Technology Trends 2012- Live Chat

I have been in customer service technology now for about 10 years and there are only a few technologies that I can remember having such a meteoric rise as Live Chat has seen in the last 18 months. So many technologies in CS come and go, but few really have the juice to break through and become that next "Must Have" tool that everyone is budgeting for and deploying. Cloud Routing from Genesys and GeoTel was one, Quality Monitoring and WFM were another. Recently voice analytics picked up steam and filled this position. And now it seems like as all those technologies mature and start to pick off the last remaining laggards, Live Chat has taken the mantle and assumed the position of the "Must Have" new technology.

For years, live chat has been around. I can remember working with some more voice related companies like Nortel, Avaya and Cisco and how they were packaging the Multi Channel approach to customers and as a part of that was live chat. But over the last 5 years, it seemed like Live Chat just lingered in the background without any significant energy to break away from just the few early adopters.

But wow, what a difference the last few years have made. Everybody and their brother seems to be either fully deployed, in the midst of deploying or going out to RFP to put in Live Chat. And it is not just CS that is pushing this initiative. I am seeing a huge ground swell of activity in the Sales side of the business, sales leadership demanding that they need to have Live Chat to support customers immediately from the website. So there has been a flood of vendors into the market space, from very large to very small and from stand alone unique solutions to packaged apps from the big software vendors. Just a few that are really eating up the market right now are Moxie Software, LivePerson, Oracle (through numerous acquistions), RightNow (now Oracle), Bold Chat and Whos On.

They all have their pluses and minuses, just like any technology out there. I have heard some companies say that it has been a wasted investment. I have heard the majority of others say that it was a great investment. The ones that say that it worked for them, are the same companies that get any new technology investment right. They are the ones that figure out why they want it, understand what it will do for them, design a set of requirements that hit on a specific use case and then limit the first project to a mission that is focused and quantifiable. The ones that complain that Live Chat was "oversold" to them, are the same ones that complain every time because they did not put in the effort to make it successful and just hoped that the technology would have all the answers.

Website Re-Design Follow Up

Just after I wrote my last post on Web Site Re-Design, I was looking through my Twitter feed and found a really interesting post about a new web site. I have no connections to this company and have no interest in promoting their product. I just think it is a really unique, interesting and creative way to think about using visuals to engage users instead of so much text. Cutting edge design choices in my mind that will be interesting to see how it pans out for them.

Here is the site:

www.marketo.com

Technology Trends 2012- Web Site Re-Design

So, I must be honest and say I was not sure whether or not I should include this one in a blog that focuses on customer service and customer service technology. Why? Because historically, the CS team has very little to do with the website design and sadly they typically have very little to do with how customers get serviced on the website. Yeah, they might be the ones writing and maintaining the FAQs section, but other than that, other parts of the organization tend to control the design and flow of how a website functions for consumers. I see this changing even as we speak, but in my opinion, not fast enough.

Three things really are influencing the move to redesign the websites of most organizations, but specifically within customer support.

#1- Political Will- CS execs are stepping up and demanding a seat at the table more and more about decisions that are impacting their more traditional channels of communication with consumers. Instead of just waiting on Marketing or Sales to launch a new site and then bear the brunt of the disgruntled customers that call to get service because the website doesn't have their answers, CS execs are raising their voices about what CS should look like on the web. They are stepping forward and demanding that even if they don't own it, they want to influence and drive the experience of consumers. Kind of a no brainer, but becoming more and more common.

#2- Consumer Expectations- I was talking to a company recently that told me that they are rethinking their whole online strategy around service because they felt like the expectations that consumers had were so far advanced from where they were as a company. And this was not some old world company that hadn't had an update for 10 years. This was a major consumer brand name that was trying to figure out where the hockey puck was going to and trying to skate in that direction. They are looking at other big brands, that ironically are not in their industry, to understand what consumers like and don't like. And what they are hearing is that consumers want simple, easy and fun. Imagine that.

#3- New Concepts and Technology- The other major reason, I am being told, that companies are refreshing their sites is because there is technology coming out faster than they can even evaluate it that could drive major enhancements to the site. CS execs are looking at Community Forums, Knowledge Bases, Gamification, Live Chat, Virtual Agents, Interactive Videos and so much more to help drive activity online. Most of this technology is SaaS based, Cloud based or Hosted and can be turned on or off quickly to see if it will drive value. So what we are seeing as a result of this new technology are site redesigns that are built purposely to be more modular and flexible to accommodate the entrance or exit of any one technology that might be useful.

To summarize, web site redesign is a major initiative that I am seeing happening today in the CS landscape. Each company takes their own customized approach to what they think will ultimately serve the consumer best, but the good thing I am seeing is that CS Execs are owning it, they are trying new technology quickly and they are listening to what consumers want. Sounds like a recipe for success to me.....

