Carriers, Customers Connect Via ‘Click-Here’ Care
By Susan Helen Moran

Telecommunications

Under a spring agreement with Just In Time Solutions, San Francisco, AT&T Corp. is poised to offer its 70 million residential customers web-based billing and customer care. With this move, the long distance giant will transform what was once a differentiator for smaller competitive service providers into an expectation. Laggards are officially on notice that they must move quickly to embrace web-enabled customer care as a minimum ante. Even early adopters must make plans to deploy newer, more sophisticated methods of web care to maintain their value-added edge over larger carriers.

Many carriers have taken the leap and invested untold amounts of money in new Internet bill presentment and payment (IBPP) technology, in which they can see the cost advantages of eliminating paper and postage for thousands of monthly invoices (not to mention the reduced cash float for receipt of payments). However, most have yet to install but the simplest web-care capabilities.

As the Internet bill is an obvious entry point for web-based customer care inquiries, experts predict it is only a matter of time before these Internet billers will deploy web-care systems, which can range from frequently asked question (FAQ) databases and e-mail response tools to proactive real-time text chat and even Internet telephony (see table, below).

Levels of Web Care

There are several levels of web care, from simple to sophisticated:

Self Care: Customers find answers to their questions themselves through frequently asked questions (FAQs) or an enhanced knowledge base at a company’s website.

Push Care: Customers are sent information to their e-mail address by the company in anticipation of a customer’s question. For example, a telecom carrier may send its customer who just ordered a new service an order confirmation and estimated start date. Proactive care also may take the form of a pop-up screen with information based on the user’s clickstream.

E-Mail Response: Customers use a pop-up e-mail screen at a company’s website to type in their questions, press the send key and wait for an e-mail or phone call back from the company. Response is not immediate, but typically within a specified time period, such as 24 hours.

Real-Time Text Chat Care: A customer types questions into the company’s website, presses the send key, and gets a typed message back written by a CSR real time in answer to his or her question.

Call-Back Care: A customer keys in his or her phone number on the company’s website and waits for a phone call back from a CSR, which ideally arrives shortly after the customer’s message is sent.

Internet Protocol (IP) Tele-phony: A customer, equipped with a PC, microphone, phone card and speakers, presses the voice-over-IP (VoIP) option on the company’s website. The customer is connected to a CSR using the same line as the web connection.

These tools will transform the traditional customer service models from a defensive (reactive) to directed (proactive) approach, say analysts at Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. (see table, below). Directed customer service, they say, is based on three principles:

Attacking customers’ uncertainty, not just their problems;Weaving service into the sales and marketing cycle; andEmpowering customers to play an active role.

Business Case

Web care potentially can reduce costs for carriers who use the new technology.

One carrier that has leveraged web-based technologies in its call center is PRIMUS Telecommunications Group Inc., McLean, Va. In May, PRIMUS opened its new call center, which supports 175 sales and service representatives and uses web-based technologies to minimize customer care and acquisition costs, while providing high levels of customer service. The center uses PRIMUS’ web-based provision and sales software, along with call center software from Nortel Networks, Richardson, Texas.

New Commerce Site Customer Service Model

Providers must migrate from

Defensive to

Directed Customer Care

Customer RoleLow involvementHigh involvementCompany RoleService customers with human repsProvide service with information systemsDeliveryPhone, fax, e-mailPrimarily webRelationshipsMonolithic: primarily customer-to-repMultifaceted: customer-to-site, customer-to-customer, customer-to-repCostsHigh fixed, high variable; one rep for every X customersHigh fixed, low variable; one rep for every 10X customersTechnologyTelephone and e-mail automatic call distributors (ACDs), interactive voice response (IVR) and e-mailKnowledge bases, wizards, proactive e-mail tools, e-mail auto-response technology and collaboration tools

Source: ICT Group Langhorne, Pa.

“When business is growing fast, it is always a challenge to efficiently scale call center needs. This new state-of-the-art call center allows us to better manage staff requirements for our highly successful marketing campaigns,” says Doug Weeks, general manager of international consumer markets for Primus.

In fact, the new web-care model calls for considerable changes in call-center metrics. Once carriers switch to web-based care, it is expected that the easier questions will be handled through various e-care methods, and not by live customer service representatives (CSRs), Forrester analysts predict. The calls handled by the live CSRs will be the most complicated questions, the answers to which are not available on the carrier’s website or easily explained through e-mail messages or even through real-time text chat.

While paying a live customer care representative is costly, investing in electronic web-care methods can be equally, if not more, expensive, experts say. Even if the initial software investment seems reasonable, integration with existing systems–such as billing modules–from different vendors can drive the cost way up.

“The more customers you can get on the web, the more you will save in operations costs,” says Chris Tatem, vice president and chief e-commerce officer, telecommunications industry group, AMS, a systems integrator based in Fairfax, Va. “The problem is getting the software and hardware, the whole web presence, operational. How much you can do it for and how much you can save depends on your customer base. For some of the real small [carriers], it may not be cost- effective. Studies should be conducted [by the carrier] to determine whether your customer base will accept web-based customer care. A business-case analysis is necessary.”

For example, a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) with a finite number of business customers could approach its customers one-on-one and try to convince all of them to use web-care tools to solve their problems before calling a CSR. “One business model is for a carrier to provide only web-based billing and customer care,” Tatem says. The other is to gradually incorporate such functionality. “Your carrier may decide that [opting to install the web billing and care functionality] is more of an investment in the future for one-on-one marketing or e-commerce, in which case your business case will change [to accommodate the] longer-term view,” he says.

Outsourcing

Another option to the high cost of web-enabling an internal call center is to outsource the function. Large call-center operators, such as SITEL Corp., Baltimore, and ICT Group, Langhorne, Pa., are among those that offer web-agent services as part of their repertoire.

ICT developed the web-based call-center service Net2tel.com in concert with Aspect Telecommunications Corp., San Jose, Calif., and eFusion Inc., a Beaverton, Ore.-based spinout of Intel Corp. The service allows customers of resellers and carriers several web-care options. A “click-here” button on the ICT customer website connects the end user in real time to one of ICT’s 5,000 CSRs in 36 call centers. ICT’s service supports a callback function, which allows the CSR to call the end user back on a phone line separate from the line the end user used to dial in on. Net2tel.com also has an Internet telephony function, wherein the CSR and the customer are immediately connected in a web session. Additionally, Net2tel.com allothat the CSR can guide the customer through the site. Whiteboarding (highlighting of a web page) can be done by the customer or the CSR (see diagram, below.)

Image: Web Agent Server Implementation

“The Internet is a passive medium. It doesn’t deliver the same level of service as walking into a brick-and-mortar business or even calling a CSR. Net2tel.com makes the web a place where they can get that personal level of customer service,” says Derrick Vlad, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development.

Net2tel.com has been in beta testing for six months with Advanta Corp., Spring House, Pa., a large financial services client. Rudy Dubay, senior vice president of sales-telecommunications, says there are many applications for the product in the carrier world, where websites proliferate. ICT Group says carriers and resellers can be up and running with Net2tel.com in as little as two to three weeks, depending on the sophistication of the application.

Contracts include a setup charge and a monthly fixed fee to be connected to the service and to retain dedicated agents. The actual price varies by volume and functionality.

Susan Helen Moran is a writer and independent consultant based in Oakton, Va. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].