"Customers want more choice,” says eGain’s general manager and vp EMEA, Andrew Mennie. “For example, a bank customer may research over the web using web self-service, engage in chat and co-browsing to locate additional information, call for more complex questions, go to a retail branch to apply for a loan, and then fax some documents to the bank later.” Phew! And you thought you had your work cut out just answering all those phone calls...

 

But is it really better to offer so many channels if it means a mediocre service through each — or should you focus on giving quality service through a single channel? “Neither approach is correct,” says Adam Faulkner, director at technology consultancy Sabio. “Consumers are smart, so if just one of your channels is poor, they will quickly gravitate towards a better quality provider. Obviously, the right approach is to offer the highest quality service across all your channels, but if you can’t do that, then at a minimum you should make sure you’re providing a fully integrated service by phone and email, while you work to improve your overall multi-channel offering.”

 

The reason why so many organisations have struggled to provide quality service across multiple contact points is that each channel has tended to be introduced as a disparate, rather than a complimentary, entity. “You need to have a single view of that customer with access to their history and transactions, irrespective of the channel,” says Faulkner.

 

“Over the years, many of these services have been provided individually by specialist suppliers,” says Andrew Bentley, director of ICR Speech Solutions and Services. “This is good, in that they have specialist skills, but potentially dangerous, because things can become disjointed. It’s important to have someone within your organisation who has an overall view of the way these channels are used and how each of your customer contact processes map on to the various channels.”

 

This consistency is vital to stop the service process breaking down and Sean O'Connell, director of European marketing at Talisma, advises a slow introduction of new channels: “Only roll out channels that you can genuinely offer a good quality of service on,” he says. “It’s best to supply two consistent and complementary channels such as chat and email, for example, rather than offering lots of options without the proper staffing in place to cope.” Deciding which channels are right for you and your customers can be tricky, though, so O’Connell offers some advice: “The type of channels offered depends on a company’s customer demographics and the service or products supplied. There’s no point having chat, for example, if your core demographic still prefers to use the phone.” Don’t make assumptions, though. For instance, the BBC has recently reported that Internet use is now the number one pastime for the retired, overtaking gardening. The only way to be sure which channels you should focus on is to talk to your audience. Let’s take a look at the main channels through which you can reach customers:

 

Considering it is the first of the ‘new’ channels to be extensively used by consumers (after letter, fax and phone), the email service offered by many organisations is still poor. Davin Yap, ceo of Transversal, says that a survey of 100 leading websites carried out by his organisation showed that 33 hours was the average wait for an email reply — and even then, 40 per cent of companies failed to give a useful answer to the question. Bart Delgado, md of Swan Solutions suggests some honest testing to ascertain how much work is needed. “Conducting some ‘customer’ tests of your organisations’ responsiveness, or lack of it, via email will likely provide some very revealing and often less than flattering results to drive a multi-channel strategy being implemented.”

 

Faulkner cites research from Genesys, which showed that 89 per cent of consumers would like to communicate with a company via email: “If you’re addressing the email channel, it’s no longer good enough just to have a small team in the corner of the contact centre just working on emails — it has to be fully integrated with all your other activities,” he says. “ Many organisations are responding to this challenge by investing in training to make sure their agents are sufficiently multi-skilled to support multiple channels.”

 

There are many good reasons to fix email support according to ICR’s Bentley.

“ Email is low cost and integrates well with web-based services,” he says. “It’s relatively immediate for the customer, but does not have to be dealt with in real time, which

can ease resource planning challenges.” There is a big problem when using email in a service environment, as Paul McFarling, director at Emax Consulting explains. “Spam is an incredible problem, causing people to delete all non-direct email. The risk of security breaches is high because of the huge numbers of emails being sent out from fraudsters pretending to be banks.” Even informative emails from financial companies are being blocked by spam filters, so be wary of using email in isolation from other channels.

 

Self-service purchasing and support fits in well with what Mark Chamberlain, business development and marketing director for numero, describes as our twenty-four-hour society. “When was the last time you queued in a bank to withdraw money?” he asks. It’s only in the last few years, however, that the potential for the web to become the bedrock of service has been fully realised.

 

Yap offers a good example of the potential of web service: “In the beginning, the move to online channels was seen as an opportunity to cut costs, rather than deliver the service that people are looking for. But now it’s both: ScottishPower, for example, is using a self-service knowledge base and 95 per cent of customer questions asked are now answered automatically.”

 

The problem with many implementations is that the host company gets greedy, fails to

create a quality database of easily accessible knowledge and forces customers to use a channel that doesn’t work. Customers won’t give self-service many chances, and if this happens in your business, it will be hard to rebuild trust. “It’s essential that companies do not repeat the mistakes made with telephone self-service (IVR), continues eGain’s Mennie. “Customers using self-service channels must be able to escalate a query or sales enquiry seamlessly and effectively to the most appropriate department.”

 

Even if you build a good knowledge base, you must maintain it, as Mennie concludes: “Review consumption and remove out-of-date information, content that is not used, search terms that don’t return a result, and failed links. Ask customers for feedback and their perceptions by asking them questions or for ratings when they are actually online or very shortly after, so the brand experience is fresh.”

 

“While proactive channels such as chat and ‘click to talk’ VOIP are less used than traditional channels, they do tend to result in higher levels of customer satisfaction during sessions,” says Talisma’s O'Connell. IM customer support could be problematic, though, as it requires an immediate response and agents will need additional training. And to do it properly, the technology will probably be expensive, too. David Alger and John Ragsdale of Forrester Research advise: “If chat is an important channel for your support or call centre, look beyond low cost or free chat tools and consider enterprise level chat products designed specifically for high volume call centres.”

 

He offers some advice if you are keen to understand how your IM strategy should progress: “Visit your competition’s websites and analyse their offerings, note what impresses you and what is annoying.”

 

As a customer channel, SMS is still relatively untouched, but there are many positives to be explored. “SMS offers opportunities for truly multi-media processes which add value for the customer,” says Bentley. “A call into the contact centre, or enquiry on a web site can result in information being sent via SMS as is done by directory enquiry firms.” The strength of SMS is the delivery of alert information — such as First Direct’s service that informs customers if they are overdrawn or when they are close to a spend threshold that will see them net a free gift or discount.

 

These examples are, however, more generally associated with marketing. From a service perspective, the inability to check whether messages have been read or even received limits its usage. SMS is therefore a very niche service channel and should only be used when a customer has a specific requirement. User groups The notion of a user group or forum is a contentious one and few customer service organisations are happy to talk about them. Allowing members of the public to answer your service issues is potentially risky and hard to police, but some organisations have succeeded.

 

Davin Yap describes the example of Sony Computer Entertainment UK (SCEUK): “User groups are a powerful way of both providing service and strengthening brand loyalty. SCEUK deployed software to build self-sufficient customer community forums, where users can easily share their knowledge,” he continues. “This means that if users require assistance on router configuration or have general network queries, they can tap into the expertise of other users. Crucial to this is providing a clear, easy-to-use interface for consumers and accurate and relevant answers through advanced search technology.” The medium is clearly suited to technical support where users already have a high level of technical understanding, but with its potential to create a cheap and sometimes very beneficial way of sharing solutions, user groups are sure to grow in prominence.