Will the recession drive integration?

With a few exceptions, call centres are pretty awful. One reason is that customers aren’t pushing hard enough for improvement. They might complain bitterly about the lousy wait times, but they will consider that against a background of all the other poor call centre experiences and partition it off. If the value of a brand is truly a measure of ‘everything’ including all customer touch points then it seems there is an opportunity being missed.Ethnographic research has shown that customers compare online experiences between different brands, and even different sectors so they expect the same service from a white goods supplier as they do from one that provides consumables. So why haven’t customers started to compare experiences between different channels and demanded an improvement in the call centre?

There has been grumbling in customer service forums, but it’s had little effect. Businesses have been looking at improvements, but they have been focused on adding and optimising single channels. Integration has been a relatively recent phenomenon.

I believe the recession will be a catalyst for change, as it has been so many times before. The need to save money has placed business operations under a microscope and this will drive businesses to integrate previously disparate channels so that cross-channel service delivery becomes a reality.

Foviance has already seen a big increase in the number of organisations that are asking us to map out their customers’ journeys across all channels. We have then identified how the lower cost channels can be used to save money, without causing damage to the customer experience.

This is an area where co-creation is an excellent approach as the answers come from our consultants, customers and their customers working together, rather than in isolation. Indeed I would extend the group even further and include call centre consultancies. Many of these have already helped organisations identify a huge number of operational efficiencies. Without the constraint of a single channel, they could find new opportunities for further gains.

It is pleasing to see publications such as Customer Strategy, which has a long heritage in customer service and call centre strategy, embracing the change that is required and projecting itself as more cross-channel in its editorial approach and content. For example, the publication is currently running a series of masterclasses, the last of which in July is focussed on helping organisations establish a cross-channel approach to improving customer service and cutting costs. The masterclass will be run by RXperience. The course description includes the words “using a contact strategy that reinforces your brand”, and if organisations do start to take this approach, perhaps motivated by the recession, we will see a step change in the quality of customer experience delivery.