Time For the Offense to Take the Field Pro-Active Customer Contact

Joe Outlaw, Principal Analyst

Contact Centers

September 23, 2008

2

Focus Points

• What is pro-active customer contact (PCC) and why you should care?

• Which strategies best leverage pro-active customer contact?

• Which applications and technologies enable pro-active customer contact strategies?

3

What is pro-active customer contact and why

you should care?

4

Pro-active Customer Contact (PCC): More Than Traditional Tele-Marketing

Comprehensive Pro-Active Customer Contact

Comprehensive Pro-Active Customer Contact

Notification and AlertingNotification and Alerting

Outbound IVR applicationsOutbound IVR applications

Customer FeedbackCustomer Feedback

Outbound DialingOutbound Dialing

Collections

Tele-marketing for new sales

Emergencies

Appointment

RemindersProduct

Recalls

After call feedback

With product registration

Random sampling

Health check w/order option

Order or service

status update

5

Impact of PCC on Customer Retention and Revenues

Source: The Loyalty Effect

Relationship Between Customer

Retention Rate and Profitability

Profit/customer

-25

0

50

0 1 2 3 4 5

Years Customer Retained

25

Proactivity increases

customers’ positive view of the company – strengthens the brand

Positive customers remain

customers longer

Positive customers buy more

Positive customers recommend the company’s products to others

6

Impact of PCC on Competitive Differentiation

Addition of point PCC

applications

Reactive, Pro-active, and Blended

Reactive-only

customer contact

Reactive-only

Widening

Gap

Point applications evolve to become comprehensive PCC program

7

Impact of PCC on Contact Center Operations

Contact Center Costs

Agent

Satisfaction

Reduce inbound calls, particularly

complaints

Increase job diversity for call center agents

Reduce staff turnover which reduces recruitment and training

Fill inbound call troughs with pro-active

Increase agent and systems utilization

Simplify staff planning

8

Which strategies best leverage pro-active customer contact?

9

PCC Emphasis: Contact Center Cost Reduction

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Incoming customer calls

Time of Day

8AM 10AM Noon 2PM

OutboundContacts

StaffingLevel

Outbound contacts balance valleys in inbound call loads

10

PCC Emphasis: Customer Loyalty and Revenue Growth

Contact Center

Revenues

Customer

Satisfaction

Mine customer interaction data -

identify opportunities to provide valued

customers’ with:•useful product/service information•offers on new and related products of previous or projected interest for sale

Identify "best" resource for pro-active service follow-up or sales offers

Challenges:• need different agent performance

metrics for outbound and blended contact handling

•need to provide sales training for agents

• add sales and blended skill sets to WFM and routing applications

11

Future: Unified PCC

Sales and Marketing

Contact Center

Revenue FocusHigh

Customer Contact - Reactive Customer Contact - Proactive

Customer Service Focus High

UnifiedPCC

12

Which applications and technologies enable pro-active customer contact strategies?

13

Pro-Active Customer Contact Technologies

Outbound Dialing and scripting

Automated dialing applications - can be operated in various states of automation, such as power, preview, and predictive

IVR and voice portal platform-based outbound applications

DTMF or speech recognition interfaced

applications for outbound calling can

support simple to complex interaction

Notification and alerting

Outbound notification and alerts can be

delivered by telephone, fax, other

media, and mixed media, can be

scheduled or event-driven

Pro-active survey and customer feedback collection/analysis applications

Can be a few instant reaction questions

after a call or lengthy periodic surveys

with the same objective - to gather

and analyze the “voice of the

customer”

14

Pro-active Customer Contact Applications

Pro-Active Customer Contact as a competitive differentiator –

combating commoditization in some of the most competitive industries.

Insurance

• On-boarding• Claim-process• Renewal reminder

Banking

• On-boarding• Credit card fraud• Payment reminders

Telecom

• Switch to auto pay• Minutes used

Retail

• Sale alerts• Delivery notification• Product recalls• Order confirmation

Govt.

• Emergency• Tax reminders• Political campaign

Utilities

• Appt. confirm• Outage status• Crew callout

Health Care

• Appt. remind• Prescription renew• Disease mgt

Airlines/Travel

• Flight status update

• Resv. confirm

• Emergency

15

Summary and Recommendations

• PCC solutions: leaders are moving from point to comprehensive

deployments

• PCC solutions can deliver both operational efficiencies and

revenue growth

• Start by creating a PCC vision for your organization

• Develop a PCC strategy and tactics to achieve your vision

• Determine application/technology, staffing, training requirements

• Iterate toward your vision - quality improvement approach

16

Your Feedback is Important to Us

Growth Forecasts?

Competitive Structure?

Emerging Trends?

Strategic Recommendations?

Other?

Please inform us by taking our survey.

What would you like to see from Frost & Sullivan?

17

For Additional Information

• To leave a comment, ask the analyst a question, or receive the

free audio segment that accompanies this presentation, please contact Stephanie Ochoa, Social Media Manager at (210) 247-

2421, via email, analystbriefings@frost.com, or on Twitter at

http://twitter.com/stephanieochoa.