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Article : Investing In Customer Self-Service Initiatives

In today's slowing economy, many companies find themselves in a catch-22. Decreasing revenues lead companies to reduce call center staff, resulting in poorer customer service as fewer agents handle more inquiries. Unhappy customers in turn spend less or go elsewhere.

Web self-service has become a top IT priority for companies in need of reliable, round the clock, high-volume customer support. Self-service technologies offload work that traditionally needed to be performed by humans so that call-center operators can concentrate on offering improved service to customers. To help get fast answers to frequently asked questions, Web-based self-service systems quickly mine large databases electronically and provide information that customers need in a familiar, conversational-style dialog. 

Many companies are adopting self-service agents to humanize their Web sites and amplify the capabilities of more traditional search engines. Through automation and the use of knowledge bases, companies cut costs without sacrificing the quality of valuable customer interactions. In a report called "Making Self-Service Pay Off," Forrester Research found that 62 percent of companies interviewed said self-service was their most important CRM initiative. Forrester also estimates that customer service questions fielded by a live agent can cost as much as $33 per phone call, and $10 per e-mail response, versus $1 per interaction via self-service technology.

Senior leadership buy-in and stewardship, as well as clear and measurable long-range goals are the most critical factors to consider when implementing a successful online self-service initiative. When there is a lack of senior management buy-in, companies can expect to face pitfalls. When self-service projects are treated as isolated, departmental efforts there is a risk of integration problems and fragmentation that can lead to customers falling through the cracks. The following recommendations will help companies ensure that customer satisfaction will go up while costs go down.

Vision - Self-service must be a senior management initiative backed by a company-wide vision with clear ties to corporate customer service and customer satisfaction goals. Companies that have realized tremendous success with self-service initiatives have focused on helping employees gain easier and more immediate access to information at a fraction of the cost of handling questions through call centers. As a result, companies' visions and goals now become realities, empowering employees to deliver high quality, faster service. Company-wide commitment directly affects the long-term success of the project.

Business Unit Accountability - Self-service is not always limited to customer service functions. For example, if the self-service solution is intended to serve as a sales tool, the VP of sales must support the project and the sales team should give substantial input throughout its design, giving them a stake in its success.

Set and Measure Clearly Defined Goals - Clearly defined and mutually agreed upon objectives must also be measurable. Hard statistics including call volume reduction, call time reduction or e-mail reduction, sales increases, customer registration numbers, and other factors will be useful in addition to "soft" measurements, including customer satisfaction, customer retention, or improved Web site usability. By calculating average costs to process individual email responses and the reduction in number of inbound emails, companies are able to effectively measure the cost savings and justify the self-service solution with quantifiable ROI.

Balance Both Short and Long-term Objectives - In the race to deploy Web self-service, companies often forget to consider the long-term goals and consequences when selecting a solution.  One of the most significant considerations is the ability for the solution to grow with your business and competitive demands. Companies need to evaluate the evolution of the solution by considering how the technology will integrate into future CRM investments, how content and efficiencies will be improved, and how customer insight will be measured over time.  By carefully considering these factors, companies will be able to determine if the solution is a temporary fix to online support problems or if it is an enterprise-level solution that will produce long-term ROI and customer satisfaction.

The ability to demonstrate and measure ROI, such as customer retention or satisfaction, is a critical determinant of success and critical to justifying IT spending in today's economy. By making self-service a long-term, company-wide commitment and setting clear, measurable objectives, companies not only show customers they care about client satisfaction, but show themselves the true value of these initiatives through ROI.


About the Company
NativeMinds provides the development of self-service solutions for the creation of automated online customer service and support agents called virtual representatives, or vReps. NativeMinds' self-service solutions help companies reduce customer support costs and increase revenue. Unlike traditional search technology, NativeMinds' vReps offer intelligent capabilities to understand and answer each customer's question based on their needs and your business objectives. vReps carry on natural conversations with customers to quickly provide answers, capture sales leads and automate your up-selling and cross-selling efforts.

About the Author
Mr. Rosenbaum brings a solid background in enterprise CRM and software marketing to NativeMinds. Most recently, he was the VP of Marketing for OpenDesign, a Web-services software company founded by Nathan Myrvolhd and Edward Jung. Prior to OpenDesign, he was VP of Marketing at Cohera, now part of Peoplesoft. He was a Senior Partner for Cambridge Technology Partners where he led large-scale self-service Web integration projects for clients such as HP, Sega, and Seagate. He has also held senior management positions with Applied Graphics Technology, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and ASK/Ingres. He has a BA in Mathematics from St. John's College and was a recipient of a Thomas J. Watson fellowship.

Today's Tip of the Day - Utilize Time & Money Saving Tools

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Published: Monday, January 20, 2003

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2024 Buyers Guide IVR

 
1.) 
Premium Listing
Call Center Studio

Call Center Studio
Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.


2.) 
Computer Data Services, LLC

VIRTUAL PBX
Get the benefits of an expensive, on-premise telephone system without the high price tag and annoying maintenance.

- Never miss another phone call
- No more busy signals
- Feature rich
- Answer your calls from anywhere

3.) 
eGain Corporation

eGain SmartIVR
eGain SmartIVR is an over-the-top solution to modernize IVR systems. Businesses can offer smartphone callers an easy choice to resolve queries via digital messaging and intelligent self-service. And they can optimize the IVR experience with end-to-end analytics.

4.) 
PEC Telecom

Virtual Phone Numbers (DID) and Business VoIP Phone Service
Whether a customer is running a Call Center business, an IVR system to take phone orders or a voice mail service bureau, he still needs inbound lines and access numbers (DIDs). These lines and DIDs give customers the ability to call in and use the service. Traditionally, these lines and DIDs were obtained through the local telephone company (i.e. Verizon, AT&T or Time Warner) and a company could only purchase numbers with area codes in the region the system resided. With VoIP, this has changed.

DID Live is an IP DID service that allows you to accept incoming calls via VoIP as an alternative to standard digital or analog lines. The service provides the same quality of sound you expect from...
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Pointel

Voice Self Service
Voice self-service can reduce cost and improve customer satisfaction. As with every system implementation, it is not the software, but the implementation that will define the success of the project. This also holds true for self-service implementations. Pointel follows a unique and proven process to implement voice self service. This process has been fine-tuned through years of experience implementing contact center and self-service applications. Pointel can design and develop solutions that will meet and exceed our client’s voice application needs. With several years of experience in Genesys GVP(Genesys Voice Platform) implementation and integration, Pointel can provide an integrated voice...
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6.) 
Teckinfo Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

IVR Edge
IVR Edge is a high performance, robust and scalable ivr system that works on various leading hardware such as Dialogic, Keygoe and Synway etc. It can handle the simplest of simple to the most complex of requirements to when it come to creating an IVR. Integration with any 3rd party database, be it for banking, telecom, insurance, travel, payment gateway etc can be handled with ease. Ideally suited to create Hosted IVR and virtual patching solutions with scalabilities that can range from 4 to 128 E1’s per setup with voice recording and CDR functionality. Integration with leading text to speech (TTS) and speech recognition ASR engines add to the flexibility and functionality.
 

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