Is Customer Service Now Too Complex to Manage In-house?

For the past few decades, many companies have resisted the urge to outsource their customer care – arguing that their products/solutions were too specialized, that their brand was too valuable to trust to a third party, or that they wanted to keep the jobs in-state or in-country. However, the latest trend analysis shows a greater number of companies across virtually all industries are seriously considering outsourcing their customer care for the first time. Here is what’s driving this trend. While social media and mobile technologies are not new, their impact on the way consumers deal with their brands is finally starting to reach critical mass. These technologies have brought about a change in power by making it easier for customers to create viral word-of-mouth marketing for a brand – or to disparage them to thousands of people. In the case of the latter, mobile and social media channels have created an almost endless number of places where customers can complain: product review boards or crowd sourced review boards like Yelp or Angie’s List. In addition there are personal blog sites, Facebook, Twitter, and the list continues. Regardless if it’s positive or negative feedback, all consumer demographic segments expect to be able to communicate with their brands across any channel of their choosing at any time of day. But what’s interesting is that consumers now expect the same level of customer service prior to the sale that they receive post sale. This demanding "omni-channel" consumer includes Gen Y, Millennials, and your existing customer base but with much higher expectations and an evolving temperament. And they are creating new challenges for companies that are forcing them to re-examine how they structure their customer care programs. Consider the following: 1. Social Media Initially, the argument was that "your customers are talking about you on social media – so you’d better be there too." As such, corporate marketing departments have traditionally monitored social media. However, a growing number of consumers are using social channels to communicate with their brands and require more traditional "customer service." In too many cases, this results in data silos, an incomplete picture of the customer experience, and the inability to accurately map the customer experience – a critical step in learning how to deliver the type of customer experience needed to create competitive advantages. 2. Mobile technology The new trend with mobile users is to simultaneously engage brands across multiple channels. Most mobile users start with Click-to-Chat. Then if that doesn’t provide almost immediate satisfaction, they resort to voice. Chat is another technology that is frequently allocated to the Marketing Department. Not surprisingly, many companies have one team working chat, another team working social media, and a third team working voice (contact centers). As mentioned above, this disparate operational picture is creating new challenges from a technology perspective, from a resource perspective, and from a budget perspective. 3. Blurred lines of service When these so-called omni-channel customers reach out to brands, what may start off as a need for customer service may quickly turn into a cross-sale opportunity. While this is not necessary new, the difference is that the omni-channel customer wants the same type of low-pressure information they get from a customer care department, not the traditional high-pressure sales experience of the past. Consequently, agents, technologies, and procedures need to evolve to accommodate this changing consumer paradigm. [eventpdf] Smart organizations today have realized that their marketing, sales, and customer service functions need to work closely together. The connection to the customer is being redefined and broadened. To design and achieve the type of customer experience that drives competitive advantage, companies need an holistic view of each customer, they need to know the entire history of their interaction with each customer across all channels, and they need to know which channels each customer prefers using. It is not just post-purchase behavior that has changed, either. As mentioned earlier, customers are now seeking a compelling experience before, during, and after a purchase. They are asking for a much richer engagement with organizations be it online, in person, at home or in the store. It’s a fact that for consumers in both B2B and B2C, the buying cycle now starts online – long before they are willing to talk with your sales team. People look for information on products first and judge whether to continue researching your company or offerings by what they find online. Here are some good questions to ask: When your prospective customers Google your organization or solutions, what do they find? Often this buying process may also end online with interactions on various channels in the middle. Have you mapped these buying cycles for your own products? Do you know where most of your customers initially look for information? What do they look for? Where do they end up? And do different customers (demographics, region) behave in different ways? Managing the customer service process in this environment requires a different technological platform than in the past, one that allows for in-depth analysis across channels, that allows you to monitor at the individual level a customer’s history across all channels, one that gives you an holistic 360-degree view of the customer’s experience. You need to manage the customer experience of your brand right from the very first search or request for information. And you cannot just think of this as managing a process. If you don’t make the experience engaging then those customers may never make it through the buy cycle. We are no longer just processing customer service interactions and asking them to rate their satisfaction from one to ten; we are now trying to create brand advocates. When a customer experiences the way your organization engages with them, you want them going straight to their Facebook and telling all their friends: "Wow! These guys are great – go and check their website!" The way you deliver a customer experience today is going to create feedback for your operations and R&D teams. It’s now the primary interaction with customers where advertising and marketing programs used to handle all the pre-sales interaction. The team managing your interaction with customers is truly at the front-line of your business more than ever before. I believe the trend of first-time outsourcers starting to outsource their customer care will continue and even escalate. As evidenced by new Gartner research, customer experience will be the main competitive battleground by 2015. The process of managing the customer experience is now so fast-paced with so many moving parts and complexity that more companies are, for the first time, opting to go with an outsourcing partner specializing in global customer experience management.

Is Customer Service Now Too Complex to Manage In-house?

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Is Customer Service Now Too Complex to Manage In-house?

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