Web serviceseservicebestpractices
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The document provides best practices for companies implementing eService (customer service on a company's website). It discusses 15 best practices organized into three categories: 1) People and Processes, which are project management strategies to ensure success; 2) Site Smarts, regarding website design and navigation to help customers find answers; 3) Software Smarts, relating to using eService software capabilities. Some key best practices include appointing an eService champion, ensuring collaboration across departments, committing to continuous improvement, making help easily accessible from the homepage, and providing visual/interactive content to answer questions.
Web serviceseservicebestpractices
- 1. The Insider’s Guide to eService Best Practices: 15 Best Practices Smart Companies Use to Maximize the Business Benefits of Customer Service on the Web 2002 RightNow® Technologies, Inc.
- 2. Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Why eService? 2 The Top 15 Proven Best Practices for eService 4 People and Processes 4 Site Smarts 6 Software Smarts 9 Conclusion: Getting Started 11 About RightNow Technologies 12 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc. 0
- 3. Executive Summary Substantial business benefits result from using the Internet for customer service. The Web is open 24 hours a day. And every time a customer finds an answer online, it eliminates the cost of a phone call or an email reply. This yields significant savings and frees up operators to handle issues that really warrant their attention. Customer service on the Web, also known as eService, is scalable, allowing companies to handle spikes in customer queries without having to temporarily add operators or phone lines. Most importantly, eService ensures customers get answers to their questions immediately, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and retention. eService adoption, by organizations has yielded many important lessons. Many benefits are gained from simply implementing the right eService software, but even greater success is achieved by applying proven best practices. In other words, becoming a successful eService practitioner requires more than just technology; it requires expertise. As the eService market leader, RightNow Technologies uniquely offers this critical expertise to current and prospective eService implementers. RightNow has assimilated the collective experience of thousands of eService adopters to pinpoint 15 essential best practices for effective eService. These field-proven best practices impact both the cost savings and increased customer satisfaction companies experience as a result of their eService initiatives. For this white paper, these best practices have been organized into three categories: 1. People and Processes These are project management strategies that impact the effectiveness of the eService initiative and ensure a speedy, successful project launch and substantially enhanced long-term results. 2. Site Smarts Tips and tricks in Web site design and the presentation of answers to customer questions. These simple principles can be applied with great effect to virtually any eService implementation. 3. Software Smarts These are insights that relate specifically to getting optimum value from all the capabilities offered by RightNow eService Center, RightNow Technologies award-winning eService software solution. RightNow strongly encourages every eService implementer to read the following pages and consider the best practices presented. These best practices enhance any eService implementation and increase returns on investments in eService technology. Best of all, most of them cost little or nothing to adopt. 1 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 4. Why eService? Before enumerating the top 15 best practices for eService, it’s a good idea to review the benefits effective eService implementations deliver. Cost savings eService has been proven to consistently yield significant cost savings. There is virtually no incremental cost when a customer finds an answer on a Web site. If that customer sends an email, on the other hand, it can cost several dollars for a customer service representative (CSR) to respond. A phone call can cost $20-$30 or more. Multiply that per-inquiry savings by thousands of inquiries and the savings can be quite substantial. Customer satisfaction eService makes for satisfied customers. When customers have questions, they want answers fast. If they find their answer with a click or two of the mouse, they feel good. This equates to higher customer loyalty and retention. Effective eService can have a very positive impact on eBusiness revenue. As customers consistently find answers online over time, their comfort level with the site and the company grows. This is a competitive advantage over companies that make them wait days for email replies and put them on hold. Quality eService instills confidence, strengthens relationships and offers a 24x7 resource to customers. Rapid scalability eService is useful for dealing with short-term spikes in customer inquiries— such as those occurring in seasonal businesses, during product launches or due to a problematic event. Rather than temporarily adding staff and phone capacity, eService allows companies to simply add relevant knowledge items to their Web sites. This eliminates much of the email and call volume that might otherwise deluge the company, minimizing the cost and disruptions typically associated with such situations. This scalability is invaluable for sustaining business growth. eService adopters have been able to support more customers with more products and services – without having to continually expand their call center capacity and/or customer service staffs. Improved staff productivity eService makes customer service staff more productive by shielding them from repetitive queries – allowing them to focus on issues that actually require personal attention. This change also tends to improve morale and reduce turnover. Plus, giving CSRs access to the eService knowledge base ensures they have the information to give customers fast, consistent answers. 