1to1 Media has published an article by ClickFox CMO, Anna Convery, on the topic of self-service. Here’s a short preview:
Self-service heaven is easily achieved by adhering to five golden rules:
Analyze the entire consumer experience across all channels
Understand that channel performance metrics are often misleading and not indicative of self-service success
Upstream and downstream channel interactions may tell us more about the root cause of self-service failure than the Web or IVR itself
Marrying customer behavior analytics with customer segmentation data gives a rich multidimensional view that enables organizations to truly make customer-centric decisions
Siloed analytics leads to isolated decisions, a less-than-optimum customer experience at a broad level, and broken self service experiences for both the customer and the organization.
ClickFox is proud to announce the launch of Customer Experience Analytics Insight (CEAi), a new industry research service to map the complete customer experience and identify the greatest opportunity for improvement across interaction channels and key points of service:
Rooted in analytics engine of 240 million monthly customer interactions, industry research pinpoints customer behavior trends and best practices
Findings reveal biggest opportunity is for companies to improve self-service to increase deflection and lower costs
Small improvements in heavy transaction volume areas drive multi-million-dollar savings for large organizations
Initial CEAi findings reveal a critical need for companies to focus on improving voice self-service:
Over 40% of self-service interactions result in transfer to a live agent, driving hundreds of millions of dollars in increased operating costs for call centers.
Deeper analysis reveals that 10% of these interactions transfer due to a failed transaction, and 24% transfer without even attempting self-service, pointing to a need to identify where customers encounter issues to truly make self-service experiences more intuitive and effective.
The most compelling findings and proven best practices of category leaders for optimizing voice self-service is detailed in a market brief, available for download at: http://web.clickfox.com/ceai-voice-self-service/.
ClickFox announced a multi-million dollar expansion contract with a leading U.S.-based global financial services organization to analyze and improve customer experience across all interaction points, including all contact center consumer touch points – contact center self-service channels, call routing, agent interaction and agent performance, email and chat.
Says ClickFox CEO, Marco Pacelli:
“Progressive, forward-thinking companies like this one are already realizing the extraordinary value of the cross-channel approach to customer interaction analytics. Most organizations are still relying on siloed tools, like web and speech analytics, that only deliver a very limited view of the issues impacting customer experience. It is critical to understand how to prevent unnecessary and expensive agent interactions — as well as multiple attempts, and multiple touch point interactions — however today’s agent performance data stops short of telling us why simple transactions end up with a live agent. And the subsequent effect on customer experience.”
As consumers, we have high expectations of companies we choose to give our business. Sometimes we want a personal touch – other times we just want the fastest way to an answer or action.
Please take our simple 2-minute survey to tell us your preferred method of interacting with organizations and institutions, as a customer. Simply provide us with your email address at the end of the survey, and you’ll receive:
The complete survey results and analysis when available so you have insight into customer channel preferences across industries and interaction types for more informed customer experience decision-making
A copy of the new voice self-service market brief, presenting findings, trends and best practices from our massive repository of customer behavior data spanning billions of interactions for over 240 million consumers
1to1 Magazine today published an article titled “What’s Wrecking Your Customer Experience” where they explained four strategies companies can use to navigate their way to customer experience excellence. Anna Convery, ClickFox CMO, was one of the interviewees quoted in the article:
Anna Convery, chief marketing officer at customer experience analytics company ClickFox, says she is beginning to see more chief customer officers and the like who sponsor customer experience projects. But it’s not yet commonplace. “There is a lot of talk about the customer experience at the C-level, but not a lot of folks putting their shoulder to the wheel,” she says.
“Traditionally analytics have been pushed up from each department,” adds Convery of ClickFox. “But as you bring metrics up to the C-level, it means that the organization understands the importance of the customer experience.”
Convery also recommends a focus on metrics around customer acquisition, retention, and growth, which all have bottom-line impact. In addition to new customer volume and share of wallet numbers, however, she advises going deeper into the data:
What causes customers to churn? Look at 90-day pre-churn behavior to identify other potential churners and save them before they go.
What’s the best way to onboard a new customer? Follow good customers and create a model of their first 30-day experience to create other good customers from day one.
How does self-service impact the customer experience? Map customer experience, customer satisfaction, and loyalty metrics against self-service. Are the experience metrics the same, better, or worse if customers use self-service channels?
What are surveys really telling us? Pay close attention to user surveys not just to look at results, but to see what customers tried to do and where the experience broke down.
Ultimately, it’s what you do with the data that will decide if your company creates or avoids a customer experience pitfall. “The data may be there, but as an organization if you’re not ready to implement change, it becomes merely an academic result,” Convery says.
To read the entire 1to1 article click here (login required).
The article also quotes Forrester analyst, Bruce Temkin, who will be featured in our next webinar. To register for the webinar titled “Understand your Customers as Individuals, Not Individual Transactions” click here.
Have you had a chance to check out our new Customer Experience ROI Calculator yet? It’s a truly unique ROI tool and many people have tried it out so far with a lot of eye-opening results. I’ve decided to put together a few posts with examples of using the calculator, based on fictitious examples of large, medium and small companies. Today we’ll tackle the large company example. First, I’d like you to take a quick look at the introduction video (click here if reading through RSS or email):
We’re going to look at a company that currently has 10 million customers and is growing at an annual rate of 5%. By leaving all the defaults in place we see that this company has 300 million customer interactions per year. These interactions are through the phone channel (IVR and Agent), Web and Retail. With a 5% increase in self service rates and industry average costs of $5 for a live agent call, $.50 for self service IVR, $.05 for a web session and $20 for a retail visit – we come to almost $1B in cost savings over 5 years. But let’s break this down a little and see what happens in a few scenarios.
