Boost Profitability WP.doc 2/15/2008 How to Boost Profitability By Leveraging Contact Center Innovations Transforming Problems into Profitability A White Paper by www.astutesolutions.com www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150,Columbus, Columbus,Ohio Ohio43231-7606 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main(614) phone/ fax 508-6110 main phone/ fax (For internal use only) How to Boost Profitablity By Leveraging Contact Center Innovations SUMMARY Due to the strength of its impact on profitability, customer loyalty has earned a great deal of attention from business leaders worldwide. Customer loyalty is quickly becoming the number one strategic goal for many companies, and the customer service function is widely acknowledged as being a key part of this strategy. Because customer service transactions account for 65%- 90% of the interactions for B2C companies, and because a majority of interactions are with anonymous consumers, B2C companies may have the most to gain by leveraging the customer service function. A contact center for customer service can be a strategic asset for a B2C company. The contact center is one of the best methods to identify and resolve issues that impact consumer satisfaction and ultimately drive loyalty. It can help to identify and resolve problems while increasing loyalty, and has the potential to reduce costs, enhance company performance, generate revenue, and improve the business. This document outlines strategies for developing a strategic and profitable contact center using innovative software and technology. It describes how a company can take full advantage of its vast potential by leveraging technology that enables, manages, and enhances interactions with consumers while aiding in increasing the efficiency, effectiveness, and value of each interaction. Moreover, it describes how a unified view of consumer data can be leveraged throughout the enterprise, allowing a company to make targeted improvements, capitalize on opportunities and trends, make better-informed business decisions, and become more profitable. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -2- How to Boost Profitablity By Leveraging Contact Center Innovations INTRODUCTION: THE VALUE OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY Due to intense competition and the commoditization of products and services, the power and control in today’s business relationships continue to move away from the seller and towards the buyer. Under these market conditions, managers are being forced to look beyond their companies’ product and service attributes to maintain profit margins and market share. This is not necessarily bad news. While customers are purchasing products that meet their needs, they are rewarding companies that anticipate their needs, understand their preferences, and exceed their expectations with their loyalty. These rewards take the form of more frequent visits, higher-value purchases, and more referrals to name a few. As a result, building customer loyalty is quickly becoming the number one strategic goal for companies worldwide. Simply put, customer loyalty translates into profitability. Researchers have found that in some industries, as little as a 5 percent reduction in lost customers will increase profits by 25-95 percent. The increase in profitability is a result of: Revenue Growth o Loyalty leads to more frequent visits and higher-value purchases. o Loyal customers tend to be less price-sensitive. o Positive word-of-mouth from loyal customers has an enormous economic impact. Similarly, when upset and dissatisfied customers tell 10 to 20 people (on average) about their bad experience, the economic repercussions can be substantial. o Improvements in products, services, and pricing, initiated by loyal customer feedback, can help to attract new customers and increase market share. Cost Reduction o Attracting new customers costs five times more than retaining existing ones. Nonetheless, companies continue to spend a great deal of time, money, and effort to attract new customers while they invest very little in retaining their existing ones. o Knowing specifically what loyal customers value most can lead to improved marketing and sales efforts at a lower cost. Reduced operating expenses o Repeat customers tend to make fewer demands on employee’s time. Employees are also more efficient with them due to familiarity with their needs. o Loyal and better-informed customers tend to have fewer product returns and warranty repairs. o Focusing resources on the needs of the most profitable and loyal customers can reduce costs, optimize products, and increase operational efficiency www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -3- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency THE VITAL ROLE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE IN BUILDING LOYALTY The customer service function, which has long been viewed as a cost center in many companies, is now being acknowledged as a key component in a company’s customer-centric, loyalty-building strategy. This function is rapidly gaining in importance of technology and thought leaders worldwide. Surveys of CIOs and business strategists in Europe and North America indicate that customer intimacy and customer service excellence are being viewed as top business priorities and key differentiators1. Gartner predicts that enterprises that have prioritized investments in customer service optimization are 2 highly likely to grow their market share 10 to 35 percent over the industry average . How? First of all, quality customer service signals the company’s commitment to the customer and acts as a key indicator of its integrity. Because the customer service function plays a central role in capturing customer expectations and feedback, the quality of this function has a significant impact on the quality of business decisions. When this information is captured and leveraged properly, dynamic adjustments can be made to products, services, and processes to meet and