Maximizing Customer Value with Proactive Outbound Contact

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Maximizing Customer Value With Proactive Outbound Contact

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INTRODUCTION

Outbound interactions have been an important part of sales and service-related customer contact processes for years. Originally, outbound meant telemarketing, which was a highly inefficient, brute-force method of reaching out to potential customers en masse using automated dialers to punch through as many calls as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Today’s outbound is vastly more customer-friendly than telemarketing. Technology and business practices have advanced to the point where smart businesses are creating programs that can be much more relevant and meaningful to customers. A good modern outbound program is

distinguished by its proactivity: it more finely targets its messages to the customer, relying on a more nuanced understanding of how the customer wants to be contacted. In the process it creates a more collaborative conversation between company and customer.

This white paper provides:

• Insight into the changing nature of outbound contact, which has evolved to be proactive and collaborative with customers

• Data on how customers prefer to engage with companies they do business with, in a variety of scenarios

• Best practices for companies to ensure that when they establish an outbound program it is productive and efficient, but still customer-friendly.

Maximizing Customer Value

with Proactive Outbound

Contact

How to reach out to customers in ways that delight them

An Ovum White Paper Sponsored by

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Proactive outbound is a hybrid of multiple forms of contact, including automated voice messages, text alerts to mobile phones, and emails. What makes today’s proactive outbound different from old-fashioned telemarketing is that these messages and calls are highly relevant to the customer, and that there is the potential for interactivity in the connection. A customer can be offered the chance to respond directly to an alert, via return SMS or an interactive voice response (IVR) on a voice message.

Defining proactive outbound

Proactive outbound can be defined as the process of directly reaching out to a customer to make them aware that something relevant to them has occurred. There are different kinds of triggers that can create the opportunity for an outbound contact:

• Something that the customer needs to know about results in a notification or alert. This can be something the customer has previously asked about (“Is a product in stock? Notify me when it is”) or something that relates to their status as a customer (“Your account is overdrawn”).

• Some condition outside the business relationship has occurred, but it is relevant to that relationship (“Storms are causing two-hour flight delays across the northeast”).

• An interaction is followed up with a survey, a confirmation message, a tracking number, or a link to a web page for more info, as long as the follow-up is relevant to that customer.

In response, the customer can choose the time and place of a return contact, or interact with an automated system immediately. What makes proactive outbound unique (and valuable) is that it only happens after the business asks two fundamental questions: what does the customer need to know, and how does he want us to get him the information?

The interaction-routing technologies involved are well-understood and robust, and include blended inbound/outbound call routing switches, SMS messaging, and outbound IVR. Proactive outbound also relies on a company having a solid business rules engine and CRM system to manage the decisions around who gets contacted, when, through which channel, and under what

circumstances.

Outbound IVR is a software platform that supports both touchtone and speech-enabled

applications for use in outbound calling campaigns. Much of the value comes from the fact that it allows a business to offer a highly personalized interaction to users. A personalized outbound solution connects with enterprise databases, and accesses caller histories, trends, and geographic locales: all information that might affect the nature of the customer service call.

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Unlike predictive dialing, outbound IVR is interactive. Users of the technology can interact with the platform through DTMF or speech, and are able to conduct transactions and also be routed to an agent for escalations or transitions to other issues.

An advantage of using proactive outbound notifications is that enterprises can take advantage of sophisticated business rules to precisely tune the message to the recipient. This helps make messages valuable to customers, and also ensures that businesses stay in compliance with regulations surrounding outbound contact.

With outbound turning from a mass-telemarketing channel into a more intimate one, businesses can use it for more than just cold calls. The current generation of proactive outbound can be very effective as a lever to improve the customer experience. If companies adhere to a relatively simple set of best practices, they can integrate outbound into a coordinated program to maximize

customer value.

Outbound is a cost-control vehicle

Proactive outbound, particularly when built around an outbound IVR, is more flexible than a predictive dialer, using speech recognition and DTMF to verify customer details, provide crucial information, and route calls back to a live agent only when more information is required. Entire transactions can be carried out without the use of an agent, which allows agents' time to be better utilized with more complex interactions and reduces operating costs.

Outbound can also be used to deflect calls. This gives companies a higher degree of control over communications and agent costs. One example is a close cousin of debt collections: sending a customer text messages either just before or after a payment is due. These texts can include options to text back, or generate a call that can be pre-identified and automatically routed into an IVR system for payment. This can preempt an early outbound collection call. It also allows a company to route directly to a trained agent if the interaction escalates, ensuring that the call is short and results in a payment.

CUSTOMERS INCREASINGLY ACCEPT OUTBOUND CONTACTS AS VALUABLE The key difference between telemarketing and proactive outbound is the way customers respond to it. Where outbound calling was considered nuisance enough to foster regulations restricting it, today’s customers often find outbound contact valuable, provided they can see the rationale for the contact.

