September 2001
 

Creating A Contact Strategy For The Enterprise

BY KARL A. WALDER

All relationships, whether business or personal, are founded on the communication of ideas. A relationship will grow or wither depending on the level of communication and the mutual acceptance of ideas communicated by the parties. Therefore, communication is the key to building a profitable relationship and should be a cornerstone in the development of your customer and partner relationship management strategy. This type of intimate relationship requires a personal, human touch that uses these new communication channels affectively across the value chain.

In business, it is not feasible to create this type of intimate relationship with every customer and for all of their business processes. However, there are those customers that represent a high customer lifetime value (CLV), which is the calculation of the net worth a customer brings to a company's bottom line. With high-CLV customers, a company should use these new channels to create a one-on-one, intimate relationship across the value chain. The key is to select a subset of processes that will help strengthen the relationship and build CLV. Understanding the overall value chain and the associated customer interaction points is essential to adding multiple communication channels to a strategy for building these stronger, more intimate relationships with high-CLV customers.

CREATING A HOLISTIC EXPERIENCE
A contact strategy needs to provide a one-on-one communication mechanism between high-CLV customers and company representatives in support of revenue generation. The contact center traditionally has been the primary interaction point between the customer and the business. The typical contact center, however, is not equipped or budgeted to service aspects of the value chain in situations involving longer sales cycle products that require consultative sales processes. Therefore, a business begins the process of introducing multiple communication channels to create a holistic, one-on-one communication experience by selecting a specific set of business processes for a specific business objective.

Two fundamental transaction mechanisms are used to facilitate communication: assisted transactions and unassisted transactions. Assisted transactions require interaction and collaboration with a human being. Unassisted transactions require no human counterpart to represent the business. The cost of an unassisted transaction is much lower, if not negligible, when compared to an assisted transaction. Assisted service transactions drive CLV growth if they support marketing and sales processes for products and services. The human touch is still required for a consultative sales process to support the distribution of these complex non-commodity products and services.

Tactical business goals must be established for the communication strategy. For example, to introduce a new financial service the following objectives would be set:

• Optimize the use of assisted-service interaction for revenue generating business processes (sales, marketing, and distribution) targeted to high CLV customers.
   
• Optimize the use of self-service alternatives for cost-accounting business processes (customer service and accounts receivable).

Over the last three years, financial institutions experienced increased market demand for self-service options to support the sales, marketing, and distribution of their financial products and services. These processes fall into the customer service dimension of the value chain. The financial institutions responded to this demand by creating self-service Web portals in support of account management, stock trading, and portfolio management. As the stock market's bubble burst, individual investors watched their portfolios shrink and began abandoning this self-service investing approach. Now, customers representing high CLV to financial institutions are looking for more professional advice to help manage their portfolios. This requires that the companies create personal relationships with local financial advisors, either at the local bank branch or with an independent distributor.

• Typically, a marketing program is designed to stimulate customer interest in using these local advisors to help customers create an investment strategy to obtain their financial goals. The obstacles that must be overcome to make this program successful include:
   
• Clients' schedules do not accommodate meeting advisors during business hours.
   
• Need to increase the appointments with qualified or high CLV customers to create stronger personal relationships with advisors.
   
• Optimize the advisors' time and schedule more meetings with clients per day.
   
• Alter the role of the distributor (financial advisor) to support enhanced, multi-channel communication for assisted service contact center processes to accommodate customers' hectic schedules.

This type of program affects the business' marketing, sales, distribution, and customer service value chain. Components of a contact strategy created to overcome these obstacles include:

• Direct mail and e-mail to notify customers of a new financial advisor program.
   
• Use both self-service and the contact center to schedule appointments for local neighborhood-based distributors or bank branch-based financial advisors.
   
• Use a multi-channel collaborative sales technique (Web collaboration and phone) to create a virtual meeting experience at the customer's office.
   
• Setting up both notification and response applications that optimize the assisted and self-service communication channels.

WHY WILL THIS STRATEGY WORK?
Existing Web customers typically have given the business permission to communicate using e-mail or messages posted to the customer's portal. These channels have the highest probability of bringing customers to a self-service Web page to view promotional marketing material and schedule appointments.

The contact strategy development process affects multiple departments across the organization and the distribution channels. The marketing organization is responsible for market segmentation and e-mail content. Either the marketing or contact center is responsible for the mechanics of the e-mail generation process. Most organizations rely on the marketing department for this support.

The e-mail contains URLs that bring the customer to a self-service scheduling Web page. Customers may schedule their own appointments on the Web or use an IVR that utilizes the same self-service application. This self-service application generates a confirmation e-mail sent to both the customer and the local advisor.

This interaction affects both the marketing and distribution organization's processes. With the appropriate customer interaction management system in place, customers that require assisted service during the appointment scheduling process may use either the contact center, local bank branches, or independent distributor resources to handle e-mail, or Web collaboration requests as part of the scheduling process. Inbound calls are best handled in the traditional contact center. Most organizations handle the scheduling process in the contact center, preferring to optimize advisor resources for the sales and advisory processes.

An e-mail response management system (ERMS) can route e-mail, auto respond, or use distributor, bank branch personnel, or contact center agents in the e-mail response process. Properly configured, the contact center agents and off site advisors use the same self service application the customer uses to schedule these appointments.

The last component of the contact management strategy is to execute an advisor consultation appointment. This assisted service transaction requires a combination of the customer's personal Web portal, a Web collaboration tool, and outbound voice call management. At the scheduled time, the customer logs into their account, selects customer service, and then the option to speak with their advisor.

The advisor, using Web collaboration, initiates a Web chat session with the customer while viewing the same account Web page as the customer. At this time, the advisor makes an outbound call to the customer's office phone. This can be accomplished with either a direct dial call or an integrated outbound dialing solution. Once the customer has answered the phone, the advisor takes over the session and, using the customer's own account portal pages, reviews the customer's account and current financial holdings. The agent then guides the customer through a financial goals questionnaire, which is also available on the Web site. The advisor evaluates the questionnaire and pushes Web pages describing the financial products of interest to the customer.

Once the customer has selected new products or has made changes to his current investments, the advisor can push the appropriate forms for these changes to the customer, or let the customer make the changes himself. The consultation with the customer concludes with an e-mail transcript of the session and by making a follow up appointment to review his account in six months. The contact strategy not only requires the introduction of new contact channels of e-mail and Web collaboration, but it also uses existing self-service and voice contact channels. The contact strategy spanned the value chain and required resources from marketing, distribution, and the contact center. Self-service was the primary channel for the customer service and mechanical aspects of the strategy.

The assisted service channels changed the role of the distributors or bank branch resources in support of the marketing and sales revenue generation goals. Web Collaboration combined with outbound telephony solved both the customer and advisor scheduling problem. In addition, this strategy meets the business goals of fostering a relationship between the customer and the local advisors or distributor.

Karl A. Walder is director of eBusiness Product and Service Strategies for eshare communications, a premier global provider of integrated customer interaction management (CIM) solutions that power the customer relationship strategies of businesses conducting traditional and Internet commerce.

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