exceed customer expectations. This leads to more satisfied and loyal customers, increased market share, and greater profitability. B2C COMPANIES STAND TO WIN…OR LOSE…MOST OF ALL Perhaps the greatest challenge—and upside--in this market will be experienced by B2C (Business-toConsumer) companies. Customer service interactions account for the largest proportion of interactions in B2C, averaging 65% and reaching as high as 90% of their transactions. Therefore, B2C organizations should pay special attention to their customer service function, particularly those with high volumes of customer interactions (>100,000 per year). Unfortunately, many B2C companies that spend millions of dollars on promoting their brand image in the marketplace provide customer service at a level that is inconsistent with the image they desire. Furthermore, a special challenge that B2C face is that the preferences, needs, and expectations of numerous anonymous consumers and its known customers are varied, difficult to assess, rapidly changing, and widely unknown. Communicating and building relationships with consumers can provide companies greater insight into these preferences and needs. Capturing and leveraging this key consumer information can radically improve the way products and services are planned, designed, marketed, priced, sold, distributed, and serviced in B2C companies. THE STRATEGIC ROLE OF THE CONTACT CENTER A contact center for customer service and consumer relations is one of the best methods to capture key consumer information and address issues that impact customer loyalty. Contact centers allow for a twoway communication with customers, providing unique opportunities to gain immediate and unfiltered feedback to improve their business and outperform competitors. Moreover, contact center agents are the www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -4- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency primary customer touch point for a majority of customer interactions. Beyond managing customer interactions, contact centers can be leveraged: o o o For rapid identification and resolution of problems, issues, and potential crises To transform negative customer experiences into positive ones To prevent future problems and reduce liability In addition, a contact center can: o o o o Reduce customer defection through rapid, positive recovery efforts Differentiate a company from competitors through quality interactions and service Positively impact brand image by improving the customers’ emotional state Create more satisfied and loyal customers by helping them to make better decisions The next section describes these capabilities in greater detail. IDENTIFYING AND RESOLVING PROBLEMS Customers are generally satisfied as long as companies meet or exceed their expectations. When mistakes happen and problems arise, however, any and all recovery actions the company takes thereafter can make things significantly better or worse. A blessing in disguise. Unfortunately, many companies avoid setting up a formal complaint process because they view complaining as a negative. By avoiding complaints these companies may not become aware of (potentially major) problems, miss the opportunity to resolve them, and lose customers. Most customers would not contact the company if they were not at a point of no return and hoping for a positive response. Studies show that only a minority of dissatisfied customers complain, implying that the issues at the root of their complaints may have affected many other customers of whom the company is not aware. The majority will complain to their families, friends, associates…or lawyers. This can prove costly in the form of lost customers, a decline in revenue, tarnished reputation, returns, recalls, and lawsuits. Enterprise-wide impact. Customer complaints captured through the contact center can initiate successful recovery efforts and can help companies resolve product and service problems quickly. Through high-quality interactions, well-informed agents, and rapid issue resolution, companies can transform negative customer experiences into positive ones. By leveraging customer issue information throughout the enterprise, a company can prevent problems from reoccurring and identify and address the issues that impact satisfaction. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -5- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency IMPROVING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY Resolving problems that are identified through complaints has a significant financial impact. The return on investment of recovery efforts has been reported in the range of 30-150 percent! This is largely due to the impact of these efforts on customer loyalty. Moderate to high recovery efforts can: o o o Significantly increase post-service failure satisfaction levels Increase purchase intent Increase positive word-of-mouth What’s more, successful recovery efforts can result in higher customer satisfaction and loyalty than if no service failure had occurred in the first place--a phenomenon called the “service recovery paradox”. Yet a majority of customers surveyed claim they are dissatisfied with recovery efforts and the poor recovery efforts of many companies only aggravate their dissatisfaction. This presents an opportunity to companies that provide high recovery efforts. Worth its weight in gold. Beyond recovery efforts, the quality of a company’s contact center interactions can have a level of impact that rivals its product and service quality. Research indicates that customers make purchasing decisions on the basis of their contact center experience and that good service is consistently a more important than good products as criteria for being loyal. Emotions run high. Other research indicates that the emotional state of the customer influences about 50 percent of the value they perceive. When a customer feels welcome and important, additional value is created. The contact center, with its high volume of customer interactions and ability to provide