2 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 5. With all these proven benefits, eService best practices are clearly worth applying. By excelling at eService, companies save money, delight customers, beat the competition, handle crises with ease and get more value performance from their customer service staffs. 3 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 6. The Top 15 Proven Best Practices for eService The more often customers have a positive experience with a company’s eService, the more the company experiences these diverse benefits. A primary quantifiable goal of any eService implementation is to maximize the percentage of customers who find answers for themselves on the company Web site. The easier and faster customers can pinpoint the information they’re looking for, the greater the resulting business rewards. Therefore, eService best practices are focused on achieving high self-service percentages. More specifically, these best practices ensure: • Customers use eService knowledge items on the Web site to find answers to their questions whenever possible, rather than using email or the phone. • Online knowledge items provide answers for the most common questions. • Customers can quickly and easily find the answer/knowledge item. • Knowledge items answer customers’ questions fully and effectively. These are the fundamental characteristics of any effective eService implementation. By focusing on these characteristics, even relatively small companies save literally millions of dollars in service and support overhead while significantly improving customer satisfaction. People and Processes The first set of eService best practices involve people and processes. These practices are essentially project management strategies ensuring rapid time- to-benefit and optimum long-term results for eService initiatives. Based on the experiences of organizations across all sectors, three strategies in particular have been shown to be essential in achieving maximum return on investment (ROI). eService Best Practice #1: The eService Champion Someone has to “own” eService. The long-term owner of an eService implementation does not have to be the executive or manager who initiated it—although this is often the case. It must be someone who fully understands the objectives of the implementation, business needs and supervises the application of best practices. The champion is needed beyond the launch of the project. eService is a highly dynamic business solution. It constantly adapts to the changing needs of the company and its customers as new products and services are introduced, markets and technologies evolve, and use of the site grows. Without a champion, site content is likely to be neglected and become stale. Support across the organization for the success of the eService initiative will fade. Eventually, this will manifest in reduced effectiveness and 4 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 7. lower ROI. Champions provide both direction and accountability for eService projects. That’s why the most successful first-wave adopters have—almost without exception—had very strong eService champions leading the way. eService Best Practice #2: Ensuring Cross-Department Collaboration While strong individual leadership is essential to eService success, it is equally critical to make sure an eService effort is fully supported by the diverse parties-of-interest whose participation makes it work. Without this support, key eService processes break down and undermine the timely creation of effective self-service content. These processes typically involve people from different departments. For example, while a customer support manager may champion eService, someone in marketing may administer the corporate Web site itself. The Web site administrator must be involved to ensure any changes to the site helps drive customers to the eService content. (These changes will be described in more detail in the following section.) Similarly, product management groups and other technicians typically generate a lot of content. It is advisable to have their buy-in on the eService effort and prepare them to collaborate on the creation of content. Often, these groups have a variety of existing materials that can be very useful in creating content. One way to motivate groups to participate in the eService processes is to appeal to their self-interest. For example, eService provides valuable feedback to product managers about the problems customers encounter, which can be used to improve next-generation products or even spawn ideas for new ones. Similarly, because eService draws customers to the Web site, it can help marketing to do online cross-selling and up-selling. Depending on the nature of the individual business, others participants may also be enlisted in the eService effort: accounting, shipping, sales, suppliers, distributors, etc. Regardless of the specific participants involved, every eService champion should determine whose help will be needed and get commitment from the beginning of the project. That way, when the time comes for them to contribute to the process, there will be no surprises and arguments. eService Best Practice #3: Committing to Continuous Improvement Because eService technology delivers substantial benefits quickly, it is easy for organizations to become complacent about their implementations. Even an initial self-service rate of 60%-70% results in rapid payback on a software investment. Many companies enter a period of complacency soon after their eService system is up and running. 