Customer Engagement: THE FUTURE IS PROACTIVE

Customer Engagement: THE FUTURE IS PROACTIVE

TABLE OF CONTENTS What Do Customers Want?... The Future is Proactive... Proactive Outbound Notifications.. 3 8 11 Proactive Live Chat.. 12 Proactive Knowledge 13 Proactive Engagement: A Compelling Business Case 14 2 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 1 WHAT DO CUSTOMERS WANT? Companies used to rely on the specialness of their goods and services to be their key differentiator. Consumers bought or didn t buy based on the features and functions of a product. It s not to say that the uniqueness of a product or service is no longer important, but the way in which customers now want to engage with your company and the ways in which they make purchasing decisions has fundamentally altered the business-customer relationship. 3 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 1: What Do Customers Want? Today, customers place great emphasis on the quality of the experience, expecting fast, seamless and contextually relevant interactions. A key driver for this changing customer attitude has been the emergence of multiple online channels, enabling customers to do business with you in multiple ways. 2009 2012 Telephoning a company and speaking to an agent 73% 73% Help or frequently asked questions (FAQs)on a company s website 57% 67% Sending an email to customer service 56% 58% Instant messaging/online chat with a live person 30% 43% Click-to-call* --- 33% Online forum or community with other customers 23% 32% Screen sharing --- 30% Virtual agent* --- 28% Sending a mobile/sms message to the company requesting assistance* --- 24% Contacting a company using Twitter 11% 22% Source: Forrester Research, Inc. North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2012 (US) North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009 (US) * Forrester did not ask about this channel in the 2009 survey. 4 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 1: What Do Customers Want? When engaging with your company, customers demand that you use all these channels in a way that shows you value their time, meeting their needs for speed, seamlessness and relevance. Those that don t pay a high price as more than 50% of customers in every age group are all too likely to abandon their carts. Golden Generation (69+) Older Boomers (58-68) Younger Boomers (48-57) Gen X (34-47) Gen Y (25-33) Gen Z (18-24) 52% 54% 58% 57% 57% 50% 75% 76% 79% 79% 76% 73% Percentage of US online adults by generation who agree with the following statements (4-5 on a scale of 1 [disagree completely] to 5 [agree completely] Valuing my time is the most important thing a company can do to provide me with good customer service experience. I am very likely to abandon my online purchase if I cannot find a quick answer to my question. Source: Forrester Research, North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4, 2013 (US) 5 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 1: What Do Customers Want? Successful customer engagement requires the following: Speed: Make sure your website is easy to navigate and easy to search for information. Manage hold times on the phone effectively. Set clear SLAs for response. Make multiple contact channels available and visible. Seamlessness: Customers expect uninterrupted, cross-channel interactions. Make sure every channel is connected, with the context of any interaction pushed to the next channel so the conversation continues without interruption. 74% of consumers use at least 3 channels when interacting with a company* 65% of online consumers want to move between service channels without repeating their situation.** Sources: * Ovum Study, 2013 ** Forrester Research, North American Technographics Customer Experience Survey, 2013 6 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 1: What Do Customers Want? Relevance: Of equal if not greater importance is the relevance of each interaction. This goes far beyond just greeting the customer by name. Customers expect each engagement to reflect their specific preferences and the context of the interaction. Personalization and relevance are becoming more real as big data gives companies far greater insight into customer behavior, and real-time decision engines can leverage this understanding to make relevant recommendations at the point of interaction. 7 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2 THE FUTURE IS PROACTIVE However, despite technology advances and the multiplicity of channels available to customers, Accenture reports that key customer experience indicators show that no metric in any industry has consistently improved in 5 years.* of customers were frustrated that they had to contact a company multiple times for the same reason. said they had been put on hold for a long time. said they had their issues pushed to multiple representatives. *Source: Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research, 2013 8 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2: The Future is Proactive Clearly, there s a need to do better. Improving the customer experience and achieving future success requires delivering more sophisticated customer experiences that provide timely and relevant information seamlessly across all channels. The best way to do this is to anticipate the customer s needs and engage the customer proactively. 9 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2: The Future is Proactive Proactive customer engagement resolves the customer s question or issue before they even ask it. It includes 3 categories: Proactive Outbound Notifications Proactive Live Chat Proactive Knowledge Yankee Group, Drive More Valuable Customer Experience With Proactive Engagement Across the Life Cycle 10 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2: The Future is Proactive Proactive Outbound Notifications Proactive outbound notifications anticipate needs by advising customers of information that is relevant to their time and place, such as a flight delay or the fact that a bill needs to be paid to avoid a fee. They combine enterprise customer data and business rules with the customer s preferred communication methods to deliver highly targeted interactions or campaigns at the right moment. Customers opt in to receive notifications, specifying the channels to be used and what types of notifications they want. 11 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2: The Future is Proactive Proactive Live Chat Live online chat is becoming ubiquitous. In just three years, chat/instant messaging has gone from 30% to 43% usage.* Companies are embedding chat deeper into the customer experience as they find it can deliver the dual benefit of higher revenue and percustomer profit while reducing customer service costs. Used proactively, chat can push a conversion forward, increase the value of a shopping cart with a relevant upsell or cross-sell offer and forestall costly calls to the contact center to get information or resolve issues. Source: Forrester Research, Inc. North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2012 (US) North American Technographics Customer Experience Online Survey, Q4 2009 (US) 12 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 2: The Future is Proactive Proactive Knowledge Like notifications and chat, proactive knowledge anticipates customer questions and displays the most relevant knowledgebase content within the context of the interaction. For example, proactive knowledge can: Provide definitions or how-to instructions as a customer is filling out an online form. Display a side-by-side comparison of features based on the product pages a customer has visited. Let customers know how much more they need to add to the online shopping cart to get free shipping. In all cases, the knowledge is closely related to what the customer is doing, and is displayed as part of that process, rather than requiring the customer to leave the screen or step outside of the activity. 13 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 3 PROACTIVE ENGAGEMENT A COMPELLING BUSINESS CASE Implementing proactive engagement is not just a nice to have. There is a compelling and proven business case for proactive communications. 14 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 3: Proactive Engagement A Compelling Business Case Outbound notifications have proven to deflect inbound calls and drive higher customer satisfaction scores. Proactive chat is proving highly efficient and costeffective, with each agent able to manage as many as 2.5 chats simultaneously. 1/3 of chat customers report they would not have purchased without chat. In the US, approximately 1/3 of sales come via proactive chat, and companies are monetizing chat by upselling, cross-selling and placing advertising in the chat window. Forrester Research, Inc. 15 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Chapter 3: Proactive Engagement A Compelling Business Case For a large technology company, chat is a key part of their proactive engagement strategy. The company regards proactive communications as fundamental to achieving their business goals. They personalize chat by providing the agent with information about what items the customer has purchased as well as the customer s browsing history. Since implementation, they have seen a 30% increase in usage of chat year-over-year and conduct 10 million chats per year globally. Forrester Research, Inc. 16 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

Meet the Author DIANE CLARKSON Diane is an ecommerce advisor and thought leader who has worked with some of the world's largest consumer and technology brands. Diane was an ebusiness and channel strategy analyst at Forrester Research where she focused on how service technology can drive sales, improve the customer experience and enhance brands. 17 Our greatest thrill is to connect you with your customers

LEARN MORE If you re interested in learning more about Moxie Software s solutions for proactive engagement, contact us today: info@moxiesoft.com NA: +1-800-474-1149 Int l: +44-870-904-1122 www.moxiesoft.com