Creating
Differentiation
by Simplifying
Customer
Experience
Creating Differentiation by Simplifying
Service providers today are facing intense competitive challenges
from other operators, over-the-top players and device manufacturers.
The only way service providers can retain and grow their customers
is by creating differentiation via a simplified customer experience
across all assisted and unassisted channels. Amdocs Customer
Management portfolio is geared to help service providers optimize
their current sales and services processes, as well as leverage valuable
customer insight to proactively address emerging issues before
they reach customers.
Customers Face a Blizzard of Choice–
Service Providers Want to Differentiate
In the past, many service providers were focused on differentiating
their network quality, attractive pricing or the cool devices they
offered. Today, most service providers understand that these
aspects, while important, do not guarantee customer satisfaction
and loyalty. The only way to stay ahead of traditional competitors, as
well as the new breed of competitors (over-the-top app developers,
such as Viber and Skype; and device manufacturers, such as Apple
and Samsung, etc.) is by delivering a great customer experience.
And since the world of communications entails a blizzard of choice
and complex combinations of products, services and applications,
the best way service providers can differentiate is by simplifying the
customer experience.
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Meet Lisa
Customers today exist in a hyper-connected world. Most
consumers have multiple personas (at home, at work, on the
road, etc.) and use a variety of applications and services on
multiple connected devices. Lisa is one of those connected
consumers. As the owner of multiple devices and a heavy
user of voice and data, Lisa is the type of consumer that
most service providers aim to attract and retain. Unlike
most consumers, however, Lisa is technologically-savvy.
Many aren’t, and yet they are buying smartphones, tablets
and smart TVs, and soon connected cars and connected
home products.
Today there are a variety of ways to connect and a multiplicity
of connected applications. This introduces a great deal of
complexity when buying new products and services, as well
as when using service and support. Consumers rely on their
service providers for help, which creates an opportunity to
simplify their experiences and create differentiation that will
lead to increased customer loyalty.
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Consumers’ Experiences are Complex...
We survey consumers like Lisa every year, to discover how service providers
can improve. In our recent global consumer survey (February 2012),
we discovered:
• Tech-savvy consumers like Lisa are comfortable with the internet and
turn to it as a first option, but 48 percent of consumers choose not to use
online self service because they expect answers to either be inaccurate
or incomplete. In addition, 54 percent of customers complain to their
service provider via social media, but only 27 percent actually receive
a response. As a result, 40 percent of self service users eventually call
contact centers for support and 80 percent of social media complaints
are likely to end up in a call center.
• This means that the burden on the contact center is not decreasing, in
spite of the increase in consumers’ technological sophistication. In fact,
over 60 percent of customers that encounter a problem with their bill or
device prefer live assistance. And 57 percent still prefer to complete their
purchase in-store. But while most consumers still depend on assisted
channels, their satisfaction from service providers’ assisted channels
is the lowest compared to all other comparable industries (credit card,
insurance, travel and retail).
• We also asked consumers what they expect from their service providers
moving forward. They want service providers to anticipate their needs
and become more proactive in addressing them. In fact, 96 percent of
consumers believe services providers should proactively inform them
about major issues related to their devices and 75 percent expect
their service provider to always provide the right answer, regardless
of the source of the solution. Finally, 91 percent of consumers think
their service provider should establish a single place online for known
solutions to problems or questions, accessible from their mobile device.
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Complex Experience Negatively Impacts
Your Business
How does the current flawed experience impact service providers?
• Shopping cart abandonment—many consumers get frustrated with
the inconsistency across channels, so they abandon their shopping
carts either online, or sometimes in assisted channels as well
(call center or store). This means they do not complete the purchase
and may be lost altogether. In fact, 40 percent of online shopping
carts are abandoned and 25 percent of in-store purchases are also
abandoned. Lisa visited her local store and she was offered a special
plan because she’s a heavy user. When she later tried to purchase the
special plan online, the system had no knowledge of the offer or the
discussions she had in the store.
• Order fallout—significant purchases that are completed online, in the
call center and in the store often encounter fulfillment problems later on.
This may be a cause of erroneous data entry up-front during the order
capture, or lack of validity checks of the order (eligibility, compatibility
and serviceability) before it is committed. The result is higher cost of
sale. In other words, manual intervention is needed to fix the order. Some
of these stuck orders only require fixing the data entered. Others may
require re-sending a technician to the customer’s premises (multiple
truck trips). In extreme cases, the order simply cannot be fulfilled (for
instance, because of a lack of coverage in the customer’s neighborhood).
This causes customer frustration and potential churn.
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• Long average handling time—the complexity of the products and
services used by the customer entails multiple, disparate systems and
processes that customer service reps have to deal with to address
customer needs. This reflects on the length of the interaction, further
frustrating the customer. The high employee turnover in call centers
and stores require ongoing training on these complex systems,
also raising risks.
• Deteriorating customer satisfaction and loyalty—as previously
mentioned, customer satisfaction in the communication sectors
(wireless, TV, internet, etc.) is already lower than in other industries.
