You have always had to serve a mix of end customers with various needs and expectations. The predominant method of interaction has been and still is voice interactions. But the next generations of end customers (Gen X and Gen Y) have been rapidly gaining power and influence in society and changing the status quo of where they get information, how they make decisions, and how to communicate. So let’s talk a little bit about this ever-evolving shift in customer behavior. We are seeing changes in preferred access and communication methods, such as web self-service, more email and texting as well as a sharp increase in usage, as well as social media. You must prepare to meet new customer expectations, with proactive communications using social networks and the other new channels of communication. Perhaps most importantly, you need to bulletproof your infrastructure to support the changes and additions to channels of communications. That’s certainly going to continue as we move forward.
Where are we today?Social media isn’t just for teens any more. A Forrester survey says 3 out of 4 consumers are already using social technology, whether they realize it or not. They may be reading a blog on CNN or on Forbes.com, which is a form of implicit social behavior vs. something more explicit like reconnecting with a friend or sharing a photo on a social network like Facebook.Facebook is growing up too. 35 years and older is now their biggest demographic, and a recent stat just came out showing that there’s more business internet traffic that goes to Facebook than any other internet site. And moreover that time spent on social networks has exceeded that of email.Personal story – I have a friend who worked at an email company who refused to pay any attention to social networks until the time spent on social networks exceeded that of email. I got news for you, that was last year60% of consumers actually believe they’re interacting with companies already and 93% believe that companies should not only have a social presence, shouldn’t just show up, but engage with them, and when they do that…
That’s one side but there’s also a cost reduction. As you begin to layer on social technologies in front of your contact center, you’re lowering the cost of providing support and they’re able to get their answer from several other forums that cost less. First instance, like a self-help forum, they’re able to post a question and get an answer with very little human intervention from your part.Peer-to-Peer Collaboration is where they’re asking you questions directly on a Facebook, you can provide an answer so there is a little human intervention but not as much as having a contact center person provide the support. Then there is Twitter, searching for and interacting directly with customers, where customers can get an answer within minutes. Again, less expensive, easy way to go, less man hours. One person can do hundreds of these on a daily basis. And then you have your most expensive one-on-one support which is your backbone to provide support.
Avaya Aura CC provides the ability for agents to simultaneously handle multiple work items. These work items can be a combination of voice, web chat, Instant Messaging (IM), E-mail, Fax, Short Messaging Service (SMS) text or scanned documents. This not only improves customer accessibility but also enhances agent productivity as agents, for instance, can respond to E-mails when the voice call volume drops off during a shift. Multiplicity Presentation Classes are used to provide multiple contact handling capability to groups of agents. This allows contact center managers to provision capable agents to simultaneously handle up to five multimedia contacts.Not only can multiple work items be presented to an agent, but reporting enhancements have been added to help measure the performance of agents working on multiple work items. This presents a holistic view of agent performance to the supervisor.We’ll now look at additional agent desktop UI enhancements to ensure agent productivity and effectiveness when working on multiple work items.
Key differentiators is bold
FacebookCompetitive business intelligence through retrieval of social context from competitors’ pages and computation of customer service-relevant metrics for benchmarking purposesExamples: how many users post or ask questions how often on my competitors’ pages? How much attention do these posts draw from other users? How (often) do my competitors respond? How quickly do they respond? How do users like these responses and what do they say about them?
Avaya Social Media Manager analyzes customer posts and determines that Patrick’s post may require a response.An agent in Adora’s contact center posts a brief response to Patrick’s complaint. The response contains a link to a personalized Adora Customer Service Widget for Patrick.Patrick clicks the link, and his personalized Customer Service Widget opens. Now he can conveniently access self service or escalate to a live agent interaction.
Avaya Customer Connections Social Media Manager Gateway (NEW)Poll for messages on multiple channels (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, RSS, 3rd Party, etc.)Send each interaction into the Contact Center for dialog processingProvide outbound capabilities to send and post to Social Media sitesAvaya Customer Connections Social Media Manager Toolkit (NEW)Avaya Social Media Manager module to interact with Social Media dataAdvanced Text Processing module provides:Language identification, relevance, spam, and classificationSocial Media Context module to build / mine social contextProgrammable Customer Service Widgets for real-time agent communicationDialog Designer (Standard Product)Combine standard data features into Social Media applicationsSocial Media Manager Design interfaces to Social Media Toolkit (NEW)Contact Center Agents: use existing email interfaces of IC, CC7.x, AACC, or other email enabled contact center systems.
Facebook / Twitter
Avaya believes social support delivers the strongest ROI. It’s supporting existing customers rather than losing them, which is always a good strategy. Customer prefer a very good customer experience over lower prices. As a premium vendor, they expect outstanding customer support, which drives positive word of mouth. This is really what a lot of the social technologies are very good at spreading, and things start coming together when providing social support. Happy customers are less likely to defect, which means that your company overall is much more profitable.What we’re showing here are actually tweets from existing customers who have received support and are ecstatic about the support they’ve received on a social basis.
That’s one side but there’s also a cost reduction. As you begin to layer on social technologies in front of your contact center, you’re lowering the cost of providing support and they’re able to get their answer from several other forums that cost less. First instance, like a self-help forum, they’re able to post a question and get an answer with very little human intervention from your part.Peer-to-Peer Collaboration is where they’re asking you questions directly on a Facebook, you can provide an answer so there is a little human intervention but not as much as having a contact center person provide the support. Then there is Twitter, searching for and interacting directly with customers, where customers can get an answer within minutes. Again, less expensive, easy way to go, less man hours. One person can do hundreds of these on a daily basis. And then you have your most expensive one-on-one support which is your backbone to provide support.