As companies prepare for 2010 and what could be a bleak first
quarter, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories has identified
customer service strategy as the key area that will help
businesses succeed in the year ahead.
In 2010, organisations should focus on enhancing company-wide
operational performance to ensure that customers have an
end-to-end experience.
To achieve this, employees need to have the
skills to engage dynamically with customers and the business
should have in place more proactive customer engagement models
better online communication will be of key importance.
Organisations that are able to offer customers the same 'shop
experience' on the web as they would do if a customer visited
its high street branch would not only differentiate themselves
from their competitors, but also see significant changes in
their customer base and demonstrable benefits to their bottom
line.
One such company who has achieved this is Vodafone Italy: a
minimal investment in a proactive customer engagement model
enabled it to bring a consumer's 'shop experience to the web'
and deliver great results to its customers 68 percent of whom
are 'very satisfied' with this new service and its bottom line a
25 per cent increase in sales.
Working closely with many leading organisations across Europe
and particularly in the UK, the downturn of 2009 put in focus
the importance of how valuable a loyal customer base is to
businesses, said Lucille Jackson, UK Marketing Manager at
Genesys. Lost customer relationships amount to millions of
Pounds.
A global consumer survey which we undertook with Datamonitor
found that poor customer service cost European countries a
little under USD$100 billion a year, with UK businesses in
particular losing a total of £15.3 billion a year. This not only
highlights the importance of how vital meeting customers'
expectations and fulfilling their demands is, but also how
crucial these have become in determining the success and
survival of businesses.
With constricted budgets a reality for many organisations in
2009, the Genesys Strategic Solutions Team helped organisations
leverage their existing systems to get the most from their
technology investments and deliver first class customer service.
Weve worked closely with some of Europe's leading organisations
to help drive performance improvement, both in their contact
centre operations and across their entire enterprise, continued
Lucille Jackson.
Genesys believes there is a simple, three-pronged strategy
organisations can adopt to address such issues:
1. Adopt proactive customer engagement models to address the
demands of the Millennial Generation (consumers born between
1982 and 2000), accustomed to using the Internet, web-chats, IM
and email to communicate and who favour convenience over price
as key driver in their purchasing decisions. Businesses should
focus on taking care of existing and potential customers
visiting their website potentially the biggest shop they have
and develop coherent strategies that straddle all channels of
customer communication, with a crucial focus on the web.
2. Ensure an adequately skilled 'Millennial' workforce that can
respond effectively to 'modern' as well as traditional customer
communication demands and meet consumers' single conversation,
cross-channel expectations. Employees can engage with customers
more dynamically and provide the new customer experience
environment that businesses are increasingly expected to offer.
3. Implement an end-to-end customer service delivery solution
that optimises all processes within a company by combining best
practices and capabilities from a broader set of business
processes and resources. Such a solution would provide added
flexibility and real-time orchestration of tasks and priorities
within the service delivery chain, not only enhancing certain
features within the organisation and integrating with existing
solutions, but ensuring that all business processes are
optimised across the board.
More info:
http://www.genesyslab.com and
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com.
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