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If you’ve been fortunate enough to attend Dreamforce this year, as the event winds down you no doubt are energized and excited about the possibilities to transform how you interact with your customers via the cloud. You’re also quite possibly a little sleep deprived, but in a good way.
With so many sessions to attend – 40 alone for service & support professionals – you probably weren’t able to sit in on all of them. Here are the top 3 things we learned at Dreamforce this year regarding customer service and support in the cloud:
1. Contact Centers Go Social
Social media isn’t going to change how you interact with your customers – it already has. We heard dozens of success stories from companies large and small that embraced social media and discovered that through conversations (not transaction or interactions) customer satisfaction is enriched and loyalty solidified. Capturing these conversations (which are all happening in the cloud) is the first step in this new form of dialogue. These conversations are taking place with or without you, and you can only benefit from being an active participant.
2. Home Sweet Home Agent
The cloud is the key enabler to accomplish work anywhere at any time. More and more organizations are moving to a home-based agent model where they are free to recruit agents based on skills set, experience & cultural fit – attributes that truly make a difference instead of just geography. Significantly lower agent attrition rates, faster resolution time, inherent business continuity, and the ability to respond rapidly – we heard these impressive results from many organizations who’ve taken this approach to agent staffing.
3. Measure Twice, Cut Once
No matter where your agents or located, or what media channels your customers are using, KPIs and monitoring are critical – even more critical when venturing out with new interaction methods. The devil is in the details and the only way to understand these details is through a comprehensive approach to measuring performance.
We hope you enjoyed Dreamforce as much as we did. We’re a bit tired after this year’s whirlwind event, but are already looking forward to Dreamforce 2012.
It’s exciting to see how each year Dreamforce continues to expand the conversation on customer service and support. Like you we are eager to see what’s new in the Service Cloud and to learn how others are using the cloud to drive fundamental improvements in customer service and satisfaction. Seamless integration of the contact center to Salesforce applications is something that many organizations enjoy, and others have come to Dreamforce to learn how they can accomplish this and reap the benefits.
Today at Dreamforce we will be demonstrating 2 approaches to achieve this integration nirvana. If having your agents work in native Salesforce is critical, our CTI Connect solution gives you the advanced routing you need for phone-based interactions along with screen pops and automated activity logging.
If your contact center is already using multiple media channels, such as phone and chat, our award-winning Multichannel Connect solution allows you to employ skills-based and skill-level routing to all types of media. In addition, this option provides both agent and queue visibility along with presence; plus custom logging based on any data elements.
That's right, two options because customer service is not a one-size-fits-all world. Stop by booth #1526 and we’ll be happy to hear about the challenges you face, talk to you about potential solutions, and demonstrate these approaches.
We are thrilled to be back as a sponsor for Dreamforce 2011 – the cloud computing event of the year where more than 40,000 will converge and learn how to move their organization forward via the next generation of cloud computing. Attendees to this event will gain the insight, inspiration and training they need to run their business faster and smarter in the cloud.
This year’s event at San Francisco’s Moscone Center boasts more than 400 sessions in 10 different tracks; exciting keynotes that explore trends in cloud computing and social media; and an impressive array of networking opportunities.
Contactual’s partnership with salesforce.com spans many years and we have a large number of customers who benefit every day from our pre-built, one-click integration for the Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. Customer-facing teams in organizations using Salesforce applications have an advantage with instant access to customer information via screen pop, logging and storing of call notes, easy access to call recordings, and much more – all from a single interface. We’ll be demonstrating these capabilities in the Cloud Expo. Stop by booth #1526 to learn more and say hello.
Recently the TMCnet team was out here in Silicon Valley and our very own Wendell Black sat down with Carl Ford to discuss some of our new initiatives. In this video of the Q & A session you’ll hear about a new and novel approach that one organization is taking to increase efficiencies in their contact center, while at the same time decreasing the burden on corporate IT.
Wendell also provides insight to some of the additional benefits that an integrated, multimedia customer interaction management solution designed to support virtual call centers provides.
We recently presented a webinar hosed by Wendell Black, Contactual’s vice president of worldwide sales and marketing and Mike McGowan, the call center manager for Acclivity Software.
The topic was one that goes to the heart of every business operating today: How to outmaneuver your competitors in an environment where change is a constant, cost containment is critical and flexibility is more important than ever before.
A Technology Poised for a Precipitous Rise
From the outset, computing has been about enabling people and businesses to do more with less. Today, technology has brought us to the cloud and that’s where Wendell began the webinar.
