Preparing your e-commerce call center with a customer-centric technology framework: Part III

Call Center Solutions, Jul 1999 by Talley, Bruce

Front Office Software As A Framework

Companies can easily lose sight of the customer's needs amidst the sea of changes, both organizational and technical, that are required to blend e-commerce systems with call centers. It is important to remember that all of these changes are being made to better serve the needs of customers - from their first call to their hundredth purchase, and throughout every service need in between. Figure I below illustrates how customer management should occur throughout an enterprise.

Initial customer interaction begins at what we'll call the front office, which includes the call center, integrated with sales, marketing and service/support functions. The customer request is then processed through a series of back-office applications that may include finance, engineering or manufacturing, depending on the product. The back office is integrated with the company's suppliers. The ideal framework is one that is integrated with sales and marketing applications in the front office and with back-office applications, while also providing CSRs access to a wide variety of customer and product-related information. Front-office software is designed to accomplish this feat. Here is an example of how a suite of front-office applications can work together to serve customer needs on a number of levels:

As customers interact with a company via telephone, e-mail and the Web, the front-office-enabled call center routes information accordingly, giving CSRs an informational edge and ensuring that customers do not get lost once they hit internal data channels. For example, a customer of a major Internet service provider (ISP) may e-mail a question about a software upgrade to one of the CSRs, but also use a Web self-service mechanism to search for the answer. If at some point in the process the customer calls the ISP, it will annoy him or her if the CSR is unaware of the e-mail and Web tracking that has already occurred. Customers don't have patience with a disconnect between various aspects of service. To successfully do business with customers on the Internet, call centers need e-marketing, e-sales and e-support functions to work together. For maximum efficiency and reliability, each of these call center applications should be preintegrated at the call center level. This creates a complete front office strategy with the following benefits.

E-marketing application benefits:

Increased revenue through Webbased marketing campaigns,

* Better management and utilization of the customer funnel, and

* Greater customer intimacy though personalized communications.

E-sales application benefits:

Increased customer satisfaction through higher quality support and self service, combined with a live agent,

Customer retention by building loyalty through value-added services tailored to individual needs, and

Lower cost than traditional sales channels.

E-support application benefits:

Increased agent productivity,

Better customer service and shorter call times, and

Reduced time-to-deployment for reduced project risk.