News from Interactive Intelligence

One of the few perks that I have always enjoyed from this travel-intensive job is to wake up at the crack of dawn, open my hotel room door, and find a freshly delivered newspaper within arm’s reach.  I know what you are thinking, but yes, this technology evangelist still enjoys catching up with world events the old fashioned way, with a cup of chai tea and the feel of soft newspaper in my hands.  During one recent trip, I read an article in USA Today by Adam Sylvain titled “State laws let telephone companies end land-line services,” regarding new legislation being passed by some states to end these services.

Those of you who grew up in homes with multiple telephones may not appreciate the effect this article had on me, but it took me right back to third grade, growing up in Bombay (now Mumbai).  Like every other family in India, we had petitioned the Indian government for a phone and a line, and were put on a waiting list.  After seven years, we were finally blessed with a big, old, clunky, black rotary phone (the kind that you might see in an Alfred Hitchcock movie).  While riding the school bus, I would trace the rickety, archaic phone lines, some of them fallen on the road due to monsoon season, wondering which ones connected to my friends’ houses.

Today’s young consumers don’t even bother using a land-line to communicate.  For this generation, speaking on the phone is not important at all.  A phone is now merely one of the many devices they have at their disposal to communicate nonverbally, along with SMS, internet based services, and mobile apps.  This communication shift has caused many companies to take a hard look at how they allow their customers to interact with their contact centers in order to serve the needs of this telephone-dissing generation.  It is evident by the various mobile app services provided by contact centers.  I am constantly designing architectures to route media like SMS, Mobile Application IVRs, Mobile Video chats etc.

So readers, many of you from my generation or older, do you share my nostalgia for landlines or have you embraced mobile, or both?  Either way, if any of you by some chance still have your old rotary phone from the 70’s, 80’s or even 90’s, don’t throw it out.  You can use your new mobile device to sell it online, during your commute to work.

Abi Chandra

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

I recently ran across an article in Insurance Networking News highlighting a report by J.D. Power and Associates entitled the ‘2012 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study.’ The report reflected the lowest customer satisfaction scores related to auto claims in 3 quarters. The reason behind this drop…a delay in policyholder reports of claims as a result of the holiday season, causing a longer processing time. So, who is actually at fault for this decline?

My guess is there are various opinions and reasons as to why reports of claims were delayed…busy schedules for policyholders, lack of resources from the carrier side, and so on. But, what if you, as the carrier, could actually take a step back and evaluate your customer service approach? What if you offered your policyholders ease of business 24-7, 365 days a year by changing how you communicate with your insureds? From the carrier perspective, this would limit complaints on lack of availability, while offering a competitive advantage.

Taking advantage of technology offerings could help cut down on lack of carrier availability no matter what time of year. Just a few ideas to consider:

• Self-service IVR options for premium payments and claim status updates
• Mobile applications for instant access to claim reporting tools
• Follow-me capabilities to route high priority calls to adjusters and supervisors no matter where they are located

At the end of the day, as the insurer, customer satisfaction declines will always point back to your business. There will never be a way to satisfy every single policyholder. However, continuing to make improvements to your customer service strategy will always help encourage positive response and results from your customers and your overall business performance.  

Jennifer Wilson
@jennleewilson

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

BPA – Why? We already have BPM! Can they co-exist?

So your company has invested a great deal of money and countless hours into planning and implementing a Business Process Management (BPM) suite in an operating department. Now your boss starts asking you about something they read about Business Process Automation (BPA) and if your department could benefit from it – how do you respond?

While both a BPA and BPM project starts with some type of Business Process Mapping, and both aim to improve business process efficiencies, there are differences. Here is a quick look at some of the differences between the two.

Business Process Management:

1. BPM projects tend to do an extremely deep dive into a business process looking for ways to “optimize” business process. These focus on holistic process improvement and not necessarily on process automation.
2. Processes tend to be limited to a single functional area, and there are clearly defined boundaries. There are manual or clunky systematic handoffs between outside departments.
3. BPM systems typically use a “pull” methodology in how work is presented to the end user. Users work from task “lists”, and pull their work from those lists. This method of work delivery leads to “cherry picking”, where a user will pull the work that he or she is most comfortable completing.

See the Wikipedia definition of BPM.

