Conversationware

My car broke down on Monday morning last week, and it was a rare opportunity for some companies to make a difference to me…..

The recovery service was Green Flag - and so within the hour of me phoning, I was being picked up by a cheerful chap. So  far so good.

I even got advice as to which three car brands were more likely to be picked up by him - not sure that I should repeat, as it is heresay, but two were German (including mine), and one was French.

Within an hour and a half, I was at Kwik Fit, being told it was a duff caliper.

However sagely I thought I was nodding, the Kwik Fit mechanic asked me whether I wanted to have a look for myself. So I gave up looking knowledgeable about cars, and meekly let him show me my braking system had broken, and that I was accelerating and braking at the same time.

A reasonable cost to fix, and they managed it the same day - not bad since I just landed on them without an appointment.

I can’t complain at the service, or the cost, given how expensive German car bits can be - and in fact, in the circumstances, all had gone well. So, I was in a good mood when the phone rang at 6pm - it was just dinnertime, but perhaps it was a customer.

Nope. It was Kwik Fit call centre. (they must have picked up my number from the ticket)

The girl immediately informed me it was a courtesy call to see if they had serviced my requirements ok. A fairly perfunctory enquiry (a missed opportunity to ask more questions about the service in my opinion) was swiftly followed by a request.

“I’m not sure if you’re aware, Mr Lambert, that we now do car insurance, very competitive car insurance. Would you mind if we called you back at renewal time and gave you a quote?”

Ah, there we have it.

Not a customer service enquiry at all then, but quite the reverse. They may as well have said

“Since you just said we treated you well, the least you can do is give us the chance to quote, you’ve just said you’re happy - why on earth wouldn’t you use us?

I think I might have had more respect if that’s what they actually did say. Humour would have worked, so would putting the phone down and sending me sales info later. 

Sales people shouldn’t be in charge of callcentres.

Of course, Green Flag were slower on the uptake - they instead posted me a 2 page questionairre, with very small writing and boxes and diagrams (I think). They wanted me to post it back (FOC) but that went straight in the bin, interruption marketing, who needs it.

I think I would have preferred a phonecall from them.

I bet Paul Sweeney of Voicesage has something to say about this….not that I’m leading the witness. But he just linked a report that said outbound call volumes haven’t reduced in spite of the recent legislation.

The report put this down to outbound callcentres being correctly advised to focus on customer service as a retention and cost avoidance strategy. On the evidence above, I’m just not sure Paul has got around to enough of them yet.

When I see CRM, a sometimes debateable technology, aligned with VoIP for the greater good, it has me snorting into my morning coffee. A good job I’m on my own this morning.

“A perfect fit” indeed.

Most industry people know that VoIP itself isn’t needed to integrate telephony into a CRM system, and this has been possible for many years.

There has to be another reason for this sort of technology bundling (and marketing)

Whatever, the lure of simplicity is just too great sometimes. When it gets difficult to decide, just go for the easy option (technology or marketing)

Getting dressed for example, it sometimes can take ages to work out what goes with what.

Deep down of course you know that you’ll pay in the end.

With technology, the cost can be time and money taken up, and the work you have to put in justifying the original decision. Still, as the article quotes, the cool factor can be worth it, just look at the cool dude above. (it’s not me) 

Personally, I didn’t go the shellsuit route. But, I’ve just resigned myself to going back to a proper mobile phone.

I’ve tried the qtek Windows mobile device, and I have to say the experience was dire. If the phone isn’t any good, it matters little that I can access my gmail whilst on the move.

One size fits all didn’t work. I realised I wasn’t using the damn phone as often as I should, because the experience was painful - how useless is that?

I like technology from people who specialise. The motorola Z8 enables me to hear people properly when I call them.

Luckily, with telephone systems these days, we can now enjoy open systems and choose the best of breed and still choose the best handsets, the best voice messaging system, the best call recording platform, the best fax solution, the best stats package, the best call centre software, the best CRM system, and not have it cost a fortune.

Any other decision might be construed as a symptom of not trusting your communications suppliers to dress themselves properly.

Paul Sweeney’s blog, “you’ve been noticed”, is a good resource for looking at what the UC technology industry calls “Communication enabled business processes” - or as Paul puts it more succinctly, customer interaction.

There is a great double win to be had

Through being proactive (and automated) interacting with customers, not only can you reduce direct costs by, for example, reducing inbound calls and removing duplication of effort. You also increase customer service levels at the same time - for increased sales.

The original article at Service Untitled is also a good read and argues for more multimedia and self service options.

My experience of friends and family is that they as customers really don’t want to be calling anyone help either! It’s not always easy asking for help, you can feel stupid.  Customers expect you to anticipate their need and deliver information before they know they need it. As competition gets tougher, then not doing anything won’t be an option.

Because maybe they just buy from someone who makes it easier next time.

I really think that an inbound telephone call is often your last chance to keep a customer, and if your people are overwhelmed with calls, that can be a really bad sign.

Shoot first and save lives.

Come on people - more sales for less costs, ….a no brainer.

So, delivery and service industries would benefit most from automation, and Paul links to the UPS desktop widget - really very cool. I wonder if RSS is at the heart of it.

I can personally think of a number of wasted days off that might have been saved if the industry norm were to text, email or phonecall confirmations the day before.

It’s not often I plug the company I work for, but Avanquest Text Message Server - has a SMS delivery receipt capability, that can update the host database, so you even know who didn’t get the message. My favourite feature of a great product - which is an end to end solution also available oem. OK, plug over. You can open your eyes again.

I still have mine closed, as I’ve upgraded and put some plugins on the site. I’m sure this will explode when I press the button.

Are you at your desk, are you on the phone…these are the two key ingredients to make your Real Time Unified Communications cake rise.

Presence, I think they call it, and, exposing (all of) the PBX telephone handset status to software is what’s needed.

Did anyone say Busy Lamp Field?

However, whether you can have cost effective UC might come down to whether you run a Call Centre.

I’ll explain (more…)