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Establish Command and Control in the Service Delivery EcosystemMastering eight core service delivery capabilities for a consistent customer experience
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Figure 1: Customers prefer to do business with companies that offer a tailored and flexible customer experience.
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Agreement with Statements
9% 46% 45%
10% 49% 41%
13% 52% 35%
14% 55% 31%
52% 37%10%
50% 39%11%
40% 52%8%
Strongly Agree (8, 9, 10)Neutral (4, 5, 6, 7) Strongly Disagree (1, 2, 3)
Global
I prefer to do business with a provider that gives me the flexibility to step out of the purchase/contract with little hassle, should I change my mind about the purchase
I prefer to do business with a provider that has policies or procedures flexible enough to account for changes in my personal context, e.g., a job loss, change in income, re-location and so forth
When returning to a company I have done business with before, I expect them to treat me differently than just a first-time “new customer”
I expect a company to provide continuity with their services and interactions with me, despite disruptions from my side
I appreciate brands that customize messaging and offers to be relevant to me
I prefer to do business with brands/companies that use information about me to make my experience more efficient from one step to the next
I find it important that companies give me the flexibility to control how my personal infromation is used to tailor my experience
Source: 2012 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research
IntroductionHaving a customer-centric agenda, and delivering a consistent customer experience across marketing, sales and service has become critical for business success. With growing product commoditization and fierce price matching, organizations must seize one of the few remaining sources of differentiation and sustainable value realization. They must deliver a superior and customized service experience across multiple channels.
Why does the customer experience matter so much? According to the recent Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research, customers prefer to do business with companies that provide a tailored and flexible experience1 (see Figure 1). This requires companies to achieve a greater degree of agility across their customer service delivery ecosystem.
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What is causing the evolution to a customer-centric agenda? Accenture sees it as a macroeconomic shift in the balance of power from companies to customers. For the past eight years, we have been monitoring consumer dynamics and changing buying behaviors through the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research—and guiding clients on how to strategically and proactively respond by organizing around the customer rather than internal processes.2
According to the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research, today’s consumers are constantly on the go,
well connected via technology and have increasingly higher expectations. As such, the buying process has changed from a linear and predictable approach to one that is dynamic, accessible and continuous—what we call the Nonstop Customer Experience. This new reality demands a tailored and seamless customer experience—from touch points initiated by marketing, to promises made by sales, to consistent delivery of customer service and support.
During the recent economic downturn, leading organizations have been developing and applying new investments in customer service tools to adapt to
this shift. Consequently, as the economy improves, these organizations will be uniquely positioned to capitalize on their competitors.
In order to successfully extract this value, companies must establish a robust set of command and control capabilities that extend across the entire service landscape and delivery ecosystem. This model helps ensure that an organization’s resources, processes and applied technologies are correctly coordinated to mitigate service failures, optimize operating expenditures and deliver the intended customer experiences.
The Traditional Funnel
Dynamic Accessible Continuous
The Accenture Nonstop Customer Experience Model
Promise
Discover
Evaluate
Purchase
Consider Use
Delivery
Discover
Consider
Evaluate
Purchase
Use
Enabled by technology, consumers control pace of decisions, paths to buying are not linear and choice becomes almost effortless.
Open content/channels Technology amplifies and empowers the “voice or Noise of Others.” Content goes beyond brand’s and provider’s control.
The flux of touch points is “always on” along the journey. It’s easy to compare promise versus reality but also to get “trapped in evaluation.”
Brand-controlled content/channels
Accenture tracks changing consumer dynamics
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Source: Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
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This is even more important since customer expectations continue to rise, especially in relation to more convenient and faster customer service with more knowledgeable and better trained customer service representatives (see Figure 2). Companies must work harder to anticipate and deliver on these customer expectations in order to maintain their customer base.
Poor customer service leads to customer churn.
Figure 2: Customer service factors for which expectations have increased.
