Direct Marketing Magazine March 2018

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Harnessing mobile analytics

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How CX innovation fuels Moneris’s growth

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Contact Management

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vol. 31 • No. 3 • march 2018

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

Leveraging mobile marketing ❱ 6Customers are now

continually connected to their peers—and companies—through their mobile devices

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Vol. 31 | No. 3 | March 2018 EDITOR Brendan Read - brendan@dmn.ca PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca

Harness the power of mobile analytics Mobile data helps address your key business challenges

MOBILE DIRECT MARKETING

Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca Robert Fisher - robert@dmn.ca

Phone: 905.201.6600 Fax: 905.201.6601 Toll-free: 800.668.1838 home@dmn.ca www.dmn.ca EDITORIAL CONTACT: Direct Marketing is published monthly by Lloydmedia Inc. plus the annual DM Industry Guide.

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Scalability, omni-channel support and personalization drive adoption

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How to leverage mobile marketing trends Customers are mobile and digital.

So should marketing

MARKETING AUTOMATION ❯❯8

Leading marketing automation (MA) developments Affordability, improved experience and features enable companies to utilize MA

FEATURE How CX innovation fuels Moneris’s growth

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Industry news EXCELLENT EXECUTION

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Dear creditors, it’s time to embrace the digital age Accurate payment information and respectful customer service key

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The evolution and versatility of callback technology Customers and contact centres win with today’s callback applications

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Twitter: @DMNewsCanada

How to become customer centric?

Think like a contact centre!

March 2018

The digital revolution in customer care.

Are you ready?

Sunny forecast for cloud-based contact centres

LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:

Markham ON L3P 1Y2

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Irek Klimczak Mike Aoki Geoff Linton, Ryan Antooa Jaime Bailey Seema Rao Matthew Clare Paul Tyndall Kevin Deveau Olivier Jouve

302-137 Main Street North

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The crooks are innovating, so must CX organizations Why biometrics needs to be an omni-channel initiative

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How speech analytics can improve your contact centre Advanced solutions bolster marketing and sales, coaching and compliance DMN.ca ❰

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Customer Centricity

Harness the power of mobile analytics Mobile data helps address your key business challenges

By Paul Tyndall

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Paul Tyndall is Vice President, Strategic Projects at Environics Analytics.

hat would you do if you knew where your customers come from, where they go after they leave your store, or when your best customers tend to visit your location? You might say your loyalty program already tells you some of this information, but remember that program is only effective if your customers make a purchase.

It is one thing to know what people are buying, it’s another to know what types of customers visit your store and leave empty handed or, worse, beeline for a competitor. While loyalty programs can’t answer these questions, mobility data can.

Whether you already have extensive shopper data, or limited information on who shops with you, mobile data can help quickly and cost-effectively address your key business challenges. Today, mobile enabled devices such as smartphones and car navigation systems are ubiquitous. Given this high level of penetration, having access to data from such representative samples presents many exciting new opportunities.

Mobile data analysis leverages a diverse dataset to provide consumer insights that would otherwise be cost prohibitive, if not impossible.

For starters, by tapping into actual visitor data you will get a more complete view of who your customers are. This information will not only help you develop new trade areas and refine existing ones, it will allow you to target your marketing efforts to the most relevant consumers with greater precision.

These insights from mobile data will help you decide where you may need to increase your marketing efforts by targeting trade areas that overlap with your competition. By identifying the differences in the profiles of loyal shoppers, compared to competitor-only or shared shoppers, you will be able to develop more relevant and compelling offers and messages.

This type of analysis will help you target your marketing offers to those shoppers who you are at the most risk of losing to your competitors versus those consumers who remain loyal to your organization.

It can also inform decisions around the best way to ❱ DMN.ca

allocate your marketing budget, by saving your most expensive promotional offers for those that might not come back, rather than using them to woo consumers who only temporarily or never left you.

How does it work?

Mobile data analysis leverages a diverse dataset to provide consumer insights that would otherwise be cost prohibitive, if not impossible. Consider the following scenario. Let’s say that you are interested in how you compare to a competitor located down the street. Their parking lot always looks fairly busy, but then so does yours. Your sales have been steady over the last six months, but you’re curious about whether their recent product launch has been stealing visitors from you, or if they are attracting new customers altogether.

Without mobile data, how do you collect this information? On-site visitor intercept surveys, license plate surveys and online panels are all options, but they’re time consuming, costly and reflect shopper behaviour at a single point in time.

If the samples were large enough, you could attempt to create trade areas for both your own location and your competitor using those postal codes you collected to see if you are drawing from the same areas. But more often than not, the sample sizes from such surveys are not large enough to make any definitive conclusions, let alone differentiate visits by time or day. And depending on the location of your competitor, some of these approaches may not even be possible.

While competitive shopper tracking is one of the most obvious uses for mobile data, it has several other public and private sector applications. By linking mobile data back to small area datasets such as Environics Analytics’ own PRIZM segments, you can develop meaningful profiles of loyal versus competitive shoppers. With these enhanced insights, organizations can more effectively target their marketing initiatives, reaching out to prospects who resemble their best customers.

This data will also enable you to identify the types of consumers who are walking or driving past your digital billboards at different times of day to inform scheduling, placement and messaging. Mobile data can be instrumental in site selection as well, by identifying areas of higher potential value based on visitor patterns.

Putting mobile data to work While traditional survey methods are cumbersome and inconclusive, it’s relatively easy to get more Continued on page 14 March 2018

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Mobile Direct Marketing

How best to leverage mobile marketing trends Customers are mobile and digital.

So should marketing. Here’s how

By Geoff Linton and Ryan Antooa

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ccording to Forrester Research, digital marketing spending in the U.S. will surpass $118 billion in 2018. Four of the top vehicles: paid search, display, on-line and email are growing between 8% 18% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). It is also interesting to note the impressions served globally on mobile devices grew over 5.5x faster than on desktops, according to the DoubleClick by Google’s State of Programmatic Direct report. The following article explores what is driving this growth and the three trends that marketers should understand. ❱ DMN.ca

Where is the consumer attention?

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? It’s likely you reach for your companion. And by that we mean your mobile phone.

Nearly nine in 10 respondents to an Ipsos MORI study on behalf of Deloitte, reported by eMarketer1, said they check their phone within an hour of waking up in the morning. Almost as many do so right before they go to sleep.

Overall, we are increasingly connected and dependent on our devices, and this dependency is only set to increase. According to the study, which polled 2,000 U.S. Internet users ages 18 to 75, most people check their device approximately 47 times per day.

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Mobile Direct Marketing And, according to eMarketer, this translates to 175 minutes of time per day spent on a mobile device.

Whether it’s scrolling your Twitter news feed for trending events, checking your email or hitting snooze on your alarm, it’s no secret that wherever we go throughout the day, our mobile devices go with us.

Whether it’s scrolling your Twitter news feed for trending events, checking your email or hitting snooze on your alarm, it’s no secret that wherever we go throughout the day, our mobile devices go with us.

Go mobile or go home There are a few reasons for our mobile-dependency: mobile represents instant and unfettered access to all the information we need on a day-to-day basis. It also gives us 24/7 connection to our peers’ activities for a better sense of connectedness.

News and media aside, there has been a massive shift in recent years towards mobile usage for brand engagement and content consumption. This is especially true among Millennials, who have influential buying power within the current marketing ecosystem.

The reason mobile usage and engagement is growing so quickly is simple: mobile is an instant, on-the-go gateway to relevant content for end-user purchasing decisions, such as reviews and price comparisons. The information that end users require to make to their decisions is more accessible and available faster.

When it comes to maximizing your business success in the longterm, it’s clear that leveraging the mobile behaviour is the key.

Where mobile behaviour is headed In a world of continuous partial attention, Inbox Marketer has seen that people now generally read through scanning. They also consume that content faster on their mobile devices than on laptops. Finally, attention spans are getting shorter and only the most essential information is retained by the end-users.

These behaviours are becoming the norm as almost everyone is mobile-enabled. Smartphone penetration rates are high across most age groups.

March 2018

lighting systems, remote controls and automobiles.

To tap this trend productively optimize and make digital content “machine friendly”. That will make your brand content to be easily found by Siri, Cortana or Alexa when end-users need it.