Amdocs’ Vision:
Simplifying Customer Experience
Fulfilling the Vision: Amdocs Customer
Management Portfolio
Our vision: help service providers create differentiation by simplifying
customer experience across three dimensions:
The Amdocs Customer Management portfolio aims to significantly simplify
the customer experience. The portfolio is divided into three main domains
that complement each other:
• Improving efficiency and effectiveness of assisted channels—
assisted channels are the “last resort” for customers. Service providers
must ensure the experience in assisted channels is positive (simple and
quick) and effective (solves all issues).
• Increasing adoption of lower-cost unassisted channels—most
customers are ready to use the Web and their mobile devices
(smartphone, tablet) to serve themselves. Service providers therefore
need to deliver an intuitive user experience that will compel customers
to use self service on an ongoing basis. This will reduce the workload of
assisted channels.
• Proactively anticipating and addressing issues before Lisa
discovers them—compared to other industries, many of which
struggle to collect behavioral and transactional data on consumers,
service providers have the luxury of a vast amount of purchase, usage
and billing data that can tell them a lot
about their customers. The key is to
harness this data in real time to identify
emerging issues and opportunities and
act proactively to address them. This will
satisfy the customer, while containing
and reducing support costs.
• Multichannel Selling—brings together all the sales channels around
a single sales and ordering hub, with the goal of seizing every revenue
opportunity possible.
• Multichannel Care—ensures all customer service channels are able to
quickly and effectively diagnose and solve customer issues, as well as
handling escalations when needed.
• Proactive Insight—anticipates customer needs by real-time monitoring
of the customer’s transactions. When a need is identified, it is
addressed proactively.
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Amdocs Multichannel Selling
Amdocs Multichannel Care
Amdocs Multichannel Selling is focused on maximizing revenue while
reducing the cost of sales, without compromising on delivering a pleasant
consumer shopping experience. At the heart of this solution is a central
product catalog, Amdocs Enterprise Product Catalog, which enables
consistency across channels. A central sales and ordering hub, Amdocs
Convergent Order Hub, ensures all orders are captured accurately and
checked against business rules before being submitted. The three main
sales channels – call center, store and self service E-Commerce-are
integrated into this central hub to check that every purchase is completed,
even if the purchase spans multiple channels (channel hopping).
Amdocs Multichannel Care provides a set of assisted and unassisted service
and support tools that aim to enable fast handling time of issues, first-call
issue resolution and reduction of agent’s learning curve. A key area of focus
is the user experience, both online and in the call center. At the heart of this
solution is Amdocs Smart Agent Desktop, Amdocs’ flagship solution for the
contact center, as well as solutions for Web and mobile self service.
With Amdocs Multichannel Selling, service providers will:
• Improve margins by increasing service consumption and reducing
no-fault-found returns.
• Maximize revenue through quick offer introduction and accurate
order completion.
• Reduce cost of sale across all channels through efficient and
streamlined sales processes.
• Deliver an unparalleled shopping experience that is simple,
consistent, personal and integrated.
With Amdocs Multichannel Care, service provides will:
• Reduce support costs by minimizing interaction time and deflecting
calls to lower-cost channels.
• Improve agent and customer experience through a simple and intuitive
user interface.
Amdocs Proactive Insight
Amdocs Proactive Insight leverages real-time events about the customer’s
purchases, issues, usage and billing, to identify emerging issues and
opportunities. It then transforms these real-time insights into recommended
actions and “feeds” the other two solutions, to allow them to address the
needs proactively.
With Amdocs Proactive Insight, service providers will:
• Further improve call shed, deflection and agent efficiency by providing
predictions and recommended fixes.
• Increase customer satisfaction and reduce churn by resolving issues
proactively before they affect the customer.
• Increase brand loyalty by giving the customer the right solution at the
right time.
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Why Amdocs?
The Amdocs Customer Management portfolio is uniquely positioned to help service providers create differentation
through a simplified customer experience by:
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•
Ensuring customer experience will always be consistent, across all assisted and unassisted channels. This is achieved by a
central set of hubs (catalog, sales and ordering, customer repository and proactive insight engine) that are used by all sales and
service channels.
•
Featuring a superior and intuitive user experience that will lower the learning curve for call center and store reps and increase
adoption of unassisted channels.
•
Injecting proactive insight into sales and service processes, across all assisted and unassisted channels, driven by real-time
insights generated from the operational systems themselves.
Summary
Customer experience is a hot topic for
service providers, but many of them still
struggle with it. Amdocs’ vision and solution
portfolio will help service providers create
differentiation by simplifying the customer
experience, and at the same time achieve
better financial results. Amdocs believes
that a holistic approach that combines a
multichannel customer management
ecosystem
powered
by
real-time
proactive insight can help service
providers deliver the ultimate customer
experience while improving their margins.
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About Amdocs
For more than 30 years, Amdocs has ensured service providers’ success and embraced their
biggest challenges. To win in the connected world, service providers rely on Amdocs to simplify
the customer experience, harness the data explosion, stay ahead with new services and improve
operational efficiency. The global company uniquely combines a market-leading BSS, OSS and
network control product portfolio with value-driven professional services and managed services
operations. With revenue of $3.2 billion in fiscal 2012, Amdocs and its 20,000 employees serve
customers in more than 60 countries. Amdocs: Embrace Challenge, Experience Success.
For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.
For the most up-to-date contact information for all Amdocs offices worldwide, please visit our website at www.amdocs.com/corporate.asp.
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