5 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 8. As valuable as a self-service rate of 60%-70% may be, a rate of 85%- 95% is even better. And those rates are achievable for companies. eService by its nature provides the feedback necessary to “tweak” implementations to increase the effectiveness of content and site navigation. By taking advantage of these built-in feedback mechanisms—which range from customers’ own comments about content to site traffic statistics—diligent eService managers can increase ROI by 200% and more. Site Smarts In addition to the preceding management considerations, eService implementers significantly boost their ROI by employing straightforward best practices regarding site design and navigation. These simple suggestions radically improve self-service rates and ensure as many customers as possible use eService content. As intuitively obvious as many of these best practices may seem, they are often overlooked by eService users. Based on empirical evidence from thousands of active eService sites, the top seven best practices for eService site design and navigation are as follows: eService Best Practice #4: Help is Just a Click Away The faster customers get to helpful knowledge items, the better. The Link to support area optimum solution is to clearly identify links on the home page—which can be directly from home page labeled “Customer Service,” “Need help?” or something similar—that lead directly to a list of top ten Answers. By contrast, a surprising number of early eService implementers made the mistake of nesting eService content within other areas of the site. As a result, customers send emails or make phone calls to CSRs without realizing they could have found the answers to their questions themselves. Another common mistake is forcing the customer to navigate through one or more layers of knowledge categories before finding actual answers. This may seem like an intelligent way to manage the navigation process, but it tends to be counter-productive. Users need to see answers right away. Since the bulk of their needs can be addressed with a relatively small number of knowledge items, it’s best to present those knowledge items to them as quickly as possible. If it turns out that those knowledge items aren’t what they’re looking for, they can then continue searching. Plus, now that they see what the knowledge items on the site look like, they proceed with their search with more confidence. 6 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 9. eService Best Practice #5: Customers See Content Before Phone Numbers or Email Many Web site managers consider it a given that the company’s toll free number is displayed prominently on the site—sometimes on every page. Conventional site designers tend to put a “Contact us” link on the home page and everywhere else. But successful eService practitioners found this to be counterproductive. If you give customers a phone number or an email link to use, then they assume this is your preferred contact method. As a result, eService content is ignored or never even browsed. An alternative approach proven to be more effective for both customer service teams and the customers themselves is to provide support phone numbers and/or an email form after they have viewed at least one knowledge item from the eService system. As soon as they enter the eService area, they then have ready access to phone or email support—but not before. This approach is not customer-unfriendly in any way. Customers like knowing a site has lots of useful content. But they have to be directed to that content at least once to experience its benefits. Once they have that first positive experience, they’re hooked. And, by habituating customers to using the Web site as a self-help resource, eService adopters can reduce their service and support costs. eService Best Practice #6: Everything Customers Need Can Be Found in eService Many companies have an abundance of useful information on their site, but it’s scattered across various areas. Product information is in one place; shipping information is in another; return policies are somewhere else. Often, there is a good reason for this information to be in these different places. Implementing eService doesn’t mean removing this information or completely re-designing the corporate Web site. It is important to make sure this information can be found within the eService area. Once a customer enters the eService area looking for assistance, they should not have to leave it and look elsewhere to find what they need. For example, a leading sporting goods manufacturer had an excellent product selection tool in the sales area of its site. As good as it was, it turned out that many customers didn’t use it and instead called the company’s CRSs to get walked through the selection process. After the company started its eService initiative, it made the very same tool available in its eService section (as the answer to the question “Which item is right for me?”). Remarkably, use of the tool rose dramatically—and phone calls dropped. That’s because customers found the tool during their quest for help, rather than during a less directed browsing of the site. It’s worthwhile to look at the information on the company site as a whole and evaluate whether any of it could also be used as an answer to a FAQ. This simple re-purposing of existing content can substantially improve customer satisfaction and self-service rates. 