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CHAPTER 3

Technology for Customer Relationship

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INTRODUCTION Successful CRM implementation will allow your

Customer Service, sales and marketing people and anyone else in your organization to have a holistic view of each and everyone of your customers.

Service organizations are evolving to accommodate rapidly changing customer’s requirements, increased competitive pressure and business imperatives to do more with less. Technology is a key enabler to meet these demands.

The technology deployed has to be in line with strategic objective of the organization.

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Technology helps firms to have a holistic view of its customers

It helps all the stakeholders in company to provide a seamless, integrated services

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CONTACT CENTER TECHNOLOGYInteractive Voice Response (IVR)

Interactive Voice Response, IVR for short, is a software application that allows a telephone caller to select options (pre-recorded voice prompts) from a voice menu.

Interactive Voice Response Systems are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so callers can access them anywhere, anytime.

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A TYPICAL CALL FLOW FOR IVR

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IVR Platforms IVR Applications Back-end servers Telephony Infrastructure IVR Experts Pros and Cons Locating Surveying

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Order Processing Outbound Applications Call Transfer After Hours Messages On Hold Messaging Voice Mail Caller ID Reporting

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CONSIDERATIONS FOR AN ORGANIZATION WHILE MAKING

AN IVR BUYING DECISION

Hosted version vs. Installed version Capacity/Scalability Specialty Demo Integration/Implementation Training and Support Quality of Web Site DTMF IVR and Speech recognition IVR

systems

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Benefits of Automation of Inbound calls Reduced Costs, Increased ROI Flexibility & Compatibility Customer Satisfaction Added Security IVR utilizations for Business to customer

(B2C) applications

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SPEECH RECOGNITION FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Speech recognition is often used in call centers to improve customer service operations. It is specially used for self service environment. Speech recognition allows computers to recognize natural human voice and translate it into text or actions based on flow of the call.

Speech is most recognized for its role in contact centers where the technology has proven to dramatically increase automation rates and improve the customer experience.

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KEY ENTERPRISE BENEFITS OF SPEECH ACCESS AND VOICE AUTOMATION ARE:

Customer satisfaction Cost savings Improved Productivity Revenue generation

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KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR DEPLOYING SPEECH RECOGNITION:

The organizations must evaluate various options available to them and determine which applications will deliver the greatest customer and business benefit and select specific metrics for success.

The organization must investigate on design and development and deployment alternatives.

The organizations must determine which standards help maximize the use of existing IT and call center investments.

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The organization should be very clear with their customer communication policy. Accordingly a technology platform can be determined for deployment.

Select a vendor with a strong ecosystem of expert partners and proven leadership and experience in integrating voice and speech communications technology.

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COMPUTER TELEPHONY INTEGRATION (CTI)

Computer telephony integration enables integration of previously disparate systems to enhance the customer experience and improve operational efficiencies.

CTI links up your computers and telephones to handle all your voice, fax, and data traffic.

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HOW CTI APPLICATIONS CAN ENHANCE THE INBOUND AGENT’S EFFICIENCY?

Screen pops in which caller information and associated files can be given to agent along with the telephone call.

Intelligent transfer of data to another agent or supervisor along with the caller’s detail on desktop.

Using live, recorded voice, or touch-tone entered input, determine how to process a call.

Intelligent routing which help the caller by routing the call to an agent as per predefined routing logic like skill based, language based, product or zone time based.

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Manage voice or video conferences. Desktop telephony features, such as login

and logout, workstation changes, statistics on an agents etc.

Receive fax messages and route them to appropriate fax machines.

For outbound calling such as telemarketing, predial callers.

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THE BENEFITS OF COMPUTER TELEPHONY INTEGRATION CAN INCLUDE:

Improved customer service Greater efficiency Flexibility CTI Solutions Basic solutions Advanced solutions

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AUTOMATIC CALL DISTRIBUTION (ACD)

ACD systems are the heart of inbound call centers. They are call routing utilities for incoming calls and can route the calls to the available agent. Basic ACD distributes the telephone calls on a first come, first served basis. The system answers each call immediately and, if necessary, holds it in a queue until it can be directed to the next available call center agent. When an agent becomes free, he or she services the first caller in the queue.

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MAJOR HIGHLIGHTS OF ACD SYSTEM Evenly distributes a large volume of calls to a group of

telephone agents. A designated ACD Supervisor has the ability to

monitor calls to ensure that callers are getting accurate information.

