NETTING IT OUT

Your customers want and need your help on every channel through which they interact with you. They want and need your help for every activity that they want to perform through those interactions for the duration of their relationships with you. Think of that help as customer service--cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service.

The requirements for the operational capabilities of cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service products are best expressed in terms of the activities within the phases of your customer lifecycle. Products should package the capabilities that can deliver the help that your customers need.

No product or product suite can address all of these requirements. You’ll be selecting, purchasing, and implementing multiple products to deliver a complete customer experience. The key types of products are campaign management, ecommerce, search and knowledge management, case/incident management, and service resolution management.

We plan to publish framework-based evaluations of leading exemplars for each of these types of products. Our evaluations will help you shorten the time, reduce the cost, and lower the risk of selecting, developing, implementing, and supporting the set of products that will deliver your complete cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer experience.

WHAT IS CROSS-CHANNEL, CROSS-LIFECYCLE CUSTOMER SERVICE?

Cross-Channel Customer Service

Your customers do business with you through mechanisms that we call channels. Channels link your customers to customer service personnel and to customer service systems. There are two types of channels: partner networks and customer touchpoints. Partner networks are the multitiered structures of distributors, agents, brokers, retailers, and resellers that market, sell, and support the products and services produced by manufacturers, suppliers, and service providers. Customer touchpoints are the interfaces through which customers interact and transact business with your company and its partners. Touchpoints include, but aren’t limited to, the Web, email, print catalogs, stores and branches, kiosks and ATMs, mobile hand-held devices, IVR systems, and your products themselves.

Remember that customers are in control. Customers choose their channels. Customers use the touchpoints that make it easiest for them to interact with you. And it’s a given that customers do business with multiple partners using multiple touchpoints and that they will flip back and forth between dealing with a channel partner and dealing with your company directly. It’s that complexity that forms the basis for the requirements to deliver cross-channel customer service.

Cross-Lifecycle Customer Service

Your customers’ activities with you traverse the phases of a lifecycle, from the first step of the first piece of business that they do with you through the time when they stop buying and using your products and services. Between those points, customers perform various activities that we can associate with phases of a lifecycle. These phases are:

* Plan
* Explore
* Select
* Buy
* Use
* Maintain
* Renew/replace

Illustration 1 shows these phases. Whether the phases are followed in sequence or whether customers act less predictably, customers need service and support for every activity of every phase of their lifecycles. If you want to build long-term, profitable relationships with your customers, then you must create a cross-lifecycle customer experience that delivers excellent service at every phase and every activity of the customer lifecycle.

Cross-Lifecycle Customer Service

© 2004 Patricia Seybold Group Inc.

Illustration 1. This illustration shows the phases of the customer service lifecycle around the core of (customer) support and the focus of the customer, represented by the proxy of your customer information.

EVALUATION FRAMEWORK FOR CROSS-CHANNEL, CROSS-LIFECYCLE CUSTOMER SERVICE PRODUCTS

We can help you create and implement a customer experience that delivers excellent cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service by helping you select software products that best address your channel mix and the phases and activities of your customers’ lifecycles. Through our work with you, our work understanding software solutions, and our ongoing customer-centric analyses, we’ve identified the requirements for cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service products and created a framework that will help you evaluate how well products address those requirements.

The framework for cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service has five top-level evaluation criteria and sets of factors for each top-level criterion. The top-level criteria are ...