In the customer service world, customer engagement is a white-hot topic. Everybody is talking about it, but there is a big difference between those who can "walk the walk" and those who "talk the talk."
I was surprised to hear comments at the contact center session at Enterprise Connect speculating on whether customer experience was a trend that would take off. Perhaps that is an indication that most traditional contact centers cannot deliver what is needed to truly provide customer engagement. As one person from a leading vendor on stage explained it, there is a lot of software in the contact center, and no one can connect it all. Well, we know you can!
Let's go back to basics. It is possible to integrate your contact center with instant access to everything you know about your customer (both ERP and CRM data are key). Agents are empowered with knowledge of the:
• History of the customer relationship (and how valuable they are to your company)
• Customer's buying history (including their credit and payment history)
• Context of why the customer may be calling--what happened during their last transaction?
Simplifying information feeds with a single, centralized database for your contact center, ERP and CRM systems and presenting a single screen for agents eliminates the agent's need to toggle between multiple screens of data, a costly waste of the customer's time. Shorter transaction times and greater efficiency are key to delivering best-in-class performance.
The Aberdeen Group's paper: "Agent Desktop Optimization: Agents Can Finally Focus on the Customer" analyzed characteristics of the top 20% performers. In 43% of those, "...the building block of top performers' agent desktop management initiatives focused on simplification and integration." Too many agent screens is also a waste of money. Twenty-six percent of agents' time was spent looking for relevant data across different systems, and the cost of each additional screen is $1,400 per agent, per year.
Recently we held a webinar along with our partner Knack Systems, that featured our customer, Wacker Neuson. They explain how they used Personalized Customer Engagement as a strategic initiative. In this effort they leveraged the power of ERP, HCM (HR), CRM and contact center to deliver a strategic advantage to their organization. If you were unable to attend our webinar on February 27, you can click on this link to access this webinar.
