gain increased operational efficiencies through integrating Web 2.0 into internal workflows; third, you can increase revenues by being where the customer is and by more effectively communicating with them for sales and marketing purposes; and finally, you gain increased operational efficiencies through integrating Web 2.0 into internal workflows. But you shouldn t try to adapt your customer service activities to Web 2.0. Instead, you must bring Web 2.0 activities to your customer service initiatives. The bottom line is that businesses that employ a multi-channel, Web 2.0 approach are more likely to enjoy a competitive advantage. Building social and business connections that support new forms of customer engagements help transform the customer conversation into a profitable relationship one that not only enhances the customer experience, but also grows revenue. For nearly 20 years, Genesys has been a leader in the enterprise customer service space. We ve helped our customers efficiently and cost-effectively identify, prioritize, and route customer phone calls, text chat messages, and e-mails to ensure delivery of stellar customer service throughout the enterprise. As such, Genesys is uniquely positioned to leverage Web 2.0 technologies to enable more successful and efficient customer conversations and, in the process, enhance customer satisfaction, decrease costs, and increase revenues. Genesys Worldwide Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the world s leading provider of contact center and customer service management software with more than 4,000 customers in 80 countries. Genesys software directs more than 100 million interactions every day, dynamically connecting customers with the right resources self-service or assisted-service to fulfill customer requests, optimize customer care goals and efficiently use agent resources. Genesys helps organizations drive contact center efficiency, stop customer frustration and accelerate business innovation. For more information visit: www.genesyslab.com, or call +1 888 GENESYS or 1-650-466-1100. 3041 v.1-05/09 Americas Corporate Headquarters Genesys 2001 Junipero Serra Blvd. Daly City, CA 94014 USA Tel: +1 650 466 1100 Fax: +1 650 466 1260 E-mail: info@genesyslab.com www.genesyslab.com Europe, Middle East, Africa EMEA Headquarters Genesys House 100 Frimley Business Park Frimley Camberley Surrey GU16 7SG United Kingdom Tel: +44 1276 45 7000 Fax: +44 1276 45 7001 Asia Pacific APAC Headquarters Genesys Laboratories Australasia Pty Ltd Level 17, 124 Walker Street North Sydney NSW 2060 Australia Tel: +61 2 9463 8500 www.genesyslab.com Genesys and the Genesys logo are registered trademarks of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All other company names and logos may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby recognized. 2009 Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved.