CRoss-ChannEl FRonT DooRs - Genesys€¦ · Cross-Channel Front Doors ..... 8 The Web Front Door The Phone Front Door Cross-Channel Front Door Strategies Conclusion ..... 11 Recommendations

In the current tough economic climate, companies must make hard decisions about where to invest their limited funds and resources. An important strategy for success is to leverage value-based customer segmentation and resourcing to win and retain cross-channel customers.

The reality is that too many enterprises that implement this strategy take the approach of applying value-based segmentation to high-value, high-cost customers only, and not also to the majority of their customer base. This is an unsustainable business practice, however, because companies that don’t match cost and service to value across all segments risk over-servicing low-value, frequent-contact callers, and/or neglecting some of their affluent customers — who tend to cross channels during multi-stage sales and service inquiries.

In fact, companies need to be able to segment customers, offer differentiated services, and prioritize interactions in real time across channels such as Websites, phone, and IVRs (Interactive Voice Response systems) based on value and cost.

Therefore, today’s industry leaders are pursuing:

a. A differentiated customer service and engagement strategy,

b. Delivered by a cross-channel front door approach, and

c. Supported by value-based resourcing.

The bottom line is that the success and survival of today’s companies depends on the alignment of organization-wide goals, people, processes, and technologies that can orchestrate value-based segmentation and resourcing across “front door” channels to optimize business outcomes.

CRoss-ChannEl FRonT DooRs:HOW COMPANIES CAN LEVERAGE VALUE-BASED SEGMENTATION AND RESOURCING TO GROW VALUABLE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS THE WEB AND PHONE CHANNELS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Customer Segmentation .................2

Cross-Channel Customer Behavior ...................................................3

Customer Service Strategy ...........5

Containment

Engagement

Value-Based Resourcing

Cross-Channel Front Doors ...........8

The Web Front Door

The Phone Front Door

Cross-Channel Front Door Strategies

Conclusion ............................................11

Recommendations for Success

References ...........................................12

Business White PaPer


Cross-Channel Front Door / page 2 of 12

Customer Segmentation In most businesses, a minority of customers yield the majority of revenue and profits. Realizing this phenomenon, companies have long invested in retaining and growing their relationships with their elite (high net-worth/high-spend) customers by offering them specialized or differentiated services. For example, a dedicated service representative — such as an account executive, a private banker or broker, or a personal shopper — may be assigned to an elite customer to provide more exceptional, personalized service. This high-touch approach is obviously more expensive, making this customer segment both high-value and high-cost, but this differentiated service typically pays for itself ten-fold.

However, there is often no clear segmentation strategy for the remaining majority of the cus-tomer base. Some companies employ complex customer demographics and product propensity categorizations, but mostly for traditional marketing campaigns, and less so for service prioritiza-tion and resource alignment.

A simple, useful segmentation strategy can be based on a two-by-two model evaluating customer value and cost. What constitutes “valuable and costly” will vary depending on industry and business model. A high-value customer could be a high-net-worth customer, a high-spender, or a loyal customer whose purchases may be small but provide a cost-effective revenue stream and significant lifetime value. A high-cost customer might correspond to a frequent-contact customer (as the largest proportion of service costs is staff-related), a customer who is regularly delinquent paying bills or fees, or a customer who purchases but then often returns products.

With the exception of the elite segment, companies often (unintentionally) adopt a philosophy of “Equal Service for All.” Systems and processes are not instrumented to properly identify and segment customers and align limited resources based on customer value and costs. As a result, all customers are equally encouraged to use self-service on the Website and within the automated phone IVR system. Also, many contact centers adhere to uniform service level goals across all interactions, such as minimizing Average Handle Time (AHT). Increasingly, customer satisfaction and sales targets are also included but, again, these metrics are often applied across the board regardless of customer segmentation.

This uniform approach results in two key areas of unrealized opportunity. First, companies routinely under-serve affluent time-starved

customers (high-value, low-cost) who tend to self-serve and with whom the company has few chances to interact directly. Most organizations are not able to effectively differentiate their affluent customers from their lower-value core customers and vary treatment accordingly. As we will explore in the next section, affluent time-constrained customers are more likely to exhibit cross-channel behavior, requiring proactive engagement at the moment of opportunity.