personalized service, is positioned to create this value. In addition, multiple contact center communication channels can be leveraged for pre-emptive strategies that mitigate the negative effects of product and service failures. Empowering customers with information will help to improve their decisions and overall experience. This will not only reduce the likelihood of failure, but also will reduce the customers’ negative feelings toward the provider if there is a failure. GENERATING REVENUE VIA MORE EFFECTIVE SALES AND MARKETING In addition to positive word-of-mouth and increasing purchase intent, there are significant marketing advantages that result from contact center interactions. By making more customer touch points available, companies will have more customer information and insight available to them. Furthermore, by capturing specific customer information through the contact center and integrating this with other databases, loyalty systems, and information repositories, a company can capitalize on the contact center interaction to make specific, targeted offers--at the time of contact or as a follow-up--that increase overall revenue. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -6- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency From a marketing and sales perspective, contact center data can be used to: o Improve customer segmentation and to better identify trends and opportunities o Personalize services and tailor marketing campaigns to individuals o Execute campaigns through multiple communication channels. Survey results reveal that most consumers will stop doing business with a company after a negative call center experience. THE CHALLENGES The Cost Center Perception. While the aforementioned benefits are compelling, many companies continue to view customer service as a cost center and an isolated functional group--not the key to a CRM strategy for building and maintaining loyal and profitable relationships. Or they set up poor quality call centers with capabilities few and far between—a mere afterthought. This is a huge mistake. Inner Conflicts. Furthermore, executives and managers are faced with how to integrate communication channels with limited resources, manage conflicting priorities, and how to build a scalable solution that will be effective now and in the future. This is one of the most vexing problems for companies to tackle, especially since one person or department is rarely responsible for the entire customer experience. Integration. Additionally, the contact center’s impact extends into other areas of the company such as sales, logistics, billing, payments, and finance. Therefore, contact center capabilities and information must be integrated with current business processes and information flows across the enterprise. But this is worthwhile: Gartner predicts that an enterprise’s skill in leveraging and integrating its communication 2 tools into key business processes and workflows will be a competitive differentiator . With these benefits and issues in mind, executives and managers must select the tools and technology that optimize their customer service and contact center capabilities while increasing profitability. A reactive, customer service-oriented contact center is not enough. Here are strategies that can help to make the transformation. THE STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC AND PROFITABLE CONTACT CENTER 1. Implement a Comprehensive Contact Center Solution According to Gartner, organizations that have high volumes of customer interactions can improve 6 customer satisfaction by 20 percent or more with a comprehensive contact center solution. How do you www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -7- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency know if a contact center solution is comprehensive? Comprehensive contact center solutions help customer-facing employees efficiently and effectively: o o o o o Identify customers and their interaction histories Manage and personalize interactions through multiple communication channels Resolve problems and complaints Answer questions consistently and accurately Provide valuable information to customers Through reporting and analysis tools, these solutions can also help managers and executives: o o o o o o o 2. Gain insight into customer needs, preferences, and expectations Identify and resolve problems with individual products, services, and facilities Identify and resolve process, equipment, employee, store/franchise, distributor, and vendor problems Optimize products, services, and processes Identify trends and opportunities Personalize marketing and sales efforts Create competitive differentiation Reduce Costs, But Not at the Expense of Customer Relationships Expand and Consolidate Communication Channels The Internet has opened new customer relationship-building opportunities. This includes the use of email, Web chat, self-service, online ordering, FAQs, and Web forms. Research by CRMGuru, Jupiter, and others has indicated that the use of the Web and email for customer service is increasing rapidly, and found that customers will regularly crisscross between channels. For customers to have the positive and rich experiences that foster loyalty, their interactions through each channel—self-service, email, phone, fax, letter, and chat--must be blended seamlessly together. Multiple communication channels can be used to help prevent service failures and to build stronger relationships with customers. The expansion into these communication channels not only increases the number of customer touch points, but also reduces the cost of individual interactions. Research by BenchmarkPortal indicates the following average costs to process transactions: Channel Cost per transaction Telephone $12.56 E-mail $ 8.79 Web Chat $ 4.62 Web Self-Service $ .79 www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -8- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency While the internet-based channels have a lower cost per transaction, the absence of a system to properly manage these interactions can prove costly in the form of dissatisfied customers and customer defection. Accordingly, Gartner notes that automation and consolidation of channels are two top issues for customer service and support at many companies3. The ideal contact center solution helps to manage interactions from all communication channels. It can also help to reduce costs by automating communications when appropriate. 