7 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 10. eService Best Practice #7: Get Visual and Interactive Well-written text can be very helpful, but often something more is required to answer a customer’s question. The interactive product specification tool mentioned above is a prime example. Customers could choose from a list of various parameters and, at the end, are given the exact model that applies to their needs—with a hyperlink that leads them right to the appropriate Web page. Many companies selling technical products offer schematics or diagrams, some allowing customers to click their way through a given procedure or repair. Several companies are adding streaming video to their eService content. In many cases, the necessary visual content may already exist in the form of online manuals or computer-based training. The trick is to get that content from its current location onto the eService site, and to make it available as an answer to the appropriate question. In other cases, it may be worthwhile to develop the necessary content expressly for eService purposes. The cost of doing so is often minimal and can be justified by looking at the number of phone and email support incidents generated by the issue. eService Best Practice #8: More Links in More Places Customers don’t always begin their visit to a Web site looking for help. Sometimes they start by browsing or merely shopping and then encounter an issue that creates a question in their minds. Often, this question may have to do with a feature or process on the site itself. That’s why it’s often wise to put additional prominent links back to the site’s eService content area in many places. In fact, many of the most successful eService implementers keep a prominent link to their eService content in a consistent place throughout the site. This reminds customers the eService content is available and it includes material that is relevant to any topic they may have questions about. By reinforcing this message with a consistent visual cue, customers can be conditioned to use eService with greater frequency, rather than calling or emailing. Habits are hard to break, so it’s important to be consistent that help can be found online. eService Best Practice #9: Tell Your Customers About It A large percentage of customers are in front of their PCs when on the phone. So it’s a good idea to put a suggestion about using eService on call center “hold” messages. That way, users can take action as they wait for a CSR to get free. In many cases, they can solve their problem while they’re on hold. CSRs can reinforce the eService message if they realize 8 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 11. during the call the question could have been answered online. By politely showing the customer where to find the answer, the CSR encourages the customer to try the Web next time. eService Best Practice #10: Always Provide a Way Out While it’s critical to not present phone or email channels before customers check online content, the converse is also true. Once a customer responds to the invitation to examine the eService resource, he or she must not feel trapped in a dead end. This creates a disincentive to try eService again. So immediate contact with a CSR—whether by phone, email or real-time chat— must always be available as an option within the eService system. Software Smarts In addition to project management and site implementation, the most crucial and effective eService best practices relate to the use of features and functionality available in a company’s eService software-of-choice. For RightNow eService Center users, the configuration of basic system capabilities make a dramatic difference in the percentage of customers successfully solving their problems online. The most significant gains are realized by applying the following four RightNow-specific best practices: eService Best Practice #11: Auto Suggest Answers to Emails Before They’re Sent Customers often launch an email from a Web site without realizing the answer to their question is just a click away. RightNow users can avoid responding to these emails manually by having their software scan email text and automatically suggest relevant knowledge items to the customer. This eliminates the delay that occurs if the email was sent and replied to later. It also teaches customers that answers to their questions can be found on the site encouraging them to find their own answers on subsequent site visits. eService Best Practice #12: Take Advantage of Reports and Other Feedback The most successful RightNow users take advantage of the software’s reporting functions to continually improve their eService content. A prime example of this is the Keyword Search report, which shows the search terms customers use most frequently. If there’s a commonly used 9 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 12. search term in the report and no corresponding eService knowledge items, then something is amiss. Savvy eService managers respond to such situations by developing and/or re-organizing knowledge items to address the search terms customers are entering. eService Best Practice #13: Activate Appropriate Escalation/Workflow Rules RightNow software provides flexible workflow and escalation functions ensuring service levels are consistently met. If responding to emails within 24 hours is a primary objective, for example, then workflow rules can be used to alerts