CHANNELING THE EXPERIENCE - Webhelp...the same book, converting its newly acquired branches into ‘stores’ and ‘lounges’ where consumers can browse financial products, bank

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CHANNELINGTHEEXPERIENCE

SERVING CUSTOMERS IN AN OMNI-CHANNEL FUTURE

©Webhelp UK 2014 | WHITE PAPER SERIESwww.webhelp.com2

3 Introduction

4 The future has arrived 6 Taking the advantage

12 The way forward

©Webhelp UK 2014 | WHITE PAPER SERIES 3

INTRODUCTION

Companies that think they’re doing well by offering their customers several channel choices for customer service and sales need to think again before patting themselves on the back. Unless those channels are connected – so that conversations and transactions started on one can be continued on another – the customer experience is likely to be disappointing, cost more than it should to deliver and generate less revenue than it might. The truth is, customers expect you to interact with them across a range of channels. They’ll only be impressed if you can follow them from one to the next.

If there is anyone out there who still thinks omni-channel is just a new fancy name for multi-channel, let me disabuse you. In a multi-channel environment customers certainly have opportunities to make contact via different channels, but one at a time and in isolation. In an omni-channel environment they will move effortlessly from one channel to another – or interact in several simultaneously – using the full range of devices that modern technology has endowed them with – from mobiles and smartphones to tablets and TV – to achieve what they want.

There is a simple concept at the heart of omni-channel thinking; to understand what customers want to do, and make it seamlessly easy for them to do it, irrespective of channel or device. The motivation to do so is clear, since there is substantial evidence that, when served in an omni-channel fashion, consumers spend more.

The sad truth is, most organisations are not in a good position to achieve omni-channel customer management. They lack the technologies and multi-disciplined approaches required. Most importantly, their internal structures mitigate against it. In pursuing a raft of well-intentioned but isolated channel strategies, organisations have reinforced the managerial and technological silos that have always prevented the delivery of a seamless customer experience. Breaking them down will mean changing the way organisations think and work.

In these pages we’ll examine what a truly omni-channel experience should feel like, why it’s good for business and the steps needed to achieve it.

David Turner, CEO, Webhelp UK


This paper’s title talks about preparing for an omni-channel future. Don’t imagine for a moment that future is a long way off and that you can afford to sit back and observe before taking action. In very many ways, the omni-channel future has already arrived.

The future has arrived

It is almost trite to say that the advent of advanced consumer technologies and the rise of social networks are transforming our society. We see it in our everyday lives and in our own behaviour. Marketers today speak of the rise of Generation C (for Connected). Its members are better informed, highly demanding, vigorously social and constantly connected. For them any conversation about channels is meaningless; they simply don’t recognise them. They move seamlessly from device to device and expect the organisations they interact with to do likewise. An online search can spark a web chat that leads to a social media exchange and perhaps even a phone call. A purchase that begins online can be completed in store. It is all one and the same for the Generation C consumer. Where the much talked of ‘customer journey’ is concerned, they care only about reaching their

destination quickly, not how many times they need to switch trains.

Don’t make the mistake either of imagining that Generation C is defined exclusively by age. It’s easy to assume that we are speaking about a young demographic with boundless enthusiasm but relatively little (or very precisely focused) spending power. Not so. While there is some evidence to suggest that most members of Generation C are between 20 and 40, the boundaries are shifting rapidly. Research conducted by eMarketer1 suggests that nearly half of us are already showing omni-channel tendencies. It reveals that 45% of us use a combination of brick, online and mobile channels when shopping. This compares favourably to the 12% who still mostly use brick and mortar, 42% who use mostly online and only 1% who mostly use mobile.

The over 55 age group in particular, with its high disposable income levels, is adopting digital channels rapidly. They are already the dominant age group on the internet, accounting for over 20% of online visits. Their smartphone adoption, at 19%, matches that of the 35 to 44 age group and is only three percentage points behind 25 to 34 year olds 2. Capgemini reinforces the point. Its 2012 ‘Digital Shopper Relevancy Report’ informs us that the older generation are surprisingly heavy users of Internet sites, use blogs and social networks to find consumer recommendations and welcome personalised offers via digital channels.

