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One in three contact centers is outdated
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Companies are failing to tap e-mail and internet potential
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Centralized knowledgebase guarantees better customer service
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Hamburg, Germany, February 22nd, 2005 –
Traditional call centers are reaching the end of their lifecycle. The future of customer communication lies in the hands of multi-channel contact centers capable of fielding calls and providing customers with all-round e-mail and internet service. The reason: channels such as e-mail or the internet are playing an increasingly important role in everyday communication according to the study, "Customer Communication Trends", carried out by software provider novomind and the trade journal TeleTalk. Three out of five specialist and executive representatives from contact centers in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Great Britain believe that the role played by the e-mail communication channel is set to grow exponentially. And the 2005 "Contact Center Trends" study shows that at last half are convinced that the internet will become an increasingly vital medium in the field of customer communications. Yet one in three contact centers has still to implement a system capable of combining the individual communication channels.
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E-mail currently account for about ten percent of customer communication instances – and this number is rising constantly. The result: to keep afloat, call centers which previously focused exclusively on customer contacts via the phone channel will need to invest in new communication solutions for integration into existing service infrastructures. "The market situation calls for universal providers capable of serving all customer communication channels," says novomind AG’s CEO, Peter Samuelsen, "but a lot of companies are currently lagging behind in this respect." For example, just 34 percent of the representatives who took part have combination call centers capable of fielding both telephone and e-mail requests. And self-service systems which customers can access independently to answer their questions independently are thin on the ground. Only about 14 percent of specialist and executive representatives who participated in the study have already implemented this type of system.
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Of all the communication channels, e-mail is the medium most urgently in need of optimization.
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On the other hand, e-mail management systems – designed to apply artificial intelligence to analyze, categorize and generate (semi-)automatic responses to incoming e-mails – are more common. More than half of those who took part in the study already utilize such a system. However, increasing numbers of e-mail customer queries will require further investments: approximately 80 percent of participants believe that their company’s e-mail management system is in need of improvement.
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The aim is to optimize service offerings by offering less cost-intensive e-mail services, aimed in particular at "poor dog" customers whose service demands are low but who also bring in minimal turnover. 64 percent of participants would prefer to attend to these customers by e-mails, 16 percent see online customer communication as the way forward. On the other hand, however, the most profitable customer groups – the "cash cows" (requiring little service but bringing in high turnover) and "stars" (relatively high service requirements but high turnover) – should receive service in person and by phone.
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High-profit customers should be addressed in person or by phone, low-profit customers primarily via e-mail.
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The increasingly important role of e-mail and the internet and the different service approaches required for individual customer groups are recent developments which traditional call centers are not equipped to deal with. Often, they opt for makeshift solutions that integrate new media into the existing infrastructure on a purely provisional basis – putting the loyalty of their customers at serious risk. A market research study into e-mail communication in the retail and service sector, carried out by psychonomics AG, clearly indicates the extent to which the quality of customer communication suffers from the implementation of such "emergency" solutions: just twelve percent of participating companies succeeded in responding to all test queries sent to them by e-mail. Identical customer complaints which are dealt with very differently depending on whether they were made via the phone or e-mal channel provide further proof that new technologies are not being combined satisfactorily. What is missing is a coherent and centralized concept enabling the different communication channels to be managed and coordinated efficiently.
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novomind has solved this problem with its new communication solution, the Self-Service Suite. How? All individual communication systems for the different channels access a single, central knowledge database. The novomind iMail™ component manages incoming e-mails and novomind IQ™ helps customer service agents answer telephone hotline queries by extracting and displaying data directly from the knowledgebase. The third component – the novomind TruaTALK™ live chat system – enables customers to initiate a direct text chat with qualified service staff, while automatically generating suggested responses which agents can use to answer customer queries.
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A single knowledgebase for all communication channels.
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novomind AG is the leading provider of digital customer communication solutions enabling optimized processes and lower costs. The product department’s portfolio includes e-mail management systems, as well as virtual customer services assistants and systems for interactive communication in real time. The novomind services department develops complex e-business applications, including scalable online shop solutions. novomind’s products and solutions focus on future-oriented service, efficient and personalized communication, and higher-performance administration. A rapid ROI is guaranteed and ongoing, long-term customer loyalty ensured. Leading companies from across the market sectors – including Bertelsmann Der Club, Otto, Sparkasse Erlangen, BKK Gesundheit, Travelocity and Hannoversche Leben, as well as public sector representatives such as the German Federal Ministry of Health and Social Security (BMGS) – have already successfully implemented novomind systems to boost customer loyalty, turnover and public relations.
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