Marketers need to be present on all devices and channels where end users engage.

Moreover, consumers use more than just one device. A study performed by Adobe reveals that end-users are using three-plus devices daily, while marketers typically only have a view of one device. Inbox Marketer client data confirms that, although people have a preferred device to read their emails on, up to 20% of email subscribers read email content across multiple devices.

In order to successfully leverage end-user engagement and achieve better business results, marketers need to be present on all devices and channels where end users engage. It is no longer a matter of whether mobile is important or not within the marketing ecosystem, but a question of how your marketing is keeping up with the following trends.

Trend 1: Micro moments, macro impact Google defines micro-moments as the intent-rich moments where users reach to devices, especially mobile, for content and information related to purchasing decisions: know, go, do or buy.

To leverage these micromoments within your marketing efforts, think about optimizing the speed of your mobile site, adding sitelink and callout extensions to your listings for easier enduser access and updating your

location information to drive in-store traffic. Also consider implementing mobile-friendly abandoned cart automations to recapture otherwise lost purchase opportunities.

Studies have shown that you can increase unaided brand awareness by 46% simply by showing up in mobile search ad results2. When considering email, relevance and timeliness is a key driver of engagement, click-through and conversion rates.

Essentially, the best way to leverage micro-moments for mobile is to implement dynamic, responsive experiences that are optimized for the devices. Then channel where your end-users are viewing your content.

Trend 2: Artificial intelligence (AI) and digital assistants Hey, Alexa: What are the current mobile trends in AI and how can I leverage them?

The argument is not whether or not AI and digital assistants will be major players within the market, but how you can leverage them to improve your end-user engagement through mobile to provide a better user experience.

For example, Amazon is pushing hard to shore up its leadership role in AI, including licensing Alexa for integration into a host of new devices like thermostats, home

Trend 3: Take more control Relying on algorithms to match target audiences with content can be risky. Today’s leading marketers want to ensure the right message gets directly to the right person at the right time.

Some advertisers are making a transition from “open exchanges” to “programmatic direct”. They are doing so partly in response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, but also to drive better targeting.

From an addressable message perspective, make your email marketing content easy to read and a more simple user experience.

Don’t overload content in email.

Remember: clarity trumps persuasion.

Millennials want to make their buying decisions fluid among devices, often beginning their search on a desktop and continuing down the funnel on mobile. Being direct with your email subject lines, call to actions and copy are all-important steps for better mobile-success.

Canadian leaders in your industry are already leveraging these trends and testing their results. Inbox Marketer provides information on how to test, refine, and master mobile-marketing efforts. The Canadian Marketing Association has seminars on this subject. Visit the CMA online to learn more.

Geoff Linton is the owner, CEO and a founder of Inbox Marketer Corporation and a data driven marketing expert with nearly 30 years of applied experience in both client and agency roles. He is a thought leader in digital marketing strategy. Geoff holds both a P.Eng and MBA from Queen’s University in Canada.

Ryan Antooa is the Content Marketing Manager at Inbox Marketer. He happens to be a Millennial, but refuses to check his phone in the morning.

1 Kats, Rimma “Obsessed Much? Mobile Addiction Is Real” eMarketer, November 16, 2017 2 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, Search for Brands Industry Research Meta-analysis, 2013–2015

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Marketing Automation

Direct mail Direct mail

Leading marketing automation developments Direct mail

Direct mail Pre-Roll

Pre-Roll

Pre-Roll

Pre-Roll

Affordability, improved experience and features enable companies to utilize MA

display display

By Irek Klimczak

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display

ccording to the Email Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 report, sponsored by GetResponse, budget, data quality and knowledge (e.g. on how to develop a strategy, use the available tools or create relevant content) were the top challenges in marketing automation (MA). These challenges have strongly influenced the leading trends MA in 2018.

GetResponse surveyed more than 2,500 marketers from 126 countries across 19 industries on the effectiveness of email marketing and MA. Let’s dig in and see the benefits they bring for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

display email email email email

GetResponse marketing automation workflow template library. Users can build a workflow from scratch choose one of the ready-made templates.

Affordability, and availability More companies within the marketing technology landscape offer affordable MA solutions. As a result, what used to be reserved only for businesses with the biggest marketing budgets is now available for those of all sizes. Consequently we have seen growing adoption of MA amongst SMBs. Whether for email marketing, social listening or content publishing software companies of all sizes can now find a plan for their business needs.

Most software as a service MA applications are easily scalable, so that businesses can start small and upgrade as they grow.

Improved user experience (product development + content) Over one-third of participants to the report said that one of â?ą DMN.ca

GetResponse Digital Marketing Certification Program allows users to become professional online marketers.

March 2018

DIRECT MAIL DIRECT MAIL DIRECT MAIL DIRECT MAIL PRE-ROLL PRE-ROLL PRE-ROLL PRE-ROLL DISPLAY DISPLAY DISPLAY DISPLAY EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL

WHAT GETS PEOPLE TO BUY WHAT THEY BUY? Ct Connectivity

Ph Da Physicality

Data

To answer this question, Canada Post has completed extensive neuroscientific research. The results suggest an integrated marketing campaign that includes direct mail is more effective in driving consumer action. In fact, campaigns including direct mail can drive greater consumer attention, more emotional intensity, and higher brand recall than single-media digital campaigns. Read the research that confirms, what we call, the connectivity effect.

Download our whitepaper Connecting for Action at canadapost.ca/getconnected

TM

Trademarks of Canada Post Corporation.

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Marketing Automation the biggest challenges holding back MA adoption is the lack of knowledge on how to set up different types of automation (e.g. rules, lead scoring). We are seeing that issue being addressed in 2018.

There is now tight cooperation between product development, design and content to provide best possible user experience. MA vendors not only provide intuitive

send the right messages to the right people at the right time. But also we want to track and prove the return on investment (ROI) from MA. That’s why we track customer behaviour, including engagement, website activity and purchase history. We want to get information that help us serve customers’ needs and achieve business objectives.

communication with contacts in their lists.

CRM integration: Customer relationship management (CRM) software lets users manage their companies’ interactions with their current and potential customers.

It allows them to create pipelines, which are visual representations of sales processes, indeed any type of interaction with their customers

Basic workflow applying scoring points when email is opened.

and easy to use products, but they also make sure that users get access to various types of educational content that helps them use it to the fullest.

Together with marketing automation tools users now have access a wide range of resources.

These include onboarding campaigns, educational courses with certification programs, ebooks, guides, infographics and blog posts written by experts sharing practical tips.

Above all, relevance Relevance remains the key trend in marketing automation. We want to

Top features that provide valuable insights: Scoring: helps users track and rate customer actions. They can decide which user behaviour to award with extra points and which to ignore, such as message opened, link clicked, visited URL and purchase made. They can use scoring points to measure engagement and the value of the contact database.

Tagging: allows labelling anyone in the contact database.

Users can assign any number of tags (e.g. engaged, loyal, kids, runner, VIP) and use them to build personalized and relevant

that involves a series of steps.

CRM enables businesses to track sales ready leads and conversion. It is extremely helpful when it comes to measuring MA ROI. Targeted communication features Customer journey workflows: a workflow is a compilation of the different conditions, actions and filters users put together to communicate with the customers.

It’s a clear visual representation of communication patterns.

A workflow may be as simple as sending a particular message to someone after they open

a message, or as complex as an extensive online course or promotion. Users can create as many workflows as they wish and use them along their customer journey, from initial consideration through evaluation, purchase and loyalty.

Businesses can test individual elements of a workflow or the entire communication patterns for conversion. This way they can constantly optimize their online marketing efforts and improve online marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

Easy contact list segmentation: users can create MA workflows that automatically divide their mailing lists according to interests, age, sex, purchasing behavior and location. Properly segmented contact list is the key to relevant communication and effective online marketing.

The future of marketing automation In the article I briefly described the three dominating trends in MA this year: availability, great user experience and focus on relevance.

I also outlined the key insightgenerating features available in MA solutions.

We’ll see what the future brings, but I’m sure that we can expect further breakthroughs in the areas of cross-platform communication in order to provide unique customer experience.

Marketers will choose the right tools according to their business needs and grow their business on a custom martech ecosystem.

