With economic forecasters predicting the largest growth period since the post-war boom, the importance of converting sales has never been higher, with consumers using a variety of communication platforms to engage with businesses, it can be very easy to miss out on a sale if your channels aren’t set up properly.  

As businesses prepare for growth and look to optimise their contact centre operations, selecting the right customer engagement technology solution has become crucial. Cost effective customer acquisition and a reduction in ‘cost to serve’ are both desirable goals but achieving them can be a challenge if you don’t have a true understanding of available technologies and their alignment to your existing environment.  

In the first of our series of expert panel discussions chaired by John Greenwood, Head of Technology, Contact Centre Panel, we look at the Bot and the differences in the technology underpinning operational performance. We will explore the difference in programmable products vs those that have minimal learning input before effectively replacing their human equivalents. The webinar will include an audience Q & A, where you will get the opportunity to ask the panelists questions.

Meet the panel

Louis Halpern: Chairman, Conversations with Ami

Louis is an ad tech veteran and is the driving force, along with fellow founder Lawrence Turner, behind Ami. He has in-depth insight and knowledge of the world of Ai and Bots. Meet Ami is Conversational Ai and contributes to clients’ competitive advantage by increasing customer service capacity, immediately freeing up resources and creating better outcomes. Louis is a big advocate of mentoring and also runs ‘Realise your potential Mentoring’, which support micro-business owners and corporate staff of all levels.

Natalie Calvert: Founder, CX High Performance

Natalie helps businesses to put their customers at the heart of their organisation through superb CX employee engagement programmes. Natalie has worked with, empowered and equipped more than 200,000 service & sales professionals and leaders across 100+ global organisations to deliver world class customer service during her 25 year career. Over the past 10 years Natalie has judged the UK Lloyds Bank National Business Awards for The Virgin Atlantic Customer Experience & Loyalty award. Natalie is also a Board Advisor to the National Business Awards.

John Greenwood: Head of Technology & Payments, Contact Centre Panel

John is a payments specialist and leading authority in PCI DSS compliance and how this applies to customer contact centres and 3rd party service providers. He was the driver and lead content contributor to the official PCI SSC Information Supplement, published in late 2018. John is a technology subject matter expert with over 30 years’ experience working with and within the industry, he has a deep understanding of the technology vendor landscape as well as BPO and contact centre environments.

Nathan Smith: Founder & MD, Gabba

Nathan is the founder and managing director of Gabba, an award-winning pioneer in digital and chatbot marketing. He has worked with some of the best-known names in the corporate world, including Microsoft and Siemens. Author of the book Social Media for the Legal Sector (Law Society Publications), he is passionate about sharing his knowledge to empower other organisations.

Topics for discussion

Over the past few years, the challenges facing the retail industry have been greatly publicised. With intense competition from new online only entrants, years of sluggish economic growth and heavily debt-financed business models, creating an environment in which we have seen a number of major High Street retailers fail. In 2019 alone, we saw Bonmarche, Clintons, Coast, Debenhams, Jack Wills, Jessops, Karen Millen, Mamas and Papas, Mothercare and Thomas Cook – either disappear, undergo major restructuring in pre-pack administration deals or become insolvent and the brand rights sold to other retailers.

In the pandemic ridden year of 2020, we have already seen similar fates for Antler Luggage, Beales, Brighthouse, DW Sports, Go Outdoors, Laura Ashley, Oddbins, TJ Hughes and Victoria’s Secret.

Almost all of these High Street retailers or brands have gone through pre-pack administration deals, which have seen major rounds of store closures and trade creditors largely unpaid, with major stakeholders and landlords facing renegotiated deals. Go Outdoors, for example, were bought by their existing owner JD Sports to be restructured, with unsecured creditors expecting to see only 1p in the pound.

Alarmingly but not surprisingly, the knock-on effect of so many retailers seeking lower rents as part of pre-pack administration deals has been a financial impact on landlords, including Intu properties who entered administration in June. Intu owns and manages some of the UK’s largest shopping malls, where retailers house their major stores, but carries total debts of over £4.5 billion.

While many businesses are failing, others are benefitting from the situation. Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct empire has recently bought House of Fraser and has enjoyed several years of incorporating well-known brands into its portfolio. The group (now renamed as Frasers Group) has purchased House of Fraser, Evans Cycles, Jack Wills, GAME and key assets from the DW Sports Fitness business since 2018, to add to its wide list of brands including Agent Provocateur, Everlast, Karrimor, Lonsdale and North Face.