A second untapped opportunity lies in extracting costs from the low-value segment, especially the high-cost, frequent callers. One Genesys client defined their low-value, high-cost segment as customers who had called more than once a week over the last three months (mostly checking on their borderline account balances and trying to negotiate a payment extension or fee waiver). Another Genesys client found that 53% of their contact center calls and 60% of their costs were generated by their low-value, high-cost segment. And a utility company found that the least profitable 18% of their customer base (those who were repeatedly behind on their payments and called frequently to request credit extensions and confirm their power would not be shut off) was responsible for 90% of their credit and collection calls. Few organizations today are able to segment out these callers. And when these customers are not properly identified and flagged, agents waste time over-serving low-value, high-cost segments by attempting to cross- or up-sell inappropriate offers to them or by initiating outbound relationship calls. Under an “equality” approach, companies are expecting their most valuable customers to subsidize the service they’re lavishing on very unprofitable customers. These costly customers are monopolizing agent resources, and constraining the contact center’s ability to spend time engaging the best customers in proactive needs-based conversations. This is simply not sustainable in the current economic climate.

Now, more than ever before, companies must realign resources in real time to attract, grow, and retain valuable customers. In these cost-conscious times, even solid business cases may not justify adding head count to service the high-value segment. Resources must therefore be extracted from costly segments and realigned toward more valuable ones. It is not a question of either/or. To succeed, companies must have their hands firmly on both dials — dial-up the service for high-value, under-served customers, and dial-down service on low-value, costly ones. The latter must be done carefully, since certainly not all lower-value customers are unprofitable. Although some customers may not be as high value as loyal customers who faithfully pay for products or services, they represent a significant revenue stream for the company long-term. The goal is to effectively separate the wheat from the chaff by cutting off costly customers without alienating lower-value profitable ones.

Value-based segmentation is only possible to the extent that customers can be properly identified when they’re at a company’s front door — especially when they enter online via the Web, or by telephone. Because cross-channel usage is becoming more prevalent, it is also more critical to have the ability to identify customers as they enter through these front doors and move across channels.

Cross-Channel Customer Behavior Customer behavior is changing — especially how customers use the online and phone channels — and this is impacting the role these channels need to play in effectively managing customer contacts. In particular, corporate Websites and IVRs need to evolve to respond to this new customer behavior.

Customers prefer human assistance — either in person or over the telephone — for all but the most straightforward sales and service interactions. As call volumes have increased, companies rely on IVRs to handle more and more calls, and customers are willing to use IVRs for routine tasks and convenient 24X7 service. But in situations where human assistance is required — such as sales and issue resolution — customers insist on transferring out of the IVR to speak with an agent.

To date, IVRs have provided two important functions:

Current Role of IVRs

Self-service automation (primary function)

Front door to human assistance (secondary function)



Of the two, most organizations concentrate on the self-service capabilities of IVRs, with less importance placed on their role as a front door to human assistance.

Recently, the Web has been supplanting traditional IVR functionality. Consumers now report using the Web more than IVRs for self-service, and they are twice as satisfied with their Web experiences [Tempkin 2008]. Customers who are willing to self-serve are converting from the IVR to the Web as their channel of choice [Genesys client data 2008]. The Web is additionally providing capabilities that IVRs have never been particularly adept at. For example, more than one-third of consumers now say that the Web is their preferred sales research channel, second only to going into a branch or store [Pew 2008, Tempkin 2008]. Corporate Websites are also more useful vehicles for brand marketing and corporate communications.

Thus, today’s Websites serve the following purposes:

Current Role of Corporate Websites

Self-service automation

Sales research and simpler purchases

Brand marketing and corporate communications

The rise of the Web, however, hasn’t stemmed the tide of inbound customer calls. For more complex sales and service, online customers still require human support for clarification, human validation of sales decisions, and issue resolution. And when online customers get stuck, they either call the company for support, or surf away to a competitor’s Website; therefore, time is of the essence to engage these Web shoppers before they click away.

