By Oracle staff writers
Consumer expectations for service have never been higher, and companies everywhere are looking for better ways of meeting those expectations.
Customers increasingly expect service and support to be available across multiple channels of interaction, and they also want to be able to switch seamlessly between self-service options, social, and call centers, notes Chris Hamilton, senior director of product management at Oracle. “There is a huge demand to be able to start in a self-service environment,” he said. But at the same time, “there is always a portion of interactions or problems that aren’t necessarily solvable by self-service.”
There is nothing more frustrating to customers than not being able to find a phone number to call when they need it, or having to explain their question or complaint all over again after shifting from one channel to another, he said. Businesses that succeed in delivering a positive customer experience, rather than a frustrating one, stand to gain more loyal patrons, he said.
Many companies are rising to meet the challenges and opportunities of providing superior customer service in the digital age.
(For more on customer service, don't miss: Driving the Next Generation of Customer Service at Mazda North American Operations.)
Pella: Getting in Sync
Pella has been making windows and doors since 1925, but today it is venturing into smart home devices like its Insynctive line of products, which can be controlled remotely. Pella’s service needs to be just as smart, said Customer Experience Manager Julia Neary. In the past, Pella sometimes delivered a fragmented customer experience to someone who interacted with the company across multiple channels, she said.
According to Neary, the company glued what was once a fragmented experience together so that whomever customers deal with for service issues, “all our agents are looking at the same information.”
Pella is only beginning to explore newer service channels like Instagram and Twitter, but it has already unified its tracking of customer interactions across phone, email, snail mail, and fax. Before modernizing its systems, Pella had trouble tracking interactions across email and the phone, for example. “Don’t underestimate the value of having all the information about a customer in one place,” she said.
Neary also advised against being “distracted by all the shiny new channels.” Her approach is to concentrate on the channels that make the most difference today, while also “thinking about tomorrow’s channels.”
Nintendo: IoT for Embedded Service
The customer experience strategist and architect for a major electronics games maker is thinking ahead to the day service will be embedded in more products, using Internet of Things technologies. While cautioning that his remarks should be considered “more about industry trends than specifically what Nintendo is doing,” he made it clear he sees great potential for embedding self-service and proactive service in devices such as game controllers.
While it’s easy to talk about the big data potential of IoT data in the abstract, “the question is ‘what are we doing with that once the analysis has been done,’” he said. He said companies can use data reported back from these devices to improve their usability, because that data reflects how products were actually used, rather than how customers reported using them.
In addition, connected intelligence will simplify the detective work related to supporting digital products, he noted. “The preeminent question that’s part of so many support interactions is, ‘What did you do just before things stopped working?’ Well, we don’t necessarily have to ask that question anymore.” If a device has been instrumented to track glitches and malfunctions so they can be reported to the manufacturer, either automatically or on demand, support staff will have a much higher probability of being able to correct the issue.
Even better, the manufacturer might be able to detect and correct a problem with the product without the customer even needing to ask for help, he said.
Healthcare: Distributed Service
One of the significant changes in customer service today is that “more expertise is now available outside of the contact center,” Oracle’s Hamilton pointed out. Once the technical infrastructure required to deliver service is available in the cloud, “people can do that from anywhere,” he said.
A good example is a remote triage service of one of the country’s leading healthcare providers, currently offering counseling to 4 million customers a year.
More than 90% of the nurses who staff the service work from their homes. The service takes advantage of Oracle Policy Automation to ensure the same policies and treatment protocols are followed across all channels.
In addition to providing nurses with the option of working from home, the service provides flexibility and convenience for patients. Part of the service involves nurses telling people when they really need to head straight to the doctor or the emergency room, based on their symptoms. Yet a benefit of the service is that it reduces the cost of care by eliminating unnecessary office and emergency room visits.
With a centralized process, a nurse can ask routine questions over the phone, and if the right criteria are met, generate a prescription, allowing the patient can go straight to the pharmacy—getting treatment faster and less expensively than if they first had to visit a healthcare facility.
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