ClickFox's Customer Experience Analytics Blog

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.

Also, you can find several industry specific case studies in our download library.

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.”

The ROI Calculator is available as a free tool at http://www.clickfox.com/resources/roi-calculator.

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.”

Read the full press release here.

Download our Utility Industry Case Study here.

ClickFox hosted an excellent webinar event yesterday titled “The Hundred-Million Self Service Question” which is now available for replay. Click the link to find out what the answer is:

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.

To view the entire webinar replay, click here.

To view all our other webinars (and there are a lot of them to chose from), visit our download library.

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.

Our next event in the ClickFox Webinar Series is open for registration.

Event Description:

Today’s companies are multi-channel enterprises striving to provide customers with greater choice and a customized experience. Meanwhile, consumers have evolved to expect a unified experience across every channel, regardless of type or frequency used. For a consumer-driven business, a fragmented experience represents lost revenues and eventually lost customers. Being successful in today’s complex, cross-channel environment means effectively balancing customer experience with operational efficiency.

Please join ClickFox for a complimentary webinar entitled “ClickFox CEA for Operational Efficiency: A blueprint for enhanced self-service and customer experience success,” where you will learn:

• New KPIs to address both operational efficiency and customer experience
• The top 3 focus areas to drive the biggest benefits
• How to measure the impact of cross-channel behaviors on efficiency and overall customer experience

Presented by: Mary Ellen Thompson
Mary Ellen Thompson is a Director of Analytics at ClickFox. She has been with the company for more than four years and is responsible for providing consulting and analytics services to Fortune 100 companies. She has extensive experience in workflow optimization and frequently speaks as a customer experience and analytics subject matter expert. Prior to ClickFox, Ms. Thompson worked for IBM. She received her undergraduate degree from Stetson University and has an MBA from UGA’s Terry College of Business.

Click here to view the replay of the webinar.

When potential customers ask us to explain why our Customer Experience Analytics (CEA) solution is different from anything else they have ever seen, we usually hear a follow up question mentioning the multi-channel capabilities of business intelligence and data warehouse vendors. Many people fail to realize that there is a tremendous difference between analyzing multiple channels as separate silos versus analyzing customer traversals across multiple customer interactions touch-points. When we refer to cross-channel analytics, we’re talking about the complete picture, not just several snapshots. We’re not discounting the significance of being able to look at multiple channels, we’re just saying that looking across the channels reveals hidden opportunities for the enterprise to understand customer behavior better and to create a better overall experience.

For example, I’ll take two channels that many companies use these days: Web & IVR. Almost every company with a website has some sort of analytics tool that helps it understand what customers are doing on the site, what they’re placing in their abandoned shopping carts or at what point in the bill pay process they decided to leave the site. When it comes to IVR, most of that kind of visibility is harder to understand because traditionally, the IVR has been a black box and at best companies know how many calls came in and how many went to a live agent. In some cases specific IVR self-service funnels are analyzed, but usually to the level of overall completion rate without the step-by-step details necessary to make any significant changes.

ClickFox CEA connects channels to show relationships in activities across multiple customer touch-points. In the example below, we can see that customers are moving from Web to IVR and focus on a specific event in the IVR experience. But that’s not all – we then look upstream at the activities that occurred in the Web channel prior to the event we’re focusing on (click image to enlarge):

This is a simple way to illustrate cross-channel analytics capabilities, but obviously this is just the starting point. ClickFox CEA also provides details in each interaction channel to show more specifics on what drives users to downstream channels and what they do when they get there. In our example, the details of upstream to downstream flows show instances of bill pay in the Web channel that lead to significant instances of bill pay in IVR channel. The cheaper web channel is actually the root cause for the far more expensive IVR transaction (order of magnitude is about x10) which can then lead to a far more expensive live agent interaction (order of magnitude is about x100+ that of a web session). When analyzing cross-channel traversals these kinds of details become painfully clear (click to enlarge):

Cost savings is not the only reason companies need to understand their customers’ cross-channel experiences. Negative experiences will almost always lead to poor customer satisfaction and the real possibility of customer churn. And there are many other interaction channels in today’s complex customer environment. Starting with a pair of channels is just the first step, but eventually additional channels (Email, Kiosk, ATM, CTI, CSAT, CRM, Live Agent, etc.) are needed to complete the whole picture.

For more on cross-channel design & analysis,  please join ClickFox and featured guest Adele Sage of Forrester Research for a complimentary webinar on April 30th, 2009 at 2pm EST:

Delivering an Integrated Customer Experience:
Best Practices in Cross-Channel Design & Analysis

ClickFox will also preview three new solution offerings — CEA Service Optimization , CEA Customer Retention and CEA Customer Modeling — each addressing strategic organizational goals.

Register Today!

ClickFox has teamed up with our partner Intervoice/Convergys for a webinar titled: “Turning Lemons into Lemonade: How to make the most of your contact center investment during an economic crisis.” Here are the event details:

Date: February 10th, 1:00 – 2:00 Eastern
Presented By: Jenny Burr, Sr. Manager Speech Solutions, Intervoice/Convergys; Alex Massie, Vice President of Business Solutions, ClickFox

In both the best of times and the worst of times, Convergys Multichannel Analytics, powered by ClickFox’s Customer Experience Analytics technology, enables better and faster decision-making on these critical areas and beyond.

Listen and Learn
Find out how Multichannel Analytics enables you to:

• Leverage the significant amount you’ve already invested in data collection, using data from any and all systems
• Create your unique view of the total customer experience
• Use Convergys Professional Services to analyze customer behavior and provide specific, actionable recommendations for modifications or simple application tuning in order to improve the customer experience
• Gain actionable insights to see/address key links to business drivers such as improving customer satisfaction, retention, first contact resolution, and self-service completion, reducing operational costs, and closing up-sell opportunities

UPDATE: This event has ended. Click here to register and replay this webinar.

There’s a new white paper in our download library that I wanted to make everyone aware of. The topic of discussion is customer satisfaction (CSAT) and how our customers have been leveraging ClickFox CEA to improve their CSAT metrics. Here a quick summary:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT), the measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectations, is a key performance indicator within the enterprise and in a competitive marketplace. Yet, CSAT is often an ambiguous and abstract concept because the actual manifestation of satisfaction levels varies widely across consumer populations and product segmentations. According to a recent Forrester Research report (“The Customer Experience Journey” by Bruce Temkin, Sept. 17, 2008), good customer experience has a high correlation to customer loyalty across virtually every industry vertical. The same report noted that, based on their surveys, customers are currently not satisfied with company interactions. Of all the different interaction channels (from in-person, to live phone agents, web and e-mail) the lowest level of customer satisfaction was related to phone-self service (IVR).

The following white paper explains real world customer satisfaction issues and shows how ClickFox CEA addresses such things as:

• What experiences lead to high/low CSAT scores?
• What were the reasons for a poor or favorable survey score?
• What behaviors need to be encouraged or discouraged that will favorably impact CSAT scores?
• How can CSAT be improved?

To read the entire white paper click here.