Boohoo have also been on the acquisition trail. Following major success in the online channel, they have further expanded their offering by purchasing Oasis and Warehouse, to add to their Karen Millen and Coast buys earlier this year. It is worth noting that Boohoo has acquired the online brands only, leaving the High Street stores to close, totalling over 120 stores and around 600 concessions. With reported cash to spare, more purchases might follow and Boohoo will need to build a business capable of incorporating the new brands successfully. The more mature demographic of the new brands’ customers might serve to improve customer loyalty and offset the criticism of Boohoo as a ‘fast fashion’ retailer. Certainly, there will be implications for Boohoo’s sales processing and customer services teams, who will need to adapt or replace legacy systems and maintain service levels to loyal customers who stay with the brands.

Survival of the fittest

With such a bleak sector landscape, how can High Street and online retailers keep their customer service operations functioning well? It might not seem a big priority to financial decision-makers, but ultimately retailers’ survival depends on retaining and gaining shopper spend, so how can they deliver a great service amidst this turmoil?

The impact on the High Street

It is difficult to predict how the High Street will look in future. The efforts of Mary Portas to invigorate the High Street have been dealt a blow by the global economic slowdown. Early signs are that a shift away from out of town shopping to local trips plus online shopping has taken place. If this shopper behaviour sticks, there are opportunities for smaller businesses to succeed and big challenges for large brands to stay relevant in physical shops. To maintain their share of consumer spending, retailers will need to complement an attractive physical experience with excellent online provision and effective customer service.

The only exceptions to this rule seem to be the lowest priced retailers. Both Primark and B&M, for example, appear to be flourishing in 2020 by delivering a simple price-based offering with no online backup. B&M was classified as an ‘essential’ store early in the UK’s journey through this pandemic, and queues built up outside its stores. The lack of online provision by the brand meant that shopping behaviour did not alter in two channels, so change was easier to deal with. Primark closed its stores until June, then continued to retail goods using its established model. Physical retail experiences a much lower level of returns and Primark’s low prices continue to attract shoppers in a much more price-sensitive post-furlough environment. Shoppers simply do not feel as confident about buying expensive goods.

These exceptions, however, do not represent most retailers. Many brands need to offer what consumers want whilst managing costs to balance customer satisfaction with sustainable physical and online retail operations.

The shift to online shopping

Covid-19 has accelerated the already-huge move to online shopping. However, the global pandemic has created new challenges: coping with the sudden increase in demand and the need for new operational procedures means that an increase in online sales has not meant an increase in profits for many online retailers. Take Amazon, the online shopping juggernaut: although sales were up 26% in the first quarter of 2020, profits were down. The company’s net income reduced by 10% from $4.4 billion to $4 billion, and provisions to fight Covid-19 were expected to account for that entire income. Amazon seems to be playing the long game, putting customers ahead of profit. Other retailers can learn from this, but many will not have the profits available to support that strategy.

We predict that the accelerated shift towards online shopping will stick. Much like the realisation that we can actually work from home now, shoppers have realised that online shopping actually works. Once that behaviour is rewarded with a positive experience, it tends to develop into a habit. Lower cost retail channels, managed well, result in higher channel profits for retailers so the winners will be those who can combine good processes with great customer service.

Balancing cost reductions and great customer service

The challenge for retailers is to retain happy customers whilst keeping costs down. Exceptional demands on ops managers to keep businesses working at a time of massive change will have resulted in big cost increases for many. Unprecedented volume fluctuations in sales and in enquiries can stress-test a business beyond breaking point. Those who were most adaptable might already have gained an advantage. How can retailers keep costs down during this time of huge upheaval?

  1. Adopt the right technologies

If your retail business is adapting business processes to deal with your post-Covid future, are you building on a future-proof flexible platform? Even with excellent teams and leaders, legacy systems might restrict your abilities to change quickly and to handle enormous variations in throughput. They may also be unsuitable for homeworkers, presenting problems including how to handle payment processes and personal information over a remote connection.

Flexible business systems now exist which are rapidly deployable and capable of fully compliant end-to-end data handling. They can deliver surprising results in short lead times, resulting in a customer experience which is more seamless, more satisfying and better value than existing systems which seemed fine until the world changed!

  1. Choose the right partners

For many retailers, the biggest challenge throughout 2020 has been forecasting and dealing with massive fluctuations in sales and customer service demand. The shift towards online shopping with associated increases in returns, then back to physical shopping has caused huge variation in the demand for sales processing and customer service support. Failure to handle the fluctuations has resulted in losses of sales, which will be unmeasurable for most organisations. Lack of resource to resolve issues and handle enquiries, similarly, results in failures which cannot be measured by most operators.

Working with carefully selected outsourcers has allowed the best retailers to be truly flexible, adapting agent numbers when needed to cope with unpredictable variations in demand. This has allowed them not only to accurately assess demand but to deliver customer service solutions to a confused and demanding customer base at a time of high sensitivity. In the long term this will result in customer loyalty, however the retail landscape changes into 2021 and beyond.

What does 2021 hold for your business?