I wonder what’s your experience with marketing automation. If you haven’t tried it yet, I hope you are now inspired to do so.

Irek Klimczak is content marketing specialist with GetResponse. He is passionate about creating valuable and engaging content for all customers. He always eager to advise on online marketing strategies that bring results.

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To send press announcements, please direct them to Brendan Read, Editor, at brendan@dmn.ca

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dmn.ca

March 2018

April 19, 2018 • Vendors • Seminars • Sources • Reports

FREE Seminars Rethinking Physical Marketing

AN IN DUST RY M One-Hour Sessions include…

UST SEE!

Over the past decade, we’ve seen digital prompt a new role for the physical store as a place of inspiration and experience activation – a role so compelling that digital pure-plays are taking note and rethinking the role of physical in their own business models. But what of the physical communication? Do catalogues, direct mail-outs and other forms of print advertising still have a role to play in today’s hyper-digitized path to purchase? To answer these questions, we look to consumer neuroscience to understand how the brain responds to physical and digital forms of advertising. Case studies will provide insight into the following: • The brain’s response to direct mail and digital advertising media • Whether the brain’s response differs within and between different forms of media • Top 5 best practices to convert with physical communications.

Speaker: Diana Lucaci, Founder, CEO, True Impact.

Email Marketing Insights

Sheraton Parkway Toronto North 9005 Leslie St, Richmond Hill ON HWY 7 404

LESLIE ST

Exhibits: 9:;00 am to 4:30 pm Seminars: 9:30 am to 4:00 pm

407 401

Check our website www.dmn.ca for the full agenda and times

Learn the keys to great email marketing, the new rules (CASL), how to grow your email list (hint: more is not always better) as well as some tips and tricks for engaging email programs. Traditional marketing has always been a rather one-sided communication: we talk while the customer listens. Digital marketing (email represents one form of digital marketing) offers a opportunity to enter a true dialogue with your customers. If you are willing to take the time to listen. Email is not a mass marketing tool and those businesses who can shift their mindset can take advantage of this cost effective medium and tap into it’s full power to drive new business.

Speaker: Derek Lackey, President of the Direct Marketing Association of Canada.

Mail Automation Processing: Using technology to drive speed to market, cost efficiencies and maximize response In today’s fast paced world we expect everything to happen “now”. While traditional media is viewed by the majority of consumers to be more trustworthy than digital media, it falls short in its ability to be agile. By using technology to drive sophisticated and personalized communication, clients have the ability to create a relevant, meaningful and trustworthy follow-up that can be received within 48 hours of customer inquiries or sales activity. We will walk you through our six step process of automating your communication to customers and prospects alike that can dramatically shorten timelines, create cost efficiencies and ultimately help create a better experience for your customers and prospects. Using real-world examples we’ll provide insight into some of the business challenges others have faced and explore when it can be a suitable addition to your marketing program.

Speaker: John Leonard, VP Sales & Marketing, Cover-All

Free exhibit area

Companies who’ll be on hand to discuss your projects include…

Warren’s Waterless Printing - Environmentally sensitive printer. Environmental printing is more than recycled paper.

No water is used in our print process and we have no water waste.

Relevant Data Solutions - Data, Document & Delivery experts! RDS is a team of industry veteran programmers who provide data processing services to lettershops, and direct to customers across Canada. Services include database management/cleansing/postal sorting, variable document composition, document management, automated workflows and custom programming.

Digital Edge Print & Media - Full service printer. Providing offset and digital printing, custom packaging and promotional products.

Imageworks Print & Prepress - Full service litho and digital printing house with an in-house bindery. We specialize in quick turnaround trade work.

Allegra Marketing Print & Mail - Allegra is a full-service printing and mailing house. Our services range from traditional to 3D mailers.

Presented by:

Insource Corp - Technology company providing leading-edge equipment, software and services to companies that are producers of print and mail communications.

Cover-All - Cover-All has been providing data and mail services for more than 50 years. Specializing in on-demand variable colour.

Neopost Canada - Through our solutions and services we guide and support organizations in how they send and receive mail and parcels.

Attend and Pick up FREE Directories and Guides

MAXIMUM

MARKETING

The Go-To Manual For Marketers

by Ron Marshak

Published by Lloydmedia Inc

Go Direct Supply Chain Solutions - Integrated eCommerce solutions, real world product fulfillment and distribution, customer support, and management analytics that enable you to take your business online, and to the next level. Let us show you how. Schedule a demonstration. We provide a fully outsourced “web-to-door” sales solutions for your company.

Torpedo Marketing - Integrated eCommerce solutions, real world product fulfillment and distribution, customer support, and management analytics that enable you to take your business online, and to the next level. Let us show you how. Schedule a demonstration. We provide a fully outsourced “web-to-door” sales solutions for your company.

Data Direct Group - Communicating through mail? Data Direct is one of Canada’s largest Direct Mail Supplier to Canada Post, our final delivery channel partner. E-Commerce fulfillment is aligned with same data driven reliance.

Data Analysis. Analytics identifies the who, why, when & where your customers & members belong in your value chain. Survey & Evaluation services are offered in a variety of formats to support your Data Driven Metrics.

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Feature

How CX innovation fuels Moneris’s growth

By Mike Aoki

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hat does it take to stay ahead of the competition for one of Canada’s leading payment processors?

“Make Customer Experience (CX) a priority,” says Marc Hollenberg, Vice President, Customer Experience, Moneris Solutions.

Moreover, all Moneris employees have a stake in ensuring customers receive the best and the most innovative service.

“Every employee has CX as part of their performance scorecard,” Hollenberg points out. “That reflects Moneris’ corporate values.”

Starts with the customers How do you decide where to innovate? Start with your customers, the Moneris executive recommends. Listen to voice of the customer (VOC), namely providing agents with the tools to forward customers’ comments and suggestions.

“Ask customers how they want to interact with you,” says Hollenberg.

“Then leverage customer feedback to constantly innovate with new products and services.”

For example, customers wanted to interact with Moneris through new channels such as live chat and social media. Moneris then added those channels to make it easy for customers to contact the company.

He notes Moneris is focused upon offering next generation payment processing and other new services to help their customers.

“We don’t make investments based on what we think customers want,” states Hollenberg. “We do it based on what our customers tell us they want.”

Listening to the employees Besides listening to customers, listen to your customer facing employees. For example, contact centre agents wanted a fast and easy to read CRM system to help them resolve customers’ issues. ❱ DMN.ca

Sifting through multiple legacy applications to piece together customer overviews was one of their most frustrating activities, reports Hollenberg. As a result, agents focused more on their computer screens than on their customers.

Pulling key customer information from several different systems into one comprehensive customer account screen was the goal of a new customer relationship management (CRM) system deployed by Moneris in midSeptember 2017. How the company launched it is a great example of customer experience innovation.

Moneris began by asking front line team members: “What do you do? How can we make that easier?”

They then identified more than 800 unique requirements that helped drive the system’s design.

Ultimately, approximately 400 of those items were available at launch, says Hollenberg. More importantly, management provided feedback to their frontline teams about why the other 400 items did not go through and when it might be available in the future.

Keeping team members in the loop creates employee engagement, he points out. That was enhanced by engaging staff throughout the build and deployment process.

They provided feedback on the tools they would ultimately use during customer interactions. As a result of that innovative rollout, employees became ambassadors for the new CRM system.

Focus on training and learning Training is another key area of innovation at Moneris. Mary Kalkanis, Director, Talent and Leadership Development, recounts how three years ago most training was classroom based. Now, Moneris uses innovative blendedlearning, micro-learning and social-learning to drive employee performance.

“Keep the modern learner in mind”, says Kalkanis. “Millennials

want learning to be self-directed.”

That means learning at their own pace through a blend of eLearning and instructor led sessions.

It means shorter and more innovative techniques such as infographics, video-based learning and mobile apps. Training then comes in easily digestible bite sized pieces. These innovations equip agents to provide better customer service, Kalkanis points out.

A second innovation is “drip training.” Rather than train new agents on every type of call, new hire training focuses on the most common customer issues. As a result, new hires ramp up faster.

Once they have experience, agents receive periodic training to handle less common interactions.