Expectations: Global Sample and Emerging vs. Mature Markets
Easier/more convenient to obtain customer service
Faster customer service
Customer service representatives to be more knowledgeable
More options for obtaining service
Specialized treatment for being a good customer
Customer service representatives to know more about me
51%62%
66%60%
59%62%
74%67%
55%
69%
48%54%
33%32%34%
18%
73%
50%
37%
75%
74%71%
76%
71%71%
77%
61%
58%
48%
28%
Global 2012
2012 Mature Markets
Global 2010
2012 Emerging Markets
Global 2011
Source: 2012 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research
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The consequences for delivering poor customer service is a higher propensity to churn. According to the Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research, one in five customers indicate that their first reaction to a customer service failure is to either quit doing business with the company immediately or begin shifting a portion of their business to another provider (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Actions likely to be adopted after having experience poor customer service.
Source: 2012 Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research
Consequences of Poor Customer Service—Global Sample
21%
Ask to speak to a supervisor
End the encounter and contact back later *Shift a portion of my spend from a current service provider
Quit doing business with that company immediately
End the encounter
Send a formal complaint to the company
* New item included in 2012
8% 8% 8%
13%
15%
14%
17%12%
14%
13%13%
15%13% 12%
13%
15%
13%
15%
14% 14%
12%
18%23%
19%
22% 18%23%
30% 36%
2011Overall
2012Overall
33%
2012Emerging Markets
2012Mature
Markets
2011Mature
Markets
2011Emerging Markets
36% 34% 38%
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While many organizations have established functional groups, such as mission control or joint operation centers, for managing service operations in the front office or back office, few have the enabled capabilities that extend across the service delivery landscape. Unfortunately, these existing groups have a finite view of what is happening in the enterprise and limited visibility into the customer experience.
Most likely, mission control is focused on metrics about what is happening, such as the number of incoming inquiries to the customer-facing contact center (via call, email, chat or IVR self-service channels) or the variance in service levels in the order-to-cash back office (order entry, order management and provisioning, design/build/test, pack and ship). Ideally, however, the functional group should be looking at the big picture about why customer calls are increasing or service levels are dropping. For instance, perhaps it is because marketing released a new campaign that resulted in a surge of customer inquiries, or sales offered a product discount on a low inventory item, causing an unexpected backorder.
In this fast-paced, competitive marketplace, customer service and contact center executives have to look at the why—or the service-and-customer interaction will likely fail to meet expectations. They cannot assume that their service delivery function is performing optimally. Instead, they must consider all of the elements that go into preparing for and executing against each customer contact.
But how do companies keep track of a highly complex service delivery ecosystem spanning multiple inbound and outbound channels, front- and back-office operations, field technicians and more?
How do they know where to look first for improvement opportunities, and which levers are most important to adjust?
For example, when reviewing existing internal or vendor-sourced service capabilities for contact centers for your company:
•Doyouknowwheretolookwhenschedulingis underperforming? Do you hold contact center managers and team leads accountable for adhering to the schedule?
•Doyoutrustyourforecasting?Forinstance,can you forecast call volume up to 90 days in advance with a minimal error rate?
•Doyouhavethenecessaryfeedbackmechanisms to help ensure service failures are not repeated?
• Isthebusinessorproductmarketinggroupintegrated into the contact center value chain?
•Areprocessesinplacetocommunicatechanges in marketing or sales activities to customer service?
Organizations that adopt a global command center operating model can deliver a quality customer experience across the entire life cycle while optimizing cost to serve.
Existing management approaches deficient
To adequately answer these questions, companies must establish a robust set of service delivery capabilities that extend across the entire service landscape and delivery ecosystem. These capabilities can provide the next generation in quality customer service—delivering targeted, differentiated service treatments across multiple channels, and addressing customer expectations for fast, personalized and digital interactions while optimizing the cost to serve.
The nexus for coordinating and delivering these services is a command and control structure—what Accenture terms the global command center operating model. This model helps optimize customer service and verify that an organization’s resources, processes and applied technologies are correctly orchestrated to reduce operating expenditures, align the organization around the service delivery chain, improve customer satisfaction and increase revenues.
