THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 4 • 2014
Canada versus offshore: what do companies have to do to compete? Also in this issue:
❯❯ Are we ready for a changing landscape?
Gary Tannyan
❯❯ Future of the contact centre: 7 key trends driving massive transformation
Technology
Future of the contact center 7 key trends driving a massive transformation
By Liz Osborn
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here is no doubt that we’re in the midst of a sea change when it comes to consumer behavior. New technologies have completely transformed consumer expectations and buying behavior, making it more difficult for brands to acquire new customers and earn their loyalty. Many organizations consider their contact center to be their first line of defense in the battle for consumer loyalty. In fact, the Deloitte 2013 survey of contact centers found that 62 percent of organizations view customer experience, provided through contact centers, as a competitive differentiator. Contact centers are now under pressure to adapt to the rapidly changing technology landscape and consumer expectations. There are seven key trends that will impact contact centers as they evolve to meet these shifting expectations. 2 | contact management
1. Cloud contact center technology will make companies more competitive Contact centers using cloud technology will enjoy a significant competitive advantage, such as the ability to add agents and sales reps immediately, and scale back when needed. The cloud also makes it easier to address seasonal spikes; in the past, contact centers had to plan far in advance for capacity requirements for peak times. Then they were faced with having to architect, buy, build, integrate, manage and upgrade a highly complex set of on-premise contact center hardware and
software technologies. Now, contact centers can work with cloud software vendors that bundle up all of the necessary capabilities and offer it as a service for one monthly fee per agent. This allows companies to be highly nimble, and extremely competitive, while still offering an excellent customer experience.
2. Omni-Channel (aka Cross Channel) capabilities will be expected Recent Ovum studies found that 74 percent of consumers use three or more channels when engaging with companies. Yet how many of us have Issue 4 • 2014
Technology had to repeat information over and over to agents or IVR systems because the systems don’t support the ability to “remember” the conversation and transfer the information across customer touch points? In the future, customers will expect companies to have an institutional memory across every communication channel and touch point. This is known as omni-channel or cross channel capability. It requires intelligent technology to provide the context of the interaction, along with the customer profile, preferences and relevant history. And, it requires one system with the ability to track and support email, chat, mobile transactions, self-service, and live agent conversations.
3. Multi channel, intelligent self service will expand Most consumers prefer to do things themselves, if possible – whether it’s buying a product online or finding out the answer to a problem. It’s also a lot less expensive for companies to offer self- service capabilities. With the wide adoption of smart phones, there are more ways to provide self-service through mobile apps and visual IVR systems. The trend in contact center technology is to provide more and more intelligence, along with the interaction context, in order to provide the answer to the customer without involving a live agent. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85 percent of consumer’s transactions will occur without human interaction!
4. The number of live calls will decline, while complexity of phone interactions will increase Most consumers are now fairly comfortable buying everything from cars to furniture online. Live web chat is one of the fastest growing channels in the contact center. With the advent of social media, and the growing use of SMS in customer service situations, the number of non-voice channel interactions in contact centers has skyrocketed. This, combined with the growth in intelligent self-service will eventually lead to a decline in the volume of live phone calls to contact centers. Picking up the phone to talk to a live agent will be the last resort, which will lead to a leap in the complexity of the phone calls. Ultimately, agents who staff the phones will need to be highly skilled, able to deal with complex interactions and handle multiple channels.
5. The work-at-home agent trend will continue strong growth When companies move their contact centers to the cloud, one of the benefits is the ability for agents to work from
anywhere. All an agent needs to start taking or placing calls is a headset, an Internet connection and a computer. This is fueling the already strong growth in work-at-home agents. According to the National Association of Call Centers, 53 percent of US contact centers already have some portion of their agents working from home. As the job of an agent becomes more complex, moving to an at-home agent model is one way many companies are finding a more educated, stable workforce – wherever they live.
6. Regulatory compliance will be the new normal Although the specifics vary from country to country, two major regulatory areas are critical for the global contact center industry: credit card data and the regulations surrounding outbound consumer calling. We’ve all heard about the big breaches in retail data security in the news. This is driving rising demand for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance for any merchant who receives credit card information from customers. In the US, the regulations governing consumer dialing are known as Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and include the Do Not Call list and rules on who can be auto-dialed. Recent large fines and pending litigation are driving the need for technology tools for contact centers to ensure that they are in compliance with the regulatory standards.