This training includes “micro learning” where agents receive push notifications in their inboxes linking to five-to ten-minutelong eLearning sessions. This innovative approach allows agents to learn at their own pace, at their own desks. It also reduces the need for workforce management (WFM) to schedule longer classroom training sessions.

Social learning is a third innovation at Moneris. They have an internal site where all employees learn how to develop their careers.

This site contains curated content including blogs, TED Talks and the opportunity to have conversations about career development. This creates more engaged employees: who contribute to a better customer experience.

Kalkanis’ team also uses Agile training development methodology. Adopted from the software development realm, it involves two-week design sprints, with daily stand-ups and bi-weekly checks. This system enhances accountability, boosts productivity and creates more innovative solutions. Leveraging the latest industry trends keeps Moneris’ training state of the art, while driving return on investment.

“The focus is always on the

customer,” says Kalkanis. “The better we equip our employees to help customers, the more satisfied customers will be with us.”

Results and benefits This constant cycle of customer experience innovation enables Moneris to stay ahead of its competitors in the fast-moving FinTech sector. According to Hollenberg, innovation has driven increased Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, better issue resolution rates and reduce callback rates. That translates to increased customer loyalty.

“Don’t be shy about communicating how customer experience results lead to increased revenue,” advises Hollenberg. “Team members need to understand how their actions —and innovations—contribute to bottom line corporate results and their own personal employee performance ratings.”

This relentless focus on innovation yields two other benefits. It creates an industrywide reputation for CX excellence.

As a result, Moneris won the 2016 GTACC (Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association) Achievement Award for “Client Centricity.” Customers want to deal with award winning companies, Hollenberg points out.

Another benefit is the ability to attract top talent. The best people want to work for a company that is innovative.

“Employees relish the challenge of inventing new ways to help customers,” says Hollenberg. “They love the freedom to help customers and go the extra mile to make them happy.”

Mike Aoki is the President of Reflective

Keynotes Inc. (www.reflectivekeynotes.com), a Canadian training company that helps contact centres improve their sales and customer experience results. A contact centre expert, Mike serves on the Advisory Council of GTACC (the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association www.gtacc.ca) March 2018

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industry news

Provenir’s Python integration helps marketers find creditworthy customers The best customers are almost always those with low credit risks. Canadian direct marketers could improve the targeting, response rates (and profits) on that score through Provenir’s platform new pre-built connectivity with the Python programming language. The integration will ultimately help create more sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI)-based statistical models at higher speeds, resulting in faster and more reliable credit risk decisions.

Python is a powerful, interpretive language based on open source software, with access to an ever-widening range of algorithms and data libraries. Its speed, flexibility, stability and ease of integration with almost any information source have made it today’s go-to tool for data scientists. As it works so well in AI applications, Python enables marketers to build self-sufficient models that process historical data, bringing new levels of machine learning to risk decisioning.

March 2018

Lending institutions send massive amounts of direct mail every day, offering re-financing, cards, new lines of credit and consolidation. By using Python AI credit risk models and Provenir, a financial institution can create precisely targeted list of recipients who are truly prequalified and are potentially experiencing life events that makes them most likely to engage.

Provenir is extremely flexible, so institutions can create their own rules and workflows. Here is just one example.

A lender can opt to have a database full of information about every application in the past two years. They want to understand which prospects applied and were approved, but who did not open a line of credit, have credit score in a certain range, Tweeted about graduation or a new job, and who have visited the bank’s site in the past 30 days.

Provenir provides the analytical and decisioning capabilities to integrate

all data, orchestrate it through the institution’s workflows, evaluate it against Python AI models and instantly make a decision on the most creditworthy individuals. Marketers can even automatically populate that into a Salesforce campaign list to make their sales teams’ lives easier.

“Our platform’s pre-integration with Python opens exciting new possibilities for developing and operationalizing credit risk models,” says Paul Thomas, Managing Director at Provenir. “In the lending space, non-linear models with a greater number and variety of data variables can gain a more accurate picture of prospective customers—and potentially reach new demographics without increasing credit risk. When accessed through Provenir, Python’s power, flexibility and AI capabilities will help providers bring such complex risk analytics to market more quickly.”

DMN.ca ❰

// 14

Customer Centricity

Harness the power of mobile analytics Continued from page 4

accurate and useful answers with mobile data.

The first step would be to decide on what areas you want to study. It can be as easy as drawing a polygon on a map that outlines the boundaries of your location and your competitor of interest. You can choose to focus on your physical store or include the adjacent parking lot. The geographic term for these outlines are geofences, because essentially you are drawing a fence around the study area.

Next, you need to specify the period of interest. Are you looking at the most recent month, quarter or year of visitor activity? Given the speed mobile datasets are growing, the more recent the study period, the more comprehensive the coverage will likely be.

Once you have established the above parameters of your study, the mobile devices that were

observed within these geofences during the established window of time can be identified. At this point, there are multiple vendors in the market that offer mobile visitor data. They vary by where they source their data, how it is captured, how it is processed and how it can be queried. To ensure compliance with consumer privacy regulations, personal identifiers such as device IDs are masked or randomized at the source so that all of the data is completely anonymous.

After you have gathered the data, you can quickly and easily query it to determine how many unique visitors you and your competitors saw over a given time period. Because you can look at this data over a larger time frame, you can filter by dates to determine trends and compare whether your competition is gaining market share or vice versa. You can also

compare where your respective visitors are coming from and identify overlaps.

See visitors in a whole new way Mobile data will change the way you see visitors. With this data you can see if you are doing better in the mornings and late at night, while your competitor might excel with afternoon shoppers. You can also discover which of your customers are much more likely to visit your store exclusively relative to your competitors.

Going back to that earlier question regarding your competitor’s recent product launch, you can easily look at visitor behaviour before and after to understand the relative impact.

Perhaps your shoppers visited the competitor to try the new product shortly after the launch, but did not return after. Or maybe they tried the new product and

continued to shift visits to the competition. Without this mobile data, you would have limited (or no) insights into the impact of the new product on your shoppers and couldn’t make an informed decision about how aggressively you needed to act.

Mobile data quickly and easily allows you to gain a deeper understanding of your customers that would simply not be possible without it. It can also enable you to target and capture mobile customers.

Whether it is understanding the loyalty continuum of your shoppers, measure who is seeing your out-of-home advertising or differentiating travelers who are enjoying your destination versus passing through, mobile data can provide new and unique business insights to make better datadriven decisions.

Fasten your seatbelts. Roll up your shirtsleeves.

And prepare yourself for an information packed day.

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March 2018

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAGAZINE ISSUE 1 • 2018

The Innovation Issue ❯❯The digital revolution

❯❯Evolution of callback technology

❯❯Sunny forecast for cloud-based contact centers

❯❯Omni-channel biometrics to counter innovating crooks

❯❯Creditors: embrace the digital age

❯❯Improving contact centres with speech analytics

The Innovation Issue

The digital revolution in customer care. Are you ready?

By Seema Rao

C

ustomer care is undergoing a digital revolution. Customers are demanding more ways to engage with organizations. They are demanding faster, more accurate service and they want seamless, connected journeys.

79%1 of consumers say they are more loyal to organizations that are easy and simple to contact, yet two out of three say it is typically “exhausting” dealing with customer service. What an opportunity for improvement!

Consider adopting these key innovations in customer care and best practices to ensure that you are delivering a seamless customer experience and driving customer loyalty: Digital Transformation, Rise of the Bots and Cloud.

idea who you were or why you were calling? Is it any wonder consumers are frustrated?

While digital transformation does include incorporating newer digital channels such as mobile apps, chat, SMS and social media into the contact centre, it is much more than that.

Simply implementing digital is not delivering on digital transformation.

The customer journey needs to be continuous. As customers engage with your organization across different channels and escalate from self-service to assisted service, agents need to be empowered with contextual information about the customers’ journeys to date. Front office and backoffice operations should be connected with your digital channel strategies for continuous care throughout the customer journeys, resulting in lower customer effort and increased loyalty.

A Gartner report2, suggests that 89% of business leaders consider the customer experience (CX) to be the “new battlefield” for competition. Delivering continuous, contextual and capable customer journeys is critical in providing a differentiated and relevant level of customer service, and CX, and winning the competitive war.

Agents need to be empowered with contextual information about the customers’ journeys to date.

