5 Innovative Use-Cases for Customer Service Transformation
Customer experience (CX) innovation is no longer a luxury, with 89% of companies expecting to compete mostly through CX (Source: Gartner). Here are five examples of how you can innovate in customer service, and deliver winning CX.
1. Goodbye, IVR Music
Being put on hold for a long time is “extremely frustrating” or “frustrating” for 84% of consumers (Source: Accenture survey). But consumers need to fret no more, thanks to eGain’s AI Knowledge! Customers waiting on the smartphone, after being put on hold in an IVR queue, can now get an SMS link to the right answer or to an AI-guided interaction that will take them to the answer. Importantly, you don’t lose your place in the queue, just in case you still need to talk to an agent—rich self-service with a safety net! Who wouldn’t want it but for rabid fans of IVR music!
2. No Return is Great Return
When products are returned by consumers for apparently being “faulty,” telecom and manufacturing companies eat the costs of replacing the product or inspecting it again for defects, no questions asked. Called “No Fault Found,” this expensive phenomenon is often the result of contact center agents not being able to resolve customers’ problems when they call for assistance in setting up or using the product. Here’s the good news. Many of our clients are using our AI knowledge solution in the contact center to remotely troubleshoot and guide the customer to a resolution, reducing unwarranted returns in the process. For example, a leading telecom provider reduced handset exchanges and returns by 38% through effective problem resolution in their contact center!
3. Roll the Trucks (backwards)!
Dispatching service technicians to field locations to fix problems is expensive for manufacturers, utilities, and communication service providers. Called “truck rolls,” these visits cost $150 on average (higher when high-skill labor is involved) and are often initiated due to the inability of the contact center to solve customer problems. Again, smart knowledge can help. For instance, a white goods giant and eGain client saved $50M per year by reducing unnecessary truck rolls through effective problem resolution in the contact center with eGain’s AI knowledge. When the truck roll was inevitable, the knowledge tool also recommended appropriate parts so the problem could be fixed in the very first visit , improving First Visit Resolution (FVR).
4. Clone Bo and Deion
As many readers might know, Bo Jackson and Deion Sanders were unique multi-skilled athletes who attained professional competence in multiple sports. As routine customer queries get handled by self-service systems, agents need to become like Bo and Deion. They need to become multiskilled, shift their value to a higher gear, turning into advisors. These days, 80% of contact centers use multiskilled agents with 50% looking to multiskill nearly all their agents (Source: Call Centre Helper). However, a robust knowledge and AI system is critical for successful multiskilling.
A leading multinational banking and financial services provider and an eGain client wanted to become the “go-to” bank in their continent. The bank’s customer service process had become a complex web of phone and email contact points with hundreds of convoluted processes and disparate, siloed systems for knowledge, a recipe for poor customer and agent experience. The company had slipped to #3 in Net Promoter Score (NPS) among peers. With eGain’s AI knowledge, the bank was able to transform customer and agent experience, while elevating NPS. Here is what it accomplished:
Customer satisfaction ratings
- #4 to #1 in helpdesk availability, #3 to #1 in knowledgeability of agents
Customer effort transformation
- 27 contact points for agent-assisted service were merged into two
- 525 service processes were rationalized to 250
Operational transformation
- All agents now handle all customer queries (becoming the contact center’s own Bos and Deions!)
- Agent churn was reduced to <1% even as the agent pool was expanded 6x
- Training time was reduced by half
- Inconsistent and fragmented knowledge silos were consolidated to unified omnichannel knowledge
5. All Aboard and Healthy
When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was introduced, health insurers wanted to quickly educate consumers and enroll them in plans. A leading health insurer and eGain client wanted to accelerate member acquisition and onboarding across its website and health insurance exchange (HIX) websites with real-time chat advice and collaborative online form-filling. With eGain’s secure cobrowsing capability, the insurer helped tens of thousands of consumers compare ACA-compliant plan options, select the best-fit plan, and fill out enrollment forms. The solution ensured that the insurer could mask sensitive consumer information from agents, and allow only the consumer to complete transactions. Needless to say, the insurer has had healthy enrollment periods, thanks to eGain!
Innovate Now
Visit https://www.egain.com/innovation-in-30-days/ to start innovating absolutely risk-free!