7. Social engagement will be used to drive leads in addition to servicing customers Today, 33 percent of contact centers are servicing customers through social media channels, according to
Highest user adoption
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the Deloitte Contact Center Survey, 2013. As social networks become more and more a part of daily life, that percentage will continue to rise. Many leading edge, early adopter companies are finding that the same intelligent social engagement software tools that they are using to listen, understand and resolve customer issues can be utilized to find prospects who are at a critical “moment of truth” in researching products and companies. These enterprises are beginning to mine the huge amount of valuable clues that can be found on social sites and use them to drive highly qualified leads. The contact center is just at the beginning of a major transformation, driven by the ever-changing technology landscape and the rising demands of customers. The next generation contact center will look very different from the “boiler rooms” with banks of cubicles, phones and terminals that many of us envision when we hear the term contact center. These are just seven of the key contact center trends that we see shaping the future of contact centers around the world. What trends are you seeing in your business that will affect the contact center? Liz Osborn is the Vice President of Product and Solutions Marketing for Five9. With more than 20 years in the technology industry, Liz is an expert in enterprise software and networking. Liz has deep knowledge of the contact center market including expertise in contact center platforms, voice selfservice, performance management, analytics and reporting, customer service, telemarketing, IP/SIP and the cloud.
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Issue 4 • 2014
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contact management | 3
Cover story
Canada versus offshore: what do companies have to do to compete?
Part one of a series on challenges facing the Canadian contact centre industry
Don Moffatt, Chief Executive Officer
Michael has enjoyed a successful 20 year sales career by leveraging the valuable experience gained in diverse client facing roles of increasing responsibility with leading Telecom, Human Resources, Media, Technology, and BPO Organizations. Michael continues to earn the trust and respect of his clients by working tirelessly to understand both organizational and industry sector challenges and mapping those challenges to unique and sustainable customer management solutions that address real client and consumer business challenges.
By Amy Bostock
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uring uring a recent visit to the new headquarters of Millennium1 Solutions in Toronto, I had the opportunity to sit down with CEO Don Moffatt and VP of Sales Mike Morrison to talk about what they see as the biggest challenges facing Canada’s contact centre industry. Millennium1 Solutions is a leading Canadian Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) solutions provider with a solid track record of providing end-to-end B2B2C solutions for many of the largest North American brands in the financial services, government, retail, insurance, and manufacturing sectors. In this first instalment of Contact Management’s series we’ll look at the practice of offshoring and what Canadian-based call centres need to do to remain competitive. 4 | contact management
Don is a highly sought-after leader for his knowledge, his reputation for disciplined execution and his aptitude for predicting trends in technology, personnel motivation, processes for improving customer experience, reducing costs and generating revenue. He has more than 25 years experience leading Large Canadian and US Operations at the Senior Executive level in both the Telecom and Financial Services verticals.
In the last 10 years Canadian companies have sent call centre jobs overseas by the thousands. But a combination of increased wages and turnover rates overseas, along with low customer satisfaction ratings from onshore callers have convinced many companies like BCE Inc., American Express Canada Inc. and Sears Canada Inc. to reconsider their offshore plans and bring back some or all of their customer call centre work.
The case for the repatriation of contact centre business “I think there are a number of
variables at play that are positive for a slowdown of business going offshore, and for the repatriation of business that’s already offshore,” says Don Moffatt, CEO of Millennium1 Solutions. “There has been a great deal of focus and attention in the media around privacy breaches. You’ve seen it with a number of well-known brands and so people are really nervous about that. And, whenever you allow access to your data offshore, which you’re doing when you’re servicing a customer offshore, you increase your risk. The second issue in Canada, he Issue 4 • 2014
Gary Tannyan
Michael Morrison, Vice President, Sales
Cover story says, has been press around jobs lost in Canada because they were outsourced. “You may recall, in that scenario, we had Canadian people training offshore people, who ended up replacing the people that trained them. The same thing was observed in the United States. It happened sooner there, where a mass exodus of jobs, and the economic ramifications of that, influenced the U.S. Government to say ‘wait a minute’. So the heightened awareness of this migration of work outside, and not supporting the labour pools that are here in Canada is another factor. “I think the third thing is what’s happening on the FX front, with the dollar now below 90 cents. That’s an encouraging trend.” But the most important issue, says Moffatt, revolves around where the customer is going to get a brand experience best aligned to their corporate brand expectations. “If you believe it’s a moment of truth in delivering on your brand promise to your customer, then great cultural sensitivity is required. Once frontline offshore service providers have been trained, are they really culturally attuned? Are they going to deliver the level of empathy and understanding? Are they going to be able to read between the lines in interpreting what the customer’s real issue or concern is? Are they going to be able to relate to the caller’s situation and understand what they are looking for? At the end of the day, people want to know that the person on the other end of the phone cares. Even before they know how much you know, they want to know how much you care. These sensitivities, and the experiential delivery, are more challenging to guarantee if you’ve sent it offshore.” According to Millennium1 Solutions’ VP of Sales Mike Morrison, the reality is that the business process outsourcing space in the Philippines is still growing 20 per cent a year according to IBPAP (IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines). “While we’re not seeing a massive trend towards bringing call centre operations back onto Canadian soil yet, I think there are lots of examples,” says Morrison. “There are pockets where particular companies have made the decision to pull business back. But, while some business is coming back, other business is going over. As an entity, the Philippines are still seeing some pretty significant growth. I think for the companies that are still trying to source on price, the Philippines will win every time.” Morrison feels that the companies that are finding success here are the ones that are figuring out how to deliver something that the Philippines can’t – resulting in a bit of a difference in terms of the mix of what calls, and which processes go offshore, versus what stays onshore. “Offshoring does have a value proposition for certain clients and certain types of calls, and we have some great partnerships that leverage that model. Low complexity work, where price is a strong driver (if not the only driver), is the kind of work where we’ve found the best success offshore,” he says. “Canada certainly has an advantage as a market in terms of understanding the customer, the brand, the vertical, and the geography. When you get into this value-add space, it’s very difficult for someone, on the other side of the globe, to provide the same insights and expertise that domestic companies can deliver.”
