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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service
Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
WHITE PAPER
Companies that are considered the gold standard for customer service wield it as a powerful differentiator, enabling them, in a time of
increasing commoditization, to distance themselves from competitors. There are common denominators in the customer-facing
strategies these leading companies use to make their reputations. By adhering to best practices in service delivery, they’re set up to
provide a superior experience each time a customer contacts them — regardless of channel — and as importantly, use that
opportunity to deepen the relationship for increased loyalty, retention and revenues.
Just as there are common denominators in the front-office strategies that set businesses apart from their competition, there are also
common mistakes that organizations make that hinder service delivery. Here are the leading mistakes customer service departments
make — and surefire ways to avoid them.
MISTAKE
1
Not Using Self-Service for Deflection
Customers have taken to Web-based self-service — handling everything from simple product registration to IT break/fix issues — in
vast and growing numbers. Though the telephone continues to play a major role in service delivery for many businesses, particularly
those with complex technology to support, more and more support organizations are opening up their knowledgebases to partners,
customers and employees.
Businesses should carefully consider which issues and tasks they entrust to self-service because some transactions are too complex to
be handled by anyone but an expert, but simpler, repetitive issues — password resets, warranty registration and a plethora of
administrative tasks — are low-hanging fruit for self-service channels.
Of the numerous benefits a self-service strategy provides, cost reduction is a leading driver. Self-service drives down costs by keeping
problems and other tasks from moving upstream to either live or delayed assisted support via the telephone or email that can’t be
handled by autoresponse. Though a good self-service experience requires investment in stellar knowledgebase content, strong search
and navigation, and streamlined escalation processes, it
Primary Benefits from Implementing Self-Service Technologies
drops the costs of individual transactions to a fraction of
that of a phone session, which can range into the
Increased efficiencies
33.3%
hundreds of dollars for more-difficult technical issues.
Reduced costs
17.7%
Beyond cost reduction, self-service increases user
satisfaction with the provider, thus strengthening the
relationship and increasing the possibility it will be a
long-term, lucrative one.
Greater customer satisfaction
15.6%
Reduced number of support requests
15.6%
Customer demand
6.2%
Improved profitability
3.1%
Source: SupportIndustry.com survey, 2009
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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
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After implementing an integrated customer service software suite with
self-service capabilities, Coremetrics has seen customer satisfaction and
agent productivity jump significantly, despite experiencing a growth
spurt and reducing support costs. In fact, thanks to its self-service
knowledgebase, the company was able to more than triple its customer
base without adding service desk personnel, says Paige Newcombe,
senior director, global client services for the San Mateo, Calif.-based
marketing optimization software provider.
Since its knowledgebase implementation, Coremetrics has seen nearly
50% of its support queries originate with the self-service knowledgebase,
keeping its agents working on more-difficult, mission-critical problems.
Further, customer satisfaction has jumped to 90% and customer loyalty to
93%.
With Web self-service, we’ve
grown our client base by 350%
without adding headcount,
which reduces our cost of
providing service.
”
Paige Newcombe
Senior Director, Global Client Services
Coremetrics
“Web self-service has allowed us to keep support staff levels the same. We’ve grown our client base by 350% without adding
headcount, which reduces our cost of providing service. Without it we would have needed a new agent for every 10 new clients,” says
Newcombe.
MISTAKE
2
Not Offering Integrated, Multi-channel Support
Self-service, though an increasingly visible and viable channel choice doesn’t suffice as the only offering in a support organization’s
arsenal. Some customers simply don’t take to self-service, preferring the more intimate experience they get from talking to someone
on the phone. Or they may decide it’s more effective to send an email, not needing instant gratification, or to get live assistance
without picking up the phone by hitting the click-to-chat button.
It’s not a matter of simply making every possible channel available to customers: Not only would that be overkill in most cases, but
would waste resources. Such an approach may even hurt the company, as those that spread their resources too thin tend to
shortchange certain channels. A sound multi-channel strategy takes into account the type of business, the unique aspects of the
business itself, the customer base and its level of technical savvy and preferences, and customer demand.
If the business decides they’re going to offer multiple channels for gaining service, integration is a key consideration. Too many service
organizations make the mistake of creating siloed service channels, each with its own data and processes. With this lack of integration
come inconsistent delivery standards, knowledgebase content, sloppy escalation, cost inefficiencies, and plummeting customer
satisfaction.
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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
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This problem has more and more companies choosing to purchase their customer-facing applications in integrated suites from a
single vendor. Because the work involved in integrating applications has long been one of the most painful challenges support
organizations face — one in which they often create less than a seamless experience despite their painstaking work — multi-channel
suites with out-of-the-box integration allow support teams to quickly deploy breadth and depth of functionality. In addition, they can
immediately take advantage of consolidated customer data from cross-channel integration.
MISTAKE
3
Not Leveraging Social Media
Great customer service has long been one of the best forms of marketing, but today, the two practices are more closely tied than ever,
particularly in the immediacy with which one affects the other. Thanks to social media, in all its incarnations, customers have the ability
to rapidly and loudly advertise their happiness with a service experience, or wreak havoc on a company until their anger dissipates.
A bad experience with their cell phone provider? They might vent their anger on Facebook. Their business’s massive software provider didn’t
live up to its service-level agreement and their network was down for several hours? They can twitter about it to all their B2B partners and
customers. They can’t log-in to their favorite online gaming site when it’s been raining for three days and they desperately need to bust out?
