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June, 2008
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A letter from the executive officeAnalytics comes into its own as a strategic differentiator
In today's competitive environment, the answer for any enterprise would be an unequivocal 'yes'. Your day-to-day decision-making capabilities would be second to none, enabling your organization to provide a customer experience that would put you well ahead of your competition. It is this kind of thinking that is pushing next-generation analytics beyond being a tool for financial and process efficiency and into the realm of business strategy execution. Leading enterprises understand that the most effective way to stand out in the crowd is to ensure excellent service, and the only way to do that is to get good intelligence on your customer, and use it effectively. Consider that about 30 percent of client dissatisfaction comes from their interactions with client reps, while about 65 percent of their dissatisfaction comes from the processes behind the interactions. And although 95 percent of companies do client satisfaction surveys, most don't look at the data that really counts – how clients interact with the company, the clues that data provides, and how that information can be used to resolve the back-end process issues that make customers unhappy. And it's in this area that we find the key to the next major evolutionary step in business intelligence: effectively using the customer information you are collecting. Over time, even as data integration and delivery became better, true intelligence was still beyond the reach of many organizations, for the simple reason that they couldn't effectively apply what they had acquired. This is one of the areas where Bell excels, covering your analytics needs from end-to-end. We are unique in that we can provide, through our voice and Web analytics, a complete picture of all of your customer interactions. At the same time we can help drive improvements to back-end areas including HR, processes, storage, security and connectivity. And the biggest benefit is that our experts will analyze the data, help you understand what is happening and why, and resolve the underlying issues. In this issue of Impact, we look at how enterprises are using next-generation speech and Web analytics to create a uniquely satisfying customer experience time after time. The resources we offer you include:
If you want to know more about how customer analytics can help you improve your customer service capabilities, our professional services team is waiting to hear from you. Click here to have a Bell representative contact you. As always, we welcome your feedback on the tools and resources we offer you in Impact and on any other aspect of our services. Best regards, Stéphane Boisvert President, Bell Enterprise ... Get actionable customer intelligence with voice and Web analytics
To do this you have to know your customers: what they like and, more importantly, what they don't like. A positive customer contact experience depends on many factors, including how user–friendly the interactive voice response (IVR) system is or whether the self-serve options on the Web site provide the right choices. Often a positive or negative experience is created by background business processes that the customer isn't even aware of. Understanding how these experiences occur, and the root cause, is the role of analytics. Next generation analytics The emergence of new tools like speech analytics is creating the next generation of customer analytics. By focusing on the customer experience, whether on the Web site or through the contact centre, analytics leverages the combined power of existing customer interactions to help you understand your customer better and improve your customer service and support functions. Speech analytics This discipline involves recording co nversations and sifting through that data to uncover specific words and phrases that collectively can be categorized. Once categorized, issues and problems can be identified and acted upon. For example, when a customer encounters a problem on the Web sit e, that incident will often lead to a follow up call to the contact centre. With speech analytics, this customer experience can become an important clue to solving existing customer issues that relate to the Web portal. Web analytics In the online world, customers can interact with you in many ways: surfing product pages to research and compare products, live chat with sales or tech support, email, searching knowledge bases, posting to discussion forums or blogs, and more. As the number and type of interactions increase, it's all the more important to know if your online presence is effective. Web analytics is the tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative Internet data. Its goal is to pinpoint problem areas and thus help improve self-serve capabilities, better target marketing campaigns and reduce calls to the contact centre. By looking at where customers visit and for how long, as well as entrance and exit points and duration, analytics provide a picture of online behavior before, during and even after a transaction. The benefits In this way, analytics highlight opportunities for change to business processes across channels and leverage the combined power of the Web site and the contact centre. By analyzing customer behaviour on the Web site and over the phone, analytics can help organizations:
Using analytics to transform business processes To leverage the combined power of Web and voice analytics, business managers need to ensure that processes are in place and that company leadership is committed to acting upon the knowledge these tools generate. That's why an analytics program, to be successful, has to have rigorous methodologies and systems in place. An analytics system needs to be integrated into a business plan with clear reporting procedures. Getting started So where should you start? Because of the specialized nature of speech analytics, assistance from consultants to establish a pilot project is often a good way to establish a beachhead for analytics in the organization. In preparing for a pilot, the organization selects one business issue that they would like to address. A pilot would typically consist of the following phases:
What to consider If you are thin king of making the move to analytics, here are some factors to consider:
