Executive Interviews : Duke M. Chung - CEO & Co-Founder On Self Service Technologies

What are the greatest challenges that a contact center manager faces when implementing self service technologies for their customer to use?
There are a number of challenges facing a contact center manager which can best be summed up by the following ABCs:

Adoption.How does the contact center manager persuade customers to try and leverage the new self-service technologies available to them? Every industry differs slightly on their customer's self-service adoption rate.
Buying.Self-service technologies can be expensive. How does the contact center manager calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) based on customer adoption to justify the costs?
Content.Successful self-service deployments require an investment in content. How does the contact center manager intend to populate the self-service system and how does he expect to maintain it? A customer's first experience with a self-service tool can determine long-term success – if the desired content is not available, they may not return.
Deployment Time. Usually ROI is based on how fast their contact center team can realize a benefit from their investment. What if the deployment falls short of expectations or fails on some level?
Evaluate.It is imperative to give self-service technology a chance. What if the number of service requests does not decrease in the first couple of months? Allow the technology to be in place for no less than a year before doing a full evaluation. Then, if the contact center manager does not see considerable results, he should reevaluate.

Do you believe that eventually we will all use self service technologies to accomplish our needs as a consumer? If so, will a contact center agent ever be needed again?
Self-service technology is popping up everywhere. Waiting in line at a bank for a teller to withdraw money from your account is a thing of the past. More and more grocery stores and public libraries are offering self-service checkout stations. And movie-goers forgo long lines outside the theaters by purchase tickets online. The overwhelming success of these self-service venues attests to people's willingness to incorporate self-service practices on a daily basis. While customers still demand quality support, due to the success of the Internet, they've come to expect such services at lightning paces to which they've grown accustomed too. It's becoming clear that an online support system, which once may have seemed like a unique solution to the problem of providing support, is increasingly becoming a necessity and will be the parallel to the contact center.

There will be fewer jobs for 1st tier and, quite possibly, 2nd tier contact center agents, because most of the questions that were directed to these agents will be resolved using an automated system. Instead, companies will shift their focus to support teams that have more highly qualified agents, who can solve complex questions over the phone, email or via a ticketing system. These contact center agents will grow to be more versatile as they become instrumental in supporting the infrastructure of the support organization.

What are some of the mistakes some managers make when considering buying self service technology?
The biggest issue manager's face when selecting a self-service solution is not thinking as their customer, but only in terms of their own productivity requirements. Managers need to understand their customer's support behaviors to ensure support success. For example, if your customers are not web savvy, managers need to select a self-service solution that has a very intuitive user interface, otherwise their customers will not adopt their self-service support offering, causing a huge loss in both dollars and customer satisfaction. It is critical to select a vendor who clearly understands your support needs, and provides a solution that can be easily customized to match your customer's support behaviors.

I recommend doing due diligence by locating multiple vendors online who specialize in web-based software. Narrow the field to four or five and really pick their brains. These vendors will have mastered the customer interaction experience for online users, since their technology is designed strictly for the web. Consider them experts who can properly direct you in achieving both high customer adoption and getting the most ROI out of your self-service solution.

How should a manager evaluate different solutions and industry providers?
Examine the costs closely between the delivery models of an installed vs. a hosted solution. When implementing an installed solution, many companies fail to recognize the total cost of ownership. This typically includes costs associated with purchasing hardware and software, hiring an internal network IT person or team to manage the hardware and software, and finally, the time to deploy, which can take months. The investment alone to hire an entire team to maintain an installed support solution could range several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

By selecting a hosted support solution, such as Parature, you avoid all of these upfront costs, saving thousands of dollars. Very often, a hosted solution on a recurring subscription model offers automatic upgrades to your system. This can prove to be very valuable since you will be able to take advantage of the latest technologies.

In addition to the hosted model, make sure the vendor offers a wide variety of feature sets that are integrated to provide a complete solution. In other words, make sure the application includes a range of features that work together to create a comprehensive support system. For example Parature provides the following features to ensure that our clients have what they need to adequately provide self-service support to their customers: customizable support portal, robust knowledge base, advanced ticketing system, discussion boards, chat capabilities, asset system, product catalog, contact management, email management, surveys, reporting, activity scheduler, and document management tools. The keys to effective self-service technologies are ease of use, minimal to no training necessary and a mixture of features that provide a wide range of communication channels.

In your opinion, what self service technology is likely to have the biggest impact in the industry in say 2-3 years time?
I am certain that, in the next several years, every business will have a complementary online business. Companies are beginning to realize that an online support solution that provides self-service capabilities is critical in customer retention and loyalty. Not having this type of system will be like not having a customer support team. Therefore, in addition to their company's best practice, they will have to have an online support mechanism that compliments their product and service offerings to ensure customer satisfaction. The expectations for the growing population of online buyers will help define this need.