Technology Trends 2012- IVR Follow Up

This post will be a quick one, but a follow up to my last post on the IVR projects. One of the things that is interesting about the IVR is how boring it has always been. No one that I have ever seen, used or worked with every really used any sort of creativity to make the experience something to be remembered or even celebrated. But I saw this today: http://ht.ly/8OJV8 and it made me think about how many really fun, creative and unique ideas are out there that could be applied to IVR's in awesome ways.

Trends for 2012- IVR's

Number two on the list of projects that people are working on and I am hearing a lot about is IVR Replacement or Re-Design. And all I have to say about that is, THANK GOD!

For years now consumers have been crying foul on anyone that is using an IVR as a typical speed bump to getting to a live agent. Consumers have been incredibly vocal on social sites and even developing their own blogs or websites dedicated to making sure each other is aware of how to beat the IVR. I was watching a show the other day on CNBC callled "Customer Dis-Service", a supposed inside look into the world of customer service. The show itself was crap. But they did have a major segment of the program dedicated to talking to the guy that built the website that puts up IVR trees online so you know how to beat them. Not sure if that says more about CNBC's journalism or the state of our industry.

Anyway, IVR's need the makeover. They have needed it for many years, but there just has not been enough real headway made in the voice interaction space to really drive compelling and useful re-design or replacement. Most companies that I have spoken with just could not justify the investment with the "new" IVR tools that had been coming out.

But, in the last year or two there have been a couple companies in the IVR space that have come up with some truly valuable and unique ways of addressing the challenges that are inherent with voice interactions. This technology jump along with the addition of common sense best practices and a deeper set of analytical tools to actually measure the customer journey have produced some strong re-designs and replacements. So much so that those big companies that could not justify it in the past are finally willing to put their political and financial butts on the line to make a change.

Of course it is again a welcome replacement cycle for technology providers and integration companies, but I think it is an even more welcome change for all of us consumers. Someday in the next ten years, someone will nail down Natural Language Processing and Voice Reco so well that this will all be a punch line to a joke we tell at conferences about when we used to use those old systems back in the day. But till then, we will see a steady stream of refresh happening that will make us all happy!

Trends for 2012- Knowledge Management

As we kick off the trends to watch for 2012, the list would certainly not be complete without the inclusion of Knowledge Bases or Knowledge Management. Seemingly every company I am working with today has some sort of initiative to overhaul how the customer service group or the whole company views knowledge.

There are any number of views on what Knowledge really is and how it should be gathered, stored, accessed and used. Some on one end of the spectrum believe that KM is really nothing more than a storage facility for information and Microsoft Sharepoint will do just fine. Others on the opposite end of the spectrum believe that KM is critical to the way a company needs to run it's business in 2012 and beyond. These folks argue that with the reshaping of the customer experience and the new dynamics of co creation with customers, there is a real opportunity to change the way that knowledge is created, used and stored that will fundamentally shift the KM space.

I am currently unsure of where exactly we are at in the KM cycle and mind set shift, but my sense is that we are somewhere in the middle of those views. From my conversations, there are a number of companies that are just starting to understand the value of having KM as a key part of their customer service strategy. While there seem to be just as many that already have some form of KM and are just trying to figure out what their strategy should be moving forward.

The one thing that I am certain of is that everyone is talking KM in meetings. They are talking about the desire to figure it out once and for all. They are talking consistency with their communication. They are talking about the single source of truth. They are working through models of how social customers impact their strategy. They are asking questions about a single stand along solution versus something that maybe comes as a part of a suite.

There are some very exciting technologies that exist in the market today for meeting the need you have as a company. The one caution that I would lay down for anyone looking to invest in knowledge is to try to think about how you can make knowledge come to life. Knowledge or information by its very nature is boring and static and certainly not sexy. Whether that knowledge lives in a data warehouse, a CRM system, a KM system or in a BI tool. The key will always be to take the time to figure out how to surface that information to the right person, in the right format, at the right time and in a way that will engage them so they will come back for more.

Yep, KM is a big hairy monster that many companies are just trying to grapple with. Take your time and make sure the knowledge lives and breaths......

Trends for 2012 Technology

Being on the front lines of technology for customer service environments, I am afforded the opportunity to meet with many different people inside and outside of enterprise companies. I work with all sorts of different people at different levels in companies and with all kinds of industries. The neat part of that for me is getting to meet so many people, but the technology geek side of me loves it because I am able to see first had what people are doing to leverage technology for the betterment of their business and for the consumer.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I am going to post about the trends/technology that I am seeing organizations take a crack at deploying in the customer service operations and what they are saying about why they are doing it.

As a precursor, here are the items that seem to be jumping out as trends that I will be talking about more in depth:

1. Knowledge Management Overhaul

2. IVR Re-Design or Replacements

3. Web Site Refresh

4. Live Chat Deployments

5. Virtual Agents

6. Feedback Management

7. Social Tools

I will take one at a time and just see where it goes. Please let me know your thoughts....