Online Customer Care – Applying Today’s Technology to Achieve World‐class Customer Interaction

Citation

McMellon, C. (2000), "Online Customer Care – Applying Today’s Technology to Achieve World‐class Customer Interaction", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 73-87. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2000.17.1.73.4

More and more corporations are discovering the importance of improving their customer care service. Firms like Honeywell, Toyota, and Corning have already been successful in their customer service approach, improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales. Unfortunately, many others have not.

Author Michael Cusack jumps right into the middle of this critical management issue with his new book, Online Customer Care. The focus of the book is for the firm to minimize cost while maximizing customer satisfaction and gathering relevant consumer information for future marketing efforts. It is a serious “how‐to” book that anyone interested in customer service should have on their bookshelf.

Online Customer Care gets straight to the business at hand, covering almost all aspects of customer care service from the fundamentals of why a manager should pay attention to customer care service to the electronic intricacies of e‐mail and the Internet, all in the easy‐to‐read language of the manager. He writes intelligently about these systems, while pointing out some of the pitfalls when it is done wrong. To make Online Customer Care more accessible to the reader, the author illustrates the book with many real‐world case histories to explain his recommendations.

Cusack takes a customer‐oriented approach to the design and function of a customer care system while continuously stressing the need for management support and involvement as the key factors for success. Author Cusack defines success as “satisfying the customer at the lowest possible cost, while gathering usable market intelligence data” (p. 47). What makes this book a worthwhile purchase is that Cusack lives up to his promise. In a step‐by‐step process, the reader is educated on an excellent approach to reaching the goal of a satisfied customer in an efficient and effective manner.

Online Customer Care is divided into two parts. The first five chapters take a macro approach to customer care service, while chapters six to 13 take a micro approach in discussing the details of a customer care system. What follows is a brief description of each chapter.

Chapter one, “Introduction”, begins with the basics of successful customer care service, including the evolution of this important managerial area, the critical issues facing the industry, and the link between effective customer care and customer satisfaction. Central to the book is that any effective customer care system should be driven by the consumer.

Chapter two, “Fundamentals”, contains the basics of the author’s quest for effective and efficient customer care. Discussing the broader issues, the author examines process considerations and improvements in relation to the technological and content aspects of customer care. The process must be driven by the customer needs, while improvement initiatives must stem from senior management. The author suggests that the technology must interact with a customer in a manner that allows easy access and understandable and accurate information. Driving this goal is systems design and integration.

Chapter three, “Media”, examines the basic approaches used by customers to contact the firm. This chapter is essential for managers as it covers most alternatives to the expensive voice‐to‐voice approach such as e‐mail, the World Wide Web, interactive voice response, postal service, fax, and video services. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed, along with current trends.

Chapter four, “Business drivers”, discusses the three drivers critical to the success of any customer care system: customer satisfaction, cost reduction, and market intelligence. The author points out the importance of resolution at first contact for customer satisfaction, minimizing contact time and staff turnover for effective cost reduction, and strategies to gather usable customer data such as conducting a root cause analysis which helps reduce customer contacts.

Chapter five, “A case study”, sets up a hypothetical “real life” case study of a new customer service center. The author takes us through a set of realistic problems and practical solutions that might occur and some practical solutions, such as reducing customer call volume by increasing the number of available channels. Here, a firm might choose to include a Web site, e‐mail, and a systems‐enabled interactive voice response system. This chapter lays the groundwork for the rest of this important book. The next eight chapters focus on the “how to” aspects of the firm’s customer care service system.

Chapter six, “Process considerations”, focuses on the processes necessary for a “world‐class” system. The author provides a list of customer care contingencies that help define the customer care process including organizational processes (e.g. screening and hiring), supportive processes (e.g. training), and customer facing processes (e.g. classifying and routing messages). In addition, the author examines process flaws and how to rectify them. Finally, quality improvement, gathering contact data, dealing with escalations, and how to follow up contacts are discussed. This is a key chapter and well worth the price of the book.

Chapter seven, “Systems design and development”, goes to the heart of the customer care system with a discussion of system design. At its core are three systems: contact tracking, information retrieval, and workforce management. The author advocates a user‐driven design, not a management‐driven design. The customer’s needs and abilities are channeled into a design that can be effective and efficient.

Chapter eight, “Information retrieval systems”, tackles the difficult problem of solving customer problems with the available information. He peels off layer on layer of customer service processes, examining each layer in detail until the reader sees the core issues. He advocates and explains “intelligent” retrieval systems that aid the agent at first contact to reduce time spent on the call. A case history using a cost/benefit analysis helps the reader understand why this approach is important. The author’s approach to these systems cuts through the technological jargon to make the systems understandable.

Chapter nine, “Content provisioning”, details what kinds of information should be available to the agent and customer. Such areas as scope, search speed, audience needs, usage strategies for retrieval, vocabulary and style, completeness, and accuracy are discussed. What is discussed here (i.e. content provisioning) is applicable to all types of customer contacts, whether by phone, e‐mail, or surfing into their Web site.

Chapter ten, “Electronic mail”, introduces the reader to cyberspace. It discusses the interpretation, response, maintenance, and many of the contingencies that the manager must deal with when e‐mail is used. For example, what to do when a customer does not provide enough information in the e‐mail or writes an e‐mail letter in a foreign language.

Chapter 11, “The World Wide Web”, continues the journey in cyberspace. While recognizing the importance of telephone contact for customer care, the author also steps out into the future with a discussion of the Internet. Such WWW features as FAQs, e‐mail, online help, and billing and account management are covered.

Chapter 12, “High technology at the call center”, prepares the reader for the technology of the twenty‐first century. Interactive voice response (IVR), call management systems, and automatic number identification that allows the firm to know who is calling and retrieve relevant information before the incoming telephone call is answered are all explained. No matter how sophisticated the technology becomes, the author always brings us back to the human factor, which is the critical factor in all customer care systems. For example, he discusses who is going to write the script for the IVR.

Chapter 13, “Market intelligence”, ends this interesting and important book with a discussion on what information (usable data) the firm should want to gather on its customers, and then where and how to distribute it. One of the few criticisms of this book is that this chapter should be inside the book and not the final chapter. Coming after chapter 12 is a glossary of terms and a bibliography for those who wish to know more on this subject.

Michael Cusack has written a very comprehensive book about customer care systems. The benefits to the reader include an examination of the three critical business drivers that help ensure customer care success: customer satisfaction, reduced costs, and customer intelligence. The book also covers the critical processes and the various methods customers use to contact the firm with problems. Readers interested in this subject should add this book to their bookshelf and use the tools author Cusack gives them in their approach to improving customer satisfaction.