Changing consumer technology is playing a role in spurring new habits and preferences. For example, according to Ovum research, over 20% of smartphone customers in developed countries prefer to use smartphone applications to communicate with organizations in financial services, travel, and communications.

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In a recent survey, Ovum asked US customers how they would like to be contacted by a business in different circumstances. Figure 1 illustrates their preferences in selected scenarios. It should come as no surprise that the more urgent the problem, the higher the likelihood that customers want to speak with a live agent. This is clearly an opportunity for companies to reach out to warn customers of abnormal situations such as fraud. Email and phone calls are the channels most customers prefer businesses to use to reach them, across a wide range of scenarios.

What this data suggests is that customers are not averse to outbound contacts, but that they are intensively weighing the context of a contact: its timeliness, urgency, and value to them. They are looking to structure their communications relationships with businesses based on their personal preferences. Adhering as closely to those preferences is a key best practice in rolling out an outbound program.

Figure 1: Customer preferences for outbound contact channels

Question: If a company or organization needs to get in touch with you for the following reasons which method of communication would you prefer?

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Account enroll ment Product recall Appoi ntment remi nder When you call i nto a contact center for support but

the wait ti me is too long

Se rvi ce outages Natural disasters and emergencies When I am a victim of suspected fraud

Perce nta ge of re sponde nts Phone call from CSR Ph one cal l from automated system Email SMS N/A

N = 520

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PROACTIVE OUTBOUND FITS A MULTIPLICITY OF USE CASES

Proactive outbound has been widely used by companies in the healthcare, financial services, and travel and tourism industries. These sectors thrive on close contact between customers and companies, and in each of them the relationship is based on transactions and interactions that require urgency and constant fine-tuning.

In healthcare, for example, companies are keeping costs under control by reaching out to

customers to remind them of upcoming appointments, or to offer prescription refills. These simple transactions are likely to generate an incoming call at some point; by reaching out in advance to the customer, the company can control the timing and make an extra effort to keep the interaction contained within a less expensive self-service system. And they ensure that the actual connection with the customer – the appointment itself – occurs as scheduled.

Airlines have been keen to automate the processes involved in passenger check-in, flight

changes/updates and upgrades. These are also transactions that happen within a known period of time (before and during travel), giving companies an opportunity to stave off a portion of potential inbound volume, and to provide value to customers at the same time. Airlines have also been very successful in training their customers to look to alternative contact channels before picking up the phone, rolling out mobile and SMS apps to provide near-realtime information that is very relevant to customers who are in transit. In this context, proactive outbound does double-duty as a cost-saver for the business and a value-creator for the customer.

There are many potential uses for outbound, ranging from the obvious (text messages about flight cancellations and changes) to the more sophisticated (delivery confirmations, or estimated time of arrival of field service technicians). Figure 2 highlights some of the common applications in leading industries.

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Figure 2: Use cases for proactive outbound communications

Source: Ovum O V U M

BEST PRACTICES FOR EFFECTIVE PROACTIVE OUTBOUND DEPLOYMENT

Tailor outbound to customer preferences

The key to distinguishing modern proactive outbound from traditional telemarketing is

personalization: taking into account the customer's preferences for how to be contacted, and why. Most customers are willing to receive contacts about issues that are relevant to them (even sales offers), as long as they have a hand in deciding what the ground rules for that contact would be. It is an essential best practice for organizations to query customers as early in the engagement lifecycle as possible to find out what kinds of contact they would like to receive, and when. It is helpful to present them with scenarios that give examples of the ways they might want to connect

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to a company; for example, when balance thresholds are reached, when certain products become available, or when service is experiencing an outage. At the same time, the company should make customers aware of the ways they can obtain these important pieces of information: voice call, self-service, text message, and so forth. The idea is to make the customer aware of the value of the information, and educate them as to the value of a proactive outbound contact from the company.

Before this can happen, enterprises must thoroughly vet the information processing systems underlying the call flow to ensure that when a customer's preference for contact is known, the company adheres to it. Customer preferences also extend to the reasons behind a contact: they may want to be alerted to certain kinds of offers, but not others. The customer will only see the value of a proactive outbound contact when they know that there is a trusted partner on the other end of the call. Respecting customers’ preferences for why to contact them is just as important as respecting their preferences for how it should happen.

Use business rules to comply with regulations

As mentioned above, outbound is most successful when it is controlled by a system that uses detailed business rules to determine the parameters of each customer contact. For example, in many regions and industries there are regulatory guidelines that control contact: companies may be restricted to certain call windows, for example, or be required to keep detailed records on what customers opt into (or out of). It is critical for a company to work with its outbound solution provider to understand the requirements and keep the outbound system in compliance.

Establish data sharing across applications

Multiple applications containing customer data have to be integrated, in as close to realtime as possible. This ensures that an outbound message does not pertain to an outdated business condition or trigger. The relevance and value of a communication to a customer is nullified if, for example, they are being reminded to make a payment that they paid the previous day.

To keep that from happening, common data must be shared across customer service apps. It also has to be accessible to agents when calls do transfer out of self-service.

