CLEAR SKIES FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

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1 How cloud technology is revolutionising the customer engagement platform 1

2 Foreword from the Cloud Industry Forum For any business hoping to stay ahead of its competitors, building and maintaining positive relationships with customers is crucial. The ubiquity of technology has contributed a great deal towards making our lives more convenient and efficient in general, but the flip side to this is that customer demand is greater than it has ever been. Expectations are high, and they must be met swiftly and effectively if customer loyalty is to be assured. Modern customer engagement is a complex, multi-faceted challenge that can only be met if organisations have the technology in place that enables staff to manage queries in a way that maximises customer satisfaction. This means having the capability to administer customer interactions from a variety of different channels, whether this be phone, , online chat or social media, and being ready to combine this with the latest innovations such as AI. The technology that a company has in place to serve this purpose has to be powerful, reliable and free from the inefficiencies common to older legacy systems. This is where the cloud has a leading role to play in customer engagement. For customer interaction to work in the best possible way, organisations need to move away from the disjointed, disparate nature of older systems, towards a new configuration that emphasises speed and agility. Moreover, to be successful in this climate, organisations must ensure that communication can be managed from any location and at any time. This is what the cloud is able to offer: by adding the power of cloud-based systems to the customer engagement mix, organisations will be able to deliver the efficiency that their customers have come to expect. In a world where speed and convenience are everything, this has never been more important. Alex Hilton, CEO CLOUD INDUSTRY FORUM 3

3 Introduction Methodology The modern world of customer service is much more dynamic and demanding than ever In conjunction with market research company Vanson Bourne, Aspect Software surveyed 100 C-suite decisionmakers at organisations across a range of sectors, including technology, financial services, manufacturing, retail and healthcare. For the purpose of this project, before. The proliferation of mobile devices and the growth of the omni-channel shopping experience mean that consumers have more choice today when it comes to accessing products and services. While this represents a huge step forward for customers, it brings significant new challenges for the contact centre to address. With so many potential points of contact between a customer The dangers of this are evident: if a company relies on outdated, inflexible systems in this new era of customer engagement, it becomes much more difficult to keep customers happy. If such a situation is allowed to persist for too long, the financial and reputational impact of customers deserting the company in favour of a competitor can be particularly damaging. With this in mind, making greater use of cloud technology can be hugely powerful in giving the contact centre the capability to handle the highly diverse nature of modern customer interaction, as well as the flexibility and adaptability required to ensure rapid evolution in the face of an ever-changing landscape. When employed in the right way and used alongside tools such as AI, cloud can be instrumental in transforming the humble contact centre into a much more comprehensive and agile customer engagement centre. the C-suite was divided into IT and non-it roles. Those in the IT role were Chief Information Officer and Chief Technical Officer. The non-it chiefs were Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Risk Office and Chief Compliance Officer. A separate category for other senior roles encompassing positions such as Managing Director was also included. Respondents were asked a series of questions relating to customer engagement strategies at their various companies, including how readily they have adopted cloud technology and whether they have plans to integrate it into their contact centre. Respondents were from organisations with over 1,000 employees and were divided into three categories: 1,000-3,000 employees (small), 3,001-5,000 employees (medium) and 5,001+ employees (large). Respondents were asked a series of questions relating to customer engagement strategies and an organisation, providing a consistent, joined-up experience across the board can be a difficult task. This paper explores the results of a research project conducted by Aspect Software into the changing nature of customer engagement and the contact centre, and the power of cloud in helping businesses to reimagine customer service. 5

4 Room for improvement Cloud perceptions For any business, finding innovative ways of enhancing the customer experience should be a top priority. After all, building a positive brand image relies heavily on a company s ability to form and maintain positive relationships with its customers. When asked about how important the cloud is in growing their organisation s customer engagement offering, the overwhelming majority of those polled had a positive perception of its impact and potential. 94 per cent of respondents described cloud as somewhat important or very important, which underlines how C-suite executives across the business are at least cognizant of the power of cloud in increasing innovation and improving performance in the contact centre. However, our research has found that businesses of all shapes and sizes still have some significant work to do to improve various elements of the customer experience. Among those whose roles are specifically focused on IT, this figure is slightly lower (72 per cent), perhaps owing to a greater understanding of the costs and complexities of cloud, but still represents strong recognition of how cloud can help them address the customer engagement challenge more effectively. When asked what three areas of the organisation s customer engagement procedures are most in need of improvement, providing customers with more comprehensive self-service options was cited more than any other (45 per cent). Alongside this, better back-end customer integration (42 per cent) and enhanced mobile compatibility (41 per cent) were the most popular choices among respondents. On the surface, this points to a wider general need to make the customer journey more dynamic, by stripping out inefficiencies, leveraging mobile technology more effectively, and giving customers more autonomy when it comes to choosing how they engage with a company. Making plans to migrate the contact centre to the cloud can be instrumental in helping achieve these goals. By moving on from a legacy solution that may be reliant on a large number of disparate, inflexible systems, organisations can go a long way towards creating a more integrated experience for customers, and one that is very much tailored to their specific needs. 7