Two-thirds of online mortgage shoppers and three-quarters of credit card shoppers complete an application within one hour of beginning their research [Strothkamp 2006]. If these customers then elect to call the company to discuss the application, they are typically greeted by an IVR. However, what they seek is human assistance, and many of today’s IVRs don’t make it easy to quickly reach a person — especially an appropriately skilled agent who can address their specific issue.

Connecting with someone who can answer the customer’s questions and validate their purchase decision is crucial for moving the sales process forward and stopping their online comparison shopping. Providing human assistance in a timely, convenient way helps customers commit to and complete their purchases — either on the phone with the agent, or later at a branch office or store.

Customer types exhibiting this trend in cross-channel behavior include:

Customer Types Exhibiting Web-to-Phone Cross-Channel BehaviorCustomer Type Comments

Technology-savvy customers This behavior is more prevalent with, but not limited to, younger shoppers. Over 40% of Gen Y, Gen X, and young-er Baby Boomers (age < 51) — and even 11% of Seniors (age 63+) — report the Web as their preferred channel for sales research [Tempkin 2008].

Affluent time-starved customers One of the most valuable customer segments

Existing customers who use company’s Website

Key to organic growth and long-term customer loyalty

Prospects looking to switch brands or spread wallet-share around

Vital for new customer acquisition to expand customer base



More and more customers cross channels to buy, and those customers who buy cross-channel spend more money. Cross-channel shoppers tend to be affluent customers who will pay for conve-nience and, on average, spend an additional $164 in the store when they purchase products they researched online [Johnson 2007]. In fact, cross-channel shoppers tend to spend 30% to 50% more than single-channel shoppers [Suleski 2007]. In other words, the most desirable customers and prospects are those who are likely to have adopted this new pattern of cross-channel behavior, and who then seek human assistance to complete a sale or service inquiry.

Customer Service StrategyThis change in consumer behavior has a number of implications for the roles played by the IVR and Website, depending on whether a company adopts a customer service strategy that leans more toward containment versus engagement.

Containment Companies are challenged to keep pace with the ever-growing demand and increasing costs of servicing customer contacts with human representatives. As such, under an “Equal Service for All” philosophy, many contact centers trend toward a containment strategy — whereby they try to

“contain” as many customer contacts as possible within self-service.

Understandably, IVRs have been the primary tool used in containment strategies. More emphasis has been put on using the IVR for self-service automation than as a front door to reach a human. In fact, the most common success metric for an IVR is usually its containment rate (also sometimes referred to as an automation rate) — namely, the percentage of calls contained within the IVR without transferring out to an agent. Much time and effort are spent on creating extensive IVR menus and self-service modules, which provide limited or restricted exit routes for a customer who might prefer to opt out to reach a live representative.

As the Web is supplanting many traditional IVR functions, this containment philosophy is permeat-ing over to the online channel as well. Namely, the online strategy is to contain customers within the Website self-service functionality, and not readily offer human assistance while online. In many organizations, the online channel and contact center are run as separate lines of business. The online business is measured and rewarded based on the number of customers using the Website for sales or service. The organization is also sensitive not to drive too many online contacts into the contact center (via Web chats, e-mails, or calls), since the contact center is often seen as a cost center that’s run under a separate budget from the online group. Thus, there is pressure from both the profit and cost sides to contain customers within the online channel. As a result, human assistance options (phone numbers, callback requests, chat links, or e-mail addresses) are not widely advertised across the Website pages, leaving online shoppers with essentially no access to customer service assistance.

Clearly, a containment-biased strategy in either channel negatively impacts the cross-channel customer experience. First, shoppers who are not provided with ready access to human assistance while online become frustrated and surf away to competitors’ Websites without ever bothering to call into the company for support. Second, even if these customers do take the initiative to call the company, they are often greeted by irrelevant IVR menus that over-emphasize containment. (If they had wanted self-service, a Web-savvy consumer would have used the online channel for this.) Blocking the exit from the IVR by hiding the agent option, or allowing transfer to an agent only after reaching the end of a long on-hold queue, just serves to further frustrate customers. If not given priority routing, these callers will continue to comparison shop online while waiting on hold, jeopardiz-ing the sales opportunity.



Also, agents who receive cross-channel calls typically aren’t trained, incented, or enabled to support online sales leads. Common obstacles agents face in handling these types of calls include:

• Lackofinformationregardingwhotheincomingcallerisorwhattheymayhavejustbeendoing online or within the IVR.