The trend is clear; channel proliferation isn’t stratified, with one particular demographic adopting any one channel in preference to another. Instead we are all adopting a range of channels with increasing rapidity and agnosticism.

1 eMarketer Report, 2012

2 comScore , ‘UK Digital Future in Focus’, 2013


The future has arrived (cont.)

The time is now

So, if the day of the omni-channel consumer has arrived, companies must make ready to serve them now. Expectations are high. That same Capgemini report confirms that 60% of us will expect organisations to have achieved seamless integration across their digital, physical and social channels by 2014. Companies that fail that expectation must face the consequences. Trevor Harvey, Director of Planning at Saatchi & Saatchi pulls no punches when forecasting what those consequences might be. “If a company doesn’t develop an omni-channel strategy it will die. In today’s ‘participation economy’, a brand or business that deliberately chooses not to engage with its audience by their preferred methods of interaction chooses not to interact with them at all.”

However, I’ve never believed it healthy to be driven to act out of fear. When dealing with our own clients I prefer to focus on the benefits available to companies who embrace omni-channel, rather than the disasters that might befall those that don’t. And those benefits are substantial. IDC Retail Insights suggests that, while the multi-channel shopper will spend, on average, 15 to 30% more than the single-channel shopper, omni-channel shoppers outspend multi-channel shoppers by over 20%. This is clear evidence of what we must, surely, instinctively know; that an easy and compelling customer journey will reach a positive conclusion for both the buyer and the seller.

But it is not to be imagined that all of the benefits of omni-channel rest in the sales environment. With many of our own clients we are pursuing omni-channel approaches in customer service environments, where there are certainly goals worth striving for. The omni-channel service operation we deliver for the newly launched on-demand NOW TV brand, is aimed at creating self-service customer journeys that are so smooth, agent assistance isn’t needed. Today, 90% of interactions are agent assisted; our target is that only 50% should be. The value for NOW TV lies in the cost efficiency this will deliver, which, we anticipate, will represent an annualised saving of 40% as well as the ability to grow its business with minimal incremental cost.

Our omni-channel programme promises a 40% cost reduction for NOW TV

Omni-channel shoppers outspend multi-channel shoppers by 20%.

Similarly, the UK’s National Rail Enquiries began its life as a voice only contact centre but today receives just 2% of enquiries by phone thanks to the highly integrated online and mobile channel options it has introduced which, together with its proactive and personalised information alert services, have made the phone almost redundant. Today National Rail Enquiries is even licensing its travel information data to mobile app developers, which means that its omni-channel approach has not only saved it considerable amounts of money, it has also opened up new revenue streams.

So, while we may conclude that omni-channel is an irresistible tide, we must equally accept that it is one we would be mad to swim against. Consumer behaviour compels us, while the expectation of benefit on both sides of the balance sheet should be more than enough to fire our enthusiasm.

3 IDC Retail 2013


Taking the advantage

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the retail sector has been among the first to adopt omni-channel approaches and has made greater progress than most (though recent research among the giants of the UK High Street suggests none can claim to have truly arrived)4. Retailers have focused, in the first instance, on bringing the in-store experience online and are now working just as assiduously to bring the online experience in store.

Andy Street, Managing Director of UK High Street giant, John Lewis, puts the point very succinctly; “Our (omni-channel) strategy is simple. We know that about 60% of our customers buy online and in store, so our approach is to make it as seamless as possible for them to move from one to the other.” Annual online sales at John Lewis passed the £1 billion mark for the first time in April 2013, with 25% of online traffic coming via mobile. To reinforce this success, the company has announced a £40 million investment to support its omni-channel strategy.

John Lewis’ competitor, House of Fraser, having seen its online sales grow by around 100% year-on-year since 2007, has focused on ‘brick and click’ integration and now sees around 25% of online purchases collected in store. In October 2011 it took online integration a step further when it opened its first ‘concept store’. Instead of displays of shoes, clothes and accessories, shoppers are greeted by banks of ipads,

computers and interactive screens, bolstered by helpful staff that help them navigate to the goods they want and arrange for them to be collected or delivered. Essentially, House of Fraser is ‘virtualising’ the shopper experience.But it shouldn’t be imagined that retail is the only sector moving in this direction. In financial services, Virgin Money is taking its lessons from the same book, converting its newly acquired branches into ‘stores’ and ‘lounges’ where consumers can browse financial products, bank online or meet face-to-face with an advisor. And we have already mentioned the successes achieved by National Rail Enquiries and NOW TV. There are early adopters of omni-channel in virtually every industry sector; insightful companies that have recognised that they can use the myriad channels technology makes available to them to mirror customer behaviour and drive transactions.

