Time For the Offense to Take the Field
Pro-Active Customer Contact
Joe Outlaw, Principal Analyst
Contact Centers
September 23, 2008

Focus Points
• What is pro-active customer contact (PCC) and why
you should care?
• Which strategies best leverage pro-active customer
contact?
• Which applications and technologies enable pro-active
customer contact strategies?
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What is pro-active customer contact and why
you should care?
3

Pro-active Customer Contact (PCC):
More Than Traditional Tele-Marketing
Outbound Dialing Outbound IVR applications
Collections Health check w/order option
Tele-marketing for new sales
Order or service
status update
Comprehensive Pro-Active
Customer Contact
Emergencies
After call feedback
Appointment Random sampling
Product Reminders
Recalls With product registration
Notification and Alerting Customer Feedback
4

Impact of PCC on Customer Retention and Revenues
Relationship Between Customer
Retention Rate and Profitability Proactivity increases
customers’ positive view of
the company – strengthens
50 the brand
Profit/customer
25
Positive customers remain
0
customers longer
-25 Positive customers buy
0 1 2 3 4 5 more
Years Customer Retained
Positive customers
Source: The Loyalty Effect
recommend the company’s
products to others
5

Impact of PCC on Competitive Differentiation
Reactive, Pro-active, and
Blended
Point applications evolve to
become comprehensive PCC program
Addition of point PCC
applications
Widening
Gap
Reactive-only
customer contact
Reactive-only
6

Impact of PCC on Contact Center Operations
Fill inbound call troughs with pro-active
Contact Center
Increase agent and systems utilization Costs
Simplify staff planning
Reduce inbound calls, particularly
complaints
Increase job diversity for call center
Agent
agents
Satisfaction
Reduce staff turnover which reduces
recruitment and training
7

Which strategies best leverage pro-active
customer contact?
8

PCC Emphasis: Contact Center Cost Reduction
Outbound contacts balance valleys in inbound call loads
160
Incoming customer calls
140
Staffing
Level
120
Outbound
100 Contacts
80
60
40
20
0
8AM 10AM Noon 2PM
Time of Day
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PCC Emphasis: Customer Loyalty and Revenue Growth
Mine customer interaction data -
identify opportunities to provide valued
customers’ with:
•useful product/service information Contact Center
•offers on new and related products of Revenues
previous or projected interest for sale
Identify \"best\" resource for pro-active
service follow-up or sales offers
Challenges:
• need different agent performance
metrics for outbound and blended
contact handling
Customer
•need to provide sales training for agents Satisfaction
• add sales and blended skill sets to WFM
and routing applications
10

Future: Unified PCC
Revenue Focus
High Sales and Marketing
Customer Contact - Reactive Unified Customer Contact - Proactive
PCC
Contact Center
Customer Service Focus High
11

Which applications and technologies enable
pro-active customer contact strategies?
12

Pro-Active Customer Contact Technologies
Automated dialing applications - can be
operated in various states of
Outbound Dialing and scripting automation, such as power, preview,
and predictive
IVR and voice portal DTMF or speech recognition interfaced
platform-based applications for outbound calling can
outbound applications support simple to complex interaction
Outbound notification and alerts can be
delivered by telephone, fax, other
Notification and alerting media, and mixed media, can be
scheduled or event-driven
Can be a few instant reaction questions
Pro-active survey and customer after a call or lengthy periodic surveys
feedback collection/analysis with the same objective - to gather
applications and analyze the “voice of the
customer”
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Pro-active Customer Contact Applications
Pro-Active Customer Contact as a competitive differentiator –
combating commoditization in some of the most competitive
industries.
Airlines/Travel
Banking Govt. Health Care
• Flight status update
• On-boarding • Emergency • Appt. remind
• Resv. confirm
• Credit card fraud • Tax reminders • Prescription renew
• Emergency • Payment reminders • Political campaign • Disease mgt
Retail
Insurance
• Sale alerts Telecom Utilities
• On-boarding
• Delivery notification • Switch to auto pay • Appt. confirm
• Claim-process
• Product recalls • Minutes used • Outage status
• Renewal reminder
• Order confirmation • Crew callout
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Summary and Recommendations
• PCC solutions: leaders are moving from point to comprehensive
deployments
• PCC solutions can deliver both operational efficiencies and
revenue growth
• Start by creating a PCC vision for your organization
• Develop a PCC strategy and tactics to achieve your vision
• Determine application/technology, staffing, training requirements
• Iterate toward your vision - quality improvement approach
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