By Denise Jack, Director of Best Practices —
Traditionally, online businesses have considered their customer service organizations only as cost centers. That's why many call center experts still claim that the best customer service organizations are the ones that exceed in metrics like call handle time and first call resolution. But what if you can position your customer service team as a strategic asset that can generate revenue as well?
Our most innovative customers are doing just that with Tealeaf. Having recently met with several companies that have deployed Tealeaf within their call centers, I've seen a lot of progress in this area. I've seen call centers in which the agents are using Tealeaf to not only service customers who call in with a specific website issue or inquiry, but also dedicated call center teams that do proactive and targeted outreach to customers who have expressed an intent to make a purchase or book a reservation online but ultimately did not complete the transaction. Using Tealeaf to understand who those customers are and what they were trying to do on the website, these outbound agents aren’t cold calling customers but instead provide an exceptional level of customer service because they understand the customer's intent and interest.
Netflights.com (a brand of Gold Medal Travel and part of the Thomas Cook Group) is a leading UK travel company that has done quite well with this practice in their contact center. Using Tealeaf, Gold Medal Travel set up alerts for customers who have certain basket values and dropped off during the reservation process—e.g., credit card failures or being stuck in a loop. Within seconds of such a website customer struggle occurring, the outbound team receives the customers' session information to an outbound team in the contact center. The outbound agent contacts the customer immediately to attempt to complete the sale over the phone. With the help of this visibility into the online experience, this outbound team now delivers more revenue per hour than any other reservation group at Gold Medal—adding up to nearly $24M annually. The order recovery process now represents 20% of all revenue generated from netflights.com. To read more about Netflights.com, check out the case study.
If your contact center organization is viewed by the business as a pure cost center, consider this strategy as a way to help your business drive additional revenue and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty along the way.
Traditionally, online businesses have considered their customer service organizations only as cost centers. That's why many call center experts still claim that the best customer service organizations are the ones that exceed in metrics like call handle time and first call resolution. But what if you can position your customer service team as a strategic asset that can generate revenue as well?
Our most innovative customers are doing just that with Tealeaf. Having recently met with several companies that have deployed Tealeaf within their call centers, I've seen a lot of progress in this area. I've seen call centers in which the agents are using Tealeaf to not only service customers who call in with a specific website issue or inquiry, but also dedicated call center teams that do proactive and targeted outreach to customers who have expressed an intent to make a purchase or book a reservation online but ultimately did not complete the transaction. Using Tealeaf to understand who those customers are and what they were trying to do on the website, these outbound agents aren’t cold calling customers but instead provide an exceptional level of customer service because they understand the customer's intent and interest.
Netflights.com (a brand of Gold Medal Travel and part of the Thomas Cook Group) is a leading UK travel company that has done quite well with this practice in their contact center. Using Tealeaf, Gold Medal Travel set up alerts for customers who have certain basket values and dropped off during the reservation process—e.g., credit card failures or being stuck in a loop. Within seconds of such a website customer struggle occurring, the outbound team receives the customers' session information to an outbound team in the contact center. The outbound agent contacts the customer immediately to attempt to complete the sale over the phone. With the help of this visibility into the online experience, this outbound team now delivers more revenue per hour than any other reservation group at Gold Medal—adding up to nearly $24M annually. The order recovery process now represents 20% of all revenue generated from netflights.com. To read more about Netflights.com, check out the case study.
If your contact center organization is viewed by the business as a pure cost center, consider this strategy as a way to help your business drive additional revenue and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty along the way.
Connecting with a customer at exactly the right moment is the holy grail of marketing. I think Netflights example of reaching out to customers that somehow got stuck is a great example of that. Instead of letting the customer get frustrated and leave for a competitor, agents were able to walk the customer through the process and close the sale, all the while providing an amazing customer experience.
Posted by: Joe McFadden | January 12, 2012 at 10:34 AM