Online Customer Support Doesn't Come In A Wrapper

CRM software vendors tantalize businesses with the promise of seamlessly connecting their Web, e-mail, call center and other customer-facing operations. The payoff, according to the vendors, is a transparent and consistent interface with customers-and a "360-degree view" of them.

But key portions of this integration end up missing or disjointed. Call centers don't talk to Web systems. The sales team has patchy real-time access to the data collected by customer service agents.

Once most companies take a close look at the technical and organizational challenges of unified customer service, they temper their big ambitions-or phase them in gradually. Customer relationship management is less a packaged software solution than a massive systems integration challenge, experts said. The result: The view of the customer is still less than panoramic.

"Our strategy is that no matter where you purchase from us, what you were contacting us about or how you contacted us, we'll be able to pull you up and have a 360-degree view of you," said Susan Knight, vice president of customer satisfaction at retailer Eddie Bauer. "But we need to have the systems that run our stores, catalog and Internet, and our back-end systems all talking to one another. We're hoping that happens within the next year or two, but a lot has to go on. We're doing it in pieces."

While dotcoms have the luxury of building integrated customer support systems from the ground up-and often serve as the poster children for Web-based CRM-Eddie Bauer's integration challenges are more typical. This established business is looking to integrate online, phone and brick-and-mortar retail operations, all of which connect to mainframes.

Eddie Bauer's customer service centers now separate catalog call and Internet customer service. Agents on the Internet team handle e-mail, live chat and Web-related phone inquiries. The plan is to integrate the two-one day-but refining the Web support is the retailer's more immediate goal.Eddie Bauer uses an Internet customer service suite from Servicesoft to manage e-mail as well as provide a self-service question-and-answer feature on its site, called Ask Eddie. The next step is to let online customers check order status, a feature that should be in place before the holiday season.

Eventually, Eddie Bauer wants all its customer-facing systems to talk with one another and with back-end systems. That will help agents resolve customer inquiries on first contact more often, and give customers more personalized service over the phone, online and in stores.

It's also an important way to identify valuable customers, Knight said. Multichannel customers are the most valuable-they spend more money and are more loyal-so being better able to identify those customers and serve them individually is essential, she said.

Other companies are further along than Eddie Bauer in their integration efforts, though their applications may not be as complex nor their traffic as heavy.

USA Group, which services student loans for other financial institutions, found that as its business grew, its customer service was spreading out across a dozen disconnected departments. Meantime, e-mail traffic from the company's Web site was increasing and had to be handled by separate reps.

"We were presenting a fragmented face of customer service," said Adam Boornazian, senior vice president of customer contact operations. "It wasn't good for our customers or for us."

The first step toward unifying customer support wasn't technical. USA Group consolidated all 12 customer service departments into a single group that handles interaction with universities, banks and individual borrowers.

USA Group then hired integrator eLoyalty to create a system that would house all customer information, whether it comes by phone, e-mail, fax or regular mail.

The initial work involved linking a customer database built by eLoyalty with a phone system designed to identify a caller, look up his history in the database and route the calls to the appropriate rep, who could view the customer's history on a PC. The telephony app involved a GeoTel call management product, a skill-based routing system from Lucent and an automated voice-response system from InterVoice. Four customer service systems USA Group had built previously also had to be linked in.

The first part of the project, begun in December 1998, was completed early this year. But USA Group's CRM integration is still a work in progress.

The next step, Boornazian said, is to automate the management of customer e-mail from USA Group's Web site, which now accounts for 20 percent of inquiries. Those e-mails are still being screened manually, then sent to appropriate agents who respond and enter details of the correspondence into the customer's case history. USA Group is evaluating two e-mail response management applications, from Cisco and eGain.

That system will be integrated into the main customer support system, automating both the routing of e-mail to agents and the entering of e-mail into customer case histories. "We'll have a total record of the relationship," Boornazian said. "The rep sees everything and is prepared for the caller or e-mailer without having to ask all the rudimentary questions."

Unifying customer contact channels also will mean more efficient use of customer support staff, Boornazian said. The integration work USA Group already has done has let the company maintain its customer service staff levels in the face of steadily increasing traffic, he added.

After e-mail integration with the customer service system is complete, USA Group plans to add live text chat with agents to the Web site.

The step-by-step approach is necessary for several reasons, experts said. For one thing, most companies' CRM plans aren't fully baked and are likely to change as e-business models evolve.

"It doesn't make sense to spend six months developing a Rolls-Royce of a system when at that stage all the business and technical requirements aren't understood," said Colin Robinson, a consultant at integrator Polaris Solutions.

"A lot of companies come in with the sky-high 360-degree vision, when in reality it's done more like 45 degrees at a time, implementing pieces that deliver real business benefit, then further developing." CRM also involves so much personal contact on a variety of levels that the touchy-feely aspects are critical and must be constantly re-evaluated, Robinson said.

For some companies, the challenge is how to give high-value repeat customers all the benefits of Web self-service without losing the personal touch.

Monster.com faces that problem as its customers-businesses paying to post job openings or buy résumés-increasingly prefer to post jobs directly to its site, said Ned Liddell, director of business applications. For instance, a company posting jobs may not be aware of how to get a better rate or access additional services; a rep would be able to offer that info.

To tie its live and online services more closely together, Monster.com now uses a Siebel database to store records of customer interactions. Reps regularly monitor the database to track account activity.

The trick is automating how data gets into the database so the information is complete, accurate and up to date. So Monster.com developed its own middleware that automatically routes information, such as job openings posted on the Web, into the Siebel database. Previously, jobs posted on the site were e-mailed to a clerk, who keyed the information into the system. Now reps will automatically be flagged when one of their accounts uses the self-service system.

The middleware also lets the Monster.com site, Oracle financial system and Siebel database (modified to also serve as an order management system) share information. Soon, billing information from the Oracle system will automatically be entered into customers' case histories for agents to see.

Live chat will be up on the site this month. And in a few months, the site will let customers request a direct call back from an agent. Records of those interactions will go into the Siebel database. The integration work is necessary to maintain a personal link to customers, Liddell said.

"We're doing it so we can be faster and more accurate, but mainly to give better customer service," Liddell said. "We want to get away from the typical e-commerce model, which is impersonal. It's not easy-from the data side, it's really ugly-but it's worth it."