A seismic shift occurring in the world of customer service is about to shake the contact center community like a 9.9 Richter scale earthquake. In a movement that the Wall Street Journal has called ‘customer service as a growth engine,’ corporate executives today are elevating customer care from a necessary cost of doing business to a competitive differentiator that can help grow the bottom line. For contact center managers, that means the pressure is on like never before.
 
As the Wall Street Journal reported last year, for example, cable provider Comcast has ratcheted up training and coaching efforts for its 24,000 call center agents in an effort to improve customer retention and upsell rates. Similarly, American Express has trained call center agents in more than 20 countries to focus less on rapid call resolution and more on building customer loyalty in a bid to drive additional sales. Inevitably, other companies will be jumping on the bandwagon.
 
The new role of the contact center in the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers is a byproduct of broad market and technology developments that have created a need for fresh methods of customer acquisition and retention. Among the challenges: redefining customer care in an environment where the three S’s of self-service, smartphones and social media have put unprecedented power in the hands of customers themselves.
 
Changing Market
 
From a business perspective, the transformation in customer service is being sparked by a convergence of reduced consumer tolerance for inadequate problem handling and an increasingly competitive marketplace. Consider that:

• 69% of consumers responding to an Accenture poll said they had switched at least one provider because of poor customer service in 2009. That’s two percentage points higher than in 2008 and 10 points higher than 2007.
• 91% of Americans in a recent American Express survey consider the level of customer service important when deciding to do business with a company; 81% are likely to give a company repeat business after a good service experience; and 51% are likely never to do business with a company again after a poor experience.
• 89% of consumers in a Purdue University study said they would probably repurchase from a company that effectively resolved a problem with a product. Surprisingly, that’s 11 points higher than those who purchased a product with NO problems.
• 80% of business executives questioned by Strativity Group think that customer service strategy is more important than it was three years ago; 95% see it as the next competitive battleground; and 57% believe it is a way to differentiate the business.

• With the rising acceptance of self-service, consumers have told Gartner that they will be willing to do all possible customer service functions themselves by 2012. The trend – being driven in part by younger consumers who are less inclined to use live assistance for routine queries – will require contact centers to enhance both their IVR and web self-service capabilities as well as to continually measure results and refine their options.
• With the explosion of smartphones, analysts predict there will be more Internet access by phone than computer by 2014. As more customers gain the ability to call, text, chat or visit a company website, Facebook page or Twitter account directly from the handset, contact centers will need to step up to the multichannel challenge – including blending channels on the inbound and knowing customers’ channel preferences on the outbound.
• And with the ubiquity of social media, contact centers will not only need to integrate social capabilities into their workflow but also take steps – in some cases changing the entire customer service culture – to avoid becoming a victim of an online smear campaign. Managers must also be prepared to initiate damage control in the event of negative reviews or an attack that goes viral.