Touchscreen Self-Service: How to Transform the Self-Service Customer Experience

By Dr. Natalie Petouhoff www.DrNatalieNews.com @DrNatalie on Twitter

Customer Service & Customer

Experience / CRM

PWC Management Consultant

Top Forrester

Customer Service,

Social Media, CRM

Analyst

Chief Strategist for Social Media &

Digital Communications

PR & Marketing Agency

Dr. Natalie’s Background

Analyst Rankings:

Instructor at Center for Entertainment, Media

and Sports Summer Institutes at UCLA Anderson

I’ve Written Books or Chapters In Other People’s Books

Quoted in the News

The Agenda

• Origins of Self-Service Technology

• The Evolution of Self-Service Technology

• How Touchscreen Self-Service is Transforming the Customer Experience

Setting the Stage for Evolution: 1939 New York’s World Fair

Speech was on: • Radio • Television

Attendance: 206,000

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/science-secrets-revealed-at-new-york-worlds-fail/

The 1939 World’s Fair’s Theme…

Building The World of Tomorrow

http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/preview_of_tv.pdf

• Can you imagine needing a brochure to explain TV? • The brochure answered FAQs • TV was one of the hot, new technologies

http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/preview_of_tv.pdf

The questions back then were -- so basic…. “Will a TV receiver purchased in one city receive programs in another city?” “How many people can comfortably see a TV broadcast?”

Along with the brochure, people at the Fair who saw themselves on TV… were given a certificate to prove what they saw— was so…

Even back then, companies were

counting on word-of-mouth…

Average TV audience was 8,000 people Dramatic shows most popular

Program production costs are $10K-$15K/ week

Another important technology that contributed to the IVR technology

we have today was at the 1939 Fair: the Voder

It synthesized human speech by breaking it down into sounds & reproducing them electronically

And at the Fair, the Voder Machine was used for the voice of a robot Elektro (by Westinghouse)

This was the beginnings of speech technology later deveioped into speech recognition & IVRs

Technology continued to evolve…

Another key component of IVRs was • DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) • Allowed customers to be routed without a human operator • Before that answering, connecting & transferring customer to the right

person required a switchboard operator

Each key has certain tones or Frequencies assigned to it…

Other technologies continued to evolve… The first interactive touchscreens

This is the University of Illinois Plato IV, used in a classroom Allowing students to touch the screen to answer questions.

Nearly 30 years after the Voder, the first touchscreens started to appear

TV Shows like Star Trek paralleled the advancement of

touch screen technology

Star Trek Bridge Touch Screens

IBM & Bell South: Simon Personal Communicator

Apple’s Touch-capable Newton PDA

Touchscreens are now everywhere

Homes…

Retail Cashier Machines…

Food Menus In Restaurants…

Automated Attendant to… Voice Response Units to…

Interactive Voice Response…

Technology continued to evolve from…

Along with that came Very long IVR scripts

And prompts

Why not Customer Service? Customer Get Frustrated

With Push-Button Phone IVRs

Requires customers listen & remember the phone tree menu

Not much has changed…

IBM Self-Service Study 2007 • 69% experienced technical difficulties with self-service

2011 • 83% of customers still feel IVR systems provide either:

• No benefit at all or • Only a cost savings to the company

• 67% still prefer live-agent service

The problem: Agent-assisted service is the most costly option of service

THE PROMISE OF SELF-SERVICE

Self-service proposed benefits • Offer a user-friendly, practical, self-service channel • Lower agent-assisted call volume • Improve call center efficiency and capacity • Free-up Customer Service agents to handle more complicated cases • Lower average handling time (AHT) • Minimize holding time • Drive more accurate routing:

• Direct customer to the right agent, the first time • Reduce costs:

• Downsize telephony • training costs • Agent frustration, stress and hence attrition.

Gen X, Y Z are the largest group of customers

aka Silent Generation or

Golden Generation

aka Millennials

40M

80M

140M

20M

While most people do still use the phone, people are migrating to other channels, web, social text…

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Phone Web Social SMS

Older Boomers & Golden Gen (56+)

Gen X & Younger Boomers (36-55)

Gen Y & Younger (18-35)

• Part of that is because they know the phone works • Part of it’s because the other channels are new • Or need improvements

Generational Differences are Driving New Preferences in The Device they receive service on…

Self-Service Couldn’t Deliver on the Promise Customers: • Hated trying to remember lengthy call menus to know which button

corresponded to the service they needed • Didn’t bother listening and “zero-out” • System randomly disconnected them • Frustrated, customers hang-up

Testing IVR for Great Customer Experience

Often only best-in-class companies tested their IVRs: • Validate the scripting • The prompts • Confirm menu options were helpful to customers • So the IVR didn’t result in customers opting to speak to an agent

The result? IVRs were designed to reduce agent-assisted call length • But when the customer experience was

poor, IVRs didn’t lower agent-assisted calls • Agent salaries: one of the biggest costs • Self-service failed to deliver on the promise

of greatly reducing costs

The B.I.G. Question is…

What’s the best IVR strategy & technology? • Simple • Easy to use • User-friendly • Become customer’s preference over calling • Contact center doesn’t need to do a rip &

replace of the current IVR

Evolution: Push-Button IVR ?????