Digital transformation Today’s digitally savvy customers prefer to self-serve online. They want to be taken care of at any time, from any location and on any device. When they do need to reach into the contact centre, the experience needs to be effortless and without friction.

But too often, customers experience fragmented customer journeys. When was the last time that you were forced to call into a contact centre because you had difficulty in filling out a web form and the agent had no 2 | Contact management

Rise of the bots Aligned with digital transformation and responding to customers’ demand for 24/7 support and quick, accurate answers to queries is the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) using bots and digital assistants. Bots use Natural Language Processing engines (NLP) that recognize human speech and understand the caller’s intent without requiring the caller to speak or chat in specific phrases.

Customers can perform simple tasks such as request a mortgage calculator, schedule an appointment and answer frequently asked questions without speaking to an agent. Bots and digital assistants are also very effective at collecting initial customer information before escalating to an agent, creating a personalized CX. The interaction can be routed to the best agent based on information collected by the bot.

Here are several best practices to consider when implementing bots: • Ensure that there is a seamless escalation to live agents or experts when required. If the bot cannot answer a complicated query or it uses sentiment analysis to detect that the customer is angry, or frustrated, seamlessly transfer the interaction to an agent to take over and finish assisting the customer; • Connect to the live agent in the same dialogue window instead of Issue 1 • 2018

The Innovation Issue redirecting and increasing hold times. To accomplish this companies should look for contact centre providers that offer easy-to-use application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow for simple ways to interact with the contact centre software; • Always identify that it is a bot that the customer is interacting with. Likewise when the interaction escalates to a live agent: identify that they are now engaging with an individual; and • Collect end-to-end customer specific data throughout the customer journey. Customer data will enable capabilities such as intelligent routing, agent insight, reporting, analytics and pre-population of forms and deliver an effortless CX.

Moving to the cloud Cloud solutions allow contact centres to gain access to the latest in technology across multiple channels (omnichannel), reporting, analytics and workforce optimization suites. They offer technology innovation as well as the ability to scale agents business needs change with little to no capital outlay.

Just some of the benefits of going to the cloud include: • Cost savings with little upfront investment, and subscription based, pay-as-you-go utility models.

Support costs and upgrade costs are eliminated as they are borne by the cloud providers; • Cloud contact centres require less deployment time so are easier to scale and administer. They can be up and running in weeks rather than months; • With access to the latest upgrades and contact centre

capabilities, innovation is continuous. Organizations can focus on changing business conditions and delivering a highly personalized and differentiated CX; • IT staff are now free to focus on being responsive to contact centre business requirements, instead of managing and deploying core infrastructure; • Security requirements are outsourced to the cloud providers that are typically is better staffed to deal with customer sensitive data; and • Cloud providers offer service level guarantees and provide disaster recovery capabilities that ensure continuous operations for mission critical contact centres. The best providers offer a highly available, geo-redundant and survivable service.

Organizations need to find a cloud partner that best matches their requirements for price, functionality and support. The vendor must offer enterprise-class, scalable solutions with guaranteed security and service levels.

Once a cloud contact center has been deployed, businesses need the ability to scale the number of seats up or down, increase channel support options or integrate applications to meet demand. A vendor with a defined roadmap that aligns with the contact centre evolution is important.

By selecting the right cloud vendor, businesses can then focus on CX innovation, digital transformation and extending a differentiated level of customer service. The burden of keeping pace with changing technologies and hardware obsolescence will instead be shifted to the cloud provider.

In conclusion the digital revolution in the contact centre space is here.

Organizations must transform their customer care strategy to meet today’s customer demands: not just to thrive but to survive.

Is your organization ready?

Seema Rao is Collaboration Marketing Manager, Cisco 1 “Chat, tap, talk: Eight key trends to transform your digital customer experience” Cisco/BT, 2017 2 “Gartner Predicts a Customer Experience Battlefield” Gartner, Feb 2015

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Contact management | 3

The Innovation Issue

Sunny forecast for cloud-based contact centres Scalability, omni-channel support and personalization drive adoption

By Olivier Jouve

O

n-premises contact centre solutions have long been a staple of customer engagement platforms. However, as companies look for innovative ways to transform operations, many see migration to the cloud as the approach of the future.

Contact centres struggle with legacy on-premises technology that was not designed for the age of web sites, mobile phone applications and social media. It can be nearly impossible to get a single, coherent picture of customers or their journeys also due to fragmented databases and functionality resulting from multiple acquisitions and past installations of point applications.

The cloud is already gaining ground in the core contact centre market. Genesys estimates the adoption rate will double by 2020, reaching as much as 35% of the installed base, up from approximately 15% in 2016.

Infrastructure conditions, regulatory limitations and overall legacy system maturity result in different rates of cloud adoption across regions. The largest contact centre market, North America, led cloud adoption in 2017 with 3.7 million seats1. It is continuing to move downward into midmarket and smaller businesses. Similarly, the Genesys cloud customer engagement solution, PureCloud, is showing upward momentum in Canada with more than 70% growth in its install base in the last six months, according to Genesys’ internal data.

Multiple factors influence the pace of contact centre cloud adoption, including the business context, workload characteristics and IT environment. The shift to cloud shouldn’t be surprising. As customers demand new forms of engagement across multiple digital channels, robust cloud platforms that simplify operations and help achieve faster time to value become a must-have.

Cloud platforms offer a wide range of benefits that let companies modernize contact centre operations quickly and inexpensively without requiring new hardware. One of these unique advantages is the flexibility to dramatically scale upwards or downwards, allowing organizations to become agile while having the tools to ramp up to meet seasonal, hourly or regional needs. Other cloud benefits include state-of-the-art security, automatic software updates and pay-as-you-go models, which curb operating expenses and eliminate the need for large up-front capital outlays.

4 | Contact management

To cloud, or not to cloud By re-fashioning legacy contact centre systems, customer experience managers can benefit from the cloud in several different ways.

Since the cloud offers the ability to store vast sums of customer data, agents can deliver more personalized customer experiences by drawing on information about consumer behaviour. Personalization saves time, increases loyalty and contributes to more seamless customer journeys.

The shift to the cloud also coincides with the adoption of omni-channel customer experience solutions. Through transitioning to the cloud, even small organizations can provide reliable service no matter what channel the customer uses whether by phone, email, chat or text.

Additionally, the development of advanced analytics and machine learning has allowed organizations to better identify customer trends and save time during customer interactions. By analyzing data from buying behavior, for example, artificial intelligence (AI) can transform information into insights and then act to create personalized interactions between companies and individuals.

As analytics are applied to data in the cloud, organizations will improve their ability to predict consumer behavior and empower customers to serve themselves without the constant aid of live agents.

Choosing the cloud-first platform Switching contact centre systems is time-consuming, expensive and disruptive though. Because many

organizations consider customer service to be a cost centre rather than a revenue source, they hobble along as best they can. However, failing to invest in modern contact centre technology is a big risk considering customer experience has become essential to business success.

When selecting a customer engagement platform, there are three critical points to consider: • First, it is crucial to find a cloudfirst platform that is scalable and uses open APIs and web services; • Choose an integrated platform to cut down on implementation costs and get rid of capability silos; and • Select a reputable provider with a strong record of migrations to help support the transition to the cloud.

Cloud computing offers limitless scale, broad functionality and the ability to deliver customer support in all channels. Organizations looking to the future need to take advantage of cloud-centric, omni-channel contact centres to drive loyalty, referrals and new revenue.

Olivier Jouve is the executive vice president of PureCloud for Genesys, the global leader in omni-channel customer experience and contact centre solutions.

He is based in Durham, North Carolina, and can be reached at Olivier.jouve@genesys.com or @OlivierJouve. Genesys has its Canadian offices in Montreal, Quebec, Saint John, New Brunswick and Markham, Ontario.

1 Sources: IDC, Worldwide Contact Center Applications Software Forecast, 2017–2021 (Sept. 2017) and Genesys Cloud Strategy Workshop, May 2017

Issue 1 • 2018

The Innovation Issue

Dear creditors, it’s time to embrace the digital age Accurate payment information and respectful customer service is key

By Kevin Deveau

D

elinquent payments are bad news to all parties. For the organization they mean interrupted cash flow and difficult reconciliation processes. For the consumer they mean hits to credit scores and often becoming inundated with notifications and reminders.

