Five Principles for Customer Service in the 2.0 World
The InQuira Point of View

In an economy burdened by content proliferation, information overload, increasing expectations and decreasing attention spans, one facet of the customer service experience has taken on greater importance: the ability to connect people with the unstructured content they need to make informed decisions. A compelling customer service experience depends on the quality of content, the ability to deliver that information to the right person at the right time and a mechanism to determine if the ensuing experience met the needs of the customer and the enterprise in a mutually beneficial way.

The delta between what consumers expect and what companies deliver represents a significant opportunity for businesses to rethink how they engage their customers. The early innovators are challenging some long-held assumptions, and rethinking the technology mix that drives the customer service experience. In particular, they are revisiting the wisdom of their content management processes and systems, recognizing the expanded role search can play in an effective customer experience, and demanding more actionable analytics to align customer needs with the behavior and content that generate the desired actions.

Here, then, are five principles for customer service in the Web 2.0 world:

1. Listen well. Customer service is ultimately about people. The best customer service interaction consists of a customer who can articulate his problem, a service provider who hears and understands that problem, a dialogue to diagnose root causes and an exchange of knowledge to resolve the issue. This process works exceptionally well in person, and when the service provider is expert on the offending product or service. But applying the same process to the Web and phone channels, through which most interactions occur, can be a challenge. One reason is that companies approach their customer service technology investments solely as a way to deflect calls and cut costs. Technology should not be a substitute for personal interaction; it should be an enabler of better customer engagement.

The Web is a two-way communication medium. Search is an underutilized mechanism for engaging customers in dialogue, particularly when the search is intelligent and capable of responding to human input at the conceptual or intent level. An analyst once referred to InQuira as "having the best ears on the Internet" because the software uses an intelligent search mechanism to engage its users in a dynamic conversation, much like you might expect with a personal interaction.

Unlike keyword search engines, sophisticated NLP search technologies like InQuira can crawl and index both structured and unstructured content sources for semantic meaning, and drive a dynamic customer service experience based on a robust understanding of visitor context, profile information and search and navigation behavior.

2. Harvest knowledge. Recognize that knowledge creation is distributed. Information is at the heart of every customer interaction, and quality trumps quantity. The explosion of social media and user-generated content to serve every possible niche need is important because it underscores how poorly existing information sources serve those needs. Companies are rethinking the important role that information, content and knowledge play in delivering a compelling customer service experience.

Traditional content management systems tend to be controlled by a centralized authoring group, while knowledge applications like InQuira are more aligned with the egalitarian nature of Web 2.0. Instead of residing in the hands of a few content creators, knowledge can (and should)
be generated by employees, partners, distributors and customers. It may be harvested from almost anywhere—discussion forums, call center interactions, internal collaboration and service requests submitted from the Web. Software solutions like InQuira make it easy for businesses to capture unstructured knowledge content from the business processes we use every day—such as resolving customer problems, or collaborating in a discussion forum—and put it through a workflow that will make it accessible to a broader audience.

3. Search and knowledge management are interdependent. A leading technology advisory firm released a report at the end of 2006 that plots customer service technologies against their impact on customer service productivity, and customer experience. The intersection of knowledge management and search topped that list, a clear indication that businesses recognize that search and knowledge management must be tightly integrated and measured by a common reporting and analytics tool if their true impact on the customer service experience is to be understood, and improved upon.

To paraphrase a popular knowledge management best practice, "searching is creating." Often, the best customer support content is captured while an agent is actively searching through information to resolve a customer’s specific problem. When knowledge is created at the point of demand, context is automatically captured as part of the knowledge creation process.

4. Don’t play multi-channel roulette. The primary channels for interacting with customers are in person, through the Web, and on the phone. Email is an admission of low confidence in other channels, and chat is a novelty whose allure will almost certainly wear off.

Too often companies are being urged to focus on multi-channel customer service as the priority, rather than focusing on how well their existing knowledgebase is serving customer and agent needs. Got poor Web self service? Add a chat box. If you cannot solve customer problems through your primary channels, how does adding more channels do anything but exacerbate the problem? Or alternatively, if you offer Web self service and contact center support that work, would customers be unhappy that you didn’t offer other channels like chat or email? Of course not. Fundamentally, the key is having the right content and making it easily findable by the people who need it. With the right foundation, all channels can be effective, and you will discover that you can get by with fewer channels as well.

5. The wisdom of crowds has powerful connotations for customer service. It’s a simple truth—people crave validation. It’s a lot easier to buy a product from Amazon when all the customer reviews are positive. The same holds true in support environments. With so much information available, many customers, agents and employees need additional tools by which to filter what is important and directly applicable to their situation from what is not. That validation can take the form of content ratings, reputation models for contributors, article reuse counts and even expertise locators—all of which InQuira supports in one form or another. For example, many customer service organizations rate the value of knowledge content by how frequently an article is used to resolve a customer issue and linked to an actual case. Reuse in the call center can be a threshold for publishing to a broader audience on the Web. Companies may monitor discussion forums to identify and reward frequent contributors with "points" and recognition, and define processes to harvest the knowledge from those discussions. These are just a few of the many different scenarios under which content ratings, reputation models and personal preferences and subscriptions can contribute to a better support experience for customers and agents.