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As described previously, many organizations lack an end-to-end view of their service landscape and the entire delivery ecosystem, which encompasses contact centers for sales and product information, outbound calls, customer retention, technical support and any other point along the customer journey.
New Capability Development
• Program description
• Program requirements
• Program goals and measures of success
Channel Management
Geographic Alignment
EnterpriseEngagement
Customer Interaction Operations
Operational Performance/Metrics
Business Process Management
Customer Experience Design
Leadership & Governance
Technology Enablement
Face to Face
Idea to Offer
Business Units Segments Preferences Personalization TreatmentsLifecycle
ManagementChannel
Management
Offer to Market
Market to Quote
Quote to Order
Order to Book
Book to Invoice
Forecast to Deliver
Invoice to Cash
Issue to Resolution
Support the Biz
Procure to Report
Market Sell Serve
Phone
Web
North America Marketing
Sales
Procurement
Finance
HR
IT
Legal
Latin America
EMEA
APACGlobal Workplace
ManagementGlobal Talent Management
Copyright ©2013, Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
Customer segment 1
Customer segment 2
Customer segment n
Figure 4: The service delivery ecosystem can be complex with multiple operating model components to review and ways in which customers experience the company.
Typically, customer service operates in a reactive mode—hindered by tactical management of day-to-day operations to keep contact centers running and call queues in check, or to keep pace with the order delivery process. This shortcoming and lack of internal capabilities often leaves organizations ill equipped to make more informed decisions about the services they provide, making it virtually impossible to meet or surpass customers’ expectations.
Reactive service delivery landscapeIn addition, the service delivery landscape is highly complex and replete with competing operating models and ways in which customers experience the company (see Figure 4). This makes it difficult for customer service and contact center executives to know where to focus, for example, when forecasting or scheduling performance goes awry or operational expenses surpass budget.
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Copyright ©2013, Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
Customers
Segment 1 Segment 2 Segment 3 ... Segment n-1 Segment n
Channels
Face to Face Phone Email Web & Chat Mobile Collaboration
Learn• Become aware
of product/ service
• Review and research product/service
Buy• Decide to buy
• Select product/ service options
• Place order
• Confirm order
• Change order (contents, delivery speed/ date)
Get• Check delivery
status
• Receive product/ service
• Activate product/ service
Use• Learn how to use
product/service and tools
• Optimize use of product/service (utilization check)
• Manage account and preferences
Pay• Receive bill
• Review bill
• Pay bill
Support• Check product/
service or account info
• Identify need (self-identify or receive notification)
• Acknowledge need
• Request support
• Check status
• Resolve issue
In this environment, companies need insight into what is driving contacts, which contacts are critical to the customer experience, which ones can be shifted to lower-cost channels (chat, online, IVR) and, finally, which can be avoided altogether. This visibility can help organizations invest in the right service delivery capabilities to support interactions across multiple channels.
In many cases, however, it is even more difficult for executives to pinpoint the aspects of service delivery that are working well, but not performing at full potential. Achieving optimized operations requires a clear vision of the end-state; it also requires an understanding of where to dedicate resources to incrementally improve service delivery
capabilities, as well as the overall customer experience. Unfortunately, benchmarking specific service delivery capabilities can fall short as most companies lack access to reliable, comparable productivity/operational metrics and leading practices. Variation in operations, service footprints, geographies, and a mix of different resource levels and types across units can all complicate the process for clear understanding.
Instead, a more effective approach is to use a holistic diagnostic, which breaks down the various components of the service delivery landscape and evaluates the governing command and control capabilities to see how effective and efficient the service organization really is.
Source: Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
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Having a customer-centric agenda requires the application of a different command and control operating model—one where organizations enable capability-driven investments and adopt a systems diagnostic approach to understand possible opportunities for improvement. These opportunities can come in many forms, but all revolve around the levers customer care or contact center executives can adjust to simultaneously improve the customer experience while containing and reducing cost.
