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Successful Customer Experience Really Does Happen in the Contact Center

Customer experience, and by extension the ongoing business relationship with any customer, lives and dies at the point of contact. All the glossy advertising in the world cannot compensate for a consistently weak experience. “Surveys find that only 26 percent of a purchase decision is influenced by advertising. By far the factors more frequently cited are personal experience and referrals,” says customer experience expert Shaun Smith of Shaun Smith + co, former Head of Customer Service, Sales, and Marketing Training for British Airways and more recently, VP of Customer Experience for the Forum Corporation.

Ideally, advertising serves to establish a promise and an expectation for a unique and appealing customer experience, which is then confirmed and reinforced every single time the customer touches the organization. That puts the contact center on the hook, yet uniquely placed, to sustain the customer experience regardless of changes elsewhere in the organization.

The best customer experiences are delivered by companies that have so deeply embedded their brand message and customer priorities in their DNA that each and every agent can present the best the company has to offer. They create self-sustaining customer communities that are so focused on their interaction with each other that they m

ay even forgive the occasional mishap, and see it as an opportunity to actively engage with the company and make improvements because they believe their patronage is truly valued.

No Barriers – Customer Experience Permeates

Achieving that goal requires a customer-service commitment that completely denies the existence of barriers. The customer experience will surely break down if the different communities that make up an organization do not understand the role they must play to build and maintain it. This means paying more than lip service to the concept of customer centricity – it requires aligning the internal organizations that provide the “care and feeding” of customers to achieve the same goal – building and maintaining the environment that provides the right service to the right customers and creates value for those customers they cannot get anywhere else. “Really strong brands have marketing, customer service, and human resources all working as one around a common agenda, which is the customer experience,” Smith says.

Marketing’s contribution is the articulation and refinement of the brand promise, using advertising and outreach to communicate the virtues of doing business with your company and setting it apart from competitors and pretenders. The customer service organization must be prepared, on a monthly, daily, weekly, and hourly basis, to deliver on that promise to customers, with the right training, systems, and most importantly, management support to make the right decisions by each and every caller.

Human Resource’s role in this process cannot be overlooked. Look at the global market for customer-service personnel as an opportunity, rather than a negative. HR should focus on bringing people into the organization that will be a natural fit for the customer experience, who can believe in the company’s brand mission, and who will use every tool and opportunity at their disposal to preserve that experience whenever possible.

Technology can help. A unified desktop that provides a 360-degree of the customer enables every person with the entire organization to share the same common view of all customer experiences. Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, the Executive Suite, and so on, can all share a common view and extract exactly the insight to help the organization support and deliver the promises made or requests extended.

Summary

The contact center’s role in a customer experience management strategy cannot be underestimated. Consumers perceive that a company’s ability to respond to a problem or request has a higher influence on an excellent experience than any other attribute, as shown in Figure 1. That puts the contact center ever-more front and center in creating that experience – consistently, intentionally, but in a manner that is differentiated and adds value.

Your customer experience can never be better than the people you place on the end of every telephone call, e-mail, or web chat, and the quality of the technology they rely on. Only they have the unique opportunity to strengthen your relationships every time a customer reaches out, and that can only happen if they are given the tools and trust to make every contact the right contact. “It is about having people who like people, who have personalities, and are willing to engage with customers and get beyond the form-filling,” Smith says. “You need a working environment where people are naturally curious and interested in doing business with your customers – not where they are driven by management to pick up the phone within three rings every time.”

This article is an excerpt from the white paper “Customer Experience Happens in the Contact Center, With Insights From Shaun Smith." Go to www.cincom.com/shaunsmith to download the complete white paper or to view a webcast titled "See, Feel, Think, Do - Creating Breakthrough Ideas to Deliver the Perfect Customer Experience," in which Shaun Smith presents a lively discussion on how to build great customer experiences.

Technorati Tags: Customer Experince,CRM,Contact Centre

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Cloud Computing`s Sunny Future

"The Big Switch" author Nicholas Carr asks why Google, Salesforce and Microsoft are having success in utility computing now, 50 years after IBM introduced the model with its mainframes.

Drawing parallels between the evolution of the electrical grid and computing grid models, the pundit who shocked the high-tech world by claiming IT doesn't matter summarized his latest book in his keynote at the Search Engine Strategies 2008 show here March 18.

Nicholas Carr drilled into theories from his latest book "The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google."

