Making Leaders Successful Everyday by Kate Leggett

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Customer Service In The Age Of The Customer – A Forrester Perspective

Kate Leggett

Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

@kateleggett

kleggett@forrester.com

92%Companies view customer experience as one of their top priorities

60%Use customer

experiences as a competitive differentiator

The State Of Customer Experience, Management, 2013

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedSource: Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2013,

Base: 2,074 IT executives and technology decision-makers

Other

Human resources

Procurement

Order fufillment

Research and development

Finance

Sales

4%

7%

13%

14%

16%

18%

21%

22%

25%

25%

25%

32%

38%

Sales and Customer Service are the top

departments for software strategy and investments

in 2014

In 2014, Investments in customer-facing technologies top the list

Forrester’s Customer Experience Index

© 2013 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 6

Source: January 121, 2014, “The Customer Experience Index, 2014” Forrester report

Few companies deliver an outstanding experience

53%

Good customer experiences are good for business

March 2012 “The Business Impact Of Customer Experience, 2012”

Customer service managers agree that customer experience is important

CostCustomer

satisfaction and loyalty

Revenue

Compliance

It is increasingly difficult to deliver good customer service as the customer service leader must balance customer needs with business needs

www.astutesolutions.com

Most companies are a mess of siloed applications

38%

44%

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Knowledge is everywhere

Email

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

The volume of social inquiries and comments overwhelm companies

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Companies offer more customer touchpoints than ever before, with inconsistent content and experiences

Poor service is costly

Your customers switch to more expensive channels when the online interactions lets them down

August 2012 “Websites That Don’t Support Customers Waste Millions”

Customers complain about poor service

41% say that complaints about customer service

from other consumers on social sites like Twitter or

Facebook strongly influence my image of a

company.

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

What are the top trends in customer service that I should pay attention to?

“I know how I want to deliver good customer but I don’t know where to start.”

Service Manager

Customers

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Customer service should be……

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Customer service should be……

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Understand that your customers expect effortless service

Customer Experience Online Survey, 2013

52% will abandon online purchases if they can’t find a quick answer

For 71%, valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide good service

..That they want to interact over a range of communication channels

…And they want to use multiple communication channels in a single interaction

Omnichannel is reality..

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Realize that your customers are deeply mobile enabled

October 2013 “Digital Customer Experience Teams In The Post-PC Era”

24© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

That time on mobile devices has overtaken time on others…

And that customer service organizations must adopt a mobile-first mindset

Accenture Global Pulse Survey

Look to using BPM tools to standardize service delivery

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

February 2012 “Update 2012: Proactive Outbound Notification Saves Money”

Rely on outbound communications to keep your customers in the loop

• November 2013 “Anticipate Your Customer’s Next Move With Proactive Experiences”

Invest in proactive engagement

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction ProhibitedNovember 2013 “Anticipate Your Customer’s Next Move With Proactive Experiences”

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Google Now uses machine learning to proactively deliver relevant information

November 2013 “Anticipate Your Customer’s Next Move With Proactive Experiences”

Deliver consistent knowledge across all touchpoints

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Use decisioning to power offers, actions and connections

email

Forums

phone

web

social

Customers & Agents

Work

virtual bookmarks

Linked In

activity

Forum Posts

Service ManagerDerive Insights

ANALYZECOLLECT

Listen to your customers and act on their insights

IMPROVE

BehavioralData

InteractionData

Content Utilization

People Performance

Experience Effectiveness

New York City Solicited Citizen Input For Bike Rental Station Placement

April 2012 “Governments Embrace New Modes Of Constituent Engagement”

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

© 2014 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Many Customer Service Organizations Focus On Increasing Efficiency

February 2014 “Navigate The Future Of Customer Service In 2014”

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Realize that an improved agent experience leads to better customer satisfaction outcomes

“Complete the following statement in the way that best describes your ability to correlate animproved agent experience to better customer satisfaction:

We can correlate a good agent experience to good customer satisfaction ratings...”

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of salesforce.com, July 2012; shared with permission

Base: 196 United States Customer Service decision-makers

Cloud deployments are increasing

Lack of in-house IT staff to maintain a traditional software solution

Ability to substitute upfront costs with regular monthly payments

Having access to a wide ecosystem of solutions around the core SaaS application

Iterative deployment model supports a higher level of innovation within the business

Gaining a feature or functionality that is not available in a traditional, licensed software package

To support a large number of mobile and remote users

Improve collaboration with business partners

Lower overall costs

Support business innovation with new capabilities

Allows us to focus resources on more important projects

Faster delivery of new features and functions from SaaS/as-a-service providers

Speed of implementation and deployment

Improved business agility

28%

33%

35%

38%

37%

33%

34%

31%

42%

38%

40%

38%

39%

21%

21%

22%

21%

23%

29%

29%

36%

26%

31%

29%

34%

36%

Very important factorImportant factor (rating of 4)

Cloud deployments deliver increased business agility

Source: Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2013,

Base: 1,417 IT executives and technology decision-makers

© 2012 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited

Focus on people, process and technology to move the needle on online customer service experiences

Thank youKate Leggett

Principal Analyst

Thank you