One of the many great things about being at a multi-faceted gathering such as Interactive Intelligence’s Interactions 13 is not only do you get to interact with solutions providers, resellers, channel partners, and customers from all over the world, but you also get to hear the views on top of mind subjects by true industry experts. A featured panel discussion on social media and its impact on contact centers was, to say the least, enlightening.
The panel -- which included Blair Pleasant, president and principal analyst of COMMfusion; Chris Vitek, president of Enterprise Telemetry; and Brian Hinton, principal consultant at Strategic Contact -- warmed to the topic at hand and was put through its paces by Interactive Intelligence CMO Joe Staples.
Where are we, and where are we going with social and the contact center?
While the session covered a lot of ground, a few highlights stick out.
Pleasant set the tone for the entire discussion by stating that despite the headlines and the feeling by enterprise IT people who read them, context is important. She noted that social media, particularly for its ability to monitor and track what people are saying about you, might be vital for retailers but not a priority for the AARP crowd. Hinton added even more granularity by saying that even if going social is a priority, its use needs to be prioritized because what is appropriate for marketing might not be useful to the contact center. Vitek added that this is all about execution as well. In fact, all of the panelists agreed that giving the right tools -- to the right people, for the right reasons -- was key, and that technology was actually the easy part.
Staples asked how do you prioritize who, what, when, where and why to make a commitment to social media. Pleasant, going back to the context-importance, stated that people are talking about you and at a minimum you need to be listening, and noted that there were lots of free capabilities out there to at least get you tuned into the conversation about your brand, and what people are upset or pleased about when it comes to their interactions with your organization. Vitek said that in regards to social and the contact center, it is ultimately also about tying in basic information from a host of places to get a better understanding of why people call, their history of interactions, what they are calling about, etc., and then analyzing that in terms of their use of the social megaphone.
It is difficult to distill all of the great insights provided, and some of the one-liners were priceless. For example, Hinton stated, “Proliferation of mobile devices does not imply dramatic change in the way you deliver customer service; if the device is still being used to talk to someone, it is still a phone call.”
Other topics covered included whether video was important. The answer was it basically could be, again based on that word context, as in “If I need to show you my problem in order to get it resolved by having you walk me through it.” Pleasant made an interesting point about mobile apps: That is, there are limited number you want on your smart device, i.e., the ones you use most frequently (banking and travel) and the ones that give you personal satisfaction such as YELP, sports and entertainment information, and games. In other words, the advice was just because you can develop a mobile app does not mean you should. This is not necessarily a case of, “If you build it they will download it and use it.” Reality is it depends on who you are and how much you really understand your customer and their behavior and needs. Vitek in fact noted that while mobile is about convenience because of HTML5, the cost of developing a mobile app has dropped from $150 to $5, which means we are already suffering, to Pleasant’s point, from applications overload, and are triaging what goes on our screens.
From my perspective, the most interesting question to the group was one asked about contact center metrics and whether they apply in a social and mobile world. The simple answer, with some nuances from each panelist, was NO! They all agreed that contact centers have traditionally measured quantity (mean time to resolution, first call resolution, average agent time on calls, etc.). They have not measured quality and in a social world, where building loyalty by providing compelling experiences is a key differentiator, quality matters.
The panelists agreed that most contact centers today are still struggling for effective data. Good data on what is happening in contact centers and what the customer experience is. They want to know why people are calling and what are they saying about the experience. This is basic functionality, but things like speech analytics and better ”voice of the customer” monitoring through surveys and watching social media can improve the ability to better those interactions in measurable ways that need to be developed and relied upon.
Staple ended with a great question when he asked each panelist to provide contact center administrators advice. It was interesting that there was “violent agreement.” It boiled down to:
In fact, there was agreement that since improving the customer experience is now such a priority, quality should make the cost/investment issue much less relevant. There was also agreement that the focus on the customer experience as core competitive differentiator was only going to increase over time. A Gartner study was cited that predicts the marketing technology budget will be bigger than the CTOs in the near future because of this customer experience focus.
One final point of unanimous agreement was that when it comes to contact centers and creating compelling interactions, technology was important but having the best people who knew how to use the right tools and processes that made the customer experience basically frictionless was what it is all about. Yes, the contact center has evolved into the front door of your enterprise value chain, and being socially adept based on context is the path to success. One size does not fit all, but finding the one that can be customized to your needs could be invaluable.