Across the enterprise To truly maximize the potential of analytics, the scope of the program should include business processes throughout the enterprise. That requires a high level commitment from executives in order to drive change across areas that impact the customer experience, including other lines of business. Analytics also requires regular internal communications, not only to publicize the success of the program, but also to stay on top of evolving or new issues emerging from the customer data that could assist various groups within the organization, including marketing and sales. Get better customer intelligence Combining and linking the mature toolset of Web analytics with emerging speech analytics in the contact centre environment can usher in a whole new generation of analytics. Leveraging both speech and Web site data improves the quality and effectiveness of analytics and provides the catalyst for effective change across the organization. The Bell analytics methodology is helping customers across many verticals tap into customer data in new and exciting ways. Bell professional services experts can help you establish and implement an analytics program that will help raise the quality of your analytics to new levels. For more information about leveraging the power of contact centre and Web analytics, click here to have a Bell representative contact you. ... Expert Q&A: Customer analytics lessons from the front lines
Impact: Erika, thanks for joining us. Let's begin with basics: what are some of the most important lessons you've learned about speech analytics? Erika: Speech analytics is the tool that drives the voice of the customer from contact centre to enterprise. It's one of the most powerful change tools, and according to DMG consulting, one of the most relevant ROI tools of the last ten years. But technology by itself will not deliver all the benefits. Information plus no action equals wasted money. What customers need is a proven methodology that helps them take full advantage of the technology. Impact: Can you briefly outline that methodology? Erika: It usually begins with a pilot project targeted at a single business problem. We extract 10,000 customer calls, transcribe those conversations, and specialists categorize and analyze them to help determine why customers are unhappy. Then you present to key stakeholders, and you simply let the customers speak. No one contests what customers say. From there you determine what actions you take to resolve the business problem. Then you expand from that pilot project to tackle other problems, define more and more call categories and customer types, and understand on a continuous basis how well you're doing in each category. Impact: And how does Web analytics fit into customer analytics and the bigger picture of business intelligence? Erika: Web portals are becoming strategic for many companies. Web analytics provides precious information that will help improve Web portals. The idea is that Web analytics show you what customers are doing, whereas speech analytics can tell you why. When customers are unhappy about their Web experience, some will call the contact centre, and speech analytics can help the Web specialists understand the problem. Combining both technologies gives you a powerful tool. Impact: What in your experience are enterprises most surprised to learn from speech analytics? Erika: They're surprised by the level of emotion and discomfort among customers caused by flawed business processes. It's one thing to transcribe a call, but to actually play the sixteen-second clip of an emotional customer, that's heart-wrenching, and gut-wrenching, and makes executives go "wow!". And you have to have that emotional connectivity, you have to feel what we call the pain and the shame, before you move to real change. Impact: What are some of the tangible benefits of analytics? And some of the intangibles? Erika: A key benefit is the real-time measurement of the impact of your initiatives – the ability to mine your customer dialogue to find out what your competitors have going on. For example, British Airways want to know how many times their customers say Lufthansa, and what Lufthansa offers them. And for the first time ever, organizations can establish agent metrics by call type. Instead of allowing 45 seconds for all calls, you can have 45 seconds for calls about topic A versus 180 seconds for calls about topic B. That's never been done properly before. As for intangible benefits, one of the most important is that it puts all this information in a format with which you can get the attention of senior executives. Impact: How are business and IT managers making the case for customer analytics, given that improved customer experience can be hard to measure? Erika: The business case is that call recording is your largest source of customer data. Instead of surveying customers and putting together focus groups, today you can dip into existing data that gets you the same or better results. This in turn allows you to make changes very quickly and immediately measure the impact. If a new product or service hits customers on Thursday, customer analytics can tell you how it's working on Friday. Impact: How is customer analytics changing the role and requirements for agents? Erika: There are huge opportunities for things like improved coaching and scripting, and also cross-selling and upselling. The technology helps distinguish between issues that relate to a knowledge gap on the side of the agent or the customer, and those related to a faulty business process. Agents are better positioned as part of the process, and they help deliver the voice of the customer. And agents are generally much happier in places with analytics because they actually feel someone's listening to them! Impact: How difficult is it to introduce a new analytics system? And how much time does it take? Erika: The pilot program, a single business case, is generally pretty straightforward, maybe up to 12 weeks. After that you can usually be up and running pretty quickly. The challenge is to put in place a structured approach that will drive changes and improvements. Key stakeholders need to be accountable for taking action in response to customer feedback. This, more than the technology, is where you need expert consultants. Impact: What trends do you see in the field going forward? Erika: Organizations that don't mine their customer data will fall behind, because the competitors will be doing it. The banks, for example, are literally lining up to implement customer analytics. Impact: If you could leave our readers with one message from your experience with customer analytics, what would it be? Erika: Analytics will only be successful if it is driven at the executive level, and seen as a foundation for overall business and process improvement, as well as improving the customer experience. Erika Van Noort is the Executive Director of the contact centre