1. Shifting a 40 year
Paradigm of
Customer Service
Customer Engagement Whitepaper
Tony Shrader
11/3/2014

2. Customer Service Shifts
In 1973 Rockwell invented the first ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) system 1
in order to solve the
customer experience problems for a call center of a large airline. This technology has driven the way
businesses have viewed customer service ever since. Although, there have been a myriad of
enhancements and new features to this technology since 1973, this technology and for that matter the
businesses have failed to consider the changing perceptions around customer service, specifically driven
by the Mobile-era. The Smartphone will account for 67% of mobile devices in the US market by 20172
,
with the largest increase in growth reported in 2012. However today, 96% of mobile applications lack
in-line customer service capabilities3
. It is time for a paradigm shift in this 40 year old technology and
the way businesses service their customers.
What is Old, is New Again…
In order to understand where customer experience is headed, you need to look back before 1973 to a
simpler time, before the introduction of ACD’s as a way to connect customers to businesses. A time
when a customer went to the same business, saw the same person and conducted business because
there was a relationship. Relationships grow because individuals have something in common and time
to build those relationships. This is something that Call Centers, even the multi-channel Call Centers
cannot accommodate. Customers are forced to interact with channels they don’t prefer and interact
with a different agent every time they connect. But what if there was a way to build one-on-one
relationships, even with a large enterprise corporation?
Introducing Mediated Interaction Matching (MIM)
In October 2013, Drew Kraus and Bern Elliot of Gartner dove into an emerging technology known as
“Mediated Interaction Matching” or MIM. In their article “Innovation Insight: Mediated Interaction
Matching Delivers Innovation in Contact Center Personalization and Performance” they describe the
next evolution of customer experience. Simply defined MIM uses a system that mediates on behalf of
the customer, and how interactions with a business are executed. This system knows the demographic
and psychographic data of the customer and call center agent. It collects this data primarily from Social
Networks and other public data sources. It then uses this data to create a “match” between the
customers’ and agents’ “personalities”. Additionally, the system presents suitably matched agents to
the customer allowing them to select a specific agent. The feedback from the customer and other data
sources about the interaction “tunes” the system, ensuring future interactions with agents that perform
the best.
1
Roger Sumner, Senior Vice President, Technology Office, Aspect Software, “How CTI And Other Contact Center
Technologies Changed My Life” , Website TMCnet.com -http://www.tmcnet.com/call-center/0606/cis-contact-
center-technology-0606.htm)
2
No stated author, “Empowered Consumers in 2013: Forging Connections to the Mobile Web”, Frost & Sullivan
report #9857-76
3
Michael Maoz, Gartner VP Analyst, “Four Ways Mobile Customers Will Force an Overhaul of Customer Service”,
10/23/2014, Gartner Webinar.

3. This is accomplished by the system implementing two key capabilities, AAR (Analytics Assisted Routing)
and CCR (Customer Choice Routing). AAR tunes the experience automatically through analytics, making
the decision process more dynamic. AAR based routing has improved KPIs by 15% to 250%, depending
environment and goals4
.
While CCR, enabled by the Smartphone, tablet or PC, gives the customer the power of choice,
presenting the customer with agents who are available or soon will be available on their devices. These
agents may be selected and ranked for the customer, allowing the customer to visualize the agent and
select the agent who they feel can best service their needs. The customer can choose one of the agents
and many times the channel which they wish to interact (chat, voice, and sms). A channel preference
ensures that customers can control usage on their data or voice plans provided by their carrier. The
customer can create a list of “favorite agents” which provides a short list of agents which the customer
prefers to interact and associated channel.
Both capabilities tend to use customer feedback in order to improve the overall experience. However,
with exception of the “worst experiences”, customer feedback can tend to be skewed in favor of the
agent. Uber and others have discovered this in their driver feedback data. Poor ratings (1 & 2 Star
ratings) only account for 1% of their total surveys5
. The accuracy of customer ratings varies by
organization. The timing and the way that a survey is presented also is critical to understand. Collecting
feedback from the customer must be customizable by business and timed at different points of the
interaction. Approaches that don’t allow customized surveys or inserting specific surveys at different
parts of the customer lifecycle will create the bias data which so many companies experience today.
Make sure that the customer clearly understands if they are rating the service, product or employee
that provided the service. Ask the right questions at the right time. Inaccurate data will skew and cause
variance in the AAR process. AAR systems must be able to weight customer feedback data against the
overall KPIs and other relevant business rules in order to avoid an imbalance in the routing process.
AAR and CCR are great concepts, but imagine a call center, where your workforce is no longer optimized
based on availability. Could agents become segregated into “cliques” based on customer feedback and
like interests? Are young, tech-savvy customers with large social networks receiving preferential
treatment over older, affluent customers? The matching process must consider more than just
demographic, psychographic and customer feedback.
4
Drew Kraus & Bern Elliot, “Innovation Insight: Mediated Interaction Matching Delivers Innovation in Contact
Center Personalization and Performance”, 14 October 2013 in Gartner Report G00257620
5
Jeff Bercovici, “Uber's Ratings Terrorize Drivers and Trick Riders. Why Not Fix Them?”, 14 August 2014, Forbes
online article, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-are-we-actually-rating-when-we-rate-
other-people/

