The Future of Customer Service

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The Future Of Customer Service A Forrester Perspective

Kate Leggett, Principal Analyst

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Ninety percent of customer

experience decision-makers tell

Forrester that a good customer

experience is critical to their

company’s success. Sixty-three

percent think the importance of

the customer experience has

risen.

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Few companies deliver an outstanding customer experience

Source: April 24, 2012, “The State Of Customer Experience, 2012” Forrester report

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Good customer experiences are good for business

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Cost

Customer

satisfaction and

loyalty Revenue

Compliance

The customer service leader must balance the needs of his customers with the needs of his business

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Cost Customer

satisfaction and

loyalty Revenue

Compliance

The customer service leader must balance the needs of his customers with the needs of his business

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Consumers want quick answers to questions or will abandon

Source: January 23, 2012, “Understanding Customer Service Satisfaction To Inform Your 2012 eBusiness

Strategy” Forrester report

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Pay attention to the reach of negative opinions

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Cost

Customer

satisfaction and

loyalty Revenue

Compliance

The customer service leader must balance the needs of his customers with the needs of his business

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One solution is to move customer service to less expensive communication channels

Source: December 18, 2009, “It’s Time To Give Virtual Agents Another Look” Forrester report

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Customers want to engage using a variety of communication channels

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Realize that online channel usage mix has changed in the past two years

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Take a step back and think about the journey that customers expect to have with a company

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Most of the time this journey is fractured. Why?

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Most companies are a mess of disconnected technology

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Companies are not investing in shoring up the foundations of good interactions

Source: “Contact Center Purchase Plans 2011” Forrester report

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The volume of social inquiries and comments overwhelm companies

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Companies offer more customer touchpoints than ever before

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What can you do to make it better?

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Three step prescription to move the needle on your customer service

Focus on the agent experience

Focus on the customer expectations

Choose the right enabling technology

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Realize that an improved agent experience leads to better customer satisfaction outcomes

“Complete the following statement in the way that best describes your ability to correlate an

improved agent experience to better customer satisfaction:

We can correlate a good agent experience to good customer satisfaction ratings...”

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of salesforce.com, July 2012

Base: 196 United States Customer Service decision-makers

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Empower agents with the right information to service your customers

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Make the agent desktop usable

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Invest in knowledge management

Email

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Email

Push the right contextual knowledge to the agent desktop

Source: October 20, 2010, “Take Control Of Your Content” Forrester report

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Predictive customer service

Anticipate customer

and company

needs.

Automate

decisions.

Get the work to the

right person system.

Guide the service

experience.

Interact across all channels.

Make feedback

actionable.

Empower agents with the right next action

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Customer facing trends

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Invest in customer communities

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Traditional feedback

– Direct survey of

interactions

Social listening

– Voice of the customer

feedback

– Sentiment analysis

Post-identified

and classified

Escalate to

service?

Create

service

record.

Direct

communication

to poster.

Resolve issue and

contact poster via

optimal channel

(traditional or social).

Escalate to

customer service.

Community management

Customer service management

Route to a

customer

service agent.

Track activity.

Respond to poster.

Leverage KB.

Respond to poster.

Track activity.

Leverage KB.

Embrace end-to-end customer feedback

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Deploy value-added mobile scenarios

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Keep your customers in the loop with proactive communications

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Enabling solutions

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What we know: customer service organizations struggle with technology costs, and integration complexity

“What challenges did you face during your technology implementations?" (Select all that apply)

Base: 196 United States Customer Service decision-makers

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Software-as-a-Service for customer service takes off

May 2011 “The SaaS Market Hits Mainstream: Adoption Highlights 2011”

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SaaS has a multitude of benefits

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 37 July 2012 “The Forrester Wave™: CRM Suite Customer Service Solutions, Q3 2012”

Users move away from point solutions to suite solutions

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Focus on people, process and technology to move the needle on customer experience

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Thank you

Kate Leggett

+1 (650) 269-8658

Twitter: @kateleggett

Blog:http://blogs.forrester.com/ kate_leggett

kleggett@forrester.com

www.forrester.com