management consulting practice at Bell. Erika and her team specialize in identifying and piloting contact centre best practices within the Bell contact centres along with consulting in the areas of people, process, analytics, strategy and technology across North America, with Bell customers. Prior to joining Bell, Erika was Vice-President, Customer Experience for the Customer Care and Services Forum (CCSF) – a unique group formed to meet the needs of senior executives who manage the strategic direction of their organization's contact centres. ... Resource CentreNeeds assessment tool: Know your customer through better analyticsHow much do you know about your customers today? What do you do with that information? What ROI can you expect from customer analytics? What other factors do you need to consider? This tool will help you determine how much you might benefit from a customer analytics quality program. When you've completed your self-assessment, contact your Bell representative to learn more how customer analytics can mine gold from data you have already collected, and carry the voice of the customer to the executive level. Download needs assessment tool! You can request to be contacted by one of our analytics experts by clicking here Speech analytics white paper Want to know more about how speech analytics can help you get to the root cause of customer dissatisfaction? Download this whitepaper and find out! This resource takes a detailed look at:
Download this valuable resource and find out how your organization can benefit from speech analytics! ... Campaign tracking: The answer to a classic marketing questionBy Remi Yong "I know that half my advertising spend is wasted, I just don't know which half." This famous John Wanamaker quote should sound quite obsolete to online marketers since everything can be measured and accountability reigns supreme on the Web... or so it should. Campaign tracking tools are now widely used and more measures are available. But it is still essential to understand the basic principles for getting the right measures and using them properly to make sound decisions concerning marketing budget allocation. How it worksCampaign tracking can be done through the use of bid management solutions, ad servers, or Web analytics solutions. Although the various solutions will work slightly differently, campaign tracking is typically done through the use of tracking codes. Tracking codes are simply URL parameters (a string of characters) appended to the URL of the link that directs visitors to your site. When a visitor clicks on a banner or paid keyword containing a tagged link, he or she will be taken to your site. The tracking solution then adds the tracking code to the visitor's cookie, allowing it to correlate that visitor's activity with the tracking code. For example, this would allow you to determine who clicked on a specific banner, how many visitors actually made it to your site, and what actions they carried out on your site. What do you want to get for your money?A key element of campaign tracking is to clearly define objectives. These can be to generate awareness, generate sales, generate leads, and so on. This step is necessary to establish a proper measure of success and a quantifiable target. That target can then be translated into a metric, which in turn can be measured with the right setup of your analytics solution. Campaigns can then be optimized to maximize the set objective. Although this may sound obvious, not paying enough attention to this step can cause poor decision making. In a lot of cases, campaigns will be optimized for sales revenues. While this approach is clearly superior to optimizing for click-throughs or visits, it can lead to erroneous decisions. For example, when optimizing a campaign based on sales revenue objectives, a marketer has to choose between two keywords:
Therefore, based on sales and a limited budget, keyword A should be chosen. However, retailers may find margins to be a more precise measure of objectives:
Now, clearly, keyword B would be the better choice. Online goals should match business objectives as close as possible for optimization purposes. In some cases, margins might be more relevant than revenues (just as the elusive lifetime customer value might be more relevant than margins). Optimizing your marketing mix versus optimizing a campaignPaid search is one of the most optimized online channels thanks to the availability of tools and detailed information (cost-per-click, click-through, impressions, revenues, cost-per-acquisition, return on advertising spend, etc. at the keyword level). Tracking can be done through specialized paid search bid management tools and optimization can be automated to a certain degree in a fairly straightforward manner. While these tools are great for optimizing paid search campaigns, they lack the capacity to take into account other channels (ex.: email, eMedia, affiliate, etc.) and, therefore, cannot measure the way these channels interact. In order to gauge one channel versus another, the use of a Web analytics solution, such as Google Analytics, Omniture Site Catalyst, Coremetrics, Webtrends, and so on, becomes necessary. "Universal" tracking codes can then be used to compare all channels. Aggregate results per channel, per campaign, per categories, per types of content, etc. can be easily analyzed through classifications. With this insight, marketers can better attribute budgets across activities as opposed to being limited to one channel. This brings about the matter of attribution. Talk to us!To find out more about campaign tracking and how it can benefit your organization, click here to be contacted by a Bell representative. |
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If you could get a full view of all your customer interactions with your contact centre and Web site, and feed that in real time to your executives responsible for customer service, marketing, sales, business operations, contact centre and Web, would you?
How does your business stand out from the crowd? It's a tough challenge in today's hyper-competitive economy, especially as many goods and services being offered are very similar. Smart enterprises realize that in this environment the greatest opportunity for differentiation lies in offering a better customer experience
Impact talked to Erika van Noort, Executive Director of the contact centre management consulting practice at Bell and a veteran of numerous customer analytics solutions, to learn from her experience and share her insights from the front lines – including what's most surprising about customer analytics, and the single most important factor in a successful implementation. 
