By John Cray, Enghouse Interactive
Many retailers recognize that satisfying the demands of today’s highly connected consumers requires a strong commitment to the omnichannel — enabling customers to interact with their brands anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Research from Aberdeen Group corroborates this fact, citing that 74% of retailers believe that improving the quality of the overall shopping experience is their biggest challenge. While many retailers are striving to eliminate sales barriers by removing the silos that exist between channels, they’re neglecting another critical component necessary to achieve their goals — their contact centers.
The Multichannel Merchant Outlook 2014 survey, which included input from more than 1,200 respondents, found that nearly one quarter (21.4%) of B2C respondents are not tracking any contact center metrics whatsoever. Michael Moseman, director of the customer contact center at Brooks Brothers summed up the findings, saying: “Unfortunately, in many organizations, the contact center is viewed as a ‘necessary evil,’ and there are better places to spend technology dollars.”
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How Customer Interaction Analytics Helps You Move From “What” To “Why”
With the new school year approaching, let’s consider a shopping scenario involving a teenage girl looking for the right outfit and accessories for the first day of school. The girl is a fan of your brand, so she begins the back-to-school search using your mobile app, where she discovers a two-day BOGO sale. After selecting the code, the app opens her mobile browser and takes her to your website, where she looks to see if the skirt size and colors she’s most interested in are in stock. Ten minutes later, she’s reaching out to your contact center (via live chat, because you’re one of only 40% of retailers that offer this service, according to the MCM Outlook 2014 Survey). So, why do you think this potential client contacted your company? Was it:
- To find out when the light blue skirt in her size would be back in stock and to find out whether she could take advantage of the BOGO deal?
- To figure out why she wasn’t able to apply the BOGO coupon at checkout?
- To confirm whether her payment went through since she didn’t receive any confirmation after completing her purchase?
- To inquire about applying her rewards points to her purchase?
If you’re like 87% of all retailers (according to a research report from ContactBabel titled, The U.S. Contact Center Decision-Makers’ Guide 2014), only the agent who responds to the problem ever knew why, and this information is quickly lost. If, however, you’re among the 13% of retailers who are using customer interaction analytics, not only do you know the “why,” you know whether this customer’s issue is a one-off problem or indicative of a much bigger concern. For example, what if the customer wasn’t able to use your online coupon? Since this sale is only going on for two days, wouldn’t it be nice to detect the problem early on, so that you could fix it rather than wondering why your back-to-school sales were lower than expected? And how about providing context and history when that same teenager contacts you again?
Providing your customers with a myriad of ways to connect with your organization is an important first-step in running a competitive retail operation. But, if you’re not able to measure effectively, quickly identify and respond to problems and trends, your customer experience initiatives are still going to miss the mark.
John Cray is Vice President of Product Management for Enghouse Interactive. Enghouse Interactive provides software and services to deliver great customer communications. Its solutions ensure that when a customer connects with an organization’s service, helpdesk or sales team, their needs are resolved quickly and efficiently, whether by phone, email, SMS, social media chat, IVR, or self-service web interface. As a subsidiary of Enghouse Systems (TSX: ESL), founded in 1984, only Enghouse Interactive brings both the expertise and comprehensive product portfolio to meet all of an organization’s customer interaction needs. Every day, Enghouse Interactive helps its more than 10,000 small, medium and enterprise clientele, and their 1,000,000-plus users across the globe, to synchronize the service experience across all touch points.
