The importance of having a stretegy for customer contact

• Customer contact is a key driver of cost: every contact, whether wanted or not, consumes resources (unless handling it is wholly automated).
• Contacts can often be handled equally effectively through cheaper channels.
• The way contact is handled is a major determinant of customer satisfaction and of an organisation's reputation.
• The way customers experience contact in any one channel influences their choice of channel for future contact. Failure in one channel commonly leads to demand being switched to other channels.

Trends in contact

Most organisations are experiencing an increase in contact from their customers. The drivers for this are:

• Perceived time pressure and impatience: people don’t read the guidance notes they just phone for clarification, and they expect an increasingly quick response to post and email.
• Increasing customer expectations to be able to make contact when and how they want to.
• New channels being opened up (especially web and email) and existing channels (especially telephone) being open for longer.
• Increasing rates of change in society: people change jobs, homes, partners, products, providers of services etc. ever more quickly.

The implications

The immediate consequence is increasing pressure on Contact Centres and other access points. This in turn can mean increased cost as more staff are needed and/or increased pressure on staff as higher productivity is demanded.

Alternatively, it means that customers have greater difficulty gaining access, resulting in a worse customer experience, loss of business and damage to your reputation.

Customer contact strategy

Organisations need a clear view of:

• What contact channels and access points they will make available: how, where and when, and how they will look to customers.
• What transactions, facilties and standards each channel will offer.
• How they would like their customers to use these channels.
• How to manage the set of channels as an integrated whole.
• How to get customers to behave in the way intended.
• What technology, software, organisation, processes, skills, etc. is necessary to achieve all this.

To develop a strategy, organisations need to:

• Understand the current volumes of contact, the channels it is occurring through and the trends over time.
• Understand who their customers are, what they expect and what drives their behaviour.
• Undertand the performance of current channels.
• Be clear what contact has value to the organisation and to its customers and what doesn’t. The latter is Avoidable contact.
• Be able to measure the extent of Avoidable contact, understand what triggers it and have processes or plans to eliminate it.

Some key insights

• The current level of contact is not a given - much of it can be eliminated.
• Outbound contact is one of the key drivers of inbound contact - and needs to be managed.
• Channels cannot be managed in isolation: customers move freely between channels as part of the same transaction and on different occasions.
• Customer contact is a strategic issue for service organisations and organisational responsibilities for it need to reflect this.

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