If you are planning for the uncertain future, make sure that you build a sales and customer service operation that is ready to deal with the uncertainty we have experienced in 2020. The retail sector will continue to be intensely competitive and challenging throughout and following the Covid-19 pandemic: retailers who survive must be prepared for difficult years ahead, which will require adaptability, cost management and great teams delivering excellent services to demanding customers.

Consider how you will deal with post-Covid customer service volumes and your strategic options for technology and flexibility. CCP can help. Our skilled and vastly experienced team is backed by our comprehensive Contact Centre and Technology Networks.

Get in touch, to find how best to build a future proof customer services solution, using the right technology and support services to deliver a flexible, cost effective and world-class customer experience.

In 2020, the struggles of the air travel industry have been well documented. In the past week, Virgin Atlantic has filed for bankruptcy protection, it has been publicised that 6000 British Airways employees have accepted voluntary redundancy, Boeing has announced that they are ceasing the manufacture of their iconic 747 jet, while EasyJet is scheduling extra flights to cope with a sudden upsurge in demand. Sadly, that upsurge is nothing to be too optimistic about – with the airline currently working at just 30% capacity and seeing a 10% increase in holidaymaker numbers.

The economic climate is incredibly challenging for the airline industry, illustrated by the potential bankruptcy protection of Virgin Atlantic, the significant reduction in British Airways workforce and EasyJet considering a 30% reduction, while Boeing reported a loss $3 billion in the three months to June 2020.

The physical disruption, caused by Covid-19, to contact centre operations has been a major challenge. With agents being forced, at short notice, to operate from home and access key systems remotely. Then there is the dilemma of move agents back to the contact centre – willing or not.

So in this global environment, how do air travel businesses plan and deliver excellent customer service?

Changing customer service demands

Historically, air industry contact centre volumes have been relatively easy to predict. Seasonal variations repeated year upon year, with any spikes in demand usually driven by marketing campaigns or weather events which were restricted to specific geographies. 2020 has been vastly different.

With Covid-19 restricting international movement of people, demand for air travel abruptly fell to virtually zero. At the same time, the demand for answers to questions spiked alarmingly, but understandably, with millions of anticipated holidaymakers and business travellers suddenly needing to alter or cancel their travel plans. Airline customer service teams were faced with an unprecedented situation.

Following the initial spike in demand for news about cancelled flights and refund handling, call volumes dropped again and settled into more predictable enquiries, giving companies an opportunity to redraft FAQs for agents to deliver consistent standards of service. However, this period of relative stability did not last.

More recently, regional, national and international ‘mini-lockdowns’ have caused unpredictable spikes in demand. The recent decision by the UK Government to impose quarantine restrictions on travellers returning home from Spain, for example, was given with only five hours’ notice. Understandably, customer service departments were faced with a new situation they were mostly unprepared for.

How can the industry cope?

With no end to the pandemic insight and outbreaks being handled on a more local basis – enormous variations in customer service demand are likely to be the norm. How do travel companies build a service capability which can deal with this?

As airlines stopped flying, some companies deployed their cabin crew to support other departments. Commonly, the multi-lingual skills and industry knowledge that cabin crew possess have provided much needed assistance to teams struggling to cope with demand. Although, as flights gradually recommence this temporary measure needs to be replaced.

For a permanent solution, air travel businesses are planning to use two important enablers:

  1. Technology
  2. Outsourced help

Technology – the enabler

To enable agents to cope with new questions and periods of unprecedented demand, implementing improved or more sophisticated technology is being viewed as a must have by some businesses. Technology platforms are available which can be implemented surprisingly quickly, capable of rapidly expanding numbers of agents to satisfy changing volumes. In addition, automated systems can reduce the demand on human agents, allowing your team to spend more time dealing with complex enquiries while simpler transactions are handled without the need for intervention.

To enable agents to cope with new questions and periods of unprecedented demand, implementing technology is being viewed as a must have by some businesses. Technology platforms are available which can be implemented surprisingly quickly, capable of rapidly expanding numbers of agents to satisfy changing volumes. In addition, automated systems can reduce the demand on human agents, allowing your team to spend more time dealing with complex enquiries while simpler transactions are handled without the need for intervention.

Online automation, coupled with fast transfer to agents when needed, can also smooth out sudden increases in demand. Data collection also enables FAQs to be updated more rapidly, further improving agents’ ability to deal with changing issues more quickly and consistently.

Outsourcing – the facilitator

The ability to rapidly bring additional support on stream may be the defining characteristic of those businesses who survive to emerge as winners once the pandemic subsides. Some airlines already have additional outsource capacity on a retainer, deployable when required. By building this capacity, costs are reduced in the core business whilst customer service levels can be kept high during peak demand.

Outsourced teams can be tasked with FAQ responses and transactional business, leaving internal highly skilled agents to handle more complex issues. These same agents can also build up a knowledge base as new situations develop, future-proofing your teams in a rapidly changing business environment.