Among the highlights is that the world will move from packaged software downloaded from a CD to cloud computing, or applications enabled by the Internet supported by the vendors who create them. Carr, pointing to successful SAAS offerings from Google, Salesforce.com and Amazon, noted this is happening already.

"If we could move to shared systems rather than private ones, we could dramatically reduce the capital that goes into computing, that goes into IT and release it throughout the economy for much more beneficial purposes," Carr said. "We are finally at the verge of deploying computing centrally as, in effect, a utility over the network."

Cloud computing allows businesses to save money by offloading or outsourcing part or all of their IT operations to vendors providing the applications or software infrastructure. Even so, cloud purveyors must employ tremendous amounts of power to fuel their customers' applications.

To wit, Carr showed a picture of one of Google's multiple cooling facilities, which draws cold water from the Columbia River in The Dalles, Ore., to cool a server farm the size of a football field packed with "at least tens if not hundreds of thousands of server computers."

"We don't know because Google is, probably for good reason, quite quiet about what actually goes on in these great data centers," Carr said, before adding as a joke, "probably animal sacrifices." Meanwhile, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Salesforce.com are making similar data center investments to support cloud computing.

Are We 50 Years Too Late?

Why is this happening now, considering that IBM leveraged its first mainframes as utility computers back in the 1960s?

Carr said the explosion in new power-hungry applications and the power to enable them via virtualization, or running multiple operating systems on a single physical machine, underpin the build out of utility computing systems.

For example, in addition to leveraging Linux to power its servers, Google uses the open-source XEN software to virtualize its MapReduce and File System infrastructure.

Moreover, Carr said the network computing effect, which Google's Eric Schmidt forecast as far back as 1993 when he was CTO at Sun Microsystems, is such that the capacity of the network is catching up to the power of the computer.

These means IT managers can deploy computing power, data storage or applications from one location (data center) over a grid to thousands or millions of people. Quoting Sun's slogan, Carr said, "The network is the computer."

This evolution to a personalized grid in the Web 2.0 has spawned numerous opportunities for application vendors such as Salesforce.com, SAAS collaboration provider Workday, as well as Amazon and 3Tera, which are providing computing and storage services to customers over the Web for a monthly fee.

HP announced its own cloud effort March 17, he added.

So, what is the comparison between the electrical grid and the computer grid as we know them today? Carr said the comparisons exist in the economic model; both are general purpose technologies with unlimited options for innovation and application.

These network or grid-driven technologies scale tremendously, driving down costs.

Source - By Clint Boulton, eWeek

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Welcome to Marketers' Hangout Zone

Once upon a time, the college katta or the nearby chai stall was the main hangout for college students across India. They haven’t disappeared completely and continue to provide asylum to collegians killing time before a lecture or taking a break from getting educated. What’s changed is the choice of places to hang out.

From local chai stalls to movie theatres, it’s moved to fast food chains, pizza outlets and cafes. But as the need to connect with the target segment, particularly the youth, becomes imperative, even brands are plunging headlong into providing a more evolved hangout experience. Marketers of brands in as diverse segments as tea, coffee and wines to banking, cold beverages and consumer electronics are busy chalking out ‘lounges’ which make a cool, hep and happening statement.

Some of the brands that have been experimenting with this format include Nescafe, Tata Tea, Smirnoff, Microsoft Xbox, Chateau Indage, Coca-Cola , Citibank and Amul. While the outlets may differ in size and staff, branding efforts in each store make them unique. Xbox lounges for example are present in both stand-alone and shop-in-shop formats , spread over an area of 300 to 500 sq ft. Chateau Indage’s Ivy has different sizes for urban and rural markets.

While stores in urban areas are spread over 800 sq ft, Ivys in rural markets are over a 1,200 sq ft, which would definitely burn a hole in the pocket, if transposed to a metro setting. Vikrant Chougule, MD, Indage Hotels Group admits real estate to be a concern, “In urban areas, real estate is a hindrance, but isn’t much of a problem in rural. Because of the costs we try and stay away from high street locations. We are okay with being in a quiet neighbourhood because people who like wine will find us irrespective of the location.”

Xbox, on the other hand, depends more on the shop-in-shop format, for which it has tied up with The Mobile Store. Explaining the rationale behind Xbox lounges, Ashim Mathur, national marketing manager, entertainment & devices division, Microsoft India says, “Xbox requires people to touch and feel the product, a lounge helps them see and experience it. We have well-trained staff at the lounge who help answer queries and doubts consumers have about games, accessories and console.” This format helps Xbox address real-estate concerns as well.