Without a doubt it is in the best interest of both parties to identify and prioritize the most effective methods of contact to ensure repayment and that resolution is quickly met.

But communications about debt repayment are uncomfortable. There are many reasons a customer may skip their payment, such as having insufficient funds or simply forgetting. It’s up to the organization to be tactful about their message and how and when it is being delivered. Are traditional paper reminders mailed to recipients too slow, too impersonal and a thing of the past?

Are calls during work hours or dinnertime more irritating?

We at FICO sought to better understand exactly how customers hope to be contacted. We wondered, though, if the banks and financial institutions they deal with on a daily basis are keeping up to the changing consumer demands?

Mobile devices and digital communications have opened new avenues with opportunities for communication. However, organizations walk a fine line when working with these digital innovations. They are faced with the difficult challenge of using technology to maximize efficiencies, while also respecting privacy and not getting “too close for comfort.”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLeIGWHs9g0&feature=youtu.be

Consumer survey results In 2017 FICO decided to skip the guess work. We commissioned a survey to ask consumers directly about their preferred and experienced methods of contact across the globe.

While in Canada, email has emerged as the most commonly used and preferred method of contact, one in five respondents indicated that they would actually prefer to hear from their banks via text messages. Text messages are direct and discrete and are delivered through mobile devices that are now the norm, making them a good Issue 1 • 2018

option to ensure customers receive the reminders, yet they enable them to respond on their own schedules.

Despite this, only 11% of respondents say that text Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLeIGWHs9g0&feature=youtu.be messages are regularly used to reach them at this responded quite differently to this time, making this the most underquestion, depending on the types served communication channel, both of social platforms they use most here and in the United States. frequently. For example, countries Preferences aside, respondents such as Germany, Mexico, Spain were also asked to consider what and Brazil most commonly use would really motivate them to make WhatsApp, and when asked about a payment. Over one-third (34%) of their comfort levels with receiving Canadians indicated that hearing late payment notifications through from a live person would be the most this channel, they were much more effective tactic. In the United States open to the idea. however, it was more important Chat apps took off only five years to respondents that the banks’ ago and have grown exponentially in messages be friendly and helpful, the numbers of active users globally. but not necessarily live. This is an An example of this in action is the important reminder to organizations growth of WeChat in China, where who operate on both sides of the banks already incentivize the use of border. Often the audiences in the WeChat app. This growth suggests Canada and the United States are that it is only a matter of time before grouped and treated as one entity, but chat apps are used extensively by there are a number of factors such as customers here in Canada. attitudes, demographics and cultural So how can organizations become differences, that make consumers more effective in the ways they are in each of the markets act and react reaching out to their customers, differently. without putting them off?

With the constantly changing decision-making environments, often How far is too far? the answer is not easy to come by.

With over two billion active users, Fortunately, analytics can inform Facebook and Facebook Messenger these decisions. have become the two most popular The future success of the social and chat apps in Canada collections organization and and the U.S. While the majority of their ability to execute in the new customers are using these platforms environment is going to increasingly regularly throughout the day, the idea depend on how they manage, of receiving late notifications through process and analyze their data. Data these channels was not well received analytics software tools, like those by respondents in those countries. offered through FICO’s Customer When asked, 71% of Canadians Communications Services, provide expressed that they would not be comfortable with this kind of contact.

Interestingly, global respondents Continued on page CM 9 Contact management | 5

The Innovation Issue

The evolution and versatility of callback technology Customers and contact centres win with today’s callback applications

By Jaime Bailey

W

aiting on hold is one of the top frustrations that customers experience. There was a time not so long ago where this was unavoidable.

Now, organizations have the ability to implement cuttingedge callback technology that allows customers to seamlessly choose their own journeys while contacting customer service. The benefits can be tremendous to the customer experience, customers’ satisfaction and loyalty to companies.

What is callback technology?

Callback technology is utilized when someone calls into customer service only to find there is going to be a lengthy wait. Instead of staying on hold, the customer can enter their information and they will receive a callback from a contact centre agent as soon as one becomes available.

Callback technology is often “triggered” from certain variables such as the number of people on hold or the estimated wait time exceeding a certain threshold. As technology improves, so do the options and the customer experience when using it.

When hold times are too long, people do the obvious: they hang up. Not only did these customers or potential leads drop off, they left frustrated.

Callback technology benefits Individuals’ time is valuable and waiting on hold to speak with agents is most likely not how they want to spend it.

Showing customers that their time matters is a great way to build brand loyalty.

Here are several other benefits callback technology offers organizations: • Call abandonment decrease. When hold times are too long, people do the obvious: they hang up. Not only did these customers or potential leads drop off, they left frustrated. Callback technology allows callers to get on with whatever they are doing instead of being tied up on the phone; 6 | Contact management

• More productive agents.

Instead of taking down callers’ information and searching through a customer relationship management (CRM) system or database, employees can easily click into the callers’ accounts before making the callbacks, thereby shrinking call times. As a result more calls can be handled by each agent while providing superior customer service; • Improved first call resolution (FCR). There is a strong link between FCR and customer satisfaction. Similar to the point above, callback technology allows employees to prepare for the calls, retrieving any information or answers they may otherwise have to look up. This saves customers time and avoids unneeded frustration; • Smoother, seamless transitions.

Consumers often use multiple channels and devices when they are looking for service. Therefore, it is vital that consumer information is retained and easily accessible across all channels. Nobody likes repeating themselves, so no matter how a customer reaches out, the context they use should be passed from channel to channel. For example, if a customer calls in, then later switches to chat to ask another question, information from the first interaction should be readily available; • Makes each customer feel valued.

Allowing customers to choose their own journey shows them their priorities and preferences are important. Forcing them to wait on hold for an extended period of time does the opposite; and • Allows customers to gain control of their relationship with your brand. With callback technology solutions, customers can choose other means of communication while waiting for the agents’ callbacks. They can later continue their journeys over the phone,

knowing they can start where they left off instead of having to start from the beginning of the process.

The future of callback technology Callback technology is constantly evolving due to advancements in communications. In order for companies to survive, they must have an efficient and consumer-centric customer service process.

In the near future, it will be important for contact centres to offer newer and more personal ways of communication, such as face-toface video chatting and seamless integration to the latest mobile device technology. On the company side, advanced analytics will be a critical piece in discovering who customers really are, where they generated and even predict why they are reaching out.

It no longer matters what industry you are in or who your primary customers are. High-tech digital companies or new start-ups are not the only organizations utilizing the advancements in customer service. Companies need to offer an omni-channel customer experience in order to satisfy all of their customers’ preferences. Failing to do so could lead to a drop in consumer satisfaction, a decrease in customer retention and even harm the company’s reputation. But taking the lead on customer service can place you ahead of your competition. Stay ahead of the curve and value what matters most to your business...your customers.

Jaime Bailey serves as Vice President of Marketing at VHT. With more than 16 years of experience, she stewards a team focused on understanding the customer experience, applying new marketing techniques and maximizing ROI. A devout proponent of the importance of a well-crafted marketing strategy, her efforts have helped companies enrich customer relationships, drive revenue and grow brand equity.

Issue 1 • 2018

The Innovation Issue

The crooks are innovating, so must CX organizations Why biometrics needs to be an omni-channel initiative

By Brendan Read

Y

our contact centre isn’t the only channel that’s susceptible to fraud. Determined crooks continue to ramp up their efforts to penetrate other channels: from mobile apps to the web. Fortunately, biometrics technologies are advancing so that your organization can detect and stop fraudsters upon first contact.

Brett Beranek

Brett Beranek, Director of Security Strategy, Nuance, is addressing why biometrics needs to be an omni-channel initiative in an interview with Contact Management.

CM: 2017 showed that hackers aren’t slowing down their efforts anytime soon. What are you finding when talking with your customers?

BB: The majority of our customers now understand that when it comes to fraudulent attacks, it’s no longer an “if” game. We are now in a “when” game. When crooks try to attack, how are we going to be prepared to ward off and stop their efforts?

Companies that are not operating with that mindset are fooling themselves. Unfortunately they are making themselves and their customers extremely vulnerable to these types of attacks.