Specialist outsourcers can be used, in addition, to deal with specific elements of the customer journey or enquiry, for example when handling transactional data. Fully PCI DSS compliant operators can handle payments and refunds within strict guidelines, supported by other businesses dealing with conversational enquiries and online requests via chat or social media channels. Technology gives a seamless way of connecting these teams, which enables your business to give its customers a positive and risk-free experience.

Beyond 2020: converting a problem into an opportunity

One of the inevitable side-effects of the changes due to Covid-19 will be an increase in prices for flights and holidays. Travel firms will need to add extra value to encourage travellers to book again, especially international travellers and customers who have either lost money or gone through the painful process of obtaining refunds from cancelled flights.

For premium brands, there may be opportunities to offer direct services including rapid Coronavirus testing and additional PPE and barrier protection in airports, as well as at the customer’s home before and after flights.

Long term effects could result in customers becoming happy to pay a premium price to take advantage of online advice with a human touch delivered via apps such as Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams or through branded online travel gateways. By delivering a travel agency experience online, companies might be able to maximise loyalty by using a lower cost, non-intermediary advice channel for premium clients.

Whatever the future looks like, it will certainly be very different operating landscape for the travel industry. The short-term prognosis is very challenging and difficult decisions will need to be made. Companies who survive and emerge as front-runners beyond 2020, will need to provide enhanced customer service in a more challenging marketplace than the industry has ever seen.

If your business needs to consider how to deal with post-Covid customer service volumes, or to look at strategic options for technology and flexibility, CCP can help. Our skilled and vastly experienced team, backed by our comprehensive Contact Centre and Technology Networks, are able to advise your business on ways to improve your customer experience and introduce contact centre technologies that will help reduce costs and improve customer interaction. Get in touch today for a free no obligations consultation.

Most people reading this article will agree that one of the cornerstones of long-term success is satisfied customers. Despite this, there are still many businesses which deal with customer service as a secondary service, with sales processing or complaint handling, measured by simple ‘how fast’ and ‘how many’ metrics and perceived as a cost.

In this two-part series, we are asking ‘what are the benefits of having a customer service representative on the Board?’ To find out we have interviewed two Director level customer service business leads, from progressive forward-thinking organisations, to find out their views.
In our first article, we find out the opinions of Ben Lappin, Director of Retention and Customer Experience at The Guardian and Chair of the DMA’s Contact Centre Council. He tells us about The Guardian’s refreshing prioritisation of the customer and gives insight into how they engage with customers.

We began by asking Ben how he felt his Board valued customer experience. His response was “I was pleased when our CEO called out customer experience as our third strategic priority, as to me that was genuine . And we got the funding and support to make things better. Many companies claim to put customers first but that’s rarely delivered in practise.”

“By really representing the customer in our business, we’ve been able to attack the issues that really affect customers rather than just responding well to failure. Our approach is much more holistic now, compared to the traditional model of working hard to improve things like response times and numbers of calls handled.”

We then asked Ben whether customer service channels for The Guardian News & Media Group had evolved in recent times, as social apps and instant communications have become more prolific. “We take a simpler approach to this issue. Everyone has access to email and the channel works for dealing with queries. Are other apps necessary? We feel that there’s a dash to apps and other channels driven by Corporate FOMO: the ‘fear of missing out’ combined with the need to make something look like a success because a team has invested in it. Why do you need a new app if you have an effective web chat on your website which also works on mobile?

“Unless you have a compelling case to use a channel, it’s better to retreat from channels where you cannot perform well. There is sometimes a case to switch from Twitter to live chat simply because the customer experience via Twitter isn’t as good, or as personal.”

We questioned Ben about his experience of customer experience being represented at the company’s Board: “I’ve been at The Guardian for three years now. Customer experience is discussed at Board level. We appointed Anna Bateson as Chief Customer Officer, who is responsible for all of reader revenues, but with a clear brief to be focused on customers. At first, the customer statistics used didn’t reflect the real issues. I was able to lobby and place issues where they really belonged and where they could be addressed. For example, newspaper delivery issues were placed with delivery providers to solve, rather than being reported as a customer service statistic. Our teams were recognising the problems through the customer service process and we’re able to improve things by driving real solutions, not by working hard to answer the problems more quickly!”
Ben continues “Company Boards are busy. To prioritise real issues, you have to be concise and punchy. The stats can help by pointing to problems. We have to propose ways to solve those problems. Without that voice on the Board, customer service would probably be a regular set of reports, watched for simple trends and costs but not as a way to really make things better.”

We asked Ben if he thought that the KPIs used in most customer service operations could result in unrealistic expectations?
“Yes. Without meaningful interpretation, customer experience is seen as a cost centre rather than a chance to add value. Traditional KPIs push towards cost management, whether that’s for an in-house department or an outsourced operation.”

