Channel applications are fragmenting rather than converging

The design of the iPhone, and now the iPad, has taken converging communication channels to a new level. With fantastic usability, simplicity and capability to do e-mails, make calls, update social networking sites, display the newspapers or show TV on the iPlayer consumers have the opportunity to do what pundits said they never would; leaning back to watch TV and leaning forward to work on the PC.

Dealing with channel multiplicity is never straightforward. If it was, consumers wouldn't still be complaining about the lack of integration, years after offline and online services have been in place. It's becoming clear that organisations are mostly struggling or stuck on the challenge of fragmented channels to deliver sales and service, rather than having all their problems solved by converging devices.

In addition to the store, the phone, letters and internet self-service, organisations are having to come to grips with social networking sites and webchat. Whatever the channel, there are complexities. With webchat, there are many webchat formats. With the internet self-service there are searches, FAQs, forms and videos. With phone calls there are touch-tone IVR, voice recognition, voice self-service and offshoring.

The attraction with internet and voice self-service has always been the need for customers to provide information in a standardised format to enable the query to be automated. But many of the new channel applications such as Twitter and webchat are unstructured: people provide information however they want. For organisations this means automation is not possible and costly human intervention required.

We should be talking more about fragmenting channel applications, rather than just channels. There will be more variations of the phone, internet, mobile and high street channels. In retail, augmented reality and location based services are now being oferred for mobiles. In TV, 3D will offer opportunities for different and new communication for brands. With technology moving on a pace, more channel applications will be coming along soon. An key question for all organisations is where to target channel resources?

People's feedback, social media and customer contact

The core ethos of social media is that of creativity and originality. Communicate using your own dialogue, images, video and symbols. As a customer, if you're unhappy about a company's service, then make a song or even post a cartoon, but don't be formulaic.

The main aim of the new world of online and e-service is to let the customer do the work - but in a structured format that automated systems can handle. Consequently, customers are given forms to complete, FAQs to search or questions from IVR/voice self-service interactions. Videos or instructions might be posted by more advanced organisations to 'make it easy' for consumers to solve problems.

But what is easy for consumers? Convenience may dictate that unstructured information, views and emotions can easily be provided through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or any of the other multitude of social media.

For some organisations with strong value positions, or monopolies like public services, it may be possible to ignore this emerging unstructured feedback - or just track it as a brand indicator. Other organisations may feel a new breed (and scale) of contact centre is required.

To take advantage of this new method of feedback, organisations have several choices. Firstly, do they use effective software to track social media, ensuring any comments relevant to its brand are captured? This may encompass public opinion on their competitors and their products. (Brands such as BT, Orange and Apple may even see some duplication.) Whilst this process is advanced in many organisations, it is usually the responsibility of the PR or reputation departments.

Secondly, it is essential that organisations understand the comment context and meaning. For example, does the use of an expletive equate to a derogatory meaning or is this just the way the consumer communicates?

Thirdly, organisations must decide whether intervention is required. "You would have thought someone would have noticed by now..." might be the sentiment of some online users, but for others any suggestion of a 'Big Brother is watching you' will be unwelcome.

It is also worth asking whether the brand, product or service is worthy of general conversation. One journalist famously commented 'Thanks. Washing Powder really is Washing Powder and no one is interested'.

The new world of unstructured feedback through social media will pose a real need or opportunity for some industries such as telecoms, airlines, technology, travel companies. Will it mean the employment of hundreds of new contact centre agents to handle these comments, just when internet self-service is supposed to be driving costs down? What will the average handling time be for a customer complaint on Facebook or a Twitter feed? Organisations like Comcast already have a hundred agents dedicated to handling social media customer relations. Where will it end and how can we effectively persuade customers to use structured channels which can be automated?

Trust Flutters

Trust Flutters: What Price Is Trust?

Declining trust among consumers and citizens for many private and public organisations is a key trend as the economic and political situation changes. What is more, the ‘hardball’ cost cutting strategies of some organisations are likely to increase the challenge just at the time when relationships need re-building.

Organisations can achieve the best relationships with their customers by taking advantage of opportunities to adopt a collaborative, open culture, with the appropriate corporate language and the right communication strategies in place. That's the outcome of work we completed for Procter.

Changing customer behaviours

Over 75% of the organisations say that the power balance between themselves and their customers is changing

Customers have higher expectations than ever before. They are more demanding and have greater choices. People want to deal with organisations that recognise their individual needs and make life easy for them. Multichannel communication choices are highly valued – however, an honest, open, adult, professional, two-way dialogue with service providers is valued even more.

Most organisations think the media has caused unnecessary panic among consumers and citizens. Fluctuating levels of consumer trust have resulted in higher call volumes and (if available) branch visits for nearly all the financial services organisations. Managers recognise the role of trust in customer loyalty, cross-selling and word of mouth recommendations. In the public sector, citizen trust has remained more stable and is now a key performance measure for civil servants, the police and professionals in the health service.

Our research shows that organisations self-rate themselves to perform worse on public trust compared with 4 other key criteria (sales performance, customer service, low costs of operation and employee satisfaction)

Organisations are aware that the power base is changing. Their customers want increasing reassurance, are more willing to challenge organisations’ decisions, and want to negotiate with them more.

