September/October 2007
How can web chat be used effectively?
(Congratulations to the reader from Pearson who submitted this month's topic!)

Why do so many customer service strategies fixate on covering multiple channels? Is it inherently in the customers' interests to have a web self-service site plus email, chat and phone service options? Is this the best way to meet the twin goals of high customer satisfaction and minimum support costs?

Hardly. If web self-service is failing, you've disappointed your customers twice; once with the product and once with your service. Do you really expect them to play roulette with an automated email response system or wait in line for a chat agent to repeat their questions back to them so they can stall for time? Gartner suggests that to maximize customer satisfaction, companies need to invest in technologies that will benefit their primary channel first while investing in process optimization so that customers remain satisfied as they move to other channels.¹ Accordingly, VeriSign points out, "Maximizing the financial benefits of web self-service happens only when an organization decides to make it the primary support channel."² Therefore, put your focus on maximizing the success of your web self-service channel before extending support to additional channels.

If your self-service isn't up to speed, get customers off the hot seat by hooking them up to a dedicated agent quickly. When a customer is unhappy, chat isn't a cost savings – it's a poor excuse for assisted service and it breeds dissatisfaction. Chat is fine to help someone through a process, such as filling out a form, especially if it's intelligently offered based on the customer's profile or current behavior. It's not a low-cost channel for problem resolution. We suggest that you heed Forrester's advice regarding this matter: "The most common question we get about sales is whether or not to offer proactive help options, like online chat or click-to-call. Our response: Forget about it, unless you have mastered the previous principles."³

References:
1. Key Issues for Enterprise Contact Centers, Michael Maoz, Gartner, 9 February 200,7 ID Number: G00146314
2. Cost-Saving, Customer-Satisfying Web Self-Service, Lori Harmon Vice President, Global Customer Support, VeriSign, SSPA News, July 2007
3. The Business Case For Interactive Help In Financial Services Online Chat And Click-To-Call Should Be A Part Of Any eBusiness Strategy, Brad Strothkamp, Forrester, May 30, 2007 | Updated: July 17, 2007

Call-center agents at Foremost Insurance Group, of Caledonia, Mich., a member of Farmers Insurance Group, have much quicker access to reliable answers now that InQuira has been implemented. In the past, call-center agents supporting busy insurance brokers had to search for keywords in thousands of electronic documents, which only arrived at accurate answers 28% of the time. With InQuira, the new system returns accurate search results 85% of the time. This relieves agents from scribbling hard-to-find answers and tricks for getting around the system onto sticky notes and pressing them onto their monitors.

To read the full Wall Street Journal article: Click Here

In this segment, we highlight excerpts from the Q&A sessions at the end of recent InQuira-sponsored webcasts. We selected questions relevant to this issue's topic, and reproduce the responses offered by industry thought leaders featured in those events. This issue we feature Ladd Bodem, Principal and Co-founder of ServiceXRG; and Jason Hekl, Senior Director of Marketing at InQuira. The archived recordings of each webcast are listed in the right sidebar.

Question: Why would anyone use self-service if live assistance was good and responsive?

The reality is that live assistance is more effective than self-service for most people right now. If the implementation of self-service is not persuasive because the first contact closure rates for the phone are higher, the key is that you need to make your self-service experience equal or better to a live transaction. Self-service can be more convenient because you can download what you are seeking right then and there, or that there is no wait to get what you need, or that it is available 24x7. 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 where if you call live support directly you will get placed in the regular queue. Plus, live assistance is too expensive! Continued pressure to reduce costs without reducing customer satisfaction can be addressed by moving to self-service. - Ladd Bodem, ServiceXRG

The reasons will vary by company, and the type of support operation. Mentor graphics, for example, employed a high-touch support model, and was well regarded in the industry for the quality of its phone support. As the company grew and acquired other companies, its customer base changed. Mentor Graphics acquired smaller customers that collectively represented just 3% of the company's support revenue, while its large enterprise customers, on which the phone support model was based, represented the lion's share of support revenue. In the post-acquisition business environment, Mentor Graphics could not justifiably provide that same level of high-touch support to every customer. Instead, they invested in developing a world-class self-service support portal that would match, perhaps even exceed, the effectiveness of their phone support model. Today, surveys indicate that Mentor has not only succeeded, but that their customers now actually prefer the self-service channel to the phone. And it's not just a matter of answering customer questions online - it's about providing the right support experience so that a lot of different things can happen. For example, if a customer comes to Mentor Graphics' support site and asks a specific question about a product or problem he or she has, that customer will not only get an answer, but may also get a link to the latest download or patch as well as an offer for a training class specific to that product. It really does provide a rich experience for the user and that is why they prefer that channel. - Jason Hekl, InQuira

Question: How is deflection tracked... surveys?

ServiceXRG proposes the way to track deflection is with a survey at the front end of the self-service session as well as at the end. The right way to do it is to ask users as they enter the self-service site, "What are you trying to do? If you don't find what you want or need, are you planning to go to live assistance?" And then when they leave, you find out whether or not they needed to go to live assistance. This way you can truly determine whether or not the transaction deflected something. - Ladd Bodem, ServiceXRG

Ladd brings up an interesting point. Not many companies survey customers at both the front-end of the web self-service session and then again as it ends. Instead, they survey customers only at the end session. In and of itself this has a bias because the customers who are prone to provide feedback or fill out surveys are the one who did not have the experience that they expected. By surveying customers both at the beginning and at the end, you eliminate some of that bias because you are asking the question in advance, before they've had that web self-service experience. - Jason Hekl, InQuira