managers to events that remain unanswered after 18 hours. Workflow tools can route emails containing specific terms to assigned subject-matter experts—eliminating the delays and confusion arising from manual routing. These rules can serve other purposes as well. For example, if a certain email subject line characterizes a new breed of computer virus, then emails fitting the profile can be automatically deleted. A reply to the email can also be automatically sent, informing the sender of what happened and suggesting that they check their email system for infection. eService Best Practice #14: Use Emotional Indicators to Spot Crisis Customers This is a special case of the above-mentioned routing technique. RightNow’s SmartSense™ feature automatically spots emotional cues (such as exclamation points or words of anger) that characterize emails from particularly distressed customers. These messages can be prioritized or handled by more experienced CSRs to save the relationship. Many times customer service teams score more points with the customer by rescuing a bad situation than they do when they take care of a more mundane issue. 10 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 13. Conclusion: Getting Started eService isn’t just a technology. It’s a strategic activity for any company selling in a competitive marketplace. eService best practices are as important for achieving customer delight and reducing operating expenses as eService software. The combination of eService best practices with a proven software platform delivers a remarkable solution for achieving rapid business results. These best practices include: 1) Have a “Champion” lead the corporate eService effort 2) Ensure buy-in for essential collaboration across multiple departments 3) Commit to continuous improvement of content and processes 4) Make sure customers can get to eService content with a single mouse-click 5) Direct customers to eService content before giving them phone number or email links 6) Make useful information on the site available from within the eService area 7) Use graphical and/or interactive material wherever possible 8) Add as many links across the entire site as necessary to eService content 9) Promote eService on “hold” messages and during phone conversations 10) Always provide the ability to speak or chat with a live operator 11) Auto suggest answers to customer email inquiries before they’re sent to CSRs 12) Take full advantage of built-in reports and other feedback 13) Activate appropriate escalation/workflow rules 14) Use emotional response indicators to respond quickly to customer crises There is, of course, one more critical best practice on which all of these other practices depend: eService Best Practice #15: Get Started Now and Enhance Implementation Over Time The most successful eService practitioners aren’t those who wait until they’ve developed a perfect system to launch it. They start with “seed” knowledge items and base functionality and expand from there. Almost without exception, eService winners have started with limited content and a simple set of eService functions. What ultimately makes them winners is they get the started sooner rather than later, and then continuously refine their eService implementation to incorporate the above best practices. By taking this incremental approach, they begin to experience the benefits of eService immediately and then expand those benefits over time. eService has proven to offer tremendous bottom-line benefits to companies in virtually every market segment. eService best practices are critical to achieving those benefits. But no one gets from here to there without taking the first step. So that first step is the most important best practice of all. 11 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.
- 14. About RightNow Technologies RightNow Technologies, a recipient of UPSIDE Magazine’s 2002 Hot 100 Private Companies Award, is the leading eService solutions expert, engineering business solutions that deliver rapid time-to-benefit and quick return on investment. RightNow delivers these benefits to more than 1,000 customers such as: Air New Zealand, Ben & Jerry's, British Airways, Cisco, Fujitsu, Maxtor, Orbitz, Remington, Sanyo and more than 100 public sector clients including the Social Security Administration and the State of Florida. RightNow's multi-channel eService suite, which is Section 508 certified, supports Web-based self-service, email response management, live chat and collaboration, reporting and service metrics. RightNow Locator, which directly links a company’s Web presence with its real-world locations, provides customers the information they need to purchase products or obtain services locally. Founded in 1997, RightNow has offices in Bozeman, Dallas, London, and Sydney, with an associated office in Tokyo. RightNow's products are available in 14 languages worldwide. For further information visit http://www.rightnow.com/. Headquarters Dallas Office United Kingdom Office Australia Office RightNow Technologies, Inc. RightNow Technologies, Inc. RightNow Technologies (UK) Ltd. RightNow Technologies 40 Enterprise Blvd. Carrollton, TX 75006 Slough, Berkshire (Australia) Pty Ltd. Bozeman, MT 59718-9300 SL1 1PG North Sydney, NSW 2060 Main Phone +1-406-522-4200 Main Phone +1-972-323-5600 Main Phone +44 (0) 1753 89 4900 Main Phone +62 2 9657 13 66 Toll Free 1-877-363-5678 Toll Free 1-877-277-3898 Fax +44 (0) 1753 89 4901 Fax +62 9657 13 53 Fax +1-406-522-4227 Fax +1-972-466-0752 Japan Office Mitsui & Company, Ltd. Mitsui RightNow Technologies Tokyo, Japan 101-0054 Main Phone +81 3 3233 2130 Fax +81 3 3233 2150 12 2002 RightNow Technologies, Inc.