Lean service and ‘back to basics’ strategies are on the day-to-day agenda for many organisations. The recession is forcing management to focus more and more on short-term cost-cutting. Of the organisations we interviewed, 9 out of 10 were implementing efficiency and cost-cutting measures. When tough strategic decisions are made about costs, there can be dangers. Our research found some success stories as a result of improving processes and reassigning workforces. But some organisations expressed concerns that the messages and impact of cost-cutting are damaging front-line customer relationships. Others raised concerns about the impact of cost savings on critical management practices. Some thought the cost-saving techniques were negatively affecting the trust and culture in their organisations – just when it needs to be rebuilt.

Recommendations for rebuilding trust through service delivery

Our research highlights that most of the measures adopted by organisations are not addressing the unstable and costly mistrust that customers are feeling. The report identifies how organisations can improve profits by maximising internal capability and culture to improve the ‘trust' aspect of the relationship with consumers and citizens.

Our research found that during these uncertain times, a ‘Trust Flutter’ exists – trust is unstable. There is an implied lack of trust due to inconsistent messages, standards and performances. Organisations have been fast to cut costs responding to explicit financial uncertainty but are slower to address the lack of trust contained in the customer relationship. The lack of trust is not going away, and denying it exists is only going to increase the impact on the bottom line.

Top ten tips for re-building trust through Service Delivery

1	Get your house in order
2	Build capability through connecting and committing with your people
3	Keep your eye on the management ball
4	Build open, collaborative organisations
5	Develop your people to have open and professional conversations
6	Listen to your colleagues and work cross together to deliver better value
7	Delete corporate speak – get real
8	Communicate more and do it even better
9	Be honest with your people before you aim to re-build trust with your customers
10	Remember – cost-cutting can be done positively

Generation Y, Generation Now

The Emerging Buyer

Our research for Cisco and JamIP suggests that Generation Y (19-25-year-olds) have experience of buying from most industry sectors; they have quickly become experienced consumers. Even the younger Now Generation (13-18-year-olds) have a surprising amount of experience, dealing with the travel, telecoms, entertainment, retail and banking sectors.

Brand On Hold

We asked these young consumers to rate the importance of price, brand, product quality and customer service for a range of products and services. They were alert to advertisements - “You buy into the advertising” – but their top criteria were price and good service: “Price and value for money – also lasting power.” One young person explained how they buy the “…cheapest best thing for the spec. I don’t follow the brands.” Both generations shop around and want ‘transactional relationships’. They tend to be less loyal to brands and are transitory customers.

TOP CRITERIA: PRICE AND VALUE FOR MONEY- ALSO LASTING POWER

Implications For Customer Contact

1. Personal service demanded: “Talking to someone” – person-to-person contact – is important

These young generations share with others the social need to talk to people. Contrary to some beliefs, which view them as ‘silent’ or solely screen-based, they want to talk to someone for customer service. They value immediacy and simplicity: talking face-to-face and by phone works best for them.

2. Visual culture emerges: Video will go mainstream for customer contact and communication

TV and YouTube are heavily used by these generations, who show a preference for visual entertainment and information. Using video and camera functions on mobile devices and sharing photos and videos on social networking sites is a major past time. In the future, visual technologies will play a part in building much-needed customer trust with contact centre agents and customer service teams.

3. The new world of mobile service: want to access customer contact on the move

Mobile phones are the number one gadget for both generations. Their lifestyle and future work preferences indicate greater mobility, so they want businesses to redesign customer service to be configured for mobile devices: barcode readers, Interactive Video and Voice Response (IVVR), outbound and location-based services. Young consumers want to contact organisations through mobile devices whether by voice, text, email, images, video, location-based services or whatever contemporary technology channels come next.

4. Use all channels: These generations’ ability to use a range of technology means multichannel will be demanded

These two generations make more phone calls, send more texts and use instant messaging than other generations. Teenagers confess to being obsessed by technology; they move from one technology to another on a daily basis and their choice of technology changes as they go through different life stages. Different channels offer different advantages, and organisations need to offer a wide range of contact channels to meet expectations.

5. Proactivity expected: “Do stuff for me, as long as it’s not selling”

More media choices and more competitors make it harder to gain customers attention and engagement. Proactive service engages young customers. They expect that businesses will do things for them, and there is a strong interest in organisations that make life easy for them. Multi-tasking on gadgets gives them a greater ability to process and handle incoming proactive messages.

6. Transactional customers: Price is the biggest factor and both generations shop around. Generation Y are likely to job-hop too

As customers, they do not stay loyal to brands - even ones they like.

As employees, despite the best efforts of Human Resource departments, agent retention of Generation Y is, on average, low. They are not typically long-term, loyal employees. Recession may ease attrition, but it will not solve low motivation. The challenge for employers is in motivating this generation.

7. Credit crunch compromise: Open to new technologies - if they work

Businesses are responding to the credit crunch with better planning, a flexible workforce and more self-service. IVR/Voice self-service is preferred by consumers to off shoring when efficiency is the goal. Generation Y is more open to voice biometrics if it works. Cost-cutting approaches involving new technologies are more likely to succeed with these generations as they are more competent in using this kind of technology than other generations are.

8. Faster service and knowledgeable staff: Speed and knowledge are key

Both generations are impatient and expect immediate gratification. They are not particularly interested in interacting with private companies or public sector organizations, but they want speedy resolutions when they do. Knowledgeable and empowered staff impress these generations. Given them access to knowledgeable employees and tailoring technology, process and training to provide quick service delivery will satisfy these customers.