Based on Accenture client experience, we recognize that enabling a robust set of command and control capabilities requires a clear line of sight across eight core service delivery capabilities (see Figure 5). Many organizations have one or more of these services capabilities in place. However, few formally recognize and prioritize the eight capabilities into an interconnected and cohesive framework that increases service delivery agility and aligns with marketing and sales growth targets, such as expansion into a new market or launch of a new product.
External Environment
Business Strategy & Objectives
Performance and Site Management
Business Intelligence & Channel Analytics
Innovation Management
Global Agent Performance
Evaluate & Calculate costs
Identify Improvement
Options
Understand Cost-benefit
Derive Initiatives &
Take Action on Prioritized Options
Monitor ResultsCompare to Financial Objectives
Strategic Sourcing
Workforce Management
Customer Experience
Self Service Automation
Technology Support
A global command center operating model
Figure 5: Accenture recommends an integrated global command center operating model.
Source: Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
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The eight internal or vendor-provided service delivery capabilities include:
Performance and site management—Drive primary metric improvements and consistency in the sites using hands-on contacts and guidance. Use business vision and goals as input to stakeholder-agreed business objectives. Regularly review site and agent productivity per defined success metrics to maintain alignment to business objectives and/or vendor performance as it relates to contractual requirements.
Establish the necessary structure to resolve issues for the most advantageous operational outcomes. Set value targets for areas of the end-to-end process, and use these to drive project activations. Consistently rotate service delivery manager assignments to confirm objectivity.
Innovation management—Direct and shape leading concepts to reduce costs and improve performance; build business cases and prioritize pipeline. Capture, define and maintain a dedicated queue of customer support improvement projects. Gather leading practices from all vendors (including internal and industry-leading practices), evaluate applicability across geographies, then prioritize and implement.
Follow a set of practices to create a clear, consistent and accurate picture of customers and the experiences they want, in order to keep a constant pulse on changing customer expectations. Gather input from teaming partners and frontline employees about their experiences with customers in relation to their role in the customer support ecosystem.
Global agent performance—Implement agent industry-leading practices; measure, standardize and align to the desired customer experience. Use scorecards to evaluate agent, team, division and contact center-level performance and determine areas for improvement (i.e., coach agent, supplement knowledge base or conduct training). Review evaluations performed on agents on a daily basis; use a combination of agent scorecard, QA recording data, side-by-side observations and agent outlier analysis to target specific coaching and performance discussion topics.
Schedule agent vendor and business training requirements, side-by-side training with more experienced agents, final examination and performance evaluation to achieve certification based on role. Equip agents with information to help resolve customer issues, including training materials, FAQs, application tutorials, practice exams, dynamic solution suggestions, process flows, workarounds and emergency procedures. Confirm technical support is available for all agents during the site hours of operation.
Strategic sourcing—Evaluate and optimize internal and vendor mixes to obtain optimum price and geographic diversity while reducing risk. Review vendor marketplace and incorporate proposal responses into a weighted scorecard to evaluate against defined performance objectives. Develop strategies that incorporate global and local vendors via a “co-opetition” model to monitor that both provide consistent service delivery across geographies and all transaction types. Manage vendors consistently according to performance objectives with clear understanding around rewards and penalties.
Workforce management—Translate demand into interval, short- and long-term forecasts and staffing requirements, and track operational compliance. Incorporate current customer base and upcoming demand-impacting events. Generate agent schedules based on published forecast, and include shifts, skills, required breaks, trainings and meetings.
Continuously monitor real-time service level metrics to determine if thresholds are exceeded, and follow established processes to understand and assess if any operational issues arise. Follow detailed escalation plans, which include select communications to a specific audience to either inform or drive action.
Business intelligence (BI) and channel analytics—Enable data modeling and analytic tools to make proactive decisions and provide insight for key performance indicator management. Combine pattern matching, influence relationships, time set correlations and dissimilarity analysis to offer simulations of future data sets. Use programmatic development tools, coupled with a software
developer’s kit, to create BI applications, which can be integrated into a business process or embedded in another application. Enable end users to analyze data with fast query and calculation performance.