Business Process Automation:

1. Means taking a process and looking for repeatable, manual steps within that process that can be automated using technology to increase efficiency.
2. BPA implementations also cross functional areas to consolodate handoffs and present work to a user in a single unified interface.
3. BPA software resides as a layer over top several disparate back end systems pulling and pushing data between these systems. The user will work from one interface instead of having to jump between multiple screens for multiple systems.
4. BPA lends itself to co-exist with other systems including BPM systems. It should be used to create an end to end system with no boundaries between functional areas. It is not meant to replace but work with other systems such as CRM, IVR, backend mainframe systems, SQL based systems, web services and finally BPM and ERP systems. BPA ties all of the existing systems together for the end user and offers craddle to grave tracking and reporting.

See the Wikipedia definition of BPA.

BPA and specifically Communications-Based Process Automation (CBPA) seek to give organizations end to end automation and to utilize skills based routing. Again, this is the concept of “push” vs. “pull” methodology for delivering work to the user with the appropriate skill to complete. Instead of an end user's “pulling”, the work it is “pushed”, similar to how a telephone call routes to a user in a contact center.  “Work” can be a document, a telephone call, an email, or a chat that routes to the next available user.

These are just a few high level differences that I have experienced working on both types of implementations.  I would love to hear others' opinions and experience on the subject. What are your experiences with BPM, BPA or CBPA systems?

What differences have you noticed?

Patrick Patton

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

This post has nothing to do with technology. However, it has everything to do with the success of the contact center. After all, the contact center's value is based on the customer experience it is able to deliver. And often times, that experience comes down to the performance of the agent.

In a recent experience with a contact center agent, I asked her, "Can you tell me what my current interest rate is on the credit card." With an enthusiastic, cheery tone that would typically be used to tell someone that they had just won the lottery, she said, "It's 26.99%!" Sparing you the details of the rest of the conversation, I went on to complain about the rate, and she went on trying to tell me why I should feel good about the rate. Clearly, this agent had been taught to "smile" while on the phone. She'd taken that advice to heart and nothing was going to deter her from it.

My point... if the news is bad, don't try and sugar coat it. Tell it like it is. Apologize if need be. See what you can do to help the caller get resolution to the issue, but don't pretend that something bad, isn't really bad. The best practice here is that the agent's tone should match the situation and that trying to mask something with an upbeat disposition doesn't work, it aggravates.

A sizable portion of contact centers deal with customer problems. And these soft skills are extremely important in improving the customer experience.

Joe Staples
CMO and the guy who just transferred his credit card balance to a new provider with a lower rate

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

Best Practice Alert!  Reduced Effort can Lead to Increased Customer Retention in Insurance.

I recently read an article from the Tower Group, Winning in Contact Center Technology, which centered on the main idea that contact centers can improve the customer experience by reducing customer effort. Certainly an intriguing idea, especially since traditional contact centers are all about finding ways to reduce something--reduce  average handle time, reduce  abandonment rate, reduce  idle time, etc.  So why not look beyond reductions in the call center?

There are a couple of ways to reduce customer effort:

1.      Proactive Outreach

 Reach out to customers that have had a poor experience.   Insurance companies must determine what the leading indicators are for defection and reach out to those customers before they become disloyal.  This can be done through technologies such as customer feedback surveys and speech analytics.   Of members surveyed, 56% were not reaching out proactively.  By reaching out proactively, you can ultimately reduce your customer’s effort by avoiding the repeat calls from an upset customer.

2.      Mitigate customer disloyalty

In a survey by the Customer Contact Council, it was found that customers who have received poor customer service are 4 times more likely to become disloyal, and that 96% of customers attributed their disloyalty to a high-effort experience with a service organization.

How many times have you had a bad customer service experience and the first thought after hanging up the phone is: “I don’t know why I even do business with these guys!”  I just went through a horrible experience with an airline company that had given me “free” vouchers to fly due to an overbooked flight.  After 4 phone calls, being escalated to 3 different levels of customer service, over 2 hours of my time, and a trip to the airport to eventually book my tickets with a “live” airline agent, I was ready to turn in my loyalty card and my frequent flier miles, and never fly this airline again.  

Are any of you capturing any of the leading indicators for customer disloyalty, such as retention metrics, negative comments captured through speech analytics, customer surveys, social media sites, etc?  How are you gathering the data and what are your findings?  I would be interested in learning if they are similar across various vertical markets, or if there are specific identifiers that are unique to the insurance industry.

In my next post, I will outline some best practices for reducing customer effort.  Thanks for reading!