CM: How is the customer experience (CX) landscape different now, from what you were seeing say, three to five years ago especially when dealing with security?

BB: The industry has been doing a fine job in making more channels available for CX transactions, which is a very good thing. Consumers are very open to using mobile apps, web sites, virtual assistants and other tools to interact with the companies with whom they do business. At the Issue 1 • 2018

same time, fraudsters are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They often first try the phone channel, and when that doesn’t work, e.g., because they can’t penetrate the voice biometrics, they target these other growing channels, devices and access points.

CM: You mentioned voice biometrics. Where does voice biometrics fit into the equation?

BB: Voice biometrics has been around for some time. We introduced it to our customers more than 15 years ago.

But the market wasn’t conditioned to using automated voice technologies for identification and authentication.

Instead, businesses relied on knowledge-based information such as U.S. Social Security Numbers, alphanumeric passwords and PINs. The problem with those methods is that once someone hacks into a database, it becomes a free-for-all, leading to a massive data breach, resulting in considerable financial and reputational fallout.

Every dollar of fraud costs organizations nearly 2.5 times more than the actual loss itself, according to LexisNexis. That’s a hard number to stomach.

Given all this, we have seen a drastic uptick in consumers using voice biometrics. For instance, in 2016 our customers had a combined 150 million enrolled voiceprints. In 2017, that number doubled to 300 million and biometrics was used to complete more than 5 billion transactions.

We now have tools that can take this security even further by detecting speech patterns associated with fraudulent behaviour with our ConversationPrint solution. We can tell if someone is an actual customer or a fraudster based on how they string their words together in a conversation with a contact centre agent or even while chatting with a live or virtual assistant.

For example, if an imposter gains knowledge-based information from a previous breach and contacts a

credit card company to try and use the information, the system can flag the interaction based on words alone. Even though the fraudster may have all the required information, ConversationPrint can identify in real-time that it is fraudulent, based on word choices and speech or writing patterns. This is through speech-to-text, a core competency of Nuance, which is applied to short speech segments to analyze vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar.

CM: Does voice biometrics work for all channels?

BB: Voice biometrics is highly effective for most channels, such as interactive voice response (IVR), virtual assistants and mobile apps.

But ideally companies will integrate other complementary biometrics technologies to further safeguard themselves and their customers from fraud. For instance, behavioural biometrics is an excellent tool for the Web channel or in tandem with voice biometrics for other CX interactions. This is why it’s vital that companies look at the whole omnichannel experience when developing strategies to combat fraud. They need to ensure that all points of contact are secure, and biometrics technologies are key to achieving this.

CM: Can you give me an example of how behavioural biometrics works?

BB: Behavioural biometrics analyze behaviour patterns. How a person types, uses a mouse, holds their smartphone or even how they pause when accomplishing a task can all determine behind the scenes that a person is who they say they are.

We’ve learned that fraudsters and hackers have different behaviour and interaction with their devices than non-fraudsters, so behavioural biometrics is useful for detecting fraud before it happens. Note that at the Continued on page CM 9

Contact management | 7

The Innovation Issue

How speech analytics can improve your contact centre Advanced solutions bolster marketing and sales, coaching and compliance

By Mike Aoki

S

peech analytics have progressed tremendously since their early days as little more than a way to measure vocal “tone” and single keywords. Now some programs can convert the content from customer interactions – calls, chats, emails, surveys and social media – into a format that can be analyzed. That gives you “the ability to monitor, record and transcribe 100 percent of customer contacts across different channels”, according to speech analytics expert, Steve Wilton, Principal Consultant at Wilton & Associates Inc. (http://www.wiltonassociates.ca).

Wilton notes that speech analytics have progressed from phonetic systems that recognize single keywords to advanced LVCSR (Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition) programs.

They generate transcripts of conversations and uses context to determine which are the right words and phrases. That provides more accurate results.

Wilton reports the Steve Wilton, Principal Consultant latest developments in at Wilton & Associates Inc. speech analytics include real time analysis to identify actionable insights during the calls rather than after they end. They also include the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to continuously improve data analysis. Those self-learning algorithms will improve at identifying key data trends to generate more accurate results.

DMG Consulting LLC predicts speech analytics demand will grow by 17% in 2018. Here are several examples how advanced speech analytics are helping contact centres and customer-focused organizations:

Customer inquiries Your CEO wants to know how many customer inquiries are caused by a particular product. Can you easily find that information? What if the sales and marketing team asks about responses to their new ad campaign? Can you provide verbatim customer quotes?

There are now speech analytics programs can recognize the context of conversations. They can tell you how many customers sounded excited about a product or talked favourably about a particular ad campaign. That enables you to provide near real time information about your contact centre’s customer interactions.

8 | Contact management

Upsell opportunities You can track upsell opportunities by product type to see if agents favour certain items. Many systems analyze an agent’s vocal tone to determine if they sound confident when talking about sales. It can identify periods of silence caused by an agent hesitating to suggest an upsell or pausing before tackling an objection. It can even flag when a customer has to repeat themselves. Some systems track the most common customer objections to a sale so, you can train and coach your agents to deal more effectively with them. Those are powerful tools for improvement!

Product intelligence Another benefit of speech analytics is the intelligence it provides to your product development, sales, marketing and C-suite teams.

They discover why customers are cancelling, what retention offers are most successful and if agents are showing the necessary empathy and customer service skills to drive higher NPS (Net Promoter Scores.) Better yet, this data is based upon ALL calls versus traditional call monitoring where only a tiny percentage of calls are analyzed and fewer still yield Voice of the Customer (VOC) data.

Coaching and QA Speech analytics helps with coaching.

One of my biggest frustrations as a coach and trainer is finding good customer interactions to review. I usually review a dozen or more calls and emails to find one good coaching example.

How does that affect your team leaders and/or quality assurance (QA) team? How many interactions do they review before finding a good coaching example? How much time does that waste and how much does that cost in lost productivity?

Imagine being able to find the right example just by clicking a few keywords into a program. How much time would that save? How would having the right example boost your

coaching conversation?

The right speech analytics software can sort interactions by various parameters such as interaction type e.g., cancellation, renewal, upsell, agent behaviour (hesitation or stress in the agent’s voice) and customer behaviour (threatening to escalate their issue to social media.) You can identify where your agents need help and quickly retrieve good examples for coaching.

Another benefit is that ALL calls can be analyzed to find overall trends.

That combats the common agent complaint of, “That call was a one-off.

I usually don’t sound like that!”

Wilton points out that with speech analytics a team leader or QA coach can offer real-time support while the call is still occurring. They might be able to instant message the agent with key diagnostic questions or the answer to a customer inquiry. That can result in improved customer service.

Speech analytics software can conduct automated QA scoring.

Wilton notes, “organizations easily can reduce QA staff by 50% using speech analytics for this purpose.

Speech analytics is a better option for agents who now have 100% of their calls scored (not just 1%-5%). This is done in a timely fashion (often in hours rather than weeks), and it is done objectively, by a machine, so there is no opportunity for believing there is a bias.” That can improve coaching consistency and agent performance. This analysis can also highlight training opportunities and process gaps.

Regulatory compliance Speech analytics can reinforce compliance. If you are in a heavily regulated industry, speech analytics can identify when agents veer off the mandated regulatory script. It can identify interactions in which the agent failed to use proper compliance language or omitted key phrases.

That allows you to coach back to those issues. It also provides you with Issue 1 • 2018

The Innovation Issue a mechanism to gauge compliance, e.g., “Our agents follow the compliance script for new sales 99.7% of the time.” A good system can also flag individual calls when that does not occur, giving you the opportunity to address those issues in real-time.

Vendor selection What should you ask, if you are planning to add or enhance speech analytics in your contact centre? Wilton says, “Some speech analytics companies design their solution to be self-sufficient—with vendor support as a fraction of their revenue costs—while others charge significantly more” to get fully up and running.

He adds, “Step-by-step guides that walk (your contact centre) through how to achieve Return-on-Investment (ROI) and having expert one-on-one support” are important for a successful speech analytics implementation.

Wilton gives one final tip, “Ask if a vendor offers the ability to ‘test drive’ or do a ‘proof of concept’ for a fraction of the price compared to purchasing it. This allows a company to see what it can do while being supported by a team of contact centre and speech analytics experts.”