5 Current state of play Cloud cover While the research has revealed that more needs to be done to raise cloud s profile more generally, looking at the current state of play in those organisations that do have a cloud-based system in place will shed further light on just how much progress is still to be made. For any business, finding innovative ways of enhancing However, our research has found that businesses of the customer experience should be a top priority. all shapes and sizes still have some significant work After all, building a positive brand image relies heavily to do to improve various elements of the customer on a company s ability to form and maintain positive experience. relationships with its customers. When narrowing the responses down purely to IT staff, only 37 per cent said that their organisation uses a cloud-based system for customer engagement. Considering the fact that IT decision-makers generally have a much stronger involvement in the technology side of the business, this figure is likely to be the most accurate assessment of current cloud deployment in the contact centre. With this in mind, it is clear that more needs to be done to bring cloud into the customer engagement equation more fully. The fact that there is a disparity between IT and non-it staff in their perceptions of cloud is indicative of this. By failing to make the most of cloud s potential to facilitate greater customer engagement, organisations may be missing a trick. Of those respondents whose organisation operates a cloud-based system in their customer engagement process, the average percentage of the contact centre currently based in the cloud is just under 36 per cent. This means that, even among those who have taken steps to embrace cloud, it still has not become a dominant force as far as customer engagement is concerned. The average percentage of the contact centre currently based in the cloud is just under 36% 9

6 A brighter future? The power of cloud So what benefits can greater cloud usage bring to the contact centre? Some of its key attributes are discussed below. A JOINED-UP CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE ENHANCING CUSTOMER-AGENT RELATIONSHIPS Traditionally, customer engagement would typically be Far from eliminating the human element of customer managed in a way that meant providing customers with engagement, cloud can also go a long way towards a truly holistic experience was difficult. Customer data making direct contact between a customer and an agent and information related to specific queries would be more fruitful. As mentioned, the ability of cloud to unify stored in various different places for example, records all points of contact means that a customer using self- of a phone call might be kept in an alternate location service can easily be connected with a human member of to an query. If an agent wanted to quickly call up staff in the event of a more complex query. In addition to information on past queries that a particular customer this, cloud-based solutions offer common configuration had made, he or she would likely be presented with a and administration features, making the user experience considerable administrative headache. straightforward and consistent for all agents. Making a move to the cloud alleviates this problem significantly, by ensuring that all information on customers can be stored in a location that is accessible to anyone at the organisation, from any location. This significantly reduces inefficiencies, and ensures that fewer customers are kept waiting when it comes to getting a problem solved. FLEXIBLE AND SCALABLE To meet the rapidly evolving needs of the modern consumer, businesses need to be agile in the way they manage their customer engagement processes. By moving to the cloud, organisations can break free of the inflexibility of legacy systems, and move to a solution that has adaptability at its heart. EMPOWERING THE CUSTOMER THROUGH SELF-SERVICE Due to the fact that it does not rely on an investment in on-premise infrastructure, a cloud-based As the respondents in our research recognised, the implementation can be scaled up or down according Despite almost four in five (78 per cent) of those in non-it roles envisaging the arrival of new cloud-based solutions over the next year, this figure sits at just 26 per cent for IT decision-makers. This is the same percentage as those who believe there will be no further cloud integration, and considerably lower than those who are undecided (39 per cent). Again, this points to a likely reality where the use of cloud in the contact centre will not increase by a great deal over the course of the next year. At the same time, these results also underline significant differences in opinion and perception depending on the nature of a C-suite executive s role. There appears to be a desire to embrace cloud more readily, but for this to happen, IT and non-it staff need to work more closely together to ascertain which systems can be moved to the cloud, and how this can then be achieved. modern customer has a strong preference towards using self-service tools such as text messaging or automated chat services when it comes to engaging with a company. Making sure this is a clear option should be a key priority for businesses. Cloud can greatly enhance the power of self-service, by properly integrating such tools into a company s wider customer engagement centre. In this way, every interaction made through self-service can be diligently recorded, and can easily be escalated to a human agent if needs be. to the changing needs of the business. Alongside this, new features can be delivered continuously and automatically, meaning IT teams do not have to spend excessive amounts of time updating systems. 11

7 WHITE PAPER Conclusion Cloud has gained something of a foothold in the contact centre, and C-suite executives across the business have at least some recognition of its potential. However, there is still a great deal of opportunity to truly make it the deployment of choice for managing customer interactions. By moving beyond the disjointed, inefficient legacy systems of old and moving to a solution that can be rapidly adopted and expanded as the market evolves, businesses will be much better-placed to meet customer needs. Cloud s ability to seamlessly join up all elements of customer interaction means that queries can be received, managed and dealt with in the appropriate manner quickly and efficiently. For cloud to become more of a fixture in the customer engagement platform, decision-makers both within and outside of the IT department need to work more closely together to ensure that cloud s key characteristics and advantages are properly understood, and that the necessary preparations are then made to enable it to be implemented successfully. How an organisation treats its customers is integral to its reputation. By making customer engagement as seamless, streamlined and efficient as possible, businesses stand the best possible chance of staying well ahead of their competitors. CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS EAST CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS WEST EUROPE & AFRICA HEADQUARTERS ASIA PACIFIC & MIDDLE EAST HEADQUARTERS 300 Apollo Drive, Chelmsford, MA E. Camelback Road, Suite 700, Phoenix, AZ Cross Street, #25-01/02 PwC Building, Singapore (1) OFFICE +(1) FAX +(1) OFFICE +(1) FAX The Record Store, 15 Pressing Lane, Hayes UB3 1EP United Kingdom +(44) OFFICE +(65) OFFICE +(65) FAX aspect.com/uk