• Training,tools,andincentiveswhichover-emphasizeservicingcallsquickly;littleornoemphasis placed on sales opportunities.

• LimitedornoaccesstotheWebsitefromtheagentdesktop,soagentsareblindtotheonlinefunctionality and customer experience.

- The solution doesn’t necessarily have to employ full co-browse (allowing an agent to view and potentially co-control the customer’s actual Web session); instead, it could be as simple as giving agents access to the company’s Websites so they can log on using test account data to view a dummy account that closely mirrors a customer’s online experience. In this way, the agent can have a contextually coherent dialog with the customer while looking at the general Webpage layout and online functionality.

The result is the cross-channel customer experience breaks down, causing missed sales oppor-tunities and increasing the likelihood that online customers will click away. Web, IVR, and contact center strategies that are fixated too heavily on containment can end up driving customers straight into the arms of competitors.

EngagementRather than uniformly trying to contain all customers in self-service (via the Web or IVR), an engagement strategy embraces the idea that companies need to have more human interactions with the right customers and prospects to deepen customer relationships and grow organically.

Certainly not all customer contacts can or should be handled by a human: The volume of interactions is far too vast, operational costs need to be effectively managed, and some customers may prefer self-service for certain tasks. So, self-service (Web and IVR) will continue to play a vital role even in an engagement-based approach. But corporate goals need to shift to put more emphasis on the front door capabilities of these channels, in order to identify and engage key customers.

One of the main challenges companies face is that their contact center staff spend too much time talking to customers they don’t want to speak with (e.g., lower-value costly customers), and not enough time talking to those customers they do want to speak with (e.g., affluent time-constrained customers). The service goals and resources should be aligned around high-value customers from whom companies make their money. However, proactive engagement, sales leads, and relationship-deepening conversations are often sacrificed in periods of high contact center activity. This, combined with the inability to identify customers at the front doors (especially high-value ones at the Web front door and low-value ones at the phone front door), effectively means that contact centers move agents from proactive engagement with high-value customers to serving low-value, high-frequency customers.

Some companies believe they need to focus first on perfecting their containment strategy, and then, after service levels and cost containment are under control, the organization can explore ways to engage key customers. But, like waves crashing on a beach, customer contact volumes continue to increase year-over-year, and contact centers are always being asked to do more with fewer resources. If you don’t get in front and ride the wave to where you want to go, the rising tide of customer contacts will crush you. So abandon “Equal Service for All,” and start engaging your valuable customers now — lest they leave for your competition.



Value-Based Resourcing The solution lies in value-based segmentation and resourcing — determining which customers should be proactively engaged and prioritized for human assistance, versus those who should be encouraged to self-serve, placed in a longer queue, or routed to a specialized team.

Specifically, elite customers should be provided with differentiated service and dedicated personal representa-tives. In many industries, less than 20% of the top customer base accounts for 80% of the profits. (You can’t afford to lose these customers!) Affluent time-starved customers — with whom companies desire more frequent contact for growth opportunities — should be proactively engaged. These time-constrained customers willingly use self-service, so engage them while they

are online or in the IVR by inviting them into a conversation with a human service representative who can deepen the customer relationship and explore hidden needs and sales opportunities. Next, for the bulk who fall into the low-value, low-cost core customer segment — and who represent a solid, recurring revenue source if handled efficiently — organizations should manage service costs and sell reactively to this group.

Finally, low-value, high-cost customers should be deflected and retention strategies for this segment should be eliminated. Push these unprofitable customers to use cost-effective self-service options, give their calls lowest-priority routing (longer on-hold times), or route them to a separate quick-handle team. Train these agents to not spend time cross- or up-selling; to wrap up calls quickly; to be firm about requiring timely payments; and to professionally and expediently close accounts if necessary. Many companies are hesitant about limiting customer service to this segment, fearing it will lead to lower overall customer satisfaction ratings and diminish the brand. However, you don’t want to encourage this segment to remain your customers, because it’ll cost you. It’s not just that these customers lack high net-worth, but also that their behavior patterns are incredibly high maintenance and will unprofitably break the company’s business models for products and services. You want these people to leave and go to your competitors. (This is one group of customers you can’t afford to keep!) Instead, redirect time and attention toward invest-ments in the more profitable customer segments.