Successful early adopters of omni-channel share a common characteristic; they have focused on the customer ahead of the technology. Too many organisations have done the reverse. “We need a strategy for mobile,” they say. Or for tablets. For Twitter or online or social or phone… Maybe. But what they need first is a strategy for the customer. By allowing customers to access the help, information or products they desire easily and in ways that seem natural to them, they will maximise their potential for profitable growth.

Customer first, technology second: the golden rule of omni-channel.

4 ‘Omni-Channel Customer Experience’, Webcredible, 2012


Taking the advantage (cont.)

Scenarios for success:

Scenario 1: Retail purchasePrint to mobile: A woman spots the ‘perfect summer outfit’ in a magazine advert. She scans the QR code in the corner of the ad with her smartphone.

Mobile to web: That takes her to the landing page for that retailer’s summer collection. She selects several items to her wish list and is sent helpful recommendations for complementary accessories.

Online to instore: She is invited to enter her height and clothes size, her chosen items are then displayed on a model just her size. She books an appointment to try them on herself at her nearest store and receives confirmation by text along with a map.

Social: With her appointment fixed for the next day, she’s happy to receive text links to social media forum pages that favourably review her selected items.

In store – with friends: When she arrives for her appointment the goods are already in the changing room. She downloads the retailer’s changing room app, which allows her to capture video of her in the clothes and forward them to her friends on Facebook to help her make her selection.

In store to at home: Having made her decision she pays by phone, but the to-die-for handbag she really wants isn’t available in store. She arranges to have it delivered to her home next day.

Next morning she receives a text confirming the exact delivery time, ensemble complete!

Here we’ve defined three omni-channel scenarios that demonstrate customer centric approaches to common processes in different B2C industry sectors. Each reflects a customer experience that any organisation would do well to aspire to. All well and good, but they also reveal very real commercial benefits on offer for to organi-sations that embrace omni-channel.



Scenario 2Banking – opening an accountTV to online: A man disillusioned with his current bank sees a compelling TV ad for a competitor. While the music is playing he uses his Shazam app to link to a dedicated landing page.

Online and social: When he asks about opening an account, he’s prompted to answer a few questions. His answers generate a recommendation for the most suitable account for him. The site also links him to social media reviews and independent product ratings.

On line to agent: He has the option to start an online application immediately, book an appointment in the branch or request a call back from an advisor, wanting added reassurance but to get the job done quickly, he asks for a call back.

Secure web chat: The call comes through immediately and he’s invited to log onto a website where documents can be shared using a unique code to protect security. He fires up his tablet. Together he and the contact centre agent go through the application process, with the agent entering customer details to his dictation. He then confirms acceptance of the bank’s terms and conditions.

Online, mobile, ongoing: The account now open, the advisor ensures the customer is registered for online and mobile banking services. The customer downloads a PDF record of the account opening and receives their digital welcome pack as an app to his smartphone. Because he’s also registered for the bank’s ‘switching service’, he is also notified by SMS when individual direct debits and standing orders have successfully transferred to his new account.



Scenario 3Pay TV – service callSocial to website: A film buff is having problems with his set-top box. He fires up his laptop and posts a question on a customer forum to see if anyone knows how to solve it. He receives a number of suggestions, one of which includes a link to the company’s website.

Website to web chat: The link connects him to the ‘Help’ area, where a YouTube video tells him just what to do. But he finds one step of the process troublesome so, when a pop-up prompt asks him if his problem has been solved, he answers ‘no’ and is invited to initiate a Video Chat with a service agent. He accepts, a link is established and he switches on his webcam to speak to the agent face-to-face.

Video streaming: Guided by the agent, he streams video of his set-top box and TV, so the agent can see the problem. The agent recognises the fault and knows an engineer will be needed to fix it. Because the agent has access to engineers’ schedules, he can see there is one is in the area that will be free in 30 minutes. He books an appointment and texts the customer’s address details to the engineer’s smartphone.

