May/June 2007
How can we avoid the perception that "Customer Service" and "Self-Service" are contradictory?
(Congratulations to the reader from Erie Insurance who submitted this month's topic!)

In This Issue:
Offer Self-Service Your Customers Will Choose to Use
Customer Connection: Juniper Networks Wins Award
Eye on the Industry
Customer Connection: Juniper Networks Wins Award

In today's service environments, for most users, live assistance is more effective than self-service. Self-service implementations will remain non-persuasive as long as the first contact rates for the assisted service are higher than that via the Web. According to Ladd Bodem, ServiceXRG, "The key is that companies need to make their self-service experience equal to or better than a live transaction by offering things that are more convenient." How can a company achieve this goal? Bodem suggests, "It could be because a user can download things right then and there, or that there is no wait for service, or that it is available 24x7." He adds, "There are people who have no problem going on-line to look for what they want and don't necessarily want to call and ask. Some companies offer that if you go to self-service first you will get to the front of the queue for live assistance, while if you call live support directly you will get placed in the regular queue."

Ultimately, the suitability of on-line self-service will vary by company and the type of support operation you run. Mentor graphics, for example, was actually well recognized for its phone support model. They had a high-touch model designed for large enterprise customers. As the company grew and acquired other companies, their customer base shifted from a few, large enterprise customers to a broader mix that included many small accounts and individual users. With this shift, Mentor could not justifiably rely exclusively on a high-touch support environment for every customer. Mentor determined that if the company could develop a world-class self-service support portal that is just as effective in resolving problems as the phone channel, their customers would actually prefer the online channel. That is exactly what is happening today. SupportNet, Mentor's award-winning support portal, goes beyond simple question and answer capabilities; it provide a complete support experience to its users. For example, if a customer comes to Mentor Graphics' site and asks a specific question about a product or problem they have, they will not only receive an exact answer to the question, they may also get a link to the latest download or patch as well as an opportunity to register for a training class specific to that product. SupportNet provides a rich user experience that drives preference for that channel.

For more information on how Mentor Graphics has balanced Web self-service and phone-based support, read Rethinking the Customer Service Mix, an article published in KMWorld Magazine last year.

According to CRM Magazine, "How do you go from facing serious service strains to being nationally recognized as one of the top 10 best support sites on the Web within a year's time? The answer can be found in Juniper Networks' e-support initiative undertaken in 2006." Read why Juniper is being recognized as having one of the 10 best Web-support sites by the Association of Support Professionals: CRM Magazine: The 2007 Service Elite.

Speech Analytics and Natural Language IVR were Hot Technologies at Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact Executive MindXchange in Fort Myers last month

In April, InQuira sponsored and participated in the Frost & Sullivan Customer Contact 2007, East event in Florida. Over 150 attendees, mostly contact center and support executives, gathered for three days to share best practices, lessons learned and technology experiences in running global support organizations. A number of InQuira's customers, including Fidelity Investments, Juniper Networks, Foremost Insurance and E-Trade, attended as "thought leaders" and participated in an InQuira-led think tank session on Knowledge Management. The dominant topics for the conference included customer experience and loyalty, evaluating contact center performance, outsourcing, and technology solutions, such as InQuira's. "Speech analytics", the ability to scan and analyze call recordings quickly, and "natural language IVRs" were frequently mentioned.

Whereas Knowledge Management isn't yet a top of mind subject for this audience, there was a noticeable increase in awareness over last year's event, and a full house for InQuira's think tank session. Asked "What does knowledge management mean to you in five words or less?", the 36 participants provided 36 different responses that ranged from "standarized solutions" to "organized information" to "making tacit knowledge explicit" to "content creation and distribution." Clearly, knowledge management is a discipline that is still developing!

Question: What is your definition of self-service deflection? There seems to be more than one way to define it.
Answer: There is some confusion between what we call self-service success and self-service deflection. So I will define both of them. Self-service success is the rate that a customer indicates that they complete a transaction or they found useful information. Self-service deflection is the rate that self-service resources eliminated the need for live assistance. So what this means is that under our definition, self-service success means you found what you wanted but it doesn't necessarily mean you didn't go and ask for additional help: maybe you didn't know how to apply it, maybe you didn't believe it was true, maybe you had some follow on questions. So, you might have found what you were looking for but you still went and asked for help. Well, that's a successful transaction, but it didn't deflect anything. Deflection really means that you found what you wanted and you did not need any more assistance. [Ladd Bodem, ServiceXRG]

Question: In your presentation you discussed the importance of measuring service automation success. What are some of the more important aspects I should measure?
Answer: Regardless of how sophisticated your implementation is, you ought to look at the self-service adoption rate, which is the rate at which your customers are using self-service. You ought to look at self-service deflection as I defined it, meaning that the transaction was successful – they didn't need any more assistance. Obviously, general customer satisfaction is important. And then you should also look at some of the financials such as first contact closure costs and first contact closure rate – if you don't track those, you should. I would say that those are a probably minimum set of things you should start looking at. You can clearly get a lot more sophisticated than that, but if it is a question of what should I start off with, that is what I would recommend. [Ladd Bodem, ServiceXRG]