In this article Shimi Ezer, an omnichannel service expert at 7I’s, shares his experience and insights as head of the customer service operation at HOT. Shimi was one of the first service leaders to actually build an omnichannel digital service operation.
It is fair to say that the 21st century brought the communications revolution with it. Use of the full range of communication channels and internet media accelerated sharply from the very start of the century. Boundaries came down, and the intensified use of media and social networks now shapes significant processes across the world. This also has a decisive effect on the service and sales processes organizations deliver to their customers.
Today’s customers spend many hours of the day online in general, and in forums and social networks in particular. 56% do so mainly from a mobile device which, beyond its basic uses, serves as a “mobile office” and an always-available platform for browsing the internet and running dedicated apps.
In a reality where almost everything is becoming digital, every service leader understands the importance of creating digital service platforms for customers, because it is a genuine win-win situation.
On one side, the customer can consume services, complete transactions and get information wherever and whenever it suits them. On the other, the company achieves a significant saving in service costs, part of which the service leader can redirect toward strengthening customer loyalty and improving the service experience.
One of the central challenges I faced as the leader of a large and complex service operation was steering customer demand toward the digital platforms. Despite the digital reality around them, when it comes to customer service those customers are still in the habit of turning to the traditional alternative – the phone or the service counter.
Listen to the customer
Like every service leader, my first lesson was that the key to excellent service is listening to what the customer needs and fitting the solution to it. So I understood that steering demand from the traditional service platforms to the digital channels also has to begin with mapping the needs of the company’s customers, and I set out on the first task: segmenting the target populations, and analyzing the information each population consumes most often, including when and where it should be made available. It also meant identifying the most frequent contact reasons suited to self-service and building solutions for them, and examining carefully where the information should go deeper and where it should instead be trimmed and focused, before the customer loses patience and abandons the process. Finally, it meant deciding in which situations proactive service information is appropriate (with the customer’s consent, of course).
The mountain will not come to Muhammad…
Once the customer needs were defined, I moved on to mapping the existing touchpoints where the customer already is – the places they are used to getting service today. That is the most relevant meeting point at which to introduce them to the digital service.
We promoted the digital platforms in the IVR, on the company website, and in the forums where people discuss the company’s service. At the same time we used hold time to offer the digital options, make them easy to reach and play up their advantages.
Simple, simple, simple
To accelerate the shift of demand to the digital channels, it is important to understand that one of the main keys to success is the simplicity of the process. Almost every service leader knows the obstacles that come with the fear of compromising customer privacy, and the demands that information security officers and company legal counsel make in order to guard against it. I identified this as a critical junction and enlisted the relevant people in creative thinking about it.
If you have decided that the customer will need to register for a “personal area” in order to consume the service, it is essential to invest thought and effort in making that process as short as possible, because a long process is a significant barrier to consuming service digitally. Work hard to drop registration questions that are really marketing questions about consumption habits. True, they matter a great deal to the marketing team, for tailoring offers and lifting revenue.
But every extra line in the registration process costs you the patience of another few hundred customers on their way to digital service.
We realized that the average customer does not consume services from me on a daily or weekly basis. So alongside a full registration process, we chose to build an interface for “quick actions” that requires no prior registration. We simplified authentication as far as possible, for example by sending a one-time password to the customer’s mobile number as recorded in the company’s systems, or by using another identifier such as an ID number.
The human option is always an option
At the entry point to the digital service platform, it is important not to remove the option of a human agent entirely.
We chose to give the digital options prominence and easy access and to set out their advantages, but alongside them we kept the option of the old traditional route the customer is used to. Customer surveys show unmistakably that withholding the human option creates antagonism and drives customers away from the digital platform.
An incentive as a trigger for building usage habits. The overwhelming majority of customers are accustomed to the traditional service platforms. Steering demand to the digital channels means changing habits and educating the market to consume services digitally, alongside building the alternative in the best and most convenient way, so that whoever chooses it will choose it again.
You need an incentive to secure that first choice and give yourself the chance to prove that the platform is convenient, friendly and reliable. To that end, we enlisted the relevant functions in the company to put together a substantial benefits package for using the digital service. For example, product benefits, discounted purchase of value-added products, discounts on dedicated marketing plans, discounts for setting up payment arrangements, waived fees and so on.
The website is not necessarily the center of gravity. When the task is steering demand to digital, the end justifies the means. The company website is a means, not an end. If the customer finds it easier to consume services through online forums, a service app or email, we will be there for them.
True, the marketing team cares about traffic to the company site. But when it comes to steering service demand, the central task is to get to the place where the customer already is, where and when it suits them to consume services, and that is where we will be for them.
The process is trial and error. In service, what matters most is staying attentive to the customer and learning and correcting on the move. To produce sustained improvement over time you have to listen to customers all the way through: measure, survey, hear, analyze and investigate.
We built daily tracking and control processes to follow usage patterns across all the platforms, in the service of continuous improvement. A customer used a digital service for the first time? We created a survey tailored to the relevant platform, to understand satisfaction, willingness to keep using it in future, and which services the customer sees as relevant in digital and which not, and why.
A customer used a digital service once and then stopped, going back to the traditional channels? We approached those customers, debriefed them, checked, asked and drew conclusions for improvement. On a daily basis we analyzed the end-to-end funnel into the digital service processes: how many entries on each platform, where processes are abandoned and what the root causes are.
We then adjusted the processes and the platforms in line with the findings.
Digital service is not the future, it is already the present. The customers are already there, and all that is left is to build them the simple, convenient, reliable and worthwhile solution, so that they choose this platform again and again and enjoy service that is available wherever and whenever they choose.
And yes, it is clear to everyone that the company, for its part, benefits from steering demand to a cheaper and more efficient platform.
A platform that is convenient, accessible and fitted to the customer, combined with benefits, discounts and promotions, or dedicated marketing plans available only through digital service – that is a winning formula.
Did we already say win-win situation?