At home: The engineer arrives right on time and makes the repair. Next day when the agent sends an email to confirm whether the job is done, he receives a thank you from a happy customer.



The omni-channel two-stepAll of these scenarios are not only possible; they are typical of those starting to happen today in businesses across the UK. They all illustrate inventiveness. More than that, they illustrate the importance of melding channel strategies and operational processes to customer behaviour and of presenting opportunities to interact and transact that the customer will naturally welcome.

To my mind there are two steps towards an ideal omni-channel approach. The first is to facilitate customer behaviour, the second, to begin to shape it.

We know that customers’ channel choices are based on several factors; where they are (home, work, on the move), the devices available to them there (phone, computer, tablet, smartphone) and what they want to do. An organisation that’s taken the first omni-channel step will, at the very least, be able to recognise the customer across each of those channels and acknowledge previous interactions. So, if a customer calls the contact centre after attempting an online purchase, it’s reasonable to assume that’s what they’re calling about and get straight to the point

on the call. If they’ve entered their customer details via an IVR, they shouldn’t have to repeat them to an agent. The brand experience – from look and feel to tone of voice – should be consistent, differentiated and reassuring.

The companies in each of these three sample scenarios have progressed some distance beyond this. In each case, the steps in the journey have been carefully orchestrated by the organisation and have moved the customer on from one channel to the next in order to achieve their goal. Our lady shopper bought at least the handbag and shoes to go with the dress. Our restless banking customer had no opportunity to succumb to the inertia he’d probably have felt if faced with a complicated and time consuming switching process. Our film fan got his problem solved and went back to the movie instead of wondering whether he ought to switch supplier for a better deal.

The lesson is a simple one. However they’ve made contact, customers should feel they’ve entered your world and that they can get things done there. In that way, your world will become their world and they’ll feel inclined to stay.

Step one: Facilitate customer journeys

• Achieve 360 degree view of the customer • Integrate channels to create streamlined

customer journeys• Anticipate and accommodate your customers’

desire to ‘channel-hop’

Step two: Shape customer journeys

• Analyse actual customer behaviour to design and encourage optimal customer journeys

• Complement analytics with human intelligence from experienced ‘practitioner-analysts’

• Adopt a continuous improvement approach to constantly test, learn and improve

The Webhelp UK omni-channel two-step


When it comes to the second move in the omni-channel quick step, the power of analytics comes to the fore. Once integrated channel access has been offered to clients, you can begin to profitably observe how they choose to use it. You can see where they hit road blocks and remove them, or identify opportunities to streamline the journey for your customer’s convenience and your own economy. In short, you can work progressively and relentlessly towards optimal customer journeys that are efficient and profitable for you as well as satisfying for the customer.

The application of analytics technologies that can work across channels is the first step towards this continuous improvement cycle. But it is not a complete answer. Though the hype around analytics technologies has been extensive, take up has been slow. The Professional Planning


Forum estimates that there are no more than 12 organisations in the UK applying analytics to their voice interactions in any serious way, let alone to their omni-channel strategies5 . There are several possible reasons for this. The most likely, in my mind, is that organisations have expected too much of technology and been disappointed. It can, after all, only capture data. We must rely on seasoned customer management practitioners to interpret that data and arrive at observations and recommendations for change. This is an area where we have invested heavily to create one of a set of ‘Smart’ methodologies that underpin our approach to transformational outsourcing. We have built a team of customer insight specialists who turn data from every channel into actionable intelligence that can be used to refine omni-channel journeys in order to reduce cost and to build revenue for our clients.

5 ‘How to Gain Measurable Benefit from Speech Analytics’ A PPF Best Practice Guide


The way forward

If an omni-channel future is so desirable, why have so few companies achieved it? The 2012 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report reveals the shocking fact that, although 91% of organisations have supplemented voice with digital channels, only 9% have integrated them – the first step towards omni-channel.

There are many reasons why this is the case and they revolve around management structures, the processes those structures dictate, and technology.

Here are three steps we recommend you take to overcome these obstacles.