Scenario 1: Let’s assume that the company in question is in the healthcare industry and has a much higher live agent cost per call, say $20. We’ll also reduce the number of retail visits to zero and the number of web sessions to 5. We’re going to keep our average number of calls per customer to 8 per year and see what happens. Now the 5 year savings have increased to almost $2.2B over 5 years. But the annual growth target should be lower so we will change it to 2% and we’ll lower the current self service rate to 40%. Even with those changes we’re still looking at a little over $2B in cost savings over 5 years.
Scenario 2: Now we’re going to look at a financial institution that has a robust website and a highly effective self service IVR system. Customers call for various reasons, from ordering new checks or checking an account balance (that can both be easily accomplished in self service) to disputing a charge, which may require speaking to a live agent. I’ve increased the number of calls to 12 per year and number of web sessions to 24. I’ve also increased the self service rate to 75% but reduced the average annual improvement in self service and the annual growth rate of the company to 2%. Even with these reduced improvement levels this company would be able to realize over $1.1B in costs over 5 years.
Scenario 3: This time we’ll look at what happens to a cellular provider who only allows customers to get to an agent after an extremely elaborate IVR. Customers still get through at a very high rate of 70% and they call in 20 times per year. Since these are fairly short calls, each of the company’s live agents is able to handle 35 calls per day. We know that many of these calls can be self-served so we’ll leave the annual self-service improvement level at 5%. At these rates this company will have a slow start and will only realize a little over $400K in costs savings during the first year. But over the course of 5 years that will grow to over $1.4B in total savings.
Do you want to find out how your company can realize these kinds of savings with ClickFox’s Customer Experience Analytics solution? Check out our free Customer Experience ROI Calculator and customize it to your needs. You might also want to read our CEA White Paper to get a better understanding of how it all works.
ClickFox today released a free interactive Customer Experience ROI Calculator and we invite everyone to try it out. Focused mostly on operational efficiency, this real world calculator was designed based on previous engagements with leading, world-class organizations across several industries. These companies have already realized millions of dollars in cost savings by identifying ways to serve their customers more efficiently across different interaction channels.
We tried to keep it as simple as possible and all you need to do to use the ROI calculator is enter the number of customers your company serves. The tool then calculates your potential ROI using default data gathered from ClickFox’s growing repository representing billions of complex customer interactions. You can then play around with many optional parameter ranging from cost per interaction and channel-to-channel transfer rates, to specific measurements such as annual self-service containment improvement goals.
There’s also a quick instructional video to help you get started.
When you’re done, you’ll be able to download a customized ROI Report, which includes graphs showing potential operations savings over a 5-year period. The report provides details on specific areas of impact that have been identified as having the most significant and immediate effect on an organization’s bottom line. This also includes real-world examples of customers who have achieved huge returns using CEA.
“ClickFox’s calculator is extremely useful for demonstrating the tangible financial benefits of cross-channel customer experience analytics,” said Marco Pacelli, chief executive officer of ClickFox. “The calculator was built not just for customer experience decision makers, but also executives in finance, sales and marketing, product development and more, who need to understand the impact that customer experience has on their departments and the overall business.”
ClickFox announced today that a Fortune 500 energy provider has expanded its software deployment for more robust customer experience analytics. The company started using the ClickFox CEA solution in 2008 to analyze customer behavior in their web self-service systems and has decided to expand to include CTI and IVR system data for
deeper insight into how web task flow processes are directly impacting customer effort, customer satisfaction and operations costs. Says Marco Pacelli, ClickFox’s CEO:
“This is one of several utility companies leveraging ClickFox’s technology to gain visibility into the complete customer experience, from Web site all the way through to customer service representative.”
The answer to this question is right under your nose and contained in your customers’ everyday transaction data history – from kiosks, web site, and IVR systems. Join us to learn how several top-tier organizations reported $200MM cost savings after they discovered the specific areas driving self-service failure and increased live agent calls – simply by analyzing customers’ paths across the multiple channels they interact with.
Today’s financial services providers are driven to discover new and innovative ways to reduce costs while simultaneously improving customer experience to remain competitive. Join ClickFox, the pioneering leader in customer experience analytics, at 1:00 pm on Thursday, October 29th to learn how the nation’s leading financial services providers realized hundreds of millions of dollars in annual savings by analyzing the paths of their customers to:
Increase online and self-service transaction efficiency to deflect more calls away from agents
Streamline authentication process for quicker account holder verification and fewer transfers
Improve task flow processes to increase CSAT scores across channels
Attendees will learn how to leverage their existing investments in data warehousing, CRM and BI tools to gain a complete view of the customer experience, enabling targeted improvement strategies that have an immediate impact on operating costs and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Some of the nation’s most respected banking, credit card and investment organizations turn to ClickFox to transform the paths of their customers into multi-million dollar insights – register now to see how we can help you on the path to full, cross-channel customer experience excellence in 2010.
