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| Friday, March 18, 2011 | |
| Expectations Around Customer Experience Are Changing | |
| Sruthi Ramakrishnan | |
| Andrew Kokes, Vice President, Global Product Management at Sitel, shared some insights with Sruthi Ramakrishnan on changing consumer behavior and how providers can best adapt to it. Excerpts from the interview: | |
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The Accenture 2010 Global Consumer Survey released last month highlighted important aspects of consumer attitudes and behaviors. The Survey, which had participation from more than 5,800 people in 17 countries (in both mature and emerging markets) across 10 industries, despite showing a decline in consumers switching providers due specifically to poor customer service, it remains a significant issue. Andrew Kokes, Vice President, Global Product Management at Sitel, shared some insights with Sruthi Ramakrishnan on changing consumer behavior and how providers can best adapt to it. Excerpts from the interview: GS:To what extent does customer service really affect consumers’ decision to switch service providers? AK: The customer experience is really the differentiating factor in an otherwise capability-neutral product environment. There are constantly new products with new feature functionalities. The rate of change is so rapid that a customer need only wait a matter of days sometimes for the next great thing to come to their service provider. Bells and whistles are a basic customer expectation with the differentiating factor being how a product makes them feel. The brand image, the price point and the experience the customer has have with a product is what’s in it for them. These are the reasons a customer would move from one product or brand to another. The actual customer-company relationship remains the unique element that can affect a consumer’s decision to stay or switch providers. Exceptional customer service is the face and voice of the brand experience, and is the foundation that a company needs to successfully attract and nurture their customer connections. It is also important to note that the expectations around the customer experience are changing. Successful companies are ones that are constantly evolving and adapting to the changing demands and demographics to shape a personalize experience for their customers; limiting the effort of the customer, opening additional contact channels and making product support more widely an open platform. GS: How have consumer expectations changed? How much of this change can be attributed to the popularity of social media? AK: Today up to 81% of smartphone users start their customer experience with the company online. This is indicative of the fact that the customer wants to be able to service themselves online, either through connecting to other consumers via an online forum or through the company’s own website. Social media is one such evolving channel in a larger online and mobile world. This means that there is a much broader web customer experience that companies need to be able to understand and support. Sitel sees two key opportunities of which service providers need to be aware in this case: Web Conversion—When a customer goes online with the intent of purchasing a product, a provider can have a 20% increase in online incremental conversion by providing support at the moment the consumer is looking to buy. Simply by offering the consumer some level of live support in the web buying channel, the provider can increase the chances of sale. Web Retention—When customers begin their experience online, they expect to resolve their issue online. The key for providers is to be there for the customer at the point before a consumer clicks away from the Web site because they either can’t find what they are looking for or when the information is too complicated. GS: How do you explain the disconnect between customers’ expectations and the service given by the providers? How can the two be better aligned? AK: Company culture plays a crucial role in how a provider is responding to customers’ needs and expectations. Providers that have a real emphasis on the customer experience, customer relationships, and the overall customer engagement are certainly better connected with their customers and tuned in to their needs and behavior. Studies of the largest consumer brands in the world have shown that there is a very strong correlation between companies that are highly engaged across multiple channels with their customers and the overall level of top line revenue and profitability, versus those companies that have a lower level of engagement in relationship with their customers which have, over the past couple of years, seen a decline in revenue and profitability. Company culture that is focused on the engagement, commitment, and development of a positive relationship with their customers rather than purely on cost-cutting is one that will cultivate loyal customers with greater Lifetime Customer Value. GS: Price is no longer the differentiator for selecting a service provider. What is the new differentiator? AK: Although price is still a big consideration when selecting a service provider, the bottom line is relationship and trust. To earn trust Sitel emphasizes Return on Customer Investment (RoCI) as our key metric. RoCI is a measuring stick that we put against everything we do and every investment we make. When a company commits their direct customer interaction to a service provider, it requires a high degree of confidence. There are a lot of different factors that go into building and earning that trust. There is of course the expectation that the price will be in a competitive range, but at the end of the day, I’m going to place my business with someone I trust will meet my service expectations and provide the best customer experience. GS: How can technology be used to boost customer experience? AK: Sitel technology is used to enable and optimize the entire customer experience. As the customer experience evolves across new communication channels, we are offering technologies that allow you to build a complete customer profile from their three big experiences - web, call center and social, blending all of these elements into a multi-channel social CRM strategy. We are using data analytics and web engagement technologies to offer proactive service and sales chat services. Technologies are becoming much more intelligent in the way that they allow you to monitor customer behavior and predict buying signs or support opportunities at precise moments of truth to drive online sales conversion or web retention. We are deploying artificial intelligence tools in the voice environment, to do complex matching of customers to agents. We look at the demographics of the customer population and psychographic profile of the agent population and do intelligent pairing based on specific business objectives, like improving sales conversion, first call resolution or customer satisfaction. The agent-caller matching technology uses key variables to create a level of empathy which potentially doesn’t exist when calls are routed solely on agent skills or availability. GS: Is the contact center industry seeing a rebound post-recession? If so, what is driving it? AK: At a macro scale, companies are focused on getting back to growth. Thee call center industry is becoming focused on customers and a dedication to growth and sales through new channels. Many brands saw incredible shrinkage in overall top line, and there is now pressure on these companies to get back to growth and overall profitability. As a result Sitel sees more intense focus on leveraging the customer experience to upsell and cross sell opportunities. GS: Which are the services seeing more demand? AK: In terms of demand, customers are craving more self-service and online or mobile communication options. Sitel sees strong growth in multi-channel support programs, with increasing emphasis on driving web retention for customer support and web conversion where selling opportunities exist. The call center agent is evolving into more of a tier 2 or tier 3 type of support as opposed to basic triage. Customers are already answering basic questions through Google, company websites, forums, and social networks, so agent are dealing with more complex questions. It’s not that there is less voice interactions, rather more customer touch point opportunities. Sophisticated companies need to be able to communicate with social customers and online networks because that’s how the customer is communicating. |
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