91% of organisations have supplemented voice with digital channels. Only 9% have integrated them.6

Step One: Challenge organisational structuresDepartmental silos, like death and taxes, have always been with us. With channel proliferation, they have become entrenched. Digital channels have typically been the preserve of marketing. The contact centre (in most cases synonymous with the voice channel) has typically belonged to an operational, service-focused infrastructure, while the physical network – stores in the case of retail or branches in the case of banks, for example – reports up another operational line and is frequently seen as the ‘heart’ of the business even in organisations with growing digital revenues. Even organisations that see all three of these infrastructures as revenue generators rarely manage them in a cohesive way.

Let’s consider a very real-world example of how this would lead to confusion for the customer and risk for the business. In a company where digital and social channels are the exclusive preserve of the marketing department, a complaint raised on Facebook would not be subject to the same workflow or case management processes that would be applicable if that complaint was raised by phone in the contact centre. The marketing executive would likely either ignore the complaint or would have to act upon their initiative to solve it or find a colleague with the ability, influence and inclination to help. Cumbersome, inefficient and unpredictable; everything a customer doesn’t want. Faced with no response or a poor one, the customer might decide to call the contact centre, whose ill-prepared agent would have no idea that the complaint had already been lodged via another channel – and a very public one at that. It’s easy to see how the situation could escalate.

6 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report, 2012, Dimension Data


80% of omni-channel implementations will fail because of siloed approaches and channel centric strategies.

Gartner

The way forward (cont.)

Omni-channel has the potential to unlock previously unimaginable opportunities for revenue gain and cost reduction.

Action:• Appoint a Board level executive with silo-straddling powers to initiate an omni-

channel strategy.

• Establish, under that executive’s leadership, a cross-functional team that includes customer management, marketing and operations to drive change across the business.

• Win executive buy-in by focusing on the revenue-enhancing potential of change.

However many channels you introduce, they will not serve your business profitably unless lines of authority and established organisational power bases are overturned. Research from Gartner predicts that 80% of omni-channel implementations will fail because of siloed approaches and channel centric strategies that will turn customers off, with inevitable negative impact on loyalty and sales.7

An omni-channel approach is, by definition, a customer-centric one, in which the processes of the organisation are wrapped around the customer. So long as channels are controlled by different teams with different processes, objectives and measures of success, this can never be. Breaking down the organisational silos and creating common purpose between the departments that ‘own’ each channel is

the painful first step towards an omni-channel strategy. It can only be achieved if directed from the top. Understanding why you’re doing it is the key to getting buy-in. It isn’t about ‘delighting the customer’ or jumping on any ‘killer app’ bandwagon; it’s about designing and delivering customer experiences that unlock previously unimaginable opportunities for revenue gain and cost reduction.

In our experience, the organisations that have been most successful in omni-channel are those that have appointed a Board level executive with overall responsibility for the customer experience and the remit to overstep organisational boundaries to effect change.

7 ‘Predicts 2012’ , Gartner, 2012



Step two:Universal processesWe saw earlier how different contact management processes (or the lack of them) between different channel-owning departments can impede the customer experience. So long as teams develop plans and approaches in isolation and without reference to others, the omni-channel customer experience will remain an unobtainable goal.

The first role of an omni-channel strategy team is to address all business processes that can affect the customer experience and ensure they are mutually supportive.

Where should they start?

In most organisations the contact centre has the greatest degree of interaction with customers and the most ‘industrial strength’ processes for managing them. For that reason it is, perhaps, the logical place to begin. There has been talk for some years now about the ‘virtualisation of the contact centre’; the aim being to draw into its operational orbit a wide range of ‘subject matter experts’ from across the organisation in order to address customer issues, or to create a unified community of inhouse, outsourced and even homeworking teams to share volume flexibly. Certainly the technology exists now to make this happen, but the processes for managing the interactions that a virtualised, omni-channel contact centre undertakes must be firmly established and commonly held.

A word of caution: It would be wrong to assume without question that, because the contact centre has processes, that they are necessarily the best ones, or that the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) they drive are the most appropriate. In every case these would have to be readdressed, re-evaluated and redesigned to accommodate omni-channel approaches.

It would be ambitious indeed to describe within the confines of this paper the ideal processes for any and every customer management operation. Let’s instead consider the three KPIs we at Webhelp UK focus on with greatest intensity and consider how they could be applied to all channels.