Mike Aoki is the President of Reflective Keynotes Inc. (www.reflectivekeynotes.com), a Canadian training company that helps contact centres improve their sales and customer experience results. A contact centre expert, Mike serves on the Advisory Council of GTACC (the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association www.gtacc.ca )

Dear creditors, it’s time to embrace the digital age Continued from page CM 5

a wealth of valuable information on debtor profiles. They enable collection teams to work smarter by identifying and prioritizing those with the strongest likelihood of payment returns. They also facilitate broad access to data, including real-time updates. This leads to informed collection decisions to connect with customers over the right channels, whether via text messages, phone calls, letter

are retained. The system recognizes positive contact from a customer and prevents further contact in the following days. Better yet, a customer who makes a payment via a web portal will not receive a collections call to their mobile ten minutes later.

These kinds of systems even record a customer’s preferred contact details, such as time to contact and channel to use to tailor future communication, ensuring the highest possibility of success in future outreach. This leads to more efficient outreach, and better customer experiences.

Canadian banks and financial organizations have big responsibilities and their customers are telling them to embrace the digital age in their communications. By instilling confidence in newer technologies, smarter communications and embracing intelligence, organizations will increase their repayment rates. These elements will result in customized responses based on consumer feedback and a better understanding of their changing expectations. They just need to listen to the data.

Kevin Deveau is Vice President and Managing Director, Canada, at FICO. He is responsible for growing FICO’s Canadian market share and strengthening client relationships.

FICO is a leading analytics software company, helping businesses in 90+ countries make better decisions that drive higher levels of growth, profitability and customer satisfaction.

The crooks are innovating, so must CX organizations Continued from page CM 7

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLeIGWHs9g0&feature=youtu.be

mail or the most effective combination of communications channels and methods. Analytics can also ensure the proper tone and frequency are identified and utilized.

Know your customers through their data Using these systems, the analytics directing each decision receive real-time data and information such as preferred contact time and method based on customer behaviour Issue 1 • 2018

same time we’re collecting behaviour patterns on customers, we’re also collecting those same patterns on criminals.

There are also artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technologies layered together to form a profile to verify legitimate users and flag fraudulent activity, including spoofing attacks using synthetic speech, recording attacks and mimics. They analyze audio to determine device types and models used during interactions and the call metadata to identify

inconsistencies and determine phone number spoofing, and detect callers’ geographic locations via the phone network.

CM: How do voice and behavioural biometrics impact the customer experience?

BB: In the majority of instances, customers opt-in or enroll themselves for voice biometrics. By being able to simply say a phrase like, “My voice is my password,” a customer can easily and securely authenticate themselves when calling into customer service, for example. Many companies also use another layer of voice and/ or behavioural biometrics behind the scenes to further ensure that the person is who they say they are. In those cases, the customer really doesn’t even know there are technologies working on their behalf to protect their identities and personal information.

CM: How are companies in Canada using biometrics technologies? How is this impacting their customers?

BB: There are several companies in Canada using voice biometrics, including Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife and Tangerine. Royal Bank of Canada has more than one million customers using voice biometrics for easy authentication and to prevent fraudsters from illegally accessing their private financial information. One of the leading telecom services firms reported fraud reductions following voice biometrics deployment.

CM: What do you recommend companies do to ensure that they don’t become one of the dozens of hacked companies we’ve seen in the news?

BB: It is vital that companies equip themselves with robust, omnichannel security solutions. They cannot operate in silos i.e., where those in charge of the IVR contact centre are not working with those developing the mobile apps, web chats or virtual assistants.

A robust, layered approach ensures that companies will be much more likely to identify and stop fraudsters across every channel, while simultaneously improving the CX experience. Treating biometrics security as an omni-channel initiative is a win-win for businesses and their customers.

Contact management | 9

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Excellent Execution

How to become customer-centric?

Think like a contact centre

BY MATTHEW CLARE

T

raditionally, inbound customer service and outbound marketing were separate worlds, but the rise of digital media means they now work in tandem. Being on the frontlines of customer experience, contact centres have learned valuable lessons, and developed strategies relevant to any organization striving to become customer-centric.

Getting to know your customer and their context, investing in data to shape the customer experience and prioritizing expertise among staff are three strategies that will lead to meaningful results.

MATTHEW CLARE is a Director & CX Specialist at Mitel, MiContact centre. Matthew has over a decade of experience in the customer experience industry, working primarily as a highly technical solutions and strategic marketing specialist for contact centre solution vendors. He holds global responsibility for leading the vision, roadmap, and end-to-end product lifecycle as Product Manager for Mitel’s flagship MiContact centre Business solution.

The onus is on the organization to anticipate customers’ needs by analyzing behavioural patterns and market trends, and using data from both inside and outside their organization to address those needs.

❱ DMN.ca

1. Know your customer deeply.

The modern contact centre caters to customer communication preferences across voice, email, Web chat, SMS, social media and self-service. It tracks customer interactions to build a picture of each journey and deliver personalized and seamless experiences.

For instance, say I’m browsing a website and I search for something, click on a page and watch a video. If a customer service rep initiates a chat with me, I want that person to acknowledge the steps I’ve already taken. If I call a customer support line, the agent had better know who I am, because nothing is more frustrating than repeating information.

Like the contact centre, a customer-centric organization knows each customer as a person, understands their usage or buying habits, and leverages that knowledge to provide a differentiated experience. The onus is on the organization to anticipate customers’ needs by analyzing behavioural patterns and market trends, and using data from both inside and outside their organization to address those needs.

2. Customer data is currency.

Customer data has completely transformed the shopping experience, allowing businesses to provide concierge-level service, strengthen customer relationships and increase profitability. My favourite example is Amazon. I’ve purchased items purely because of its “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” recommendation engine. Brick-and-mortar retailers are also stepping up, emailing curated look books of items customers may enjoy based on past in-store transactions.

In contrast, buying phone and emails lists and hoping someone bites on the distribution will not set you up for conversions. It is critical to develop a process that allows you to hold your customer’s hand through their entire experience. From identifying who is visiting your website, to gathering the appropriate data to then guide them on their journeys.

In the contact centre, consolidation of data from across the organization, as well as from publicly available external sources, paves the way for highly

tailored customer experiences. Customer-centric organizations can replicate this model, as data lives in many different places: search history, cookies, IP addresses, web forms, previous transactions and various repositories. Self-service interactions are opportunities to collect data by asking customers to opt-in to receive personalized information.

Most notably, the Internet of Things (IoT) has accelerated the ability to monitor, measure, and manage customer experience and product use in real-time. Automotive is one area where IoT is taking off. Tesla cars cannot be bought at a dealership. They’re ordered online. Tesla updates customers about their car as it is being built. As soon as customers are in the driver’s seat, Tesla knows exactly what’s happening with the car and can send notifications such as a premium feature that would be beneficial: a very powerful case of direct marketing.

3. Make everyone an expert.

Equally important to understanding your customer and gathering data is offering expertise in every interaction. We’re seeing salespeople use the same contact centre tools as customer service reps to do their jobs better. In fact, the most successful teams break down silos and use “blended agents”. Regardless of inbound or outbound customer contacts, generalists no longer suffice. Organizations must have subject matter experts equipped with the right tools who can give customers more insights than they’d get from looking themselves.

Thanks to smartphones, customers can easily get second opinions and product reviews. We have such intelligence at our fingertips and we expect organizations to exceed it. Gone are the days where customers tolerate being pressured into making immediate purchase decisions.

Here’s an example of where having insightful employees pays off. Last year I was due for new snow tires, and my dad recommended a brand. I went to the store ready to buy them, but the salesperson’s expertise changed my mind. He asked where my dad lived and explained that while those tires work well in one part of the province, they’re not as suitable for Ottawa winters. He then pointed to another brand that was on sale. I excused myself to grab coffee, looked the product up on my phone, compared prices, and returned to happily close the deal.

In conclusion, just as contact centres define themselves by the customers they serve, the problems they solve and the quality of experience they deliver, customer-centric organizations know their customers deeply, continuously pull data to create personalized experiences, and have experts ready to engage. By taking these steps, organizations can ensure a unique experience for each customer that will keep them satisfied and coming back for more.

March 2018

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