TeleMedia Strategy
The Bleeding Edge of Disruption

Here we try to talk about how to best serve the customer, but many times it doesn't stop there.  Customers are an independent lot and sometimes they want us to help them help themselves (read that last part again).  So what about self-service?

From the customers’ perspective, going to the Internet is not the only place they want to manage their account. Remembering to pay a bill, update an address or change a profile doesn’t happen only when we are online….but anytime and anywhere that those random “I-forgot-to’s” pop up in our memories and thoughts.

The customer expectation and trend for “real time everything” is that they should be able to check that task off the list anytime and anywhere too.  The implication is that service providers need to provide self service capabilities everywhere linked by hand-off flows and relevancy.

It's not just customers driving this trend.  Companies across all industries are looking to expand their self-service capabilities.   No doubt many of you have been involved in many anxious corporate initiatives lately aiming to reduce costs. I don’t know about you, but the number of e-mails crossing my Outlook screen with the subject “Need to reduce calls to call centers by xx%” has been astounding.   This is not a new need - just the increasing pressure on all of our OPEX budgets given the dire economic times.

For a few years, the popular answer to that question was call center optimization. A thorough analysis of operations could find areas for process optimization, automation, training, CSR motivation and reorganization that will positively affect Average Handling Time (AHT) and First Call Resolution (FCR). This answer hasn’t gone away it’s just no longer the popular buzzword.

Today’s popular answer: call deflection is self service. Ah, if only our self service website was better then that will solve all our problems and reduce calls into care.   There continue to be many ways to improve online customer personal account management including:

• Benchmarking against best in class (both in and outside your industry)
• Studying the natural customer processes and mapping those back to operational processes to find areas for rationalization and optimization
• Analyzing channel usage by customer segment to improve design
• Leveraging real time customer feedback methods now on the market to feed continuous improvement
• Increased rapid prototyping and real customer testing for improvement
• User Experience improvements
• Don’t forget driving self service adoption through all external communications
• And reliable hand-off’s from self service to care or retail……

Which brings me back to the point of this story – customers want to reduce those tasks and Outlook reminders wherever they are. They may be on the street and a storefront reminds to them to check on a problem. An SMS or text reminder of their account balance encourages them to pay a bill at that moment.

A successful self service strategy looks at how to give the customer the opportunity to interact, buy things, solve problems and manage their account by any means, including:

• Popping in a store (without the queues or explanations to staff) through automated kiosks and drop-off/pick-up bars
• Creative vending machines
• Good old fashion IVR
• Online
• How about self service widgets on other sites and affiliates that your customers regularly visit?
• Via the handset itself
• Call to Text (visual displays and proactive text reminders to take action but please, please with a link or shortcut to actually do it)

The operational success of that self service strategy then depends on the quality of the process and natural flows presented to the customer especially between channels. Just as we as an industry are striving to make different channels aware of real time customer activity (e.g. the CSR has the information that a calling customer has just upgraded their service online)….to reduce more calls into care, those processes must be tested and if an action is suspended in one channel, the customer should be able to finish it in another. 

In summary: Self service must be mobile, easy and instant – just like we want it.

By Lisa Modisette,

Lisa Modisette is a recognised expert in customer management (segmentation, churn, database marketing, loyalty & experience) most recently with Amdocs Consulting.  Her experience includes areas such as business transformation programs, loyalty programmes and customer strategy, segmentation, customer lifecycle management, best practice database marketing, customer experience, contact management, CRM gap analyses, marketing planning and communications, product marketing and churn modeling.  Her current research area is in the mobile customer experience, and mobile loyalty & data services.   

Lisa's previous positions include Founder and Principal Consultant for Info Insight Ltd, Interim Manager of Segmentation, Customer Insight & Market Research at Vodafone UK, Managing Director of European Operations for Lightbridge, and Director of Telecommunications Industry Marketing for Metaphor (an IBM subsidiary)  She has been engaged a numerous consulting engagements at Cingular, AT&T, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, MCI, Deutsche Telecom, KPN and so on.  She has a lengthy publication and public speaking list, including journals, international conferences and articles.  She is the author of Baskerville Telecom's report, Mobile Customer Experience 2003-2007: How companies can survive in an evolving market.  Lisa may be reached at Lisa.Modisette@amdocs.com