The first is Customer Effort. The debate about what constitutes a ‘good’ customer experience will likely run on forever, but, to my mind, a ‘good’ experience is one that’s easy for the customer and profitable for the organisation. In the omni-channel scenarios we described in the previous chapter, it cannot have escaped your attention that the focus was on making each step effortless, even intuitive, for the customer. Making it easier for customers to make contact, resolve their issues and complete their purchases can only have two possible outcomes: it will cost less to serve them and they will be more likely to spend.

Elevating an ‘easy’ experience into a ‘delightful’ one is a recognised source of customer advocacy across any channel. Psychological research has repeatedly shown that direct behavioural experiences have the greatest impact on peoples’ attitudes towards brands. It is for this reason that we at Webhelp UK supplement Customer Effort with Customer Satisfaction (CSat) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as key measures across the customer contact operations we manage for our clients. To capture precisely the impact of the customer interaction on advocacy, we have developed ‘Touchpoint NPS’. Contacting customers immediately after an interaction – via whichever channel it finally concludes upon – we ask about its impact on their likelihood to recommend the company, giving us a true measure of how brand value is being built or destroyed.



Whatever additional key performance measures you decide upon for your customer management activities, some of which will be defined by the idiosyncrasies of your industry or your business, make sure any outsourced operations you have are measured in the same way. It is all too common for outsourced service providers’ performance to be judged purely on productivity measures; an unfortunate legacy of ‘old-style’ procurement approaches that saw outsourcing as little more than an opportunity to achieve cost reduction by harnessing a third party’s economies of scale. This will lead to a service-compromising dichotomy in your approach, where your inhouse operations are focused on enhancing the customer experience and your outsourced operations are focused on ‘doing it cheap’.

Action:• Identify and address all business processes that affect the customer experience and

ensure they are mutually supportive.

• Establish common key performance measures across all channels and across in-house and outsourced operations

• Focus on business outcomes ahead of productivity – loyalty, advocacy and spend.

• Adopt Customer Effort and Touchpoint NPS as key performance measures to ensure productive customer experiences.

• Challenge outsourced service providers to support and inform your omni-channel strategy – and to base their remuneration on its achievement.

There is, indeed, a sea-change occurring in customer management outsourcing that you may benefit from. Mature players are positioning themselves to manage omni-channel interactions and to advise clients on the way their customers might select and use them. Consider; in the past you may have valued your outsourcer’s ‘volume-based efficiency’; in the future you may value their ‘volume-based insight’. And you can reinforce your ability to win by basing their remuneration, not on agent seats or calls per hour (irrelevancies in an omni-channel world), but on the contribution they make to your real business objectives – the growth of revenue and advocacy.



Step three: TechnologyWhile consumers adopt new technologies with ease and at speed, the organisations that serve them are disadvantaged by aging infrastructures that are too inflexible to adapt and too expensive to replace. As we have noted, the contact centre is often at the heart of a company’s customer management strategy, and there the pain is being felt acutely. The 2012 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report identified that less than 20% of organisations believe that the core technology infrastructure components within their contact centres could meet their future needs. And that included the very technology elements most crucial to an omni-channel strategy; knowledge management, CRM systems and channel routing applications.8

For the first time ever, customers have better technology than we do.Prof Morris Pentel, CEO, The Customer Experience Foundation

We have identified three key areas of technology that need to be synchronised in order to deliver effective omni-channel services:• CRM• Knowledgemanagement• Crosschannelanalytics

CRM: Most organisations hold and manage customer information in a plethora of different CRM systems that are not universally available to teams across the organisation managing different channels. A 360 degree view of the customer is a key requirement if customers

are to be recognised and followed as they travel across channels. Achieving it in your organisation may involve some heavy integration or even the replacement of systems, but true omni-channel service delivery will not be achieved without it.

Knowledge management: If customers are to receive a consistent experience and – essentially – the same answers across any and all channels, those channels must draw upon a central repository of shared information that is constantly updated and universally available across the organisation. Many organisations are still operating with channel specific or even function specific knowledgebases that, again, have been allowed to proliferate.

The knowledgebase solution you choose must be able to embrace all channels, from voice to web and social media. And you need a cross functional team dedicated to its ongoing maintenance.

