Self-service can be better service

Are your agents swamped during peak times – leading to abandoned calls, long queues and frustrated callers? Do your agents have to waste valuable time answering calls that are repetitive and mundane? As staffing for peak times is rarely cost-effective, ensuring you can provide a consistent level of customer service is a key business challenge.

Time is money; money is time. Every call centre wants to improve efficiencies and reduce operational expenditure. But there is a remarkable opportunity: 67% of consumers would rather use voice self-service than an off-shore facility. Self-service offers benefits to you, your customers, and your employees. The steps to achieving this ideally include:

Operational flexibility – virtualisation can increase resource utilisation with centralised management and control.

Improved reporting – centralised reporting and pro-active monitoring.

Cost reduction – better resource use, lower cost channels, call avoidance through self-service, reduced support and system maintenance.

Technology refresh – replacing aging Automatic Call Distribution systems that are difficult to maintain and out of support. Unifying siloed operations and provide new multimedia support.

An automatic call-back can save a customer

BT ‘s expertise working with leading providers – including Nortel, Avaya, Genesys, Cisco , Eckoh, and nGenera – enables you to:

• Establish virtualised contact centres using Internet Protocol (IP) technologies.
• Implement interactive voice response (IVR) capabilities to enable customer self-service.
• Reduce call waiting times, with “Queuebuster” technology – offering callers the option of being called back instead of waiting on the line.
• Automate a wide range of customer interactions to improve productivity and positively transform the customer experience and increase loyalty

The self-service approach to customer relationship management helps customers access the information they want faster. And it can perform routine tasks over the Internet, without requiring any interaction with a representative of an enterprise – saving you major expenses. For employees and customers, self-service offers 24 hour-a-day support and immediate access to information without having to wait for an email response or a returned telephone call.

Self-service solutions reduce the cost of contacts by up to 90%

The BT Self Service solution automates labour-intensive calling tasks, so your operators are able to perform more complex and revenue-generating tasks. Customer satisfaction is also increased by reduced calling times.

According to Forrester Research, the cost of the average Web self-service session is $1 – compared to $10 for an email response – and $33 for a telephone call.

Another benefit self-service can bring you is the ability to gather personal information about the people who use it. Users may be asked to enter identifying information, or their information can be collected in other ways – for example – through examining click stream data. Tracking and analysis software may be used to create a pseudonymous profile of the user for research and targeted marketing purpose Self Service will:

Reduce costs and improve efficiency

• Cut cost of ownership and cost per contact
• Improve employee productivity – helping them concentrate on non-routine contacts
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Implement solutions that have proven ROI

Increase revenue potential

• Give customers access to information, products and services, 24/7
• Smooth out fluctuating seasonal or market drivers

Improve strategy implementation

• Offer a variety of products and services through self-service platforms
• Enable agents to access knowledge bases, to speed up response times and improve first-contact resolution

Save your cash-flow

• Limiting any need for capital investment, if you prefer the Op-ex rather than Cap-ex model
• Serve more customers with same or less resource

“We’ve moved much of our HR administration from a high-cost transactional business into an intranet-based, self-service system. BT was hugely supportive in building this platform with us and offering their expertise. They are a very powerful partner.”

– Colin Hilton, Chief Executive, Liverpool City Council

Get in touch with your BT Account Manager to learn more about Call Queue Management and Self-service, and how you can drive down the cost of customer service and help your customers to help themselves.