With small and medium size businesses (SMBs) leading the way, because it offers these companies the opportunity to leverage multi-channel solutions without having to buy multiple point technologies and hire systems integrators to build out the connections between them to deploy a holistic solution, cloud computing is already a US$40.7 billion market.
Because cloud-based solutions, in contact centers especially, provide you the best of all worlds—they’re fast to deploy, easy to manage, and offer robust functionality all from a single vendor—this market is forecast to grow six-fold by 2020 to US$241 billion.
SMBs Really Take to the Cloud
In the Hosted Contact Center segment, SMBs accounted for 75% of the market share in 2010. The fact that it simplifies their operations by letting them operate state-of-the-art contact centers with their existing staff while the host does all the heavy lifting of keeping the data center up and running—from integration to security to backups—letting SMBs focus on their core business resonates with SMBs as well as it does with enterprises.
SMBs using an On Demand contact center solution also get to hire the best call agents regardless of geography, the ability to scale capacity up or down with the push of a button as business needs dictate, and their computer telephony integration (CTI) is seamless—their agents have all the customer information they need popped up on their screens ready to assist, upsell, cross-sell and provide the fastest customer service possible.
The Cumulative Effect of a Cumulus-Type Solution
With cloud-based contact centers, SMBs get integrated email and chat,skill-based routing and deployment in days, not weeks. And, the savings and ROI are enough to make your finance folks weep with joy. With the implementation of CTI along, an average 40-seat contact center taking 40,000 calls per month will recognize a reduction in cost per call from $1.75 to $0.77, which translates to $468,000 savings per year. Call us and talk to one of our account executives to get a more detailed ROI analysis specific to your situation.
The value proposition of an On Demand, cloud-based contact center, which offers lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and better—and faster—ROI, is thus far, unbeatable. It will give your business the tools and the flexibility to outmaneuver, outshine, and outperform your competitors hands down.
As an organization selling products/solutions how you manage your customer engagement will make or break your business. We define customer touch point as any interaction your customer has with your organization directly or indirectly . Customer experience with your organization is a product of numerous customer touch points. How you manage your customer touch point chain will determine how customers perceive your organization.
Go where your customers are
For a marketing organization predicting how customers will first contact you is difficult. You cannot control what the customer’s initial touch point will be; they can find you through a variety of sources ranging from online sources to offline tradeshows to referrals to name a few. However, by leveraging different mediums of communication and increasing your visibility across different channels you can make it easy for prospects to find you. Once they have made the first contact it is easier to control their experience based on different calls to actions.
Some of the traditional mediums that your teams can utilize include Web Chat, Emails, Inbound Calls, ACD, Outbound calls, however organizations shouldn’t limit themselves with leveraging traditional channels. Newer channels like web call back, social media, sms go a long way in making it easy for customers to contact you.
Ensure consistent customer experience for each touch point
Once the customer is in your funnel it is important to measure which touch points work better for customers. Different forms of engagement work differently for different customers. Some customers prefer picking up the phone and calling you directly where as some customers prefer emails. It is important that you have multiple options available to make your customer engagement better.
Leverage each touch point
Make every interaction an extension of your previous interaction with a customer. There is nothing more valuable you can offer to a customer than reduced redundancy whether you are selling or solving their problems. By leveraging a 360 degree view of a customer you can better serve your customer by providing personalized, unified and consistent service.
Delivering good customer service is not limited to just your customer support organization. Every customer interaction contributes to their overall experience and will shape their perception of your organization. Leveraging tools that make it easy to serve customers across different departments in your organization will not only make the customer engagement better but make it more scalable as your organization grows.
Contactual is excited to be a Silver Plus sponsor for NetSuite’s first-ever global conference for customers, partners and developers – SuiteWorld 2011. Attendees to this event will gain the insight, inspiration and training they need to run their business faster and smarter in the cloud.
This year’s event in downtown San Francisco boasts more than 75 sessions in 8 different breakout tracks, exciting keynotes that explore trends in cloud computing, and an impressive array of networking opportunities.
Contactual’s partnership with NetSuite spans many years and we have a large number customers who are benefit every day from our pre-built, one-click integration for NetSuite environments. Customer-facing teams in organizations using NetSuite can benefit from instant access to customer information via screen pop, logging and storing call notes in NetSuite, easy access to call recordings, and much more – all from a single interface. We’ll be demonstrating these capabilities in the SuiteWorld Expo Hall. Stop by booth #SP159 to learn more and say hello.