Cross channel analytics: There is broad acceptance that the most valuable data available to customer management operations lies in actual customer interactions – unstructured, complex data that is rapidly growing in volume. Omni-channel customer journeys create big data, but only by interrogating it holistically, not within channel silos, will you be able to understand the direction of your customers’ journeys with you and the points at which they falter. Earlier in this document we mentioned our work to reduce agent assisted interactions from 90% to 50% for NowTV. This is being worked upon by our specialist team of customer experience analysts who are using analytics technologies to bring the crude ore of customer interaction data to the surface and their own experience and skill to refine it into the gold of actionable intelligence.

8 Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report’, 2012, Dimension Data



Few organisations in today’s economy have an appetite for big ticket technology investment. So, what to do? For many, the advent of hosted technologies presents a very real way forward, which allows fixed asset cost to be translated into flexible operational cost; technology on a ‘pay as you go’ basis, if you like. Certainly respondents to the Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report recognise its potential to get them out of a technology cul-de-sac. Fifty nine percent of them reference its flexibility, 65% its economic attractiveness and, importantly, 52% its potential to facilitate a move towards a distributed

Action• Focus on the integration of CRM and knowledge management systems

• Apply cross-channel analytics to map and refine customer journeys

• Examine the opportunities offered by hosting

• Challenge your outsourcer to match or advance your technological capabilities in key areas.

Your journeyThe shift towards omni-channel customer management isn’t really a choice. In a culture where customers have both choice and the disposition to exercise it, they will opt to work with those organisations that serve them in ways they want to be served. In short, your business will become uncompetitive twice-over. First, this will be because your omni-channel competitors

technology architectures able to support several operations and channels simultaneously.Outsourcers, too, can come to your aid. While they have typically been reluctant to invest in technology ahead of client demand, many are now realising that their future prosperity depends on their ability to manage multiple channels and are investing in the technology to support it. Like hosting, this allows you to achieve a technological advantage without large scale upfront investment.

will use service quality as a differentiator to win your customers away. Second, because your ‘poor’ service will become increasingly expensive to deliver. Don’t imagine for a second that there are not dramatic cost savings to be achieved by creating effective omni-channel customer experiences. If you don’t choose to do so, you are turning your back on them.


About the author

David Turner, CEO, Webhelp UK

In a career spanning almost thirty years, David has been at the forefront of channel innovation to support business growth within leading UK and international businesses. He began his career at Marks & Spencer where, in the late 1980’s, he was responsible for the creation of M&S Direct. Under his leadership it grew to be a £275 million business, signalling an industry-wide trend away from pure ‘bricks and mortar’ retailing that would accelerate as the digital revolution gathered pace. He left Marks & Spencer in 2000 to take up leadership of the change management business Trinity Horne, where he specialised in the development of growth strategies for service businesses including NTL, Thames Water and BT, for whom he developed an early multi-channel customer management strategy.

He joined Webhelp UK (then HEROtsc) in 2008 with a remit to grow the business by delivering channel innovation and insight-based contact strategies. In 2012, he orchestrated the company’s acquisition by French-based Webhelp, which has injected extensive digital experience into the business and provided the company with a strong European footprint.

Webhelp UK is part of the Webhelp Group, which provides comprehensive customer lifecycle management services across a range of digital, social and traditional voice channels to an international client base.

The Webhelp Group has been an innovator in omni-channel management, having begun life in the year 2000 providing real-time online assistance to Europe’s early but fast growing community of Internet users. Today the group provides digital channel management for more than half of its client base and, on behalf of its eight largest clients, manages the complete lifecycle of key customer groups across all channels.

Webhelp operates from 10 locations across the UK and 27 across mainland Europe and Africa, providing multi and omni-channel services to some of the UK’s most progressive brands and businesses including BT, Cisco, FedEx, Groupon, NOW TV, Office Depot, Photobox, Sky and Vodafone. The business has trebled its revenues in the past five years by focusing on value-based outsourcing, channel expansion and the use of cross-channel analytics to create optimal customer journeys.

The Webhelp Group employs 18,000 people across 37 sites across Europe and Africa. Its British

headquarters are in London, UK.

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CHANNELING THE EXPERIENCE - Webhelp...the same book, converting its newly acquired branches into ‘stores’ and ‘lounges’ where consumers can browse financial products, bank

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