Outbound requires intensive integration with inbound systems

Proactive outbound calling often spurs customers to seek out more information or clarification. It might be that they are responding to an attractive sales offer, or that they need to take an action to pay an overdue bill. The most effective use of outbound is to direct customers towards actions (and channels) that a company wants them to take. So companies need to tightly tie the outbound call (or message) to a mechanism for the customer to respond directly.

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This can be via an outbound IVR system that offers the customer instant prompts with options, and then connects them to an inbound queue or agent for immediate processing. Alternative outbound channels such as SMS and email can also be set up to offer the customer immediate feedback, offering to connect the customer's mobile phone to an inbound call, or schedule a callback. Another option is to enable two-way interactivity directly through return SMS. This is especially useful for confirmations that do not escalate, such as appointments or flight check-ins. The importance of these inbound integrations cannot be overstated; without a way for the customer to directly act on the information a company sends, the message risks getting lost or diluted, or worse, seen as a nuisance. Proactive outbound is most genuinely of value to a

customer when it begins a two-way dialogue. This also happens to be when it is of the most value to a company.

Contain the interaction within self-service

Another best practice is to anticipate that the customer will respond to an outbound notification or voice message, and build the self-service routing around that return call.

Upon identifying the caller as a customer, it makes sense to serve them an inbound prompt that refers to the outbound message they just received, and asks them if that is the reason for the call. This helps keep those calls contained within the automated system, only routing them to an agent when assistance is an absolute necessity, instead of as the default option.

Prepare the customer base for outbound by educating them on the benefits

Many customers still have a reflexive notion that communications from a company are of low value and low urgency. Companies need to be aware of that tendency, and should educate customers from the beginning of the relationship about the value of communications. They often need to be shown concrete examples of what kinds of contacts they will receive, and in what circumstances. Increasingly, customers are reachable via multiple channels on different devices. It is incumbent on the business to provide each customer with a package of communications options that explains to them with great clarity what they should expect for both inbound and outbound contacts. Customers need to be trained to see that an incoming text message or phone call carries a certain urgency, whereas an email may be just a transaction confirmation. In industries such as health care or financial services, automated outbound phone calls are already starting to be seen as higher-value communications, reminding patients of appointments or warning account holders of potential fraud.

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Understand how to measure a program's success criteria

The success of traditional telemarketing and collections is measured by the number of sales made or dollars collected. These measures are still valid for proactive outbound communications, but they need to be augmented with metrics that take into account two other factors:

• the increased productivity and efficiency of the contact center, including cost-reductions in operations

• the increased value of the customer relationship over the long term.

Much of the case for using proactive outbound is based on the way it helps shape responsive inbound traffic. For example, say a utility is facing a temporary service outage. If it does not make any attempt at proactive communication, a fairly large portion of the customer base will initiate inbound calls wanting details of when service will be restored. But an early outbound message, either via automated voice calls or text messages, can keep customers from making those expensive inbound calls. It can also point the customer to the Web for information-rich self-service options. This allows planners to staff for lower peaks, saving costs.

Over time, outbound can make a company seem more responsive to customer needs and more aware of each individual customer's preferences. This can lead to longer customer tenure and higher revenue per customer. It is important to keep customer value metrics and contact center efficiency measures in mind when evaluating the success criteria for a proactive outbound program.

Consider cloud deployment for scalability and flexibility

Today's proactive outbound is much more than just bulk voice calls to a customer base. It is a set of highly targeted, preference-driven communications across multiple contact channels. This can be hard to achieve with legacy premises equipment that may not be capable of identifying the distinction between a landline and a mobile phone, for example, or of offering outbound IVR or scheduled callback options. Many of the most valuable capabilities can be time-consuming to deploy, even in new premises systems, and require delicate application integrations. One way around this problem is to consider the latest generation of hosted systems for outbound. Cloud deployment allows companies to start with smaller programs (testing customer preferences and establishing good workflows), and then scale up as the need grows.

In addition, using a cloud deployment makes “burst” capacity available at short notice. This can be very important when the outbound volume is unexpected, as with emergency notifications. These might in fact create unexpectedly high inbound volumes as well, taxing fixed capacity. A cloud solution can mitigate this problem by allowing a business to scale service to handle those bursts.

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CONCLUSION

A well-crafted, proactive outbound program serves the interests of both parties to the conversation: the customer and the company. Not only are customers more willing to hear from the companies they do business with, but they are opening themselves up on more platforms and devices than just the simple voice call. This makes today's outbound look and feel very different to them than old-style telemarketing.

In order to profit from proactive outbound, companies have to make it valuable to their customers. They have to stress the urgency it commands, and tailor each message to the preferences and platforms that the customer makes available. They may have to educate customers on the value of using a particular channel, but overall today's customers are willing to listen, willing to engage, and open to a two-way dialogue.

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APPENDIX

Authors

Keith Dawson, Principal Analyst of Customer Interaction

[email protected]

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