He stated “Don’t have contact volumes as a KPI. Measure problems and how you solve them, not volumes. Responding brilliantly to failure should not be seen as success.”

Finally, we asked Ben if he thought other businesses were missing out on not having customer experience representation within their Board meetings?

“Almost certainly. Even if it’s not a permanent Board member, there should be representation at the level where there is regular interaction with the Board. Customer acquisition can almost always be improved by spending more money on it, but customer experience and retention require a more long-term view.”

Ben continues “We can measure our successes, because we’ve made an effort to recognise the value of what we do. We’ve self-funded some initiatives which generate real value for the business, making our customer-facing teams a value-adding department, not perceived as a cost centre. Being able to articulate this allows us to request what we need from a position of authority, and to ask from a position of moral authority, representing the customer properly. Expressing a request by explaining how it’s going to reduce customer time wasted and improve retention makes the problem human, which makes the decision-makers much more likely to react favourably.”

Ben’s experiences made it clear to us that having the customer experience discussed in Board meetings is an important chance to not just represent customers, but to highlight real business issues and initiate improvements which drive better bottom-line results. Helping the Board to understand the value added by improving customer interactions can encourage a problem-solving culture, rather than a cost-management one. This is a way to gain and maintain genuine competitive advantage.

In our next article, we’ll be talking to Liam Smith of Rank Group to find out what advantages his company has found from letting the customers’ voice be heard at the top table.

Get involved

Does your Board listen to your customers? We’d be interested to hear about your experiences. Get in touch. Call us on 0114 209 6120 or email hello@contactcentrepanel.com

New annual survey highlights key trends within the industry

The survey focuses on the key topics affecting customer service interaction. It will be run annually to monitor, track and highlight any market changes in areas such as customer interaction, digital transformation, purchasing, business process optimisation and macroeconomic influence.

2020 survey results are in…

The first Automotive Customer Service Survey was launched at the end of last year and has been completed by a number of leading vehicle manufacturers and retail businesses, including Aston Martin, Avis Budget Group, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Renault, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi and Pendragon.
The results are now in and have highlighted a number of interesting insights into the current and future shape of customer service delivery within this highly competitive global marketplace.

Communication channels and AI adoption

It may be no surprise to learn that voice, social and web chat are used by almost all the businesses that responded. However, only 50% currently use Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Bots within their customer service provision, this is a surprisingly low proportion given the well-publicised accelerated adoption rates of AI and its suitability for repeatable inbound enquiries.
Although, the survey also showed that 60% of participants believed the use of AI and Bots would rise at the expense of agent handled Webchat, over the next 3 years.
This is a statistic we will watch closely in the future, to see if these predictions become true and the industry starts to take advantage of the cost and speed benefits made possible through the adoption of AI and Bots.

Showrooms: value-add or cost-inefficient?

Showrooms came out as the second most popular customer service channel in the automotive sector. Whilst this is not surprising news, it does raise a point for manufacturers and dealerships in regards to the limitations of providing customer service from the showroom.
Many businesses are benefiting from centralising customer service – enabling the measurement of enquiry types in a ‘hub’ environment and the building and implementation of standardised processes to solve the most common issues faced by their clients. Centralised models help customer service departments to maximise training and development benefits, building strong customer service focused teams without having the added distraction of handling sales.
However, adding value to customer relationships through the showroom must not be undervalued. Vehicle manufacturers and retailers are faced with the dilemma of delivering consistent, centrally controlled customer service, against the more personal and familiar showroom experience, which many of their older demographics, Baby Boomers and Generation X, have become accustomed to and often prefer.
It will be interesting to see, from future surveys, how the rise of the millennial and the introduction of new technologies, such as Virtual Reality showrooms, will impact on future customer service interaction.

Environmental factors driving purchasing

Unsurprisingly, surveyors thought that environmental factors and changes to vehicle tax and legislation would be the main drivers for vehicle purchasing in 2020, with results showing a move away from diesel to electric as the top reasons, followed by finance offerings and a move to second hand.

Get involved

We are always looking for new participants for our surveys so if you represent an automotive manufacturer, retailer or are involved in delivering customer service for a business in the sector, and would like to provide your own insight into the topics shaping customer experience in your industry, get in touch. All participants will receive a full report on the findings of the survey. Call us on 0114 209 6120 or contact us by email.

The impact of not getting important information through to your customers?

Just imagine that a problem is found with one of your most popular products or services, meaning you have to contact all your customers to offer a solution or replacement. How would your service team, or your outsource customer service partner, cope?

Now, stop imagining and start planning. The last 12 months has seen some major brands fall foul of poorly handled product recalls or poorly communicated service failures. Nat West’s Black Friday experience was a prime example, where a lack of regular updates about the bank’s online banking failure, on the busiest online shopping day of the year, created further frustration for thousands of customers, who shared their discontent across social media. By not updating customers, the bank gave the impression they didn’t care, while no doubt they were working very hard to resolve the problem. Worse still, there was no apology once the issue was resolved leaving many customers feeling let down.