Revisiting customer perceptions With the recent iGate scenario still fresh in everyone’s minds, and the backlash it created around offshoring, Issue 4 • 2014
some companies are recognizing that they have to revisit the customer perceptions around moving work and jobs offshore. “That’s forcing companies to consider repatriating their business,” says Morrison. “I think that sometimes companies need to go through the offshoring exercise and experience the offshore model in order to understand that there is a difference. Often, when they outsource initially, they really believe that call centres are call centres, and as long as you can answer the phone and be polite and take care of my customer, it really doesn’t matter where. So, they go ahead and they deploy seats into a particular market, and then they start getting customer backlash and feedback saying ‘no, I’m not okay with this particular region handling my call’, or ‘I’m having trouble understanding the person on the other end of the phone’, or other factors.” So what do Canadian companies have to do to satisfy client needs and still stay competitive in terms of value for the dollar? If they just want seats, and they’re looking for the best price they can possibly get, there are probably 50 companies that can take care of them. “That’s when Canadian companies have to start talking about where they can add value beyond simply servicing your calls, because they’re not differentiated until they get to that conversation.” At Millennium1 Solutions that conversation includes talking about business insights and analytics, and how can they drive improvements or learning. “With some clients, before we’ve ever taken a single phone call, we’ve done that on the front end,” says Moffatt. “We’ve gone in and sat in a client’s internal operations, conducted time and motion observation - because how do you make a recommendation if you’ve never taken a call for that particular customer? Then we’ll come back to the customer and say ‘vendor B down the street might be a dollar an hour cheaper, but rather than focusing on the cost per unit, let’s focus on the unit’. Let’s figure out if there are ways to reduce the net number of units that you need to manage, a unit being a call or an email or a chat session, or whatever the case may be. Then, let’s also figure out how to maximize those units, in terms of are
there other things we could be doing with these calls to improve customer experience, reduce customer effort, or drive revenue in incremental steps. I find this kind of strategic objective is a value-add and helps us support our customers and drive the best experience from each unit.” “Ultimately, it’s a conversation shift. Our domestic customers are moving away from ‘I have this many calls, they come in at these times of the day, and I need these languages, what would it cost for you to do that for me?’ They are moving toward value-based delivery models. Price will still win in a lot of cases, especially in cases where there is no value differentiation. It’s just having a different dialogue with our clients around what our role is as a service provider.” Michael adds “I think that’s where domestic BPOs have a tremendous advantage over offshore operations, because people in the Philippines don’t read the Toronto Star or The Globe and Mail. “They don’t know the market, they may not even know the client’s industry, brand or cultural nuances. I’ve worked with clients in a lot of different countries around the world, and there are different behaviours. And, I’ve seen people go into different markets, with assumptions that are bad assumptions for that marketplace, based on trying to take the North American operating model to other countries, as they have expanded their business. “For example in Brazil, there was a social media site more popular than Facebook, several years ago. Brazilians used their own social site. So, if you were going into Brazil, and you thought Facebook was your strategy, it was probably a little bit off. It’s that kind of local knowledge that you get from somebody who’s in market. This example is a good one to underscore why having people in the country you’re operating in can help clients rethink their strategies. Just being in the country, knowing the client, the marketplace, and the brands cannot be overstated in terms of importance.” Coming in February, the next instalment of Contact Management’s series on challenges facing the Canadian contact centre industry, we’ll look at the Power of Outsourcing.
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Trends
Are we ready?
