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Introduction
This paper presents general, practical considerations for those considering
Web-based customer service and support. It is assumed that the reader is either
researching ways to extend their online presence to include customer support or
seeking alternatives to traditional customer support methods. Top consultants
recommend a holistic approach that integrates the strengths of several methods
into an overall strategy for customer service and support. A Web-based method
can be one of your most powerful business tools in implementing this strategy.
Challenges For Suppliers In The New e-Business Economy
Customer support is an essential part of maintaining a competitive position in
the industry. Companies can and do compete on the basis of superior service and
support. The evolution of business into ebusiness brings new levels of
competition. Not only does the Internet provide around-the-clock access from
global markets, but it levels the playing field between competing suppliers.
There can be great variation between business entities in terms of size, age,
wealth, whether one has an information technology (IT) staff, and so on. In the
new ebusiness economy these differences become less visible in comparison to
the basic value of the products and services offered. Because of this, small
dot.com companies can project the same market profile as larger
brick-and-mortar companies.
On the Internet, features and prices are easily compared. This creates more
choice for the consumer. Furthermore, since selection of an alternative
supplier requires only a mouse click, prices of substitute items tend to
converge at commodity levels. In such a business environment, service and
support become more significant to maintaining loyalty. Supplying superior
service becomes even more important as a means to differentiate and earn
customer loyalty.
Let's consider two businesses. The first is a medium-sized enterprise. It has
several hundred employees, a brand name with a retail presence, an IT
department, dedicated customer service personnel, and perhaps a call center
that also handles some of the incoming email. One example of this size company
is Black&Decker, which has been
around for years and has a loyal market. A company this size might be
interested in maintaining currency in the new ebusiness environment. Such a
company might face the challenge of maintaining high quality customer contact
while volume increases to ever higher levels.
The second organization is a much smaller. They have dozens of employees,
operate in a new, niche market, have one or two products and their customers
are other businesses. No one is assigned exclusively to customer support. Such
a company might be interested in revenue growth and market share. However,
increased volume generated by recent press coverage and online advertising is
creating support concerns. Previously the managerial staff could handle all of
the customer questions and concerns by telephone. Now things are starting to
fall thru the cracks.
It's clear that both these types of companies need to examine their customer
support solutions.
Comparison Of Alternatives
Numerous methods exist for providing service and support to your customers and
business partners. These communication methods include telephone, call center,
fax, email, customer visits and, most recently, the Web.
These methods vary widely in cost and the degree of interactivity and therefore
selection amongst these alternatives depends on the type and style of your
business. A small, niched business-to-business company in an industrial market
may not invest in a call center but instead depend on email for receiving and
logging customer contact. However, a large company dealing in residential
services would rely heavily on call center technology.
Web-based customer self-service provides a complementary addition to these
traditional methods. Currently a large number of businesses put product
information, brochures and catalog content on line. A growing number of these
businesses have established online order processing for not only their
customer's convenience but to add speed and accuracy to the shopping
experience. Although most business managers recognize customer support as
equally important to acquiring and retaining customers, many still depend
exclusively on email and telephone based methods. New Web-based technology
makes this inconsistency unnecessary.
The Web's strength is delivering graphical, hyperlinked information, anywhere
at anytime. Suitability of Internet methods for handling customer service is
judged on ease of access to information and the degree of interactivity.
Original Web methods and styles were lacking on both accounts compared to what
was available through telephone contact. Development of Internet technologies
and Web authoring tools has enabled a more robust user interface (UI) that
includes capability for inquiry, and information retrieval. Evolution of these
capabilities has resulted in interactivity and information access that is on
par with traditional customer service solutions.
Workflow Technology
A third component of customer service and support is the business process, the
policies and procedures for stepping the customer contact from beginning to
end. This encompasses inquiries, complaints, and service actions such as Return
Material Authorization (RMA) and warranty. Exact steps in processing customer
contact can be described by a workflow. Workflow technology has been embedded
into commercial products for some time. Tasks such as bank loan processing that
are procedure oriented and involve several people can be modeled and managed
with workflow technology. The paperwork that traditionally floated around
between people's inbox waiting for review is now captured in electronic form
and routed through networks.
Workflow technology can be applied to the service and support function of
business where one receives inquiries or requests from the customer. This type
of contact is stepped through a workflow process from logging, to routing, and
then on to investigation and resolution. By automating and managing these
steps, workflow based software adds quality by ensuring all steps are completed
in the right order and nothing is forgotten or left out. Workflow-based
software applications also add convenient functions such as database search,
statistical aggregation and report production.
Goals Of The Service Supplier
Develop and maintain customer satisfaction and goodwill
Over the long term the success of a business depends on repeat customers or
references from satisfied customers. Customer satisfaction with service and
support has its basis in the achievement of customers' goals. These goals can
be simple, like getting information to make a decision or use a product. They
might also be more complex, such as getting a product fixed. A good customer
support method should help customers achieve their goals. Web-based systems
have the potential to achieve goals that center around the delivery of
information and the processing of requests and claims.
Make it easy for customers to do business with you
Progressive business leaders seek ways to streamline their businesses. This not
only minimizes cost by increasing efficiency but it also makes it easier for
customers to do business. We can apply this concept to service and support by
giving people more access, more choice and improving communications.
Traditional methods often are designed around the limitations of older business
processes. In older processes customer have access to the services and
knowledge base of the company only through a portal, with a gatekeeper who is
on duty only from say 9AM to 5PM. Confirmation and response notification is
sometimes optional. Now if someone made it difficult for you to do business
with them, would you come back or go elsewhere?