Product recalls, if not handled well, can have a very detrimental effect on a brand. Recalls are relatively common in sectors such as automotive, electrical appliances and pharmaceuticals. They must be handled well as the corporate consequences of failure can be serious. The reputational damage can be difficult to recover from, but more importantly, in some cases, there can be a genuine threat to personal safety.

How would you get critical messaging to all your customers?

If you had to get essential information to every single customer, how would you do it? If your customer service planning doesn’t include this as a possibility, there’s a risk that a product problem will result in a huge influx of inbound enquiries, flooding your team and leaving many customers unhappy with your performance. By getting ahead of the problem and proactively communicating with your customers, dissatisfaction can be minimised. A well-handled problem can result in genuine brand advocates, but a badly handled one can irreparably damage your brand reputation.
Critical messaging solutions can vary – using different channels according to the needs of the clients. However, they tend to be built on an initial SMS (text message) transmission. SMS messages, on average, achieve delivery and open rates of well over 90%, so with a suitably clear message, a huge number of customers can be reached and engaged extremely quickly and inexpensively.

The initial SMS will usually contain a call to action, a link, or rich media for an app like experience, that enables customers to self-serve and take control of their own problem resolution. This could be to make an engineer appointment or to arrange collection of a defective product. This is much more resource efficient than waiting for inbound enquiries following a news story or even a proactive email campaign.

Customers are also given the option to engage via SMS or social media to ask questions: this is also far more cost-effective than prompting calls, as agents can typically handle four text conversations at one time, and customers are more accepting of slower response rates via SMS or social chat (via your brand’s Facebook page, for example) than on the phone.

When you compare the self-serve option to staffing up your customer service department, or securing outsourced seats to handle a massive spike in demand, it is both cheaper and quicker, reaching customers more effectively and delivering the required results with minimum human involvement. This is more likely to result in more satisfied customers, despite the obvious initial bad news about their purchase.

How do you turn a negative situation to your advantage?

So, by adopting a proactive, planned approach to dealing with critical messaging, your brand can:
• Reach your customers quickly
• Get resolutions acted on efficiently
• Allow your customer service team to focus on just the complex cases
• Maximise cost-effectiveness
• Convert potential brand damage into happy customers

At CCP we work with specialist partners who are able to deliver the latest crisis management and critical messaging solutions, so if you have any customer service issues, or are concerned that your business is not setup to handle a crisis, get in touch. We’d love to help.

The introduction of automation within the customer service industry continues at a rapid pace. Whilst it’s always well intentioned and designed to increase efficiency and improve the customer experience, what happens when things go wrong? We take a look at some of the potential pitfalls of automation and put forward our thoughts on how to avoid the poor use of technology within your customer-facing operations.

What’s going wrong with customer service automation?

When the customer experience is not managed well, the consequences are serious. According to Accenture’s 2018 research, 60% of customers had not made a purchase due to poor customer service, and 61% of customers had completely stopped doing business with at least one company in the last year for the same reason.

As customers ourselves, most of us can recall experiences where our interaction with a brand has been harmed by poor automation. Poor handover between automatic and human systems; confusing and over-long sequences of button-pressing either on the phone or computer keypad; excessive recorded announcements… the list goes on. It’s situations like these that are often badly implemented, which should be designed with the customer in mind to avoid potential loss of purchase or cancellation of a service.

Common mistakes include:

• Replacing a system instead of complementing it. Recognising when humans are needed is important, because it’s not practical to expect automation to address all issues and enquiries.

• Relying on a single channel. Put simply, customers use multiple channels and they expect to be able to receive customer care through the one they’re using right now. This means that information has to be available across all your channels, which need to be able to share data between each other.

• Automating complex support issues. Some issues are just too complicated to automate. Humans are better at understanding complex issues, negotiating and solving difficult problems. Good agents are also much more effective at empathising with frustrated customers. A well-handled complaint can be worth ten issue free transactions.

• Using outdated systems and information. Not maintaining data in customer-facing systems can easily result in bad information being passed to your customers. Up-to-date information allows your agents to act quickly and correctly.

Caring for your customers

From research by Salesforce and Interactive Intelligence Group – 83% of consumers need some degree of customer support while making an online purchase. The most important factors for customers who use your customer service channels are:

1. Short response times
2. Consistency across channels
3. Knowledge of staff

It’s vital that you provide an effective customer service, which addresses these factors.

Implementing robust systems to deal with the most common enquiries quickly and effectively will improve your customer experience, enabling your human agents to deal with the more complex situations with empathy and expertise, resulting in happier customers. This handover from systems to humans can also be improved with good IVR, call recording analysis and usage monitoring to enable predictive call handling.