As another month draws to a close I’m constantly reminded how fun competition within a call center environment can drive results and create a sense of camaraderie. In comes in various forms – teams competing against each other in contests, individuals striving to qualify for spiffs, or sometimes both. There are so many ways to motivate employees to surpass their goals. I say I’m reminded by this constantly this week because of all the noise being generated by the sales team here at Contactual. And by noise I don’t mean they are simply talking more loudly on the phones than in the past.
Bang a Gong, Get it On
At Contactual we have a large gong located right in the middle of our sales department. When a deal closes the gong is rung proudly by the salesperson. Large deals that are long in the making – a big resounding ‘GONG’. Small and medium-sized deals get the gong treatment too. Our newest rep closed his first deal this week and you guessed it, he gonged it with a big smile on his face. Team members who aren’t in the office when their deal closes, they let us know at headquarters so we can bang the gong on their behalf. Everyone here stops what they are doing to take notice, learn more about the deal and offer their congratulations. Once you bang that gong, you are hooked!
Spreading the Recognition Around
Of course recognition programs and contests aren’t just limited to sales. Customer service organizations frequently organize contests around customer satisfaction (CSAT) and first call resolution (FCR) or other metrics they deem critical to achieving goals. It’s just one way some organizations keep their front line employees motivated.
Other organizations have successfully built an entire corporate culture relentlessly focused on customer satisfaction – in these organizations everyone is responsible for ‘customer service’, not just the individuals manning the phones. Everyone knows that Zappos is a leader in this customer-centric movement, and as a highly satisfied and repeat customer I can tell you that their approach works.
What’s working in your contact center? We’d love to hear how you keep your team motivated, excited and winning.
These are good times to be a Silicon Valley startup, especially if you are an internet based business. Internet based businesses were 5th in Sales but had an impressive 2nd in profit margin and market value. These are impressive turnaround returns after the downturn. On the other side of the table, industries who had less impressive turnarounds were hardware and traditional networking companies.
We know that after the great depression in the 30s the recovery was slow and cautious. There were a lot of federal changes and regulations, which were introduced as a direct result of the depression that are still relevant – heard of the Security Exchange Commission? However the most important change that stayed with us after the great depression was the change in attitude of countless Americans towards various aspects of life.
So are we seeing a paradigm shift in the way businesses operate as we recover from the great recession? We have been predicting that there we will be a tipping point when businesses and organizations, both enterprise and SMBs, will realize that the TCO for traditional enterprise software deployments is too hard to justify. Where enterprise customers were deploying cloud-based call centers only for Disaster Recovery or to meet the needs of internal departments, increasingly these enterprise-level customers use on-demand software for their core business units. For SMBs there hasn’t been a better time to be able to focus on high growth and high value while implementing repeatable business activities on the cloud.
At Contactual we understand that we are in the middle of a significant paradigm shift in the contact center industry. Contactual recently announced record Q1 results and these dramatic results come on the heels of a Contactual being named to the OnDemand 100 top private companies for the second year in a row.
So what does it mean for startups that are not part of the SV150, like ours? The growth of SV150 is great news for startups as not only are businesses more willing to buy but the free flow of the capital in market will encourage even more innovation in our industry. In one of our usual lunch debates Buki Adeniji, the Director of Operations at Contactual, mentioned how sometimes it takes a recession to realize which industries are the real deal. According to the SV150 results we chose the right path.
If you’re like the rest of us, you’re not sure what’s worse, being on hold or listening to those annoying prerecorded messages telling you just how important your call is while you wait your turn in line. So important, you’ve been told 20 times now.
We’re with you. We think being on hold stinks. So, we’ve added a new Web call back feature to our website to better serve our own customers and of course, that same Web call back feature is available with your Contactual Call Center Solution for you to better serve your customers too.
The concept is simple. We’ve added a Web call back link to our homepage. Click the Call Back link at the upper right of our homepage and a screen pops up with a short form allowing you to give us your name, and phone number we will call you back.
You don’t have to wait on hold and we’ll put your call into our queue and send the next available agent your way. It’s quick, simple, and spares you the pain of humming along to our background hold music (catchy as it is), while you wonder when we’ll get to your call.
You’re happy. We’re happy that you’re happy and nobody gets stuck on hold.
Set Your Customers Free
With the Web call back feature you can even connect these Call Back requests to your CRM so your agents are armed with everything they need to know to solve your customers’ problems on the first call or upsell a product or service based on their history.
Like this new feature? Try it for yourself, we’ll call you right back.