It is an age old question which we all hear time and time again but it can be done in a variety of ways and sometimes it can be done using solutions slightly differently to how a vendor may sell their solution to you.
Around 10 years ago, a new solution was being promoted, which would allow customers to contact you for free. It was called click-to-call. Some of you, who may recall the original solution; it was somewhat cumbersome (customers had to download an applet to be able to submit a call request from your organisation).
Well, things have changed. No longer do customers have to download an applet and it is now very easy for organisations to implement click-to-call functionality.
A way in which it has proven successful is to assist in email management. Using click-to-call enables customers who are not satisfied with the email response they have received, to request a call back.
What is the business benefit?
If team members are responding to customers via multiple email responses, it can lead to issues around the quality and high handling times (even if your centre doesn’t measure average handling time but that is another post).
When responding to customers for a second time, the team member has to read three emails: the initial customer email, the initial customer services response and the second response from the customer. Also, for the team member trying to write another email different to the first response, it can take quite a long time (unless you have another level of templates). All this could be resolved in a 5 minute telephone call, instead of 10 to 15 minutes on one email and sometimes higher dissatisfaction for the customer.
Who is using Click-to-Call as part of email management?
There are two organisations which I know that have used this solution successfully: Amazon (using ATG) and easyJet (using Encoded).
What is the customer journey?
I will show you the customer journey for Amazon. (easyJet was similar to this.) In the email response, the customer is presented with two outcomes (click image to enlarge) to the statement: “Did you this email answer your question? “Yes or No”. Yes is taking the customers to a short survey and No is taking them to the update email landing page.
If you are using a contact management system, like RightNow, Inquira, Salesforce or ZenDesk customers can log into an account area and update their support ticket. This is where you enable customers to either update their ticket via email or request a call back.
The click-to-call pop-up will appear, customers can enter their contact details and when they would like to be called. You are able to add other fields, such as account number or support ticket number and this will be passed to the contact centre team member via text to speech when the call is connected.
What happens next?
A call would be presented to the call centre in the usual way by providing the solution provider with a delivery number. As mentioned above, the team member would hear that it is a click-to-call call, followed by whatever information you have captured from via the pop-up and then the team member is able to check the customer history.
Once the history has been check and the team member is fully aware of the issue, they will then have the option to accept the call back. The click-to-call platform then calls back the customer; customer and call centre team member are then connected. Calls are not usually ‘forced’ to the call centre team member. This enables them to be fully up to date with the customers history.
What are the possible issues?
- If you allow customers to receive call backs on their mobile telephone then this is where the ROI model can breakdown due to the pass on costs of calling mobile phones. If you are wishing to control costs on this channel, you are usually able to block mobile phones and you are able to tell the customer upfront of this policy. I know some customer experience people will be jumping up and down.
- Customers can soon realise that they are able to log in and keep opening the same ticket to get a call back instead of contacting the call centre in the usual way. Most contact management systems allow the permanent closing of tickets, after set time parameters.
- If a support ticket has been escalated from the front line team to a 2nd or 3rd tier level, those involved must ensure that the history has been updated regularly to enable the front line team members to update the customer properly. Organisations should allow those dealing with customer support to be accessible to customers (what a strange thought). If you fail to enable customers to get an update on their issue, it will lead to further customer dissatisfaction.
One final piece of advice
If you are having issues with email first contact resolution, review all of your email templates first and carry out an audit of your teams writing skills. Ensure that you extract any jargon, add empathy and also start to use the terminology your customers would use. By doing this, you are fixing the root cause of the problem and not covering things up with a band-aid.
Do you use Click-to-Call?
If you use click-to-call within your operations, is there any advice for other readers? Or are you using VoIP click-to-call to allow customers to contact you via their pc or mac? Post your comments below.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you Paul for this really good post. Finding the right balance between improving customers experience and reducing costs is a never-ending battle. As an ecommerce professional currently working for a large managed hosting company, I have a lot of experience using click to call (and live help in general). I’m a big believer of click to call, and I think more and more sites are going to adopt it. But if I had any advice for your readers, it’d be to seriously consider integrating click to call with your chat and email solution and periodically checking your average handle times to make sure you’re always using the most cost effective communication channel. We’ve been doing that at my company, and we’ve discovered that it makes more sense for us to proactively engage customers via chat to deflect low value inbound phone calls. We allow our agents to seamlessly escalate the conversation to a click to call. The chat transcript is passed on to the voice agent so that the voice agent continues serving the customer where the chat agent had left off. This helps ensure both my chat and voice agents stay productive, while also minimizing handle times for complicated interactions and improving first contact resolutions. And we’ve been getting excellent feedback from our customers.
Of course. We have a large segment of customers who still prefer the voice channel, and who, when given a choice between a voice and a chat channel, will always prefer click to call over click to chat. I have also read recent data suggesting that click to call can be cheaper than a normal phone call, (see Forrester Research’s blog post http://blogs.forrester.com/diane_clarkson/10-09-20-right_metric_measure_click_to_call)
So yes, click to call is a great way to improve customer experience and reduce costs but it’s worthwhile adopting an integrated live help approach rather than focusing on one single communication channel.
A number of my clients use ATG’s click to call – their “live context” technology allow us to reduce handle times by more than a minute.
VB
Thanks for the feedback. Being able to see the pages which customers have use viewed is an ideal way to improve the customer experience and drive conversion.
Peter
Thank you for the excellent comments to this post.
I totally agree that it is essential to monitor all contact channels, primarily to ensure you are providing the best channel for your customer but also to optimise the cost base within customer support. I believe that the preference of customers to use the telephone channel to contact an organisation will remain with us for many many years to come.
Your idea of using a blend of chat and click to call is fantastic and shows how these two excellent channels can be used in tandem to provide the best customer experience.