When is a Website Not a Website?
"Relevance is important. On the Web, I can get more targeted content than on the phone. When I go to your website, you're able to track all sorts of implicit behavior...things I didn't even know you are tracking, such as where I've been before (click-stream analysis), the category of customer I am, whether I'm on DSL or dial-up, what browser I use...all these things start to add up to create a pattern to segment me into a customer group. Based on that, you can target services and information that's more relevant to me in a Web self-service environment that you can't do with other channels," he said.
"It's not just putting offers in front of me to up-sell or cross-sell; it's providing relevant information that I would welcome. I click on a document to research a support case, and I can see six other recommended documents. You might not be able to do that on the phone; you either don't know enough about me, or it takes too long. But on the Web, I can scan a page and see other information that's relevant to my case."
Mapping Intent with Outcome
I stayed with this question of "cost" versus "value" as a starting-off point for these interviews. I wanted to get a consensus from the group whether their customers were trying to save money, or whether they sought some other, more intrinsic advantage, by deploying their Web self-service environments. So I asked Mark Buckallew, senior director of product management at InQuira, the same question.
"A few customers still use older terms such as ‘call deflection,' or how to leverage their website to reduce costs," admitted Buckallew. "But now more people are talking about how to leverage their customers more. How do you build community and customer loyalty? How do you improve the usage of the site, so customers are coming to your site more often? And then how do you market to those communities, and help them grow?"
Good questions. You tell me.
"Here's the thinking," said Buckallew. "They think: I know I have to invest in Web self-service to improve the overall experience for my customer. Then they take the next step: How can I leverage those interactions? How can I funnel folks toward certain offers that are appropriate for them? How can I drive business toward other areas I'm trying to create interest around? Take the automobile industry as an example. They know that if someone can ‘configure' their own car (via a website), they're more likely to go into a dealership and buy that car. That's not so much cross-sell or up-sell; that's creating market demand. It's a matter of correlating activity on the Web to actual results in increasing revenue," he said.
About that "efficiency vs. value question," I reminded him? "There are clearly two sides to the coin: There's always an ROI argument...that we can save money, or find things faster, or even at a system level, resolve questions faster so that more people can use the system," he answered. "But there's another side of the coin: can I utilize the system to generate more revenue? This is not such a clear-cut set of metrics, but we want to make sure that is part of the justification, and that it's not solely based on cost reduction. People are interested in ALL the ways you can impact the company."
He continued: "It comes down to industry vertical. For instance, in high-tech they want to use the website for resolution of problems. In those cases, they want to keep marketing away from it! They don't want to complicate it. But another case is a bank; if someone asks about a mortgage, you're going to start sending offers!"
That fragmentation is reflected in the manner in which Buckallew's company engages its customers these days. "We usually start with a VP of customer service. But we are starting to see companies that have a ‘VP of customer experience.' These people take an overarching view of customer service AND marketing. The marketing department may not be as heavily involved in the evaluation of the actual system, but they provide inputs and requirements that are filtered into the support or customer-service organization, because they want to have some control over the customer experience," he explained.
"The biggest change we're seeing is that, organizationally, groups are coming together. In the past you might have seen Web self-service as its own island. But now there's far more interest in solutions that involve a combination of Web self-service and contact centers, for instance, and that gets you into organizational business process and management of content for the website."
I wondered whether he could provide examples of this interaction between the traditional "customer support" role and the trend toward a more robust interaction.
"There is a push toward personalization, where a visitor signs in and authenticates, and he sees subscriptions to content and alerts, offers that are available, etc., based on his profile and knowledge the company already has about this person. It may then reach out to become more transaction-oriented—here's his current account info; here's his order history. This requires a great deal of individual personalization; what did this person look at, and has it changed since then? What alerts do I need to deliver this person?
"There are insurance companies, for example," Buckallew continued, "where 90% of their revenue comes from 10% of their customers. These are high-value interactions; in many cases, they have an account manager they always work with. If this high-value customer goes to the Web, you want to make sure they have a way to get to their usual account manager. But also keep in mind, there may be a REASON this customer is on the website and not calling their account person!" he laughed. "You never know!"
This cross-pollination of support and service has led to advances on the technology side. "There's a shift happening; search and navigation are converging," said Buckallew. "You gather information from multiple inputs, which could be search concepts, or they could be navigational options that somebody's entering. You need to determine what responses to send based on these multiple inputs. It's a many-to-many relationship—many different inputs and many different responses. That drives a more dynamic experience for the visitor." Plus it sounds complex to implement.
Historical knowledge alone isn't enough. "It needs to be based on the visitor's current needs, more so than the historical information about the person. The most important thing is figuring out what the person wants NOW. That's basically what we do; we provide an engine that identifies the visitor's intention, and then drives the business desires of the company to map up with that input."