Should value-based resourcing focus purely on customer segmentation, or can it also take into account the type of interaction or sales lead? The answer is that, in most cases, customer segmentation should take precedence. For instance, imagine an unprofitable customer who never pays their bills on time. If this person happens to be browsing mortgage rates online and dreaming of owning a home (even though they defaulted on their last loan and have a poor credit score), a bank would not want to proactively engage this customer, no matter how valuable a mortgage is for the bank. On the other hand, the value of an opportunity may at times be factored in when trying to prioritize between the competing demands of affluent versus core customers. For instance, if there are limited resources, a core customer (lower-value, but profitable) shopping for an especially valuable product could be prioritized over a lower-value opportunity with an affluent customer (particularly if this wouldn’t negatively impact customer loyalty and retention).



Cross-Channel Front DoorsValue-based segmentation and resourcing require the ability to identify and prioritize customers in real time as they come through the front door.

Customers may choose from a variety of channels to begin their interaction with a company — such as going online or phoning into an IVR that answers incoming calls. No matter which front door a customer selects, companies need the ability to know who the customer is, how valuable or costly that customer is, which channel they are coming from, what their recent interactions and shopping behavior have been, and how to intelligently prioritize and manage the next conversa-tion with that customer. The Website and IVR cross-channel front doors must be instrumented to identify, engage, and prioritize customers using value-based segmentation and resourcing.

The Web Front DoorWhile many customers prefer to use the Web for self-service and sales research, most would rather purchase from a person who understands their needs — particularly for more complex, financially or personally sensitive, or expensive products and services. Online shoppers have noto-riously short attention spans and make rapid decisions within split-seconds. If not directly engaged in the moment of opportunity, they can quickly click away. So companies need to proactively engage online shoppers by providing them a doorway from the Website to human assistance.

A Web front door is based on three pillars:

• WebMonitoring

- Use real-time Web analytics to monitor online shoppers’ behavior. Based on behavioral analytics, customer data, value assessment, and resource availability, determine those that are hot leads to engage while the shopper is online.

• WebEngagement

- Reach out to hot leads by presenting proactive online invitations that offer a choice of ways to interact:

a. Chat Online (instant messaging),

b. Call Me Now (immediate callback to the customer’s telephone), or

c.CallMeLater(scheduleacallback).

- Web monitoring and engagement must be closely coupled with an awareness of currently available skilled contact center resources.

• Forinstance,aninvitationtochatonlineaboutinsuranceshouldonlybepresentedifachat-skilled insurance specialist is currently available (or soon to be, based on predictive analytics). Proactively inviting a customer into a conversation which cannot be fulfilled by the right resource in a timely manner causes customer disengagement.

• Potentialcustomerinteractionsacrosschannelscompeteforalimitedpoolofskilledresources. An effective value-based solution must prioritize these competing demands through a universal routing queue, regardless of channel. If a high-value customer is online and looking to purchase a product, it makes sense to proactively engage with them at the moment of opportunity, prioritizing this interaction over a reactive response to a lower-value customer who is calling into the contact center. Value-based customer segmentation needs to be matched to the right resource to optimize the opportunity. This cross-channel contact center-wide approach is significantly different from basic chat or click-to-call solutions that are only linked to a small, isolated pool of agents.

“Whatever ‘door’ the customer comes in, [we want] the ability to know in realtime [who the customer is and] where that customer is coming from.”

-CIO,SUPER-REGIONAL U.S. BANK



• MissedOpportunities

- Since it is not always possible to engage all online hot leads in real time (given limited resource capacity), these missed opportunities should be earmarked as warm leads for potential follow-up in another channel at a later time. Online activity can be mined for behavioral leads which are fed into offline channels (contact center or branch/store) so informed cross- and up-sell offers can be made during subsequent service interactions.