3. Ward off Problems and Reduce Liability A one-time occurrence of a defective product, service quality problem, or a foreign object being found in a meal may not be cause for alarm. Multiple occurrences may very well be. This could be the sign of a severe employee problem, large-scale product problem, or vendor or distributor problem. At this point it is critical that the right individuals in your organization are notified before the problem becomes a liability. Automated notifications via the contact center are valuable for quickly alerting key individuals to potential problems. For example, using the alert features in PowerCenter, notifications can be triggered to an individual--in real-time-- based on a predetermined set of circumstances. Problematic trends can also be identified through reports by analyzing the data captured from contact center interactions across all channels of communication. 4. Mitigate Loss by Minimizing Bad Customer Data and Behavior Address verification and cleaning capabilities improve the accuracy of customer data, helps to eliminate wasted postage for incorrect or old addresses, and increases the effectiveness of correspondence and outbound marketing after the issue has been resolved. They can also identify multiple, active addresses related to the same person or phone number and can tie this to this individual’s record, leading to faster issue resolution and more satisfied customers. This can also reduce the impact of chronic complainers and scammers. These individuals cost companies untold sums of money when they fabricate product or service problems and call in numerous times to swindle coupons, discounts, and other goodwill from companies. PowerCenter can help to prevent scammers from obtaining excessive goodwill by using threshold limits and alerts. 5. Establish a Unified View of the Customer Customers expect that agents can access their interaction history and understand the issues they have encountered--whether they choose to correspond via phone, letter, fax, email, chat, or Web form. Silos within the contact center – usually separate databases for each type of customer interaction –results in poor reporting and creates inefficiencies and customer dissatisfaction when a customer initiates an interaction through email and then follows up with a phone call. If the agent does not have access to the initial email and the response, this is likely to be detrimental to issue resolution and will aggravate the customer. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax -9- Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency A survey of 1000 consumers by Modalis Research Technologies found that repeating their situation to different agents in the same company is undesirable to nearly all, and 73 percent expect the agent to have a complete record of their relationship with the company--whether the contact is online or by phone. Sharing customer service information between interactive channels such as Web, phone and email reduces hassle for customers. A “unified view” of the customer provides the agent a comprehensive customer record and interaction history, including all addresses, issues, feedback, and goodwill associated with him/her. It can help to resolve issues faster and indicate how best to work with the individual to ensure satisfaction. It can also provide an organization insight into the relative value and brand loyalty of an individual customer. For companies with multiple brands, this will reveal insights into customer interactions across brands. Not only can the unified view be leveraged within the contact center, but Web-based contact center management systems, like Astute’s ePowerCenter, can help to coordinate the efforts of multiple contact centers through the same contact management system. In addition, this functionality allows a company to capitalize on a non-traditional, flexible, remote workforce by establishing a ‘virtual call center’ for handling customer inquiries. A unified view can also reduce costs by eliminating redundancies and ensuring smooth information flow throughout the enterprise. And finally, it leads to more satisfied customers and differentiation from competitors. 6. Improve First Call Resolution Through Advanced Capabilities Customer satisfaction decreases when their issue is not resolved on the first call. With each call back, research suggests customer satisfaction drops by 15 percent. Furthermore, repeat calls increase contact center volume. Assuming a first-call resolution rate of 70 percent, repeat callers will account for 30 percent of call center volume. That means, for example, that a contact center that receives 100,000 calls per quarter is dealing with 120,000 repeat calls every year! Elevating first-call resolution from 70 percent to 90 percent--a high, but attainable standard--reduces repeat calls by 80,000! A high level of first-call resolution is rarely attained without the right contact center management tools and strategies in place. The ability to provide agents with key pieces of information – such as an address or a complete customer profile – at the front end of the call increases the potential for a successful resolution. Providing agents the ability to capture detailed information quickly through tools that are tailored to the specific needs of the company leads to the generation of more useful reports and improves issue resolution. Providing managers the ability to analyze the fine details of customer issues in real-time is essential to an effective contact center. Furthermore, advanced contact center capabilities can ensure that complex issues and highly-valued customers are routed to the most qualified agents—whether through email, phone call or chat. This is www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 10 - Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency especially important from a liability perspective, where ensuring quality and consistency of response is essential. The ability to route customer data and issues out to the field for resolution and updates as needed improves customer satisfaction, recovery, and the benefits to the company. Since a large restaurant chain began using Astute Solutions’ PowerCenter, it achieved 99 percent customer issue resolution rate on first contact. Furthermore, the company managed a 400 percent increase in call center volume with a minimal increase in resources. 