With dollars and staff at a new low in the telecom arena, it's no surprise more service providers are looking to automate customer service. But vendors note new customer relationship management tools go beyond simply lowering the costs of dealing with customer concerns, they can help service providers stem churn and drive new revenue from the existing customer base.
For example, a vendor called KANA offers an e-mail customer service tool designed to help companies respond to a high volume of e-mail quickly and efficiently. One of its applications forwards e-mail to customer service agents based on their knowledge. Another tool provides customers with automated responses to their questions about billing through a Web site.
As KANA learned more about inbound communications, it realized that outbound e-mail was an opportunity too, says Chris Olin, director of products at KANA, which counts BellSouth, British Telecom, Sprint, Verizon and many others among its customers. So the company introduced KANA Marketing application, which segments customer information based on various parameters, such as service type and geography. That enables the service provider to single out groups of customers easily and send those groups e-mail promotions. For example, the system could offer cell phone customers in a particular region Internet access at a discount, says Olin.
Meanwhile, KANA Connect could help the service provider create a more "sticky" experience for its customers. This tool offers what Olin refers to as "operational messaging". That is, it used notify customers via e-mail when a bill is available for viewing online or other aspects of their account.
Daniel Kenyon, vice president of communications industry strategy with PeopleSoft, says that service providers are beginning to deploy analytics in a fashion that drives that data to customer service reps in real time. The goal is to help the reps gauge customer propensity to churn and provide them with an automated process to response to that. Also important is creating a hierarchy for dealing with customers, based not only on which customers spend the most money, but also on which ones are most profitable, says Kenyon. "This is what we see service providers really trying to get down to," he says.
"We're trying to help service providers get a 360-degree view of the customer -- products, services, but also past purchasing and where we can go with those customers. And to put it all in an easy-to-use format CSRs can understand."
KANA's Olin says the next development he expects to see in customer care is proactive response, or a move by companies to answer questions before they are asked. For example, he says, a service provider could send users e-mail ten days before their bill comes letting them know how many minutes are left on their cell phone plan.