Create formatted and interactive reports with highly scalable distribution and scheduling capabilities, as well as dashboard reports to publish key performance metrics to a Web-based interface. Deploy data visualization capabilities to display numerous aspects of data more efficiently. Apply dashboard metrics to a strategy map that aligns key performance metrics with strategic objectives.
Self-service automation—Use self-service channels based on the nature and complexity of major customer service interactions. Promote channels at a value/behavioral segment level to increase utilization rates and reduce transfers to more costly live-agent support.
Technology support—Implement a cloud- or premise-based telephony infrastructure to support the contact center network and call virtualization at scale. Use advanced scheduling technology and industrial-grade analytical capabilities that incorporate data directly from source systems (i.e., telephony switch, workforce attendance, marketing campaigns, sales and response rate data) to improve prediction accuracy of service volumes at 30/60/90 day increments.
Employ a user experience-designed, common agent platform with support for dynamic and contextual process-driven call flows and navigations for optimal contact handling processes. Incorporate a toolset for social media monitoring with natural language text filters, and response priority tagging to improve workforce effectiveness and cost per response.
Develop case management capabilities that capture and track all customer transactions across all channels. Include an agent interaction management capability that captures interactions with speech analytics overlay capabilities to support customer sentiment, compliance and quality standards.
Provide a security and access overlay that is integrated with HR/ERP systems to assign access to applications and data by role and function.
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These capabilities, when managed via the appropriate command and control model, force the realignment of the organization around the stated customer-centric agenda. The resulting service activities manifest in the delivery of an orchestrated customer experience that is cost optimized. Additional benefits include:
Reduce operating expenditures extracted from improved forecasting, scheduling and marketplace “co-optition”
•Efficientandaccurateforecastingandscheduling performance levels up to 90 days out to help confirm the correct number of resources are on duty to handle calls and minimize wait time.
•Propertechnicalandanalyticaltoolsinplaceto forecast call volume and predict service levels based on agent mix, along with quality assurance tools to confirm agents are following trained processes.
• Improvedagentperformanceandproductivity (i.e., reduced call handle time) and additional revenue generation from cross-sell and up-sell activities.
•Efficientself-serviceautomationandcalldeflection to less expensive channels, which also supports customers’ willingness to self-serve.
• Increasedinnovationmanagementbymonitoring what customers and business partners are saying about service delivery in company-sponsored feedback mechanisms, as well as blogs, tweets and posts, then acting on those insights. Proactively monitoring to see if expectations shift.
•Clarityinsiteperformancemanagementto make sure the organization is paying for vendor-delivered capabilities according to distributed business objectives, service level agreements or contracts. If implementing a vendor marketplace and cooperative competition, reward vendors based on performance. Confirm proper governance and operating rules are in place to decide vendor selection and to manage vendors consistently.
Align organization around the service delivery chain—All upstream service delivery activities (i.e., hiring the right talent, training them to address various customer interactions, structuring web site for quick and easy self-service inquiries, installing comprehensive IVR system, etc.) along with all downstream activities (i.e., reviewing interactions and monitoring against plan, proactively coaching agents, making incremental improvements) are aligned to support each specific customer service interaction.
Improve customer satisfaction—Service delivery interactions are designed to deliver against customers’ needs and wants both quickly and efficiently—and at an expected price, which will help maintain or improve satisfaction levels, and drive overall customer loyalty.
Increase revenue—As the operation becomes more efficient, typically cycle times are reduced. We have seen examples of cycle time diminishing from 120+ days to less than 12 days. This reduced cycle time allows for revenue recognition as much as two to three months earlier.
A major entertainment company wished to transition to a pay-for-performance model and turned to Accenture for help. Accenture took a holistic approach, using the global command center operating model to assess all operations necessary to drive the desired performance. The team started with an operating model gap assessment, which identified two major work streams to prepare for
the move to the pay-for-performance model. The first work stream focused on determining the appropriate run/operate capabilities for the company and quick wins, and the work stream delivered an actionable capability mobilization schedule and tasks. Financial modeling of pay-for-performance impact was calculated. Proof-of-concept service delivery improvements were implemented.