How can your business avoid pitfalls?

There are clearly some things to avoid when implementing technology and automation in your customer service operations. If you want to improve your customer experience, not harm it, then consider the following before implementing your next automation programme:

• Automate your FAQs. The most common questions that people ask of your business should be built into an automated FAQ system, or a chatbot. This will help to solve most customer issues quickly and reduce the burden on your customer care team.

• Build automated follow up. Most visitors do not become paying customers on their first visit. By automating follow up, in the form of surveys, emails and/or targeted ads on social media, the time consuming process of sales conversion can be made much more effective.

• Predict customer behaviour. Many customer issues are predictable. By capturing data on ever interaction, repeated enquiries can be predicted and customer service times can be minimised whilst keeping customers happy.

• Design systems that are able to handover seamlessly to humans. 72% of customers blame their bad customer service experience on having to explain their problem to multiple people. This also applies to systems. Make sure that data is handed over to your agents from your systems, so that the human interaction adds value, rather than starting over again.

• Track confidence scoring. Automated systems can record words and actions which flag low confidence and negative feelings towards your brand. By redirecting selected enquiries to a human agent, customer satisfaction can be maximised.

• Update a knowledge base for every customer. After every customer interaction, update the purchases, questions, location and preferences so you can cater to their needs in future. This is as important to straightforward no-nonsense buyers as it is to customers who make frequent enquiries.

• ASK FOR FEEDBACK! Automation is not easy. Regular testing and requests for feedback from users not only helps you to improve your systems, it makes customers feel more valued while you find better ways to serve them.
While there are certainly bad examples of automation hindering the customer experience, a well-designed, tested and implemented set of systems will help you to increase customer happiness, reduce costs and improve sales. If your automation is having a negative effect or you require help finding and implementing a system, get in touch. At CCP, we have access to a network of highly skilled technology and automation experts who will be able to assist.

In the run up to Christmas, online and offline retailers will, as usual, be desperately vying for consumer attention and wallet spend. Whether you’re a fan of the phenomenon or not, there’s no denying that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are an increasingly important part of the build up to Christmas. Since Black Friday’s introduction in 2014, online sales have risen steadily from £0.81bn to £1.49bn in 2018. Black Friday falls on 29th November this year, so is your customer service provision geared up and ready for the sudden rise in demand?

How big is the spike in sales around Black Friday?

As reported in a recent article on SaleCycle.com, the last few years have seen a pattern of increasing sales in the days leading up to Black Friday, with a marked spike on the day itself. Sales have continued at very high levels throughout Saturday, then risen again on Cyber Monday and the Tuesday too. So Black Friday isn’t just one day – it’s a sustained period of high spending and activity driven by promotions, the last pay day before Christmas and consumer responses to perceived limited offers.
According to a survey by SaleCycle, 70% of UK retailers will be taking part in Black Friday in 2019. This participation will be driven by increased sales promotion by those retailers, which will have a knock-on effect throughout retail sales as a whole, as buyers react to the pressure and increase their shopping online.

How does Black Friday impact your customer service teams?

Peak shopping days like Black Friday and the intensely busy days afterwards can put a huge amount of strain on customer service. This is not just because of increased volume, according to Business Matters, but the promotions used. To make an impact, many retailers will launch new products and/or promotions increasing the amount of new information that customer service agents need to deal with during a very busy time. As a consequence, this can result in negative customer experiences if challenges are not handled well.
The potential for success is significant, but the risk of failure is also heightened by the sheer volume and variety of transactions and issues in the few days around Black Friday. The limited timescales of this huge spike in retail spending mean that there’s not enough time to respond to and recover from failures. Therefore, it’s vital that retailers prepare for this period carefully and comprehensively.

How can you prepare customer service success?

1) Plan to succeed

If your organisation has experience of the Black Friday weekend, use all the sales and customer service data you have available to make predictions for 2019. In addition to reviewing sales made and calls handled, make sure you analyse abandon rates and calls received. This also applies to social channels and any online chat services you use. Plan your resources for the anticipated inbound spikes to ensure that you don’t miss opportunities to sell more products and make more customers happy.

2) Test your transactions

For most retailers taking part in Black Friday, their website will be the most critical part of the sales process. A site which performs well will maximise sales, whereas a poorly-performing site will not only lose opportunities, but will result in customers not coming back. The whole premise of Black Friday is limited availability, so your potential buyers will quickly move elsewhere!

3) Find flexibility

Not able to grow your customer service team to cope with the increased demand? There are other options available, so recruiting new team members does not need to be the only choice. Consider working with an outsourced contact centre to cope with the spike in volume, or to handle specific parts of your business processes. This can leave your experienced agents to deal with complex enquiries, while your additional team handles the more predictable tasks and interactions.

If your data from 2018 suggests that coping with Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2019 will be difficult, let us know. We can talk through the options available to you.