They can light up their favorite forums dedicated to the game. There aren’t many secrets about service in a world where few people
keep secrets about anything.
Given people’s increasing comfort and even addiction to social media as a communications vehicle, service organizations that ignore
these networks not only set themselves up for some nasty surprises, but miss out on a significant opportunity to use the chatter to
engage users.
Best-in-class customer service platforms today include forum functionality
so businesses can create a hospitable place at their own site for their users to
congregate, socialize, and solve problems. These suites also integrate their
ticketing capabilities with platforms like Twitter and Facebook, allowing
organizations to automatically create tickets based on chatter on popular
social networks.
That’s what’s happening at Gazillion Entertainment, a San Mateo, Calif.-based
massively multiplayer online gaming (MMOG) company.
“We’re looking to determine effective ways to leverage user communications
from our forums because the community is such a great source of
information and they’re always helping each other solve problems,” says
Gabriel Scott, customer service lead. He uses activity in the forums to create
tickets in his customer service system and link to existing content or create
new content in the knowledgebase.
We’re looking to determine
effective ways to leverage
user communications from
our forums because the
community is such a great
source of information and
they’re always helping each
other solve problems.
Gabriel Scott,
Customer Service Lead
Gazillion Entertainment
”
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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
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Scott’s team also uses their system’s Twitter integration to track and monitor relevant tweets and re-tweets, from which they create
tickets and address content accordingly. It enables them to be more responsive to users and better measure their support content
quality.
“Moving forward, we’ll be working closely with the marketing team to generate reports so they can see all the [relevant] tweets we’re
tracking through support,” says Scott. “Our community managers will track and post to Twitter, Facebook and the entire spectrum of
media we use to disseminate information.”
MISTAKE
4
Not Capturing Customer Feedback from Support Transactions
Support organizations should not only make use of the feedback they can find all over the Web on social networks and at home on
their own forums, but through each and every service interaction they have with their customers. Instead of viewing service as an
event to be dispatched with — continually worried about that time spent with customers will negatively impact the bottom line —
executives need to think of service from a big-picture perspective, understanding the value of each interaction to the business. Too
many rely solely on support center metrics such as hold times to measure performance, and ignore valuable information that can
come straight from the source.
There are multiple instances where it makes sense to capture feedback directly from the customer — at the point of interaction, as a
follow-up to a transaction, continually throughout the relationship. Support organizations should implement customer systems that
allow them to automatically collect feedback at various points in the relationships, and numerous ways to view it. Their team can
generate a feedback mechanism as they close a chat session, or a ticket, or after they’ve served up a knowledgebase article, while they
have the sentiment of the customer at the ready.
Beyond immediate feedback, support organizations should also regularly take advantage of surveys to continually monitor their
customer relationships. They’ll want to be able to customize their surveys, keep them “lively” and timely, and adapt the ways they
deliver them. They can have them pop-up non-intrusively at strategic points in a website visit, or deliver them through email
campaigns. They should take advantage of technologies that enable feedback capture across every channel they use, and that allow
them to view it by individual session, individual history and in various aggregates across their customer base.
MISTAKE
5
Not Using Tracking and Reporting Tools
Measurement is the foundation of service and support, but too many service organizations measure everything possible and then do
nothing with the data. Within these metrics often lie the keys to problem areas, avenues to improvement, and better overall customer
satisfaction. As long as they’re out measuring everything from first-contact resolution to abandonment rate, across every channel, they
should use what they capture to unlock the information that can translate to critical business improvements.
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Five Big Mistakes Customer Service Teams Make — And How to Avoid Them
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As part of any customer service system they implement, support organizations should
look for sophisticated reporting tools as part of an integrated package. With every
front-office application producing metrics-related data, support center executives can
and should run reports on all relevant performance indicators. Not only are they able to
get a deep view of their daily and long-term performance as they track tickets from
creation to resolution, but they’re able to predict and adjust staffing levels, scheduling
and training needs.
At Austin, Texas-based e-MDs, a provider of EHRs and other clinical applications, the
support team uses reporting tools to review such metrics as time-to-resolution to tailor
their training programs and staffing levels, according to James Foster, client data
operations manager. They also rely heavily on specific reports to monitor and update the
effectiveness of their knowledgebase content.
Beyond support, one area that’s
benefiting from reporting and analysis is
e-MD’s development team, taking
advantage of the full-circle
knowledge-sharing between
development and service that
technology providers are always seeking.
“Our reports give us solid data that we
can give to the development team to
address issues in future releases of our
products,” says Foster.
Our reports give us solid
data that we can give to
the development team to
address issues in future
releases of our products.
James Foster,
Client Data Operations Manager
e-MDs
ABOUT PARATURE
”
Parature enables organizations to better serve, support, engage with and retain their customers via
the Web. Industry-leading, on-demand Parature Customer Service™ software provides customer
service organizations with a comprehensive, multi-channel way to meet the growing expectations
of their customers. With more than 10 years experience, Parature serves organizations in a wide
variety of industries worldwide and helps support more than 16 million end users. Parature is
among Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Software Companies and is the recipient of
numerous product, technology, and leadership awards. Today, the Parature name is synonymous
with innovation and value in Web-based customer service software, strategies and best practices.
Parature is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia with offices in San Francisco and the U.K.. For more
information, visit www.parature.com or follow @parature on Twitter.
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