Apple just rocked the world of consumer electronics again, with its launch of the Apple Watch. If the wrist-wonder follows the successful trajectory of other Apple devices, it won’t be too long before it becomes an indispensable part of our lives.
Innovative technology has the habit of recalibrating our expectations as we begin to comprehend what it can do for us. The previously unthinkable becomes routine. But game changing results don’t come from buying the latest technology, they come from using it – and that makes all the difference.
The latest innovation in interaction analytics technology “ups the ante” for users too, making it possible to gain even greater insights from your contact center data. And the insights don’t just apply to improvements in the contact center; they can inform strategic decisions across the enterprise. Here’s how:
Five Ways Interaction Analytics Can Impact Your Bottom Line:
1. Sales – Optimizing Offers and Delivery. For companies who rely on inbound calls to drive revenue, making the most of each selling opportunity is critical to the bottom line. Captured interactions can paint a vivid picture of what happens during calls, so companies can adjust their tactics. With analytics, you can uncover customer reactions to specific product offers and find out which offers are most appealing. You can hear common objections to offers, and learn how to overcome them. You can even find out what makes your highest-selling agents successful, and then get the rest of the team to do the same things. Interaction analytics can give you direct feedback from your customers to help you design and deliver offers more effectively.
A client of ours in the health and beauty products industry used insights from its interactions to make sure its agents were consistent from one customer to the next. The company was able to pinpoint agent behaviors that led to its desired call outcomes, and put these techniques into practice across its entire sales team. As a result, the company has seen big improvements to its close rates.
2. Customer Retention – Preempting Customer Churn. How can you predict which customers are at risk of cancellation? Have disappointing experiences prompted them to shop for service elsewhere? Are your competitors effective at wooing them away?
One of our communications clients discovered the answers to these key questions with interaction analytics, and took steps to save the accounts. This client’s research into call histories showed that many customers had been signaling that there were unresolved issues and dissatisfaction during calls that happened well before their cancellation date. Key topics and events kept surfacing in conversations with these former customers that connected with patterns of subsequent churn. By recognizing those same patterns among existing customers, the company could attempt to correct any unresolved issues and save the at-risk accounts before it was too late.
3. Product/Service Delivery – Deploy Responsive Course Corrections. The best laid plans don’t always go as expected, but customer feedback can help steer initiatives back on course. One of our clients, a major software developer, experienced a spike in customer service calls on the heels of a new product launch. A quick investigation into the increased call volume showed that customers were having problems installing the new software on certain computer configurations.
This insight helped developers discover a previously-undiscovered glitch, and determine how widespread the problem was likely to be. Armed with this information, the product management team was able to rapidly communicate a temporary workaround solution to affected customers, and engineer a permanent fix for future product shipments, helping contain a costly and embarrassing situation.
4. Marketing – Reveal Customer Attitudes. Learning why your customers prefer your products – or those of your competitors – can be marketing gold. This is especially true in the financial services industry, where the battle for “wallet share” can be won or lost based on customer experience. Our financial clients are using interaction analytics to give themselves a competitive edge by better understanding the customer journey.
One of our clients – a retail bank – discovered that many of their customers thought it was simply too hard to do business with them. This client measured “customer effort” and found that this metric was directly linked to the market’s perception of the bank’s brand. Unhappy customers aren’t likely to open new accounts or expand their relationship with a bank; they’re more likely to move their accounts elsewhere. Our analytics revealed where the bank’s customers were frustrated by its inability to provide a seamless experience across all their different contact channels. With this new knowledge, the bank took steps to improve their “interaction landscape.” Now it’s easier to do business with them, and the bank has an opportunity to grow their relationship with customers.
5. Operations – Adapt processes; maximize performance. Business as usual may be costing you more than you realize. Operational inefficiencies can be driven by a case of “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Interaction analytics can help dispel the mysteries that surround customer behavior, and help your organization take a more proactive approach to managing internal processes for maximum efficiency.
A hotel chain client of ours was blindsided by an unexpected spike in the number of cancellation calls to their reservation center during a time when call volumes were expected to stay flat. With many more incoming calls than anticipated, the call center was short staffed, and service quality suffered. Our team was able to help the organization discover the reasons behind the sharp increase in cancellation calls, and take steps to address the operational issues that prompted the call spike.
Game changing results don’t come from just buying the latest technology, it’s from using it that you begin to experience the difference it can make in your life. Companies like the ones I’ve mentioned here are experiencing the rewards of using next-generation interaction analytics technology, and they all share an important realization that might be of interest to you, too. Interaction analytics can impact your bottom line far beyond the contact center. Failing to use it to drive strategic value across your enterprise is like wearing the new Apple Watch just to tell time.
