While contact center operators generally accept that outsourcing customer service can improve dealings with clients, reduce costs and boost operating efficiencies, some also believe it doesn't help reinforce brand essence.
This can be particularly true when non-native customer service representatives (CSRs) — who have a totally different frame of cultural reference than the customers they are hired to serve — are used. And remember, “non-native” could just as easily be Ben from Bangalore answering calls on behalf of an American company as it could be Betty from Buffalo handling inquiries for a firm in the United Kingdom.
Too often, outsourced customer care is evaluated as a basic operational decision in contact centers — one that's made by a C-level finance manager whose primary concern is to save money and increase operating margins. The risk of this approach is the huge potential for failure, not to mention the devastating effects a poorly executed program can have on a company's long-term customer satisfaction.
Finance's primary focus is on costs. And marketing often is busy developing creative, exploring new markets and launching products and services. Somewhere in the process it tends to be forgotten that the contact center can be a central touch point in a company's go-to-market strategy, helping to reinforce brand image and foster customer retention and loyalty — and that it's worthy of resource commitment and dedication.
When customers refuse to deal with or are frustrated by a telephone rep from Bangalore or Buffalo, brand suffers. Underestimating the value of the contact center, whether it's in-house our outsourced, can have a devastating effect on a brand's value.
However, with proper planning, implementation and continuous process improvement, an outsourced customer care program can yield its intended cost savings and service level benefits — while avoiding the unintended consequences of an abandoned brand essence.
One challenge associated with outsourcing is striking a balance between what the outsourced provider knows best — technology, computer telephony integration and customer service — and the intangible challenges of maintaining and extending a company's core brand essence.
The outsourced contact center industry has seen dramatic changes over the past decade. Contact centers are no longer regarded as cost centers but rather as profit centers. Capitalizing on inbound cross-selling opportunities has become quite common. And recruiting and training multifunctional customer sales/service reps has added a degree of complexity to the business as well.
But just as the migration from “service” to “service and sell” came with an incremental price tag, so too will the evolutionary shift to “branded customer service.” Accordingly, we must focus on integrating the needs of enlightened brand managers with those of skeptical financial officers to create a new service — one with incremental hiring, training and monitoring expenses.
Decisions will need to be made in which “branding” trumps the traditional metrics of “cost” when evaluating the potential benefits of outsourcing. While initially there may be additional expenditures, ultimately the extended brand value will improve the overall return on investment of the total outsourced customer care effort.
Beyond mere customer satisfaction and service performance-level analysis, branded customer service requires active customer participation. If customers exposed to this new kind of contact center activity feel better about the brand, then branded customer service has been achieved.
Here's two examples of branded customer services in a contact center environment:
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A prepaid wireless communication product is developed and targeted to teenage girls. The telecom company's advertising has a youthful edge, using age-appropriate language, color and context that reflect its target audience. The customer care challenge is to deliver an enjoyable experience in which service levels are met and brand extension achieved.
Essentially, there are two choices: (a) Develop a highly competent live operator and interactive voice response environment using traditional scripting and staid, reliable customer service reps, or (b) Develop a customer experience that delivers on service level requirements and functionality and has the hip edge of the core brand.
In Option ‘a’, the customer experience is likely to be perceived as efficient and courteous — nice, but not primary core brand takeaways. In Option ‘b,’ the provider is able to use the tone, slang and colloquialisms of its audience while delivering quality care. In other words, the target consumer will define the experience as, “Hey, that was way cool!”
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Approximately 18.2 million Americans suffer from diabetes. Patients continually must assess their glucose levels using self-monitoring devices. Maintaining this regimen often can be challenging and painful, making it critical for device manufacturers to establish a caring relationship between their technical support representatives and patients.
Some medical device manufacturers have turned to outsourcing as an effective hybrid solution. Besides hiring doctors, nurses and other high-level healthcare professionals to staff these programs, outsourced providers also use advanced contact center technologies such as skill-based routing and screen pops to handle repeat customer inquiries and help build relationships between patients and service reps. Outbound dialing systems also are used to enable the CSR “caregiver” to follow up with patients while using the appropriate, legally permissible customer management processes to engender genuine interactive relationships.
Remember that every customer touch is an opportunity to improve brand value. Make sure your outsourcing agreements include both service- and branding-level metrics, so your contact center can have the maximum branding punch.
James Vander Putten (jvanderputten@ictgroup.com) is senior vice president and sidebar co-author Pam Goyke (pgoyke@ictgroup.com) chief information officer at ICT Database Marketing Services, a division of ICT Group Inc., Newtown, PA.
Seize Those Touch Points!
Every customer interaction is a chance to enrich the brand. Here are seven steps to help transform calls from a mere cost of doing business to a branding opportunity.
Step 1. Recognize core brand values and take-away statements.
Step 2. Align those values with contact center metrics that can be calibrated through systematic tracking and traditional consumer research.
Step 3. Create a new training curriculum that goes beyond competence and courtesy and includes the presentation of brand attitude as defined in core value statements.
Step 4. Set into motion role playing and simulation to help ensure that the customer service representatives and contact center management are delivering against the core values with every customer touch.
Step 5. Monitor continuously the brand managers, corporate decision makers and the outsourced provider's management to listen to customer interactions firsthand.
Step 6. Using characteristic customer samples from the brand's core marketing segments, do consumer research, asking them about their brand takeaways.
Step 7. Compare target and control group results, and improve customer touch protocols to enrich the total brand experience.
The Top 5 for 2005
A roundup of what will be hot in call center technology
VoIP.
Advances in voice over Internet protocol (or Internet telephony), combined with reduced telecommunication costs and the availability of cost-effective, qualified resources in other regions of the world, has led to the explosive growth of offshore contact centers. VoIP allows for the delivery of seamless, high-quality sales and service solutions from anywhere in the world — efficiently, reliably and cost-effectively.
Speech recognition
Advanced speech recognition (ASR) is highly effective for streamlining costs as well as improving operating efficiency and customer satisfaction. Compared with traditional touch-tone or interactive voice response (IVR) solutions, ASR provides customers with a more accessible, efficient and user-friendly alternative for obtaining information without having to navigate through cumbersome directories. Companies also are using ASR to extend their brand image, create automated IVR “personalities” and help foster customer retention, satisfaction and loyalty while reducing costs and improving efficiency through self-service and automation.
‘Intelligent’ quality assurance digital recording
Advanced digital recording technologies are capable of purposefully scanning voice and data information, identifying potential problems and providing an opportunity for continuous development and improvement. Using this intelligent recording technology, service providers can more easily identify potential problems based on client-specific information, addressing these matters proactively and optimizing performance while also improving agent satisfaction and retention.
Security/disaster recovery
Combined with the explosion of offshore contact centers, clients increasingly are focused on security, redundancy and the protection of their customers' voice and data transactions. Accordingly, outsourced service providers are utilizing centralized, common technology across their global operations. They're also setting up IT/data network facilities to provide clients with optimal system redundancy, up-time performance, security and communications safeguarding.
Performance dashboard software
The latest in contact center management technology, performance dashboard software consolidates service performance metrics across a number of different applications, providing such detailed statistics as average handle time, customer satisfaction, agent utilization and adherence in one centralized, convenient report. This optimized performance reporting tool can significantly streamline the statistical reporting process and yield improved operating efficiencies and greater cost savings for outsourced contact center operations.— James Vander Putten and Pam Goyke