The Canadian Contact Centre landscape is changing – but is it for the better? By Eli Federman
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his is an important question, and one Canadian Contact Centre leaders are asking with increasing frequency. The landscape is definitely changing, but the real questions are to what extent, and are we ready for it? Three key themes tend to dominate this discussion: the increasing use of e-mail, chat and text to talk with consumers; transforming technology through cloud based solutions; and creating a multi-channel approach, inclusive of a social media and mobile user strategy. These are exciting times indeed. Let’s explore these themes in a bit more detail.
The importance of the written word It used to be that when consumers had a question or concern related to a product or service, they would call customer service, which meant a Contact Centre. Writing a letter was an option too, but Contact Centres did one thing really well – they answered the phone and provided immediate support. In today’s digital world, consumers have different preferences and expect new and enhanced options: they want to be able to write an e-mail, have a live chat or send a text. In all cases correspondence is written, and that is a very different skill from talking on the phone. Understanding the difference between strong speaking and writing is the first step towards gaining an edge in a fiercely competitive customer service landscape. Here are three considerations for how to ensure your e-mail, chat and text support is every bit as strong as what is provided over the phone: 1. Design a job profile that befits the skills required to write competently, keeping in mind the variation between corresponding on e-mail, chat or text. While e-mails more closely resembles writing a letter, chat and text requires an ability to be more concise and use shorthand. In all cases the framing of the response requires clarity, diplomacy and most importantly, resolution. 2. Develop a testing process to confirm the candidate’s ability to write. Too often, we take for granted that someone who interviews well (by voice) can also write well. This is not always the case and the results can be quite different! Even those with a college/ university education may not be able to write well in business format. 3. Develop measurements to ensure you deliver the kind of written customer experience you want. Set goals to create accountability and make sure they can be tracked and reported on. Ensure there are both quality and accuracy components. Also, try to tie those goals into the organization’s customer satisfaction program.
The move to cloud based technologies There was a time when a Contact Centre infrastructure 6 | contact management
was hardwired end to end. Various pieces of equipment along with numerous servers, switches and wires made up the technology solution for a Contact Centre. While there was also complimentary software (such as the use of Windows to manage Microsoft Office tools) little else was exclusively web based. Customer data was typically stored in some form of internal database, and even CRM solutions often required hardware to enable them. How things have changed! With the advent of the cloud (simply said: web based technology solutions), organizations can be wire-free and eliminate the need for physical hardware altogether. But while the cloud redefines technical simplicity, there are still those who prefer the classic hardware route. Purists will argue that hardware is less likely to fail, is more stable, and easier to build redundancy for. The cloud also makes you entirely dependent on the stability and range of your broadband connection. Despite this, we are of the opinion that cloud is the way to go. There are far too many advantages when compared with traditional infrastructure including: • Cost – it is substantially cheaper to invest in cloud technology • Ease of set up – it takes far less time to set up a cloud based infrastructure • Scale – in the cloud, expanding is limitless as long as you have the right broadband connection • Simplicity – web based technologies are founded on a point and click premise • Access – with a computer and web connection an employee can work from anywhere It is a pretty easy argument (at least from this corner!) to go the route of the cloud.
Become a multi-channel Contact Centre Social media has probably been the hottest topic over the last five years. Almost every modern organization is at some stage of development of a social media strategy, and lately
this overlaps with how to service consumers on their Smart phones. While this isn’t unique to Canadian Contact Centres, the impact has been substantial and has forced companies to create a more diverse and flexible customer experience. Customers want to be serviced on their terms and that has forced organizations to build a multi or Omni channel approach. But to really stand out, Contact Centres have to properly execute this capability. This requires a substantial investment in people, process and technology; but those who do it well gain a competitive advantage, which increases customer spend and loyalty. What can Contact Centres do to embrace this change and turn it into an advantage? • Define a strategic plan – articulate what a multichannel experience should feel like • Diversify your workforce – consider the different skills required for the various channels • Know your customer – understand how their behaviours fit into this approach • Create measurements – decide what success looks like for employee in each channel • Establish strong internal partnerships – work in lock step with HR, Marketing & Communications Contact Centres in Canada are definitely changing for the better, with increased capabilities, exciting new technologies and multi-channel operations capable of delivering world class customer experiences. The essentials of a great Contact Centre remain the same - hire terrific people, build simple and easy to use processes and leverage great technologies – but it’s how they are evolving that has become so fascinating to watch. Stay tuned because continued change is imminent, you can count on it! Eli Federman is Founder and Lead consultant of Customer Service Simplified. Learn more at www. simplifyingservice.com and to reach Eli call 647-202-7385 or e-mail eli@simplifyingservice.com
Issue 4 • 2014