News & Views
| News | Views |
|---|---|
| Latest press releases from Ember | Find out what Ember has to say about issues shaping the customer management industry |
News
Attempts to reduce cost of customer contact by enforcing use of alternative contact channels backfire.
Organisations that try to save money by forcing customers to use lower-cost channels and restricting their access to the telephone risk customer defection and routinely fail to achieve their cost saving targets. So concludes new research conducted by customer management consultancy Ember Services on behalf of Sword Ciboodle. In contrast, organisations that offer multiple channels and allow customers to use them as they wish are experiencing significant cost savings and enhanced levels of customer satisfaction.
Views
Speech analytics − why it isn’t taking the contact centre world by storm.
Posted by Paul MacKenzie, Ember Services
The promise of speech analytics is irresistible: Definitive, irrefutable insights into our relationships with customers based on an exhaustive analysis of every conversation. The opportunity to refine every process and optimise every interaction. Who could resist? However, most organisations are resisting. Research from the Professional Planning Forum reveals that there are no more than 12 contact centres in the UK using analytics in a mature way.
Make multi-channel multi-choice
Posted by Mike Havard, Director, Ember Services
There are a lot of ways to communicate with customers that are cheaper than the phone. But forcing people to use them could cost you more than you think.
We’ve been taking a long hard look at companies’ multi-channel offerings, and some of our findings might surprise you. Companies that try to restrict access to the phone and force people to use lower cost channels rarely achieve the cost savings they were aiming for. And they frequently manage to alienate customers in the attempt!
Follow the money
Posted by Mike Havard, Director, Ember Services
Times are tight. In our boardrooms and at our kitchen tables we need to make prudent decisions about how and when to spend our money. Customer management departments are faced with challenging choices about where to invest and where to cut back. Customers’ demand for channel choice and their rapid adoption of social media call for investment, while tough economics call for constraint.