Janet Thalacker
Insurance Strategic Consultant


To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

I’m sitting in the Hong Kong airport reflecting back on this week’s APAC Partner Conference in Phuket Thailand.  It was an awesome experience (of course the beautiful setting had nothing to do with it…) and between this trip and one last month to Kuala Lumpur I’ve learned a ton about the implications of the cloud in the Asia Pacific region speaking with Interactive employees and partners as well as key analysts and consultants in this part of the world.

Andrew Milroy of Frost and Sullivan shared that the cloud is projected to be the number one priority for IT in the region in 2012, with Australia, New Zealand and Japan leading the cloud contact center charge and with impressive growth expected across other Asian countries over the next few years. That said, everyone I spoke with also agrees that premise deployments aren’t going away anytime soon and we’ll likely find ourselves in a perpetual hybrid world to ensure that customer requirements, preferences and financial needs are met.

While it’s fun to talk cloud, nothing gets me more excited than learning about and discussing how customers are leveraging the model in new ways to solve specific business problems. One example that seemed to light up the room during a breakout session in Phuket was how customers are leveraging the cloud for premise deployments. Huh? Let me explain…

Companies purchasing premise-based contact center solutions are choosing to use the public cloud to get up and running quickly and make progress while infrastructure is built out, resources are trained, and existing platforms fully depreciate. In essence, phase one of their premise deployment is to turn up applications in the public cloud and then, when the time is right, migrate them to their own data center to be managed internally --a private cloud deployment.

Seems like common sense, right? Well, I have to admit this is not something I ever thought of or expected. Most folks I speak with confess the same which is why it makes for such an interesting discussion. It gets you thinking, “What else is possible?”

For those interested in knowing how customers are able to use the cloud this way, the answer lies within three important technical and architectural advancements:

• Streamlined application architectures
• Virtual server (machine) technology
• Hybrid cloud deployment models

To put it simply, a streamlined application deployed on a virtual server as part of a hybrid cloud deployment can be migrated from a public cloud provider’s data center to a customer’s private data center relatively easily and cost effectively. Of course, this assumes the application provider supports both public and private cloud deployments.

Kudos to customers for getting creative in the clouds!

Are you leveraging the cloud in unique and non-traditional ways? If so, please comment and share! If not, I challenge you to get your team together and brainstorm how you might do so. Don’t settle for the status quo, continue to push the envelope and help drive the pace of innovation.

#juststartedusingtwitter,

Jason Alley (@jasonalley4c)

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

They are the hot topics for every industry this year…social media, mobile apps, and cloud-based offerings. So, what’s driving this interest and feeding the buzz in the insurance industry? Sure, social media and mobile users are steadily increasing, and cloud-based solutions are both attractive and affordable, but it is the opportunity to improve overall customer service that is really enticing.

Insurance carriers must expand their traditional contact center and customer service operations to offer information through multiple communication channels and manage it effectively, streamlining both policy and claim processes. Given the breadth of these three trending technologies, carriers of all sizes have the perfect opportunity to implement solutions to satisfy this need, while factoring in budget, business requirements, policyholder needs, and resources available.

Here are a few things to consider:

Social Media: Implementing a social strategy helps open up an additional communications channel for policyholders. Although the core business operations will most likely still be processed through more confidential channels, social media can be a great tool for brand awareness, proactive warnings and tips to help decrease losses (weather and traffic alerts), as well as a possible fraud investigation tool. (FYI…insurance fraud is an estimated $80 billion loss each year according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud). In addition, a variety of social monitoring tools, from free to paid, offer great ways to be aware of posts, engage with policyholders, and attract new business.

Mobile: With the U.S. smartphone usage taking up 40% of the mobile market (Source: Nielsen) and growing, people want the ability to expand the use of their mobile devices. Easy access to premium payments and coverage information, as well as mobile friendly websites can be a great way to satisfy existing policyholders while attracting new business. Further expanding mobile options to include claim reporting applications that allow for loss reports, photo uploads, and GPS integration to pinpoint the location of an accident, are great selling points for the policyholder, agent, and field adjuster.

Cloud: Hosted core admin systems have traditionally been great options for small carriers with limited internal IT resources. However, with more data centers, newer technology, and non-traditional solutions, like communications platforms, being offered as hosted solutions, carriers of all sizes should explore their options. Cloud-based is typically more cost-effective, easier to maintain, and flexible in allowing hybrid deployments to fit the needs of any size and type of insurer. Implementing hosted solutions also allows for greater system stability, decreasing down-time and helping avoid customer frustration.  

For once, it’s not about the big budgets or the unlimited staff. It’s about being creative with the latest trends and doing the research to determine the best approach for your organization, while improving the policyholder experience.