“The profile of customers who visit The Mobile Store and those who like to look at our products are quite similar, the interiors and ambience of the stores gel well with what we want,” explains Mathur on the choice of The Mobile Store as a partner.

Coca-Cola’s Red Lounge outlets operate on a franchise model and therefore don’t require investments to be made in real estate. Discussing the format , Venkatesh Kini, VP-Marketing , Coca-Cola India says, “The Red Lounge is located within a mall and is a place where the youth can watch TV, play video games, surf the net, chat and also experience the whole range of Coca-Cola products.”
For Nescafe, the concept of Cafe Nescafe evolved some years ago when, anticipating the changing customer lifestyle, they decided to pioneer out of home consumption for coffee in an organised manner. “It exists in two formats ,” explains G G Pillai, business manager, OOH Nestle, “we first understand the needs of the consumer at the location and then decide whether it should be a full range Cafe Nescafe that provides a wide variety of speciality coffees , teas or soups, or a scaled down ‘coffee corner’ , located within stores or restaurants, targeting takeaways.”

Amidst all the outlets that have changed the tea-drinking habit of the nation, comes Tata Tea’s ambitious project Chai Unchai to promote tea as an equally cool beverage. Sangeeta Talwar, ED-marketing , Tata Tea says, “Chai Unchai fills a gap between the huge unorganised segment comprising tea shops or dhabas, and the premium priced tea houses. The focus is on providing a space for youth which provides a memorable and exciting ‘adda’ experience.”

And there are signs that even categories like banking are looking to jazz up the entire experience, via business centres . Citibank for example has opened Citigold Business Centre at select branches for its high-value Citigold customers . The centre has a state-of-the-art meeting room, where customers can use facilities to remain connected with office or home even as banking transactions takes place.

Rahul Soota, head — retail banking, Citibank India, says, “This service helps strengthen Citigold’s promise of exemplary service and connecting better with our clients, which in turn has a positive rub-off on the Citi brand due to positive word-of-mouth and experience sharing among customers.”

One advantage these outlets offer is undivided customer attention. “The number of consumers who order wine is encouraging ,” says Chougule, “Although there are no concrete figures, about 70 percent-80 percent tables order wine in the evenings and 30 percent of the tables order wine during lunch, even if it is port-wine .” Ivy, says Chougule, also enables the company to promote wine culture in India: “Once you are in, the décor gets you to try something and most of the times the customer ends up ordering wine.”

Ivy has presence across eight locations in both urban and rural areas and has plans to set up 34 outlets by March 2009 across the country. Amul parlours as they are called are present on campuses of Infosys, Wipro, IIM-A , IIT-B , Somnath temple, Dwarka temple, Metro rail and Gujarat rail. Spread over 150-200 sq ft, Amul is targeting a figure of 10,000 parlours by 2010. Elaborating on the parlours, BM Vyas, MD, Amul says, “Our idea of opening the parlours is to be independent. We want to directly reach the customers and eliminate the middleman.”

Cafe Coffee Day is one of the foremost players in providing experience using outlets as a platform. Shyamala Deshpande , senior general manager, Cafe Coffee Day offers a word of advice for all the brands, “Apart from the products and services, it is important to concentrate on the look and feel. Café Coffee Day creates a very relaxing environment complete with comfortable chairs and sofas. Also from time to time, Café Coffee Day brings to its customers offerings by way of interesting alliances with likeminded brands.” CCD’s success comes from the first mover advantage that they have in a space which was relatively untapped until their entry.

None of the brands have invested in marketing or advertising their outlet but are relying largely on the brandpull for their success. Says Kini of Coca-Cola , “We are looking at rolling out a range of above- and below-the-line initiatives locally within Pune and Bangalore to create a buzz and traffic to Red Lounges. Being located in malls we manage to attract high footfalls especially from the youth who are looking for a hangout destination with friends.”

Source - Preethi Chamikutty, The Economic Times

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Web of many dimensions

As intelligent as the human, as responsive and as understanding. Web 3.0 is likely to be something most of us have not even imagined. And yet, it is going to be something we are all going to create!

STORY COMING SOON!