Adopting Web methods helps to remove barriers to doing business by providing a
solution that is customer centric rather than supplier centric. This means
providing support twenty-four hours a day instead of only during business
hours. It means providing support globally, not just domestically or within a
region. It means giving the customer the keys to the knowledge base rather than
using intermediaries to find and deliver what is there. By giving the customer
both control and responsibility, the support process revolves around the
customer's preferences rather than those of the supplier.
Achieving ROI
An investment in customer service capabilities, like any other project, should
come under ROI scrutiny. Quantifying an exact number is difficult, but for
those who have already decided to make an investment, ROI based decision can be
reduced to a qualitative comparison between the viable alternatives.
Back-of-the-envelope analysis tells us that call center technology has a high
fixed cost for a list of things from capital equipment to staff payroll. This
choice only becomes viable at high volumes. However high volume does not
necessarily dictate the need for a call center solution. Web-based solutions
improve on the call center choice by providing a solution that works at high
volumes yet requires a lower fixed cost.
Ideally as volume grows the support system scales accordingly. A Web-based
self-service system places much of the responsibility for information research
and problem logging in the customer's domain. Thus at least this portion of the
support scales exactly with the volume of users. Using other methods,
particularly those not providing knowledge base and problem logging, the
resource loading increases in proportion to the volume of users.
Inviting The Customer Into Your Business
The full potential of Web-based customer service methods is realized when the
customers and business partners have access to the dynamic data sets found
within the organization. An example is giving access to technical drawings and
part lists so that a customer may select a replacement part to order. Another
example is when the site content is configured or tailored in response to the
identity of the site visitor. A visitor from the XYZ company might be presented
with convenient links to the products that have been purchased.
Integration
Structural integration
The degree of integration between the customer support functions and other
marketing & sales functions is a matter of choice and will vary. The Web
site might have separate sections of the site devoted to service and support.
Site visitors that decide to use the service features must navigate on their
own to the service portion of the site. An integrated approach has navigation
links to service functions available at convenient and reasonable locations
throughout the site or electronic media.
Integration of information resources
Data about your business and customers are stored in a multitude of files
around your organization and there may exist a variety of tools for managing
this resource. The integration of functions across these information resources
is the motivating concept behind both customer resource management (CRM)
solutions provided by Siebel and Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems provided by Oracle.
A common example of this integration is when customer information, such as
names and addresses, is entered once and then shared amongst business
functions. Furthermore the customer support functions and knowledge base may be
arranged in some hierarchical or partitioned format. This facilitates
organization and management of these functions and content. CRM and ERP suites
have traditionally provided a desktop client application to provide
integration, access and presentation of this information.
Web-based solutions use hyperlink technology that allows immediate navigation
short cuts directly to the relevant information or support features. Consider a
business that places its product catalog online. Next to a product description
is a link to assembly instructions for that specific product. A customer, who
incidentally has already purchased the product, opens a standard browser on
another type of computer, enters a name and requests additional information.
Such a scenario integrates the support function across three databases (the
catalog database, engineering documentation, and customer management) at three
locations and two computer systems that can't normally talk to each other. We
have created something close to a universal tool for supplying customer
support.
Resource Loading
Organizational issues influence the choice of a customer support solution.
Consistency should exist between the solution and the organization resources.
For instance, most all customer service methods allow the logging of request
and the subsequent routing to support personnel for processing or resolution.
Web-based methods do not provide anything new in this respect. However
Web-based methods have the best potential for reducing the total resource load
from repetitive tasks such as providing answers to FAQs. Many companies have
found that these types of customer contact form the bulk of customer
interaction. Personnel tasked with answering email and phone enquiries might be
freed up by the installation of a knowledge base that provides this same
information online. However, effort and a different set of skills must be
applied to maintaining the knowledge base and providing dynamic qualities to
the website content.
Teamwork And Skills Allocation
How customer support is handled varies greatly depending on the type of
business. Options exist as to the division of responsibility between the front
line and other departments. The people who handle the customer interaction are
not necessarily the same people who have in depth technical knowledge and
experience with the product. This division of tasks optimizes the training
effort between skill bases. Web technology offers the option of having a thin
CSR staff skilled in customer interaction that routes contacts to technically
trained support personnel. While the knowledge base (KB) is made available to
the CSRs when interacting with the customer, problem tickets and enquiries can
be logged and routed by the CSRs to the appropriate personnel for resolution.
Maintenance of on-line service capability requires coordination and cooperation
of several organizational functions: marketing, information technology and
operations. In some organizations, customer support is a part of the operations
function. However providing dynamic, interactive content may require the
involvement of people who possess specific knowledge and web designers who can
package and present the information.
Geographic And Cultural Scope
For large, distributed organizations an inherent conflict exists between the
need to standardize the service or product offering across business units and
geographic boundaries and the desire to localize the offering within cultural
boundaries. Brand managers like to see standardization while area managers
desire customization to meet the needs of the local market.
The nature of the Internet is that it tends not to acknowledge geographic,
political and cultural boundaries. Information just goes everywhere. This can
be put to good use by providing a cohesive image for companies that happen to
have globally distributed sales and operations. The result is that the brand
names such as IBM mean the same in Texas as
they do in Istanbul. Although providing localization while using Internet
methods can be problematic, translation programs exist which aid the porting of
Web site content into dozens of languages (
www.accentsoftware.com & www.languageware.net).
The customer can then be given the choice at the top of the website as to what
language is convenient for them. Extending this same sort of coverage using
call center methods quickly becomes intractable. Thus if your company aspires
to global markets and you consider customer support an integral part of your
business, you may have only one option.
Implementation
Web technology provides an advantage over traditional client/server
applications in that it immediately and effortlessly rolls out to all of the
organization. This ubiquitous nature gives it great potential for integration
with all other processes.
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