7. Integrate the Contact Center with Disparate Systems and Databases Businesses often quarantine the knowledge, insight, and best practices in separate departments. Most organizations have customer, product, and organizational data that exist in numerous locations, including internal and external databases, intranets, and external Websites just to name a few. In fact, Gartner estimates that 40 to 75 percent of the information required to fully meet customer and enterprise needs is 1 not resident in a single system or interface . If customer service agents don’t know where to look for information or have the ability to access other systems, it is unlikely that the customer’s issue will be resolved efficiently and effectively…if at all. The integration of contact center system with data sources outside the contact center enables better issue resolution and provides the organization a more complete picture of customers, trends, and opportunities. PowerCenter provides one of the world’s largest fast food chains the ability to integrate its 15,000+ restaurant location database with the contact center system. This combination of databases gives them the power to measure customer satisfaction results from the national level, right down to the individual restaurants. This information can be then used to identify, address, and resolve the issues that are impacting satisfaction. 8. Leverage High-Touch, High Quality Self-Service A major problem that companies face is managing the growing number and different types of interactions. According to Gartner, the number of interactions between a typical B2C organization and its customers is 4 growing at 15-20% per year, and the number of self-service transactions is growing at 25% per year . To increase the scalability of customer service operations and provide customers a range of service channels to address their needs, companies are now adding more self-service to their communications mix. Gartner estimates that in some B2C industries, such as consumer goods, banking, travel and leisure, consumers complete 60 to 80 percent of simple service interactions without the assistance of a 1 service agent . www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 11 - Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency A self-service channel provides numerous benefits: o Improved quality and efficiency: frees customer-facing employees from spending too much time dealing with routine inquiries, providing them more time to spend on calls and emails that demand more time and attention o Higher quality customer service interactions: frees agents for issues that require more attention and time and increases their job satisfaction o More satisfied customers: the customer has the opportunity to quickly obtain answers to their questions immediately and experience more control, 24X7 o A valuable source of information about your customers, products, locations, and your pany’s image when integrated with the contact center Self-service options include: o Interactive Voice Response (IVR), a telephony solution where the customer is presented with a menu of choices and makes a selection with their voice or touch-tone phone. o FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) via the company Website o Natural-language-based self-service solutions, that enable users to ask questions in their own words (not key words), and receive specific, accurate answers. Solutions like RealDialog can provide a single knowledge engine for all channels. It creates a searchable knowledge base for customer, contact center agent, employee and partner use based on real questions and issues issues. It can conduct productive “conversations” with the end user to get to the heart of their question and deliver the best response. Moreover, it allows calls coming into the contact center to drive new content in the knowledge base, ensuring it addresses the real questions customers are asking. When a customer’s question can’t be answered sufficiently via self-service, it can be seamlessly escalated to a live agent, who is provided a transcript of the self-service interaction. This provides a highlysatisfying experience to the caller while significantly decreasing service costs. 9. Improve and Refine Targeted Marketing by Consolidating Customer Databases By unifying customer issues and feedback in a single system, a company can efficiently launch outbound surveys to solicit customer feedback on breaking news, product introductions, or menu changes, or market a product to a specific set of customers based on the reasons they contacted the company. Furthermore, by integrating contact center data with other customer databases, marketers can rapidly identify specific targets for their marketing campaigns. Also, by integrating multiple communication channels with one unified contact center system, marketers can easily execute multi-channel campaigns to these specific individuals. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 12 - Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency 10. Capitalize on Opportunities and Trends to Increase Revenue Revenue opportunities can be identified with a toolset that enables the capture, tracking, and analysis of customer information on a granular level. For example, one of Astute’s customers, a large casual dining restaurant chain, tracked inquiries about where to purchase gift certificates. Not all stores carried them, but due to the volume of inquiries they received, the customer relations manager suggested that gift certificates be made available on the company’s Website. Doing so resulted in new customers, increased customer satisfaction, and an enormous revenue increase for this chain. For one of our beverage chain customers, many calls, emails, and letters poured in requesting a specific type of product. Management analysis of the contact center reports prompted the chain to develop the product. By later generating a report of all customers requesting the product, the chain was able to send out a communication which alerted the customers who requested it to the availability of the new product. The time and effort spent doing so was minimal--the process of generating and sending the notice and accompanying coupon was handled by PowerCenter’s automated fulfillment capability. The results of such a scenario include customer delight, effective marketing, and increased revenue—all with minimal effort. 11. Improve Business Decisions and Operations by Leveraging Contact Center Data The ability to analyze and leverage information from customer-facing systems is essential to answering many important business questions. It has been proven to be directly proportional to a company’s success in enhancing customer loyalty. Through powerful, flexible contact center reporting, the data collected and tracked over time gives will aid companies in making continuous product and service improvements. In order to accurately identify issues and their source, managers must be able to analyze information from all customer interaction channels. Using consolidated reports from all customer touch points, managers can gauge customer reaction to new offerings, identify issues that impact loyalty, and identify locations that are not meeting company standards. The ability drill down into data and generate reports with an increasing level of detail can help managers better understand issues, trends, and problems. Moreover, Contact center reports can proactively alert managers of issues and problems. With the ability to present a very high level of detail, these reports can enable companies to establish and monitor metrics for individual products, services, and locations. They can also aid managers in measuring promotional effectiveness and identifying opportunities for new products, services, and locations. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, the contact center’s “voice of the customer” reports can lead to: o o Better-informed management decisions including product, marketing, sales, and locationrelated decisions Improved consistency and quality of stores, franchisees, and restaurants www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 13 - Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency o o Better management of vendors and distributors Improved ability to quickly adapt to changing business and customer needs CONCLUSION In a nutshell, customer loyalty is critical success, and the contact center is one of the best channels to build and retain customer loyalty. But achieving this outcome involves careful, strategic planning, and putting the right people, processes, and technologies in place. The contact center’s human and technology resources should be selected and developed with the goal of building customer loyalty. Also, its activities and capabilities should be focused on the creation of value for the customer and the company. In addition to the specific benefits described previously, the overarching results of leveraging a contact center to its full potential are: o o o o o o o Reduced customer defection Increased competitive differentiation Improved brand image Increased customer loyalty Increased revenue Increased market share And greater profitability A company can boost its profitability and its chances of long-term success when the customer is at the heart of its goals and strategy, and its people, operations, and use of technology are centered on building customer loyalty. Even with the best contact center tools in place, however, these results will not be realized without execution and implementation. ABOUT ASTUTE SOLUTIONS Through its award-winning contact center automation, customer relationship management and knowledge management solutions, Astute Solutions enables consumer-focused companies to differentiate through service excellence. Its ePowerCenter™ and RealDialog™ solutions solve day-to-day interaction challenges and enable high quality customer experiences across all touch points. These solutions optimize operations through immediate, actionable feedback, while meeting the complex technical requirements of the enterprise. Astute Solutions’ Global 1000 customers include: McDonald’s, British Airways, Levi Strauss & Co., L’Oreal USA, Scott’s, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott Labs, and Dunkin’ Brands. For further details, visit www.astutesolutions.com or call (877) 769-3750. www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 14 - Ten Strategies for Driving Customer Loyalty and Contact Center Efficiency Notes: Sources Cited in the Document 1. Gartner Research Note, “How the Customer Interaction Hub Will Improve CRM”, 9 November 2004 2. Gartner Research Note, “Predicts 2004; Customer Service, From Function to Process”, 5 December 2003 3. Gartner Strategic Analysis Report, “Hype Cycle for B2C CRM Technologies, 2004”, 6 July 2004 4. Gartner Article Top View, “Make CRM More Strategic with a Customer Interaction Hub”, 9 November 2004 5. Gartner Research Note, “CIH Migration is Best-Suited for B2C Businesses”,1 November 2004 6. Gartner Research Note, “A Functional Analysis of a Customer Interaction Hub”, 27 October 2004 www.astutesolutions.com 2400 Corporate Exchange Drive Suite 150, Columbus, Ohio 43231-7606 (614) 508-6110 main phone/ fax - 15 -