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Lean ERP Is Best Practice in Industrial Manufacturing

Aberdeen Report Offers Roadmap for Best-in-Class ERP

Despite the fact that half of best-in-class industrial machinery and components manufacturing companies have a rigorous commitment to lean manufacturing strategies and processes, 25 percent of these companies were classified as average or lagging in their lean manufacturing efforts, according to a recent research study completed by Aberdeen and Cincom Systems. According to the jointly published report, "ERP in Industrial Machinery and components"  (www.cincom.com/industrialerp), it's clear that the majority of industrial manufacturing companies aren't getting the greatest benefits possible from their lean manufacturing strategies and processes. The report cites that 33 percent of industrial manufacturing firms had not realized the full potential of their lean manufacturing strategies and processes.

In the report, Aberdeen offers a roadmap for industrial machinery and components manufacturing firms seeking to attain higher levels of organic revenue growth while balancing the need to improve customer response times through best-in-class use of enterprise resource planning (ERP).

Download this report to learn:

• The best practices of lean manufacturing leaders in the industrial machinery and components industry
• How to classify your company (best-in-class, average or laggard)
• Which ERP component technologies enable a higher level of lean manufacturing process and strategy execution success

To download "ERP in Industrial Machinery and Components," visit (www.cincom.com/industrialerp).

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Hardware 2.0

Quite recently the term Web2.0 is all over the place and it seems that everyone wants to get over this bandwagon. Though I shouldn't be complaining as I am in the queue to get onto the web2.0, web3.0, web4.0 and so on. These are surely new and exciting times\tools for the marketers.

Well I can go on and on over the Web 2.0 however has selected the topic of Hardware 2.0, hence need to keep the focus onto the same. A good example of Hardware 2.0 could be iPhone, and with the Apple release of an SDK for the iPhone and iPod touch, we can expect more and more application that we can be used on iPhone. Though not being an analyst, I will not be able to justify the new paradigm shift in the Hardware business. However with visible trends seen in the case of the Web's of the world surely foresee a new dimension to the hardware and its business as well.  Conceptually it will create a dimensional shift from what and how we know our hardware today.      

We all know how the "Soft" has changed over the years; however can we say the same on the "hard" side. Though this encourages me to think that aren't we to much focus on diversifying in the software and not that much about on the hardware side. Is it to "hard".

The software side has gone and is expected to go through the hyperdisruption however I am yet to see this happening in the hardware side.

With the introduction of the Apple iPhone, and my friend being kind enough to let me see the features of it has forced me to think that we have gone through so much of development in the software, telecommunication, mobile technology however are we still living in the same age of enterprise "hard" automation. Can we we expect it to change? 

Things like Google, Salesforce, Appexchange, Mashup, so on has changed the way we compute today even at an enterprise level. The thing I would like to imagine is, can we move in direction on Hardware "hyperdisruption".  I have been hearing now and then the cloud computing, however still do not know that will it enable an enterprise level disruption.

SMB, SME, "target the small", seems to be the flavor of all enterprise targeted sales. But sometime I do wonder that are the companies gear to understand the implication that the SMB sector entails. I may be talking specific to the Indian domestic market, with not even a single person in the name of an IT department in an SME organization that I have visited or known. Please do not take me wrong, I am talking about companies with annual revenue of $30 millions sustaining the IT on single free email. Then we talk about things like online\on-demand application and we conveniently assume that the organizations we are targeting will have T1 lines with redundancy, backup, etc, etc.

Not going much in detail would like to put the question to wonderful people who have been kind enough to read this post -

• Can we imagine that we will be able to have single "hard" server that will allow us to have or "add to cart" application(s) that are only one time downloadable, application that suits our requirements, at the time when we require, and we do not want to worry about an integration, and also not to worry about the having T1 redundant net lines?
• Switch on & off application as per our requirements.
• Ability to create hardware that does not require a power connection and runs on power from the network cables as phone lines does (conceptually).
• Not to worry about backup, maintenance, etc. as that will build in by the hardware provider who providing you the servers.
• Can we imagine Hard 2.0, Hard 3.0, so on?

The answer is a probable "YES".

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Build-operate-transfer outsourcing catches on

Some firms are opting to buy the development team from vendors rather than terminate or extend the contract

In February, data storage firm Network Appliance Systems India Pvt. Ltd, or NetApp, “bought” 30 engineers from partner Symphony Services Corp. India Pvt. Ltd which builds software products or parts of them for it.

With this, NetApp joined a growing list of companies that includes Dendrite International Inc. and Oracle Corp. which have exercised the transfer option or buying out people from their partners in a so-called build-operate-transfer, or BOT, deal.