Before Press 1 for…

Press 1 for…

Press 2 for…

Press 3 for…

Press 0 for Operator

What if Customers… • Could see the prompts on their phone • Didn’t have to try to remember what each prompt said • Didn’t have to move the phone from their ear to look at

the key pad & recall which number to push

Might make customer satisfaction

go up…. Among other things…..

The Contact

Center is

Like a

Canary in

Coal Mine

It’s always been true…

• What’s working • What’s not working • What would be better if…

Can be seen by evaluating

customer conversations…

Most everything the business needs to know…

But it’s been difficult to “get”

senior management to understand that…

Today Customer’s Post Comments online… • On review sites like – Yelp, Amazon… • On Facebook • On Twitter • In Forums & Communities…

Just because a company is not listening online, doesn’t mean that customer’s are not posting…

What is wrong in a company often is posted in social networks

Most everything the business needs to know… • What’s working • What’s not working • What would be better if…

Can be seen in social networks…

Word-of-mouth in social media tends to be very direct & authentic

Technology Evolution: Offer a Better Customer Experience

with Touchscreen IVR

Customers can: • See the prompts on their phone • Don’t need to remember what

each prompt said • Don’t have to move the phone

from their ear • Look at the key pad & recall

which number to push

How a Visual IVR works: Customer Chooses:

All Reservations

Then Chooses: Change

Reservation

Customer Enters the Confirmation Number

Or the Customer has the choice to Talk to an Agent who has all their information

All the customer interaction data is preserved so customer doesn’t have to repeat to agent what they did…

The same visual IVR on the phone…

…works on the Website, too!

The customer reads the

menu choices

…picks the item they need

Easily follow the options…

…and the choices

They can identify

themselves

…Its all so easy….

Using Touchscreen IVRs Take Less Time

No Need to Retire the Current IVR Technology, i. e., Rip and Replace…

Just Evolve The IVR’s Interface

• Takes Your Current IVR • The Technology Interprets the IVR

• Renders a Visual IVR with enhanced features for Your Website & Mobile Devices

Changes Within One Channel are Immediately Duplicated to All Presences

IVR Script Editor

Deployment Schedule Is Short

Let’s look at a website: Old Way to Reach Out To a Company:

Contact Us Form

•1-800 number •E-Mail, fill out form •Static FAQs •Static Links •Static Helpful Links

New Way to Reach Out To a Company: Contact Us Form… but…

Click on Visual IVR

Website button

Customer Experience: Customer Touches the option to get help

Customer Experience: Customer Answers the question

Contact Us Becomes An Interactive, Visual Touchscreen With Easy to Read Options

Visual IVR Menu Opens Up

Customers can: • See the choices • Touch the screen to

get what they need

Answer is presented

If the customers wants to talk to someone, they can • Call • Chat…

Chat box opens

All customer interactions can be seen by agent • So agent is not starting from scratch • Customer experience across all channels is perserved • Customer can get specific questions answered quickly

• Not sure how to integrate chat to your website?

• Now you can save yourself the cost of figuring that out!

Customer can navigate backwards

Traditional IVRs force customers to listen to a whole menu • Often going backwards is difficult or impossible or • The IVR hangs up on the customer

What’s on the website is exactly the same mobile devices

• Don’t have a mobile app? • Now you can save yourself

the cost of creating one!

You can get your customers started by sending them a Text Message

One Click and the Visual IVR Menu Opens Up on the Mobile Device

If customers don’t have smart phone…

• While web, mobile web and native iOS and Android are very popular, there are large sections of customers who do not have smart phones

• The Visual IVR can support non-feature rich phones through the USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) protocol

• USSD is supported across most GSM carriers and • Provides an alternative mechanism for rendering a visual IVR

interface to these types of customers

The Business Case For Visual IVR*** • Decreasing the number of “zero-outs” or agent-assisted calls • Knowing more about the customer and why they are calling if

they opt to talk to an agent so you can: • Decrease Average Handle Time • Increase First Contact Resolution and • Eliminate asking a customer to repeat their interaction

history and details of their story / issue when they connect to an agent

• Providing a consistent experience regardless of which channel the customer uses

***Upcoming white paper… on all of this…

The ROI of Visual IVRs

www.visual-ivr.com/calculator.

23% Reduced Call Volume

73% Minutes Deflected

4% Reduction in Call Transfers

IVR “zero-out” rate is greater than 7%

Percentage of call transfer within contact center is high

Your company’s website is listed on sites that show customers how to “zero-out” to reach an agent

Grumpy customers Often customers who use an IVR still reach out to an agent,

and are even more frustrated than when they first tried to reach the company

Signs Your IVR is Not Meeting Customer Expectations

Ask your customers if they feel: Forced to listen to long, introductory prompts? Are the menu options so long that they have a difficult time deciphering or remembering

which option to choose? Is the navigation path clear, i.e., is it easy for them choose the right option to get their

answer as well as to go back to the main or previous menu? Does the IVR system hang-up on them when they don’t respond fast enough or go down a

IVR path that is a dead-end? When picking an IVR menu option, does the agent receive the information about the

customer or does the customer have to repeat it all once connected with an agent? (I.e., is the agent desktop computer telephony integration (CTI) delivering all customer interaction data to the agent?)

When using your IVR, especially on mobile devices, do customers become frustrated, and

just zero-out vs. navigate the IVR menu tree?

Sample Questions To Ask Customer’s About Your IVR

THANK YOU! DoctorNatalie@gmail.com

@DrNatalie www.DrNatalieNews.com

Q&A