A Website instrumented with proactive engagement thus acquires an additional capability as a front door:

Revised Role of Corporate Websites

Self-service automation

Sales research and simpler purchases

Brand marketing and corporate communications

Plus as a front door to human assistance

Amongst these capabilities, developing the online front door should receive the greatest near-term focus. While customers will continue to use the Website for self-service and product research, building out these other capabilities must not be at the expense of online engagement. Converting online shoppers to buyers requires immediate human attention. No matter how good online sales tools are, customers will always need human interaction to validate more complex or costly sales purchases. Providing online human contact has a direct impact on revenue growth and customer retention which, in today’s economic environment, is a priority that cannot be postponed.

The Phone Front DoorRecent changes in customer behavior, coupled with adopting a value-based engagement strategy, require a new approach for the phone channel, and IVRs in particular.

First, the Web — and not the IVR — will continue to grow as customers’ preferred self-service channel. This means that usage of IVRs for self-service will wane over time.

Second, online customers often call companies while they are still online, or shortly thereafter. An IVR that not only greets the caller, but also gathers the caller’s intentions, adds contextual information about the caller’s profile and history (including online behavioral insights), and then routes them to the most suitable resource that will effectively resolve the interaction is called an intelligent Customer Front DoorTM (iCFD) (i.e., dynamically adaptive, customer-centric self- and assisted-service driven by intelligent business rules — see References for additional Genesys white papers on iCFD).

The phone front door needs to identify who the caller is, what they are calling about (by recognizing what they were just doing online or what they just requested in the IVR), and route the call to the most appropriate resource according to value-based business rules. It is crucial to spot callers whose real-time or recent activity is indicative of a high-value customer and prioritize those interactions.

Thus, moving forward, the IVR’s two primary functions will reverse in importance:

Revised Role of IVRsFront door to human assistance (primary)

Self-service automation (secondary, waning over time)



Cross-Channel Front Door StrategiesThe table below summarizes techniques for instrumenting the Website, IVR, and contact center as part of a cross-channel front door strategy to enable value-based customer segmentation and resourcing:

CRoss-ChannEl FRonT DooR sTRaTEgIEsSegment Online IVR Contact Center

High-value high-cost (elite)

• Prioritizeproactive engagement, offering choice of chat and callback now/later to hot leads based on resource availability

• Don’troutetoIVR.Providedirect access to personal representative’s phone

• Providedirectaccesstopersonalrepresentative. If unavailable, re-route to gold service team within contact center

• Closelymonitorandincentcustomerengagement and loyalty

• ImproveIVRAuthentication to identify and segment callers, especially for opt-outs

• Inviteselectcustomers to transfer to agent rather than self-serve (based on leads and resource availability)

• Priority-routetobest-skilledavailableagent,basedoncustomer profile, recent online behavior, and/or request within IVR

• Screen-popsegmentationandcustomerdata(including leads) to agents

• Coachandrewardagentsbasedoncustomerengagement and sales targets to deepen customer relationship

• ProvideagentswithWebsiteaccessandinsightsintocustomer online behavior

• Makeoutboundrelationship/retentioncalls

• Eliminateproduct-pushcross-/up-sellingand outbound calls

High-value low-cost (affluent time-starved)

Low-valuelow-cost (core customer base)

• Encourageonlineself-service

• Limitproactiveengagement (based on value and resourcing priorities)

• EncourageIVR self-service

• ImproveIVRAuthentication to identify and segment callers, especially for opt-outs

• Limitinvitingcustomersout of IVR (only for valuable leads or critical issues (e.g., fraud alerts), based on resourcing priorities)

• Lowerpriorityroutetoappropriatelyskilledagent

• Flagcallssoagentsknowtominimizehandletime

• Trainagentstocoachcustomerstoself-serve

• Enableagentstoreactivelysellbasedon customer-driven requests

• Cross-/up-sellvaluableleadsduringcapacitylulls

• Makeoutboundrelationship/retentioncallsduringlulls

• Monitorandincentcustomersatisfaction

Low-valuehigh-cost (unprofit-able)

• Encourageonlineself-service

• Don’tproactivelyengage

• EncourageIVR self-service

• ImproveIVRAuthentica-tion to identify and seg-ment callers, especially for opt-outs

• Onlyinvitecustomersoutof IVR for critical issues (e.g., fraud alerts)