Calls are routed to the agent who has been idle longest.

If all agents are busy, calls are stacked in a queue to wait for the next available agent.

If the queue becomes too full, additional calls are routed to a designated network treatment.

After hours, calls can be routed to a Night Service destination, usually a voice mail message.

Best suited to departments receiving requests of a repetitive nature or frequent calls addressing common question.

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MAJOR COMPONENTS OF AN ACD SYSTEM

Call processing features Agent features Supervisor features

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METHODS OF CALL DISTRIBUTION

Direct Department Calling Uniform Call Distribution Expert Agent Distribution

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KEY CALL HANDLING FEATURES OF AN ACD

Call Hold Call Transfer Call Forward Three-Way Calling Station Hunting Call Pickup Group Call Park Camp-On with Callback

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CUSTOMER COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

The technology for complaint management system is generally divided into two parts namely front end and back end. The front end is used by the employees who are dealing with the customers for taking their complaints and communicating back a solution to them. Back end systems are used by the employees who are responsible for resolution of customer complaints.

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The front end of customer complaint management system comprises of:

Customer profile page Customer interaction page

The back end part comprises of: Complaint resolution page – Pages where

solution is provided and Root cause is found MIS page – MIS helps in monitoring complaint

resolution and keeping track of the same, it provides reports

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BENEFITS OF COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Enhanced productivity of employees Speedy and Error-free resolution of

complaints Troubleshooting and probing help Monitoring and tracking mechanism Singular database and customer history Wide angle view of customer

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FRONT DESK MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY

Electronic Queue Management System The Electronic queue system is ideal for

customer related concerns, where waiting forms an essential part of the service.

Airlines, Hospitals, Banks, Railway Stations etc

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ELECTRONIC QUEUE MANAGEMENT MODULES

Ticket dispenser unit – Customers obtain a ticket from ticket dispenser unit

Status dispenser unit – Strategically placed in the waiting area, it displays the ticket number along with the counter where he has to move

Teller station unit – It is used by the counter staff

Counter Display Unit – Displays the ticket number of the customer being served

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PAYMENT TECHNOLOGY Bill payment kiosks typically include a

computer inside of a durable enclosure. The kiosks can be customized to suit the organizational needs and one can put their company logo or corporate images on the outer of machine.

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The capabilities of a bill payment kiosk machine are:

Authenticates the customer Accepts and dispenses cash Accepts credit/debit card payments Accepts check payments Full network management Real-time system monitoring Software updated remotely Narrowcast digital advertising

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Benefits for the service provider: Improves staff utilization Improves retail space utilization Cuts customer wait time Increases customer satisfaction Reduces or eliminates balancing errors Reduces operational costs Cuts back office error and expense Supports additional applications

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CUSTOMER SELF SERVICE PORTALS The self service modules provide the

opportunity to customers to access his account and get lots of information as and when he wants and from wherever he wants.

Example Vodafone my account

The self service applications help the customers in following ways: Empowering of the customers Improve supply chain efficiency Reduce cost of service

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The self service modules generally come into two forms:

Fulfillment Self Service - - Examples Futurebazaar.com, Flipkart etc Sales Force Management Self Service

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CRM TECHNOLOGY

CRM is not just a piece of technology. It is an organizational commitment to add value to its customers during every interaction. It is the summation of technology, processes, business rules, customer knowledge and above all, the organizational strategy.

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Most of the CRM applications focus on the two aspects of the business namely operational and analytical.

The “operational” part of CRM refers to automating basic business functions such as sales automation, service guidelines and marketing tactics. It also includes the facilitation of customer communication, including Web, phone, fax, etc.

The “analytical” part of CRM is geared around gathering business intelligence from customers that can be used to analyze customer behavior.

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CRITERIA FOR CRM PRODUCT SELECTION

Organization imperative Integration with existing IT application

landscape Products adaptability Scalability of the application Implementation experience Post roll out support structure

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DATA MINING

Data mining is a methodology to assess the value of the data and to leverage that value as an asset to provide valuable information for decision making to management based on a continuously evolving analytical model.

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DATA MINING METHODS

Statistics Decision Trees

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DATA WAREHOUSING In customer service one of the most

important assets is the customer data base. The organization must have the details of all the transactions covering the entire customer life cycle. This data should also be available to all the users so that they can make data based decisions. The data based decisions are generally better than the decisions based on the hunch or gut. Data warehouses are generally used to store large customer data.