Are you doing anything creative to tackle the social, mobile, cloud trend? If so, is it impacting your overall customer service strategy?

Jennifer Wilson
@jennleewilson

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

Dear Customer Service Provider, 

My role in the Customer Service industry is that of your customer.  In the corporate hierarchy, that should place me one step directly above the CEO.  I am the lifeblood of the entire company.  Without my involvement, there’s literally no reason for your company to exist.  Now that we have a proper perspective, there are four things I’d like to say.  

First, I don’t want to call you.  Nothing personal, but it’s a pain.  I have better things to do than wait on hold to speak to someone who doesn’t know me, then try to explain a situation I really don’t believe they can help with.  I do give you credit for trying to make it less painful, though.  You’ve done your best to bring my hold times down, and I do appreciate the slight upgrade in music.  (Side note: if I’m on hold for 30 minutes, and you tell me every 30 seconds that my call is important to you, it feels less believable.)

Second, being held prisoner to phone-based support feels a little demeaning.  I’m an adult.  I manage my life fairly well.  I’m able to navigate my US tax forms every year.  Being one of the 400 million people who got a smartphone last year, chances are very good that I could take care of my business with you on my own, if you were to give me an app to do so.

Third, when I DO have to call you, I’d appreciate it if I could choose how to fit it in to my day.  The real problem with sitting on hold waiting for you is that I could be doing so many other things!  I could pick up my kids, go for a run, or drive home from work.  When I want to sit and talk with someone I schedule a meeting, or plan to meet them for coffee.  Why can’t you and I do something like that?

Last, I want you to know who I am.  That’s why I’m on social media.  If you have something to tell me, it’s fine if you hit me on Facebook or whatever.  I don’t mind that you know if I like Miles Davis.  In fact, I’d feel better about our relationship if you treated me like the unique person I am.

I know this sounds like a lot of complaining, but I’m still your customer.  I’m not going away.  I only tell you these things because I want our relationship to improve.  As a customer, my needs and expectations are changing.  I want you to know how you can keep up, and even get ahead in the service area.  Please do a little research and see if there is something you can use to make these dreams a reality.  (Another side note: there is.)

Thanks for listening!

Murph Krajewski

PS: If you’re already working to make your customers’ dreams come true, tell us about it in the comments!

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog

Does your company have detailed process maps for all of their business processes?  If your company is like most my guess is that the as-is process maps are nonexistent or very outdated.  I have heard it time and time again – “we don’t have time”, “we don’t have the resources,” etc. Companies that are starting process improvement or business process automation projects will many times skip the as-is step and move right into the to-be design. If you don’t truly understand your process how can you improve it?

A personal case study

My first taste of as-is process mapping came with a Fortune 25 health insurance company where I was Director of the new business department. The COO of the company asked me to help find areas for process improvement-- to shave time off our very manual and very paper-heavy processes.  Immediately I came up with several ideas, and with a background in technology, of course all of them centered on using new technology or making system changes. However, the IT priorities were set months ahead of time and the COO wanted improvements made in the next 3 to 6 months.  Fortunately for me, the COO mentored me and helped guide me in creating very detailed process maps to get the job done. Here is some of what I learned:

Visual representation of the process

• It is much easier to talk about a process when you can literally see the steps. Steps and details can be missed if you don’t have a map to see the process. How do you know where you are or where you are going if you don’t have a map?

See interdependencies

• Hand-offs between departments or processes can clearly be seen. Interdependencies may be where some of the “black holes” in a process reside. Manual hand-offs to other departments could be where work is sent and many times disappears!

Find the gaps

• With a documented process map you can start to visualize the problems. Gaps or disconnects in a process can normally be clearly seen in a process map. This could be where the process becomes convoluted because it was never mapped out. 

The “ah ha” moment

• “Are we really doing it that way?” There is management’s perception of how the process functions and then the reality of how it is truly being executed.  It is important when creating a map to get input from the people doing the work; otherwise you will end up with a map of how management “thinks” the process works.

Consistency

• Especially when you have processes that span multiple departments or locations a documented process will make sure all areas see the process and perform it consistently. It is very possible without documented processes that different locations doing the same work will have very different ways of performing the same tasks.

My question is how can you not afford to document your as-is processes today? 

I would be interested to hear from others on their experiences with as-is process mapping within your organizations. How many of you have gone through this process? Any ROI stories?

Patrick Patton

To view past posts from the Interactive Intelligence Blog Crew, visit http://www.inin.com/blog