• Routewithlowestpriority(orplaceonhold)ordirectto quick-handle team

• RewardagentsforshorterAverageHandleTime

• Trainagentstocoachcustomerstoself-serve

• Expectlowercustomersatisfactionscoresandalign agent incentives

• Don’tcross-/up-sellandremovesalestargets

• Makenooutboundrelationship/retentioncalls

• Trainagentstoprofessionallyandexpedientlyhandleaccount closures



ConclusionIn the current volatile and competitive economic climate, companies must make tough decisions about where to, or not to, invest limited funds and resources. These assessments need to be across time and channels. Customers must be correctly identified and segmented, and the right customers must be engaged and prioritized at precisely the right time in the sales cycle.

Leadingcompaniesareleveragingvalue-basedcustomersegmentationandresourcingtowinand retain cross-channel affluent customers, while simultaneously extracting costs from unprofit-able segments. Websites and IVRs play a pivotal role in this new approach. As cross-channel front doors, they enable companies to identify customers and dynamically differentiate service in real time. Effectively instrumenting these cross-channel front doors requires the alignment of organization-wide goals, people, and processes, as well as technologies that can orchestrate value-based segmentation and resourcing across channels to optimize business outcomes. The bottom line is that the success and survival of today’s companies depend on it.

Recommendations for Successadopt a strategy of engagement, not just containment.

• Re-positionboththeWebandIVRasfrontdoorstohumanassistance.Proactivelyengagevaluable online shoppers using chat and callback invitations. Provide adaptive IVR flows for identifying high-value customers and offering to connect them with an agent.

leverage value-based segmentation and resourcing.• Avoid“EqualServiceforAll.”

• Prioritizeinteractionsbasedoncustomersegmentation,opportunityvalue,andskilled resource availability.

• Extractcostsfromunprofitablesegmentsandapplyresourcestoproactivelyengagevaluablecustomers.

Create cross-channel front doors.• LeveragetheWebsiteandIVRascross-channelfrontdoorstoidentify,prioritize,andengage

customers in real time.

• UseWebandIVRanalytics,customerdata,skilledresourceawarenessandvalue-basedbusiness rules to facilitate the cross-channel customer experience.

Don’t design channels as silos. • Ifyouwaituntilyou’veoptimizedeachchannelinisolation,you’llneverkeepupwithhowyour

customers are behaving or catch up to where your competitors are headed.

Design from the customer’s cross-channel perspective.• Understandthatcustomersusedifferentchannelsfordifferentpurposes,andvaluable

customers are more likely to cross channels.

• Ratherthancreatingfunctionalparityineachchannel,optimizechannelstomatchcustomerexpectations of the primary purpose of that channel. Enable smooth hand-offs at transition points where customers tend to cross channels.

align cross-channel goals, resources, and technologies.• Alignorganizationalandstaffgoalsandrewardswithcross-channelsuccess.

• Involvecross-functionalteamsfromthestartofprojects.

• Employindustryexpertiseandtechnologiestoenableorchestrationandprioritizationofcustomer contacts across channels.



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bring their people, insights and customer channels together to effectively drive today’s customer conversation. Genesys software directs

morethan100millioninteractionseveryday,maximizingthevalueofcustomerengagementanddifferentiatingtheexperiencebydriving

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Genesys and the Genesys logo are registered trademarks of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All other company names

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Inc. All rights reserved.

ReferencesCapgemini. (2005) World Retail Banking Report. http://www.capgemini.com/resources/thought_leadership/world_retail_banking_report_2005.

Genesys. (2008) Contact center and online data from various client sources.

Genesys. (April 2008) The intelligent Customer Front DoorTM: Go Beyond the Limitations of Traditional Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to Deliver Superior Customer Service. AbusinesswhitepaperbyGenesysTelecommunicationsLaboratories,Inc.

Genesys. (July 2008) Deploying an intelligent Customer Front DoorTM for Exceptional Customer Service. AbusinessconsultingwhitepaperbyGenesysTelecommunicationsLaboratories,Inc.

Genesys. (October 2008) Mastering the Cross-Channel Conversation: How Retail Banks Can Employ an Online Engagement Strategy to Improve Sales Performance and Efficiency While Delivering a Superior Customer Experience. A business white paper by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories,Inc.

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