The challenges of maintaining good customer service against a background of industry failures

The UK energy industry has seen massive changes over the last 20 years. Since the energy supply sector became competitive in the 1990s, there has been an unending cycle of consolidation and failure as the largest players have sought cost savings and new entrants have miscalculated the demands of the industry.

Energy supplier failures

The advent of supplier choice for consumers was supposed to usher in lower costs, more freedom and innovation in the industry. However, new entrants have found it extremely difficult to sustain growth and maintain customer service against a backdrop of low margins driven by the creation of a highly competitive environment.

Many consumers do not switch suppliers, which means winning new customers can be expensive for energy businesses. This has driven hard sell tactics, particularly from some new entrants, which has caused complaints from consumers. For those suppliers who have won new consumers in good numbers, there has been a consequential increase in back office work, to manage the onboarding of new customers, through established industry systems and when these fail, there are consequences for the supplier. There is also the need to issue accurate and timely bills, where a mixture of inaccuracies, mistakes and consumer misunderstandings can generate high volumes of customer service enquiries.

The established ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers in the UK have a long history of supplying electricity and gas to consumers. Their systems, staff and support are well tested and their large customer bases enable them to cope with fluctuations in consumer numbers. For new entrants, however, a major success or failure in signing up new consumers can have disastrous effects on the customer service and back office teams. This can cause unpredicted increases in costs and as a result we’ve seen a number of high profile failures of new supply companies:
• Eversmart Energy – 29,000 households affected
• Solarplicity – 7,500 households
• Brilliant Energy
• Our Power
• Economy Energy
• One Select
• Spark Energy Supply
• Extra Energy
• Usio Energy
• Gen4u
• Iresa
• National Gas and Power

With the introduction of a price cap and high wholesale energy prices on top of unexpected costs, more suppliers are expected to fail over the coming months.

Suppliers of last resort

Ofgem, the energy industry regulator, assigns a new supplier to the consumers of every energy company which fails. That new supplier then has to cope with the onslaught of new enquiries from consumers who weren’t expecting to switch again so soon and, quite understandably, have some questions they want answered. Taking on a failed competitor’s customer can therefore be tricky, resource intensive and less attractive than you’d imagine.

Consolidation

The recent sale of SEE to Ovo Energy has created a new member of the ‘Big Six’ with 5 million customers. This will add around 8,000 staff to Ovo’s business, and as expected there are likely to be some cost synergies driven out of the combined business. It’s vital that to retain their status as the 2nd biggest UK supplier, customer service levels are kept high throughout the transition period.
In a further shake-up of the ‘Big Six’, Eon has moved to take on Npower’s UK energy supply business. They’ll face the same challenges as Ovo Energy as they look to transform Npower’s loss-making operation and take on their consumers.

Smart metering misery

In recent years, the roll-out of smart meters to homes has caused additional problems for consumers and the industry alike. Just last week, it was announced that the deadline for installation targets in UK homes has been extended to 2024. Alongside the delayed installation programme, many householders are unhappy with the smart meters they have received. Problems with meters failing when consumers switched supplier have rendered the devices almost useless for people who have tried to minimise their household costs, resulting in unhappy customers and customer service issues for energy suppliers.

What does all this mean for customer service?

In an industry which supplies an essential service to every household in the UK, customer service is going to remain under the spotlight for energy companies. The ability of suppliers to cope with fluctuating demands from consumers will affect their ability to win and retain business.
Energy suppliers face a number of challenges when planning the future for their customer service operations:

Customer numbers – can future numbers be reliably forecasted, especially if the supplier is bidding for new business as Ofgem’s ‘supplier of last resort’? How will they cope with large variations in numbers?

Resource planning – if a supplier has merged with a competitor, how are the conflicting demands of providing excellent customer service and realising cost savings for shareholders going to be balanced?

Systems integration and development – how do you choose which systems to adopt following a merger? Can systems be improved to deliver better service and integrated with existing back-office operations? How will this be done within the limits of GDPR regulation?

Skills transfer – can the strengths of a more experienced team be passed into the combined business? How can this be done without harming customer service and minimising staff dissatisfaction?

Outsourcing – is it possible to supplement the team with experts from experienced energy industry outsourcers?

In an essential industry which is regularly in the news, energy companies must strive to maintain not only margins and customer numbers, but high levels of customer service. The high failure rate of new entrants is testament to the unpredictability of the sector and its extremely competitive nature. Ultimately, it will be a case of survival of the fittest; effective planning and management will be necessary to succeed and to cope with the inevitable challenges of the industry and its consumers.

Not even the ‘Big Six’ have been safe. We now have a new group of companies heading the industry and who knows if they’ll still be there in five years’ time? New entrants and old stalwarts alike need to consider customer service as an integral, essential part of their business make-up.
It’s going to be interesting being involved.