Vikram Shah, president of NettApp India, said the takeover was necessary as the work being handled by the team at Symphony became critical to the company’s business. “It was more of a strategic decision when we felt that the application integration project (that was outsourced to Symphony) has become vital for us,” Shah said.

In last two years, cos as Oracle, SAP have bought development teams from outsourced firms

Traditionally, firms such as Dendrite and Oracle sign deals with India-based product development firms which set up dedicated development teams for them, run the operations for a specified period (usually three-five years), and eventually transfer the teams to them. But it’s only now that the T-factor in BOT is gaining momentum. Depending on the terms of the deal, the vendor is compensated for the transfer as it entails loss of revenue and employee resources.

“As outsourcing deals struck some three-four years earlier come up for renewals, we see more such transfers,” said Pari Natarajan, chief executive of Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a research and consulting firm that advises clients on their product development outsourcing strategy.

In the past 18-24 months, firms such as Dendrite, SAP AG and Oracle have bought development teams from outsourced development partners. In early 2007, Dendrite took over a team of 325 engineers from its development partner Aztec Software Ltd after it decided to set up its captive development centre in Bangalore.

Dendrite was subsequently acquired by French firm Cegedim SA in May 2007.

Following its acquisition by SAP in 2006, Business Objects bought over a team of 300 from Ness Technologies Inc., which runs a 2,700-engineer development operations in India. In 2007, Ness started transferring a team of more than 100 engineers to Oracle after it acquired Portal Software.

Shashank Samant, head of North American operations for Ness, said transfers happen when clients think they are going to save more money by taking over the teams or when they feel they are losing control over core operations. Mergers and acquisitions are another reason for transfers, Samant added. He said Ness has done some six transfers in the past five years, the latest being to Portal Software.

For NetApp, the recent transfer marks the first time it has taken over a team from a vendor and integrated it into itself. Instead of terminating or extending the contract, “we felt it was better to buy the team,” Shah said, thus saving time and investment in re-building a new team that would have “slowed us down”.

However, NetApp continues to outsource its software development to Symphony and half a dozen other Indian vendors. “Our engagement with Symphony continues, as they have a large outsource team of 60 people in Pune working for NetApp,” Shah said. The pricing details for the transfer have not been disclosed.

Ajay Kela, chief operating officer and managing director of Symphony Services, denied that NetApp had bought a team from the company.

The BOT delivery option provides all benefits of a fully outsourced service and additional benefits, such as a complete control over billing, a faster learning curve through on-the-job training, and access to expertise, skills, innovation and technologies that would not otherwise be available.

“Earlier, the BOT model helped firms mitigate the risk of setting up operations in India, but now, after they have reached a maturity level in their operations here, they are taking over the teams rather than continue with the outsourcing arrangement,” said Chandramouli C.S., engagement manager, advisory services, Zinnov.

Typically, the client is billed between $3,700 and $4,500 a month for every outsourced engineer of the vendor. Depending on the nature of the contract, the transfer is priced on a “sliding” scale, according to Chandramouli. If the team is transferred after two years of the contract period, the client has to pay approximately three months’ salary per employee. After three years, this comes down to an average of two months’ salary. “It could be that after four years of the contract period, the vendor has to transfer the team for free,” Chandramouli explained.

BOT also gives customers an opportunity to get an offshore development centre built to suit their needs. They also have access to a set of dedicated personnel who are hired and trained in collaboration with the client. The staged process helps the client evaluate the risks involved and check the feasibility before investing in a full fledged manner.

On the flip side, BOT deals could involve a sudden loss of revenues and resources for vendors. After the Dendrite deal, Aztec has not signed any BOT contracts as such deals bring in an element of uncertainty in revenue cycles, said V. Sundarajan, the company’s chief financial officer. Dendrite accounted for 10% of Aztec’s revenues when the transfer happened and the vendor’s growth was impacted.

“Last year, only 20% of our contracts signed were based on BOT model compared to four years ago when almost all deals were BOT model. However, larger companies have increased outsourcing to OPDs like us, and we expect majority of contracts that will come up for renewals will not be based on BOT model,” Kela added.

However, the model continues to attract some vendors and clients. “We signed six new deals last quarter on BOT model,” said Samant.

And even Aztec’s Sundarajan said that structuring these deals better could make them more attractive to companies, even those such as his that have been previously stung by them. “We are open to look at such deals if the terms are good and the transfers are well planned,” Sundarajan added.

Source - Malovika Rao and Vishwanath Kulkarni, LiveMint

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