| Companies hope that by linking their Web sites and call centers they will improve customer loyalty, attract new business and even cut costs. Those are all compelling reasons. But another driver behind the Web call center is even more persuasive: customers are demanding it.
A Web call center can improve customer service and retention by providing various self-care applications online, and then backing up that convenience with the ability to communicate with a person in the call center. Furthermore, handling contact with less strategic customers via the Web can free agents to provide costly hands-on care to the most profitable customers.
The ideal way to link a Web site with the call center is to use common infrastructure technologies in each environment and deploy applications that are designed to work together, says Ashok Sathe, a vice president for the telecommunications practice at Kanabay LLC, a systems integrator in Rosemont, Ill. In an integrated environment, the customer application will have an interface that is similar to the one customer service representatives use in the call center, and most important, data can flow directly between the two.
But few enterprise users have that option because the larger call/customer service centers have grown over the years into a hodgepodge of legacy systems, Sathe says. Rather than attempting to build Rome in a day, most companies take a modular approach to the process by deploying new systems in the order that will deliver the best results. |