4. Segmentation becomes Paramount
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is used by marketing organizations to determine the future profitability
of a particular customer6
. The role of CLV plays in the matching process is critical if businesses wish to
define their own servicing strategies. High value customers can receive concierge services, while the
businesses work to “fire” their worst customers7
. Businesses stand to increase revenue and decrease
costs when CLV is combined and properly weighted within the AAR process.
Customer intent and customer value are tied closely together. Intent can be defined as “what I want
now” or “what I don’t know I want now”. Let’s take the customer whose large ticket item which they
purchased years ago is ready for replacement. The customer’s value may have dwindled, but when
combined with the need to replace the item, Intent can be an important factor in properly segmenting
your customer base. AAR combined with Intent and Value is an even more effective way of servicing
your customers and insures the right customers are getting with the right agents. But what if the person
that can best service the customer, isn’t even a call center agent?
Use the Right Workforce
Over the last four decades, businesses have used the call center to improve their bottom line by
centralizing operations and reducing cost. Call Centers extended their cost savings by introducing their
customers to traditional self service capabilities (IVR, Virtual Agent, and Knowledgebase). Don’t get me
wrong, Self Service is a viable strategy even in this new era, but it should be used in conjunction with
customer value and intent, but clearly it de-personalizes the entire experience. But what about the
businesses with “brick and mortar” store locations? Are some of these businesses sending customers to
a call center thousands of miles away or to a self service platform, when there is a real expert located in
a location very close to the customer?
Imagine a store or field employee empowered with a mobile application, which provides their presence,
geolocation and a mobile CRM at their fingertips. Then tie this capability to the MIM platform.
Matching is then conducted by considering the customer’s location, CLV, Intent and Personality matched
with an actual expert (not call center agent reading from a knowledge base), located just miles away
from a high value customer. Through the CCR capability, the customer chooses the expert which they
wish to interact and chats, speaks or sets an appointment with the expert. This capability would allow
businesses to build strong, local relationships while closing the gap of the virtual and “concrete” worlds.
This represents a dramatic paradigm shift for most businesses using the call center as a primary means
to service their customers, but is the approach of using mobile workers on the horizon? Gartner
predicted for 2014 a 500% growth in mobile CRM applications.8
Salesforce and Microsoft are gambling
in this market, both with growing Mobile CRM applications and capabilities. Could we be returning to
6
Definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_lifetime_value
7
Jennifer Polk, “Three Reasons to Fire Your Worst Customers”, June 17, 2014, Gartner Blog Post -
http://blogs.gartner.com/jennifer-polk/three-reasons-to-fire-your-worst-customers/
8
Chuck Schaeffer, “Sizing Up the CRM Software Market”, no date, http://www.crmsearch.com/crm-market.php

5. an era before 1973, where customers conduct face to face transactions with businesses who are
interested in maintaining relationships with their most loyal customers?
About the Author
Tony Shrader is the Director of Solutions Consulting @ Humanify, a Teletech subsidiary company. He is a
20+ year veteran of the customer interaction technology. Humanify’s mission is to provide data driven
matching technologies that enable businesses to execute world-class customer journeys by overcoming
some of the complexities present when trying to integrate CX designs into the legacy ACD systems.
Matching not based on traditional skills based routing but rather based on; WHO the customer is, WHAT
the customer is doing, HOW the customer wants to connect and WHICH expert resource(s) are best
suited to deliver on the customer intent. He is currently working on the company’s Expert Connect with
Personalization product, which provides a MIM solution combined with a Mobile expert capability.
Personalization will allow businesses to define and segment their customer base, and then apply
matching principles based on the Customer’s demographic, psychographic, CLV, intent and feedback.
Customers will be able to interact through their mobile device with businesses, choose the channel of
which they wish to interact and pick the expert they wish to interact. Humanify has also expanded the
concept of Experts, to include Virtual Agents, Social Forums, and Knowledgebase to Call Center agents
and field experts. Businesses are able to segment and define treatments for these customer segments
and connect them with experts in a way never thought possible.
Tony Shrader
Tony.Shrader@Humanify.com
www.Humanify.com