Discover the Power of Live Chat! A Key Service Differentiator

Discover the Power of Live Chat A Key Service Differentiator Julie Larsen| EMC Corporation Chris Gardner| EMC Corporation 10.24.2011

Session Objectives• Share – Insights to develop a successful Live Chat strategy to help you differentiate your business and increase customer satisfaction. – Lessons learned during our journey to deploy Live Chat in a complex enterprise environment – Ideas to help you influence a company- wide paradigm shift and cultural transformation Online Support 2

About EMC EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect, and analyze their most valuable asset— information— in a more agile, trusted, and cost-efficient way.EMC at a Glance Revenues (2010): $17B Lifetime Achievement: Fortune 500 Rank: 166 Professional Services Excellence Employees: ≈ 49,000 in Enabling Customer Success Countries with EMC operations: > 80 R&D investment (2010): ≈ $2B Excellence in Use of Metrics and Total cash and investments (2010): $9.5B Business Intelligence Market capitalization: ~$57B (3/31/11) Education Services Excellence in Founded: 1979 Enabling Customer Success 3

Audience Poll• Do you currently service your customers with Live Chat offering?• If so, do you offer multi-lingual Live Chat? – Are you using auto-translation services?• If not, do you plan to offer Live Chat as a support option? 4

Business Challenges• Customers asked us to solve their issues faster and more effectively• Evolve and enhance our customers’online support experience while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction• Change business model so Support Centers could focus on complex technical issues• Meet changing customer behaviors as new generations enter the work force• Need to match support cost to case complexity 5

Match Support Cost to Case Complexity Focus your investmentsWhere NOT to invest High Volume High Complexity Low Volume High Complexity (Exceptions requiring Web 2.0 human support) Low Volume Low Complexity High Volume Low Complexity (Traditional Web Quadrant) 6

What We Did• Gained senior leadership’s commitment to sponsor and support launch of Live Chat – Champion the approach to look at our business model differently – Lead the key paradigm shift of transitioning behavior and priorities from phone to online – Build a unified organization dedicated to online support and specifically, Chat 7

Defined Business Strategy• Created a business strategy with 3 key focus areas – Customer experience – getting the customer to the right technical expert…fast • Faster than the call dispatch process and faster than submitting a service request online without barriers to spoken languages – Greater operational flexibility • Ability to quickly engage customers and route the Chat session to appropriate support center and team – Metrics • Establish key performance indicators for support teams, set quarterly goals and benchmarks to track status 8

Built a New Team Dedicated to Chat• Organized a New Team to improve ability to develop and deliver Live Chat• New team was comprised of Customer Service Operations, eServices, and IT Program Management• Dedicate agents to the channel• Created Rotation Program – Support Center subject-matter experts focused on Chat during a 180 day rotation period – At end of rotation period, returned to Support Center role with new skills, knowledge and deeper understanding of customer day-to-day challenges 9

Created Chat Pilot Plan• Designed a Chat event to generate interest, create energy, gain momentum: “April Chat Challenge”• Roll-out Plan – 30 day pilot comprised of 5 core technology products – Offered during basic business hours• Pilot was designed to – Validate the business strategy – Test newly designed business process flow – Validate systems integrations – Control the quality of service delivery Support Center Resources – Collect data to build operational dashboards 10

Chat Pilot KPIsWe closely monitored the following key metrics KPI Definition Volume Number of Chat sessions Abandon Rates Number/percentage of customers who abandoned their chat session Wait Times in Queue Average time the customer waited for an agent to begin Chat session Session Duration Time from start to finish session Positive Disposition Number of sessions successfully closed within Chat session - no need to escalate CSAT Transactional survey sent to customers immediately after each Chat session 11

Chat Pilot Evaluation• Performance evaluation results after 30 days: – Overwhelming customer acceptance of Chat for enterprise technical support – Generated momentum at all levels of EMC management – Average Time to Close via Chat much faster vs. phone/web – Improved customer satisfaction with timely engagement to “right” technical expert for relevant technical response – Eliminated language as a barrier to technical resolution – Lowered cost of operations • Fewer hand-offs = faster resolution = lower costs 12

Taking Chat Mainstream• Following the initial 30 day pilot, we grew the channel by adding new service lines while continuing to monitor metrics and user behavior• The pilot evolved into a formal business operation program with a dedicated Chat team, formal operational metrics, and a refined process flow• Ongoing engagement with customers for feedback regarding their Live Chat experience 13

What our Customers are saying… “The chat response was quick and easy and the problem got resolved much faster than through a support ticket.”“Live Chat gets meanswers within minutes,plus I can continue to “Chat Rocks!!!” “I love the response timetroubleshoot and work of Live Chat. All of theon other issues or engineers I have workedcollect needed with so far solve myinformation for the problems very quickly.”support engineer!” 14

Lessons Learned• Customer acceptance and adoption of Chat for tech support on complex problems far exceeded our expectations• Create and communicate clear escalation procedures as some issues are simply too complex for Chat• Maintain and automate a “Chat Can’t Handle” list• Abandons are the #1 killer of Chat and CSAT• Dedicated Chat agents have higher productivity than “blended” agents 15

Chat Best Practices• Maintain your Agent Ready Status – Routing due to incorrect ready status is the #1 cause of abandoned chat sessions• Never let a chat wait more than 30 seconds for initial acknowledgement – Even if you don’t think you can help, pick it up • Saves an abandon and creates the chance of helping a customer• Never assume the customer knows what you are doing – Tell the customer when you will “go silent” to research – Remind the Customer that you are working and still there• Use Frequently Used Scripted Sayings – Consistency is a major component of a positive user experience• Maintain a “Chat Can’t Handle list” and automate it 16

Keys to Success• Four critical Live Chat success factors – Dedicated Chat team – Prioritize Chat queue over all other channels • Focus on Chat, not phone – Broad visibility and easy access to Chat – Periodic reviews and analysis to determine what is working, what is not and what changes are needed 17

What’s NextTaking Chat to the Next Level• Meet the requirements of a global economy with multi-lingual Chat – Multi-lingual Agents speak User language – “Any language-Any agent” with Auto Chat Translation Service• Expand Chat offering from Customer-initiated (inbound) to Agent-initiated (outbound)• Use Chat to promote additional self-service vehicles such as forums, content, etc.• Focus on routing issues to the right engineer and further enable engineer-engineer collaboration 18

Contact InformationJulie LarsenVice President, eServices, EMC CorporationLarsen_julie@emc.comChris GardnerDirector, eServices, EMC CorporationGardner_chris@emc.com 19

Discover the Power of Live Chat! A Key Service Differentiator

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