Through this work, Accenture identified initiatives, coordinated an implementation timeline, and delivered actionable insight to major client stakeholders to help ensure the client had the framework to support a pay-for-performance model and the foundation for a global command and control center.
Accenture helps client establish foundation for global command and control center
Performance benefits from the global command center operating model
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The path forwardCompanies transitioning from a mission control or joint operations service delivery model to a global command center operating model can help expedite the process by taking the following steps:
Seek an external assessment—Many organizations believe they can fix or augment their internal or vendor-provided service delivery capabilities. However, the reality is that internal executives are probably too close to objectively assess strengths and weaknesses. Bringing in an external provider—with deep functional and industry experience, as well as documented leading practices—is a wise investment.
Gather customer inputs—Start by identifying customer needs and wants, then use these inputs to determine where the organization
is excelling in its service delivery capabilities and where it is underperforming. The outcome of this exercise will drive the command center flow and highlight focus areas for capability improvement.
Develop a plan—Figure out what the end-state global command center operating model should look like. The goal is to help ensure that each part of the service delivery organization is lined up to deliver against the right interaction to address a particular customer’s needs and wants. Assess the eight service delivery capabilities and set targets for the appropriate level of maturity based on the company’s priorities and budget.
Avoid the common pitfalls—Identifying and working to understand gaps in service delivery capabilities is an opportunity to improve, not necessarily a reflection on existing internal or vendor-provided services, or a green light to start from scratch. When evaluating
capabilities, keep the big picture in mind in terms of how each incremental improvement can be leveraged to benefit the overall enterprise.
Design path for implementation—Based on the plan, create a roadmap that outlines the necessary steps and sequence to achieve the desired improvements to the customer experience while creating value for the company (see Figure 6).
Obtain stakeholder buy in—Review global command center operating model plan and implementation roadmap with critical stakeholders from all impacted functional areas.
Establish continuous improvement mechanism—Once the plan is executed, pursue incremental improvements that derive the greatest impact to both the organization and customers.
Figure 6: Example of roadmap for implementation.
Operational Model Component
Months
Customer Experience Design
Leadership & Governance
Business Process Management
New Capability Development
Channel Management
Customer Interaction Operations
Global Workforce Management
Global Talent Management
Geographic Alignment
Enterprise Engagement
Operational Performance/Metrics
Technology Enablement
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1816 17
Source: Accenture LLP. All rights reserved.
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In many cases, business groups outside of service delivery, such as product owners or product marketing, are footing the bill for customer service support from an internal department or an external vendor. Even though they are paying for support, they may not know how to evaluate and manage internal suppliers or external vendors, let alone which capabilities they should be supplying.
Accenture recommends using the global command center operating model as a starting point. If assessing available vendors in the marketplace, evaluate them based on the eight core service capabilities, with an emphasis on
innovation management, BI and channel analytics, global agent performance and workforce management. In addition, it is critical to structure the arrangement to match what the business group and outsourced vendor have agreed to, such as a pay-for-performance model, and then to properly transition and manage the workload on an ongoing basis.
If an organization is considering fully outsourcing the customer service function to a third-party provider, it is highly probable that the outsourcing provider will need to perform some internal transformational work before taking over the function.
Outsourcing service delivery capabilities
Copyright © 2013 Accenture All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.
Contact Us To learn more about improving your company’s service delivery capabilities through a global command center operating model, please visit www.accenture.com/managementconsulting or contact one of the authors:
Mike Flodin [email protected]
Kwame Monthrope [email protected]
About AccentureAccenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 266,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2012. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About Sales & Customer Service (CRM)Sales & Customer Services (CRM) helps companies acquire, develop and retain more profitable customer relationships. We offer a broad range of innovative capabilities that address every aspect of the customer experience, including pricing strategy and profitability assessment, customer analytics, direct and indirect sales force execution, customer service, field support, customer contact operations, and retail/branch operations. We use these combinations of skills to help our clients accelerate growth, improve sales productivity and reduce customer-care costs—helping increase the value of their customer relationships and enhancing the economic value of their brands.
