Customer
Service in the Web 2.0 World
Our world is changing and the rules of customer service are being rewritten..
With over 100,000 new blogs being created each day,
every individual's voice can now be heard. And, with more ways to connect to
one another – through the Web, the blogosphere, social networks and virtual
worlds – people are starting to tap into the power of the online community.
What does this mean for customer service organizations?
The rules of customer service are being rewritten. Web 2.0 consumers, who
have become accustomed to the instant access and gratification of the
Internet, expect the same level of speed and ease in their customer service
interactions. They trust their social networks and look to peers online for
information and advice. Self-service is a way of life for them, not just an
option for service outside business hours. Plus, an unhappy customer has the
power to destroy a company’s brand with a single click.
Leading companies are using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to swiftly adapt to
this new world. SaaS – or on-demand software – brings together both the
technology and interaction models popularized by Web 2.0 to help customer
service organizations turn their customers into evangelists, transform
service agents into brand champions, and move as quickly as their customers
demand.
Turn Customers into Evangelists: Self-service websites have been
around for a while, but most are static, difficult to navigate and use, and
limited in the types of services available for the customer. With on-demand,
companies can quickly deliver a fully branded, personalized customer portal
that redefines the customer experience. Just as Google and Yahoo! make it
easy to find information on the Web, these portals help customers easily
find the right answer to their questions. The relevance of the answers is
continuously improved through user ratings and feedback, another attribute
of Web 2.0. Customers can log or email trouble tickets and chat with agents
online to resolve service issues and requests. Beyond issue tracking,
companies can enable any number of new services for customers using mash-ups
with Web services for maps, shipment tracking, ordering, and training.
On-demand customer portals also allow companies to create their own social
networks for their customers using Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, wikis,
forums, and online voting. All of these services are fully integrated with
the internal service application, allowing customer service managers can
have complete visibility into these interactions. By creating these
compelling online experiences and being part of the conversation with the
community, companies can build greater customer loyalty.
Transform Agents into Brand Champions: With client-server solutions
of the past, customer service organizations had to choose between speed and
ease of use. On-demand applications, which are built from the ground up on
the Internet, provide the best of both worlds: they are as intuitive as
buying a book on Amazon.com, while also providing a highly-efficient,
desktop-like user experience, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX.
These technologies also allow on-demand applications to seamlessly integrate
both traditional telephony systems and new VoIP services, such as Skype,
right into the browser and combine productivity features like click-to-dial,
screen pops, and call logs. Plus, since on-demand is built natively as a Web
service, companies can create a 360-degree view of the customer history by
integrating data from internal and external systems.
For companies looking to outsource, offshore, or homeshore, on-demand is a
natural choice – since it requires no hardware or software installation
onsite, companies can turn any browser anywhere in the world into their own
call center desktop. By giving every agent the right tools and up-to-date
information at their fingertips, on-demand can empower call center agents to
delight their customers by delivering faster, better service with the fewest
possible clicks.
Move as Fast as Customers Demand: As the front line for the customer
experience, call centers need to constantly innovate their service to meet
callers’ changing expectations. Client-server solutions of the past have
forced customer service organizations to focus on technology infrastructure
rather than service innovation because those solutions are hard to
implement, challenging to use, and tough to maintain, customize, or modify.
In a recent report, Gartner said that $8 out of every $10 that companies
spend on technology is “dead money” because so much effort is spent just on
keeping the infrastructure running. On-demand frees companies from the
hassles of expensive and complex hardware and software so that they can
focus their resources and energy on delivering a superior customer
experience, while the on-demand vendor takes care of the infrastructure.
On-demand provides the most value to companies when it is built on a
multi-tenant architecture. Multi-tenancy is the core innovation that allows
consumer Web giants like eBay and Amazon, as well as Web 2.0 applications
MySpace and Facebook, to run shared, massively scalable infrastructures.
These giants can complete these functions while allowing each user to keep
their information private and fully customize their experience or “space.”
On-demand platforms that follow this model are unmatched in their
flexibility and speed of customization, allowing companies to tailor the
application to fit their unique business. As business needs change,
companies can easily and quickly make modifications or develop their own
custom applications with just a few clicks. Multi-tenancy also allows an
ecosystem of vendors to create value-added applications, just as many
developers build services on top of eBay and Amazon or home page widgets for
Yahoo! and Google users. That means customer service organizations can count
on a growing stream of innovations from both the on-demand vendor, as well
as independent software vendors.
Connecting the Dots: In their recently released 2007 Magic Quadrant
for Contact Centers, Gartner predicted that at least 75% of customer service
centers will use a form of SaaS by the year 2013. Visionary companies are
joining the on-demand revolution to stay in tune with the Web 2.0 customer.
They are replacing inflexible and complex legacy systems to get up and
running with the on-demand in weeks – without being mired in long
implementation cycles or painful upgrades.
Furthermore, The Economist, in its recent survey of 406 senior executives
across the world, found that companies expect their customer service
departments to be one of the most significant users of Web 2.0 technologies.
By bringing the best of Web 2.0 to customer service applications, on-demand
is poised to play a critical role in helping companies build a community of
loyal customers with enduring value.
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