January 13, 1999 Web posted at: 7:57 p.m. EDT (1957 GMT) by Martin LaMonica

From...

(IDG) -- Before companies found their way onto the Internet, it seemed the worst you could do was call customer service and wait on hold for an eternity only to reach an agent who couldn't solve your problem. But the Internet age has managed to one-up poor phone support with a new experience: Sending an e-mail into the cyberspace void that will perhaps be replied to in a day, or perhaps in a week, or perhaps not at all.

For companies looking to leverage their Internet presence for sales and service, these kinks in the system mean big bucks. As CEOs chant the customer service mantra, building customer loyalty will become a priority for all IT departments in the coming year.

More sophisticated technologies and consulting practices are creeping into the IT landscape, but experts say the test of success will be how well an organization can revamp existing business processes and systems to incorporate the Web.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE
	IDG.net home page
InfoWorld home page
InfoWorld forums home page
InfoWorld Internet commerce section
Get Media Grok and The Industry Standard Intelligencer delivered for free
Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net
IDG.net's personal news page
Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter for IT leaders
Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you
Search IDG.net in 12 languages
News Radio
	Fusion audio primers
	Computerworld Minute

In today's Internet marketplace, the Web is notably better for sales than it is for service. A recent report by New York-based research group Jupiter Communications found that nearly half of the top-ranked Internet sites offer weak service: 42 percent of 125 major sites either didn't answer customer e-mail for at least five days, didn't respond at all, or didn't bother to list an e-mail contact.

For both consumers and businesses, the Internet is a medium of instant gratification. Delays could easily send customers or potential customers elsewhere. Analysts say Net users will begin to demand not only prompt replies, but proactive alerts. For example, travel Web site Travelocity can send out a page with updated gate and time information if a customer's flight is delayed.

With the potential for personalization and advanced features such as proactive e-mail notifications, companies should start marketing to Web users much as they do to any other demographic niche -- but not at the expense of existing customers, says Beth Zollars, director of customer loyalty solutions at systems integrator Cambridge Technology Partners, in Cambridge, Mass.

"The Internet is a key tool in developing successful customer loyalty, but it has to be a multichannel approach," Zollars says. "You're not going to get 100 percent of an enterprise's constituents to be comfortable with the Internet. It may happen over time, but it may never happen. Some people aren't comfortable with [interactive voice response]."

Self-service rules

Jack Rodgers, president of online mortgage lender loanshop.com, sees the future of sales and support in the company's "teleweb center" in Plantation, Fla. Using Brightware's Internet front-office applications, Loanshop.com built a natural language-activated knowledge base that has been capable of immediately generating answers to 80 percent of customer inquiries.

To use the system, customers submit structured e-mail messages in which they answer a number of leading questions. If the system can't answer a query automatically, the e-mail is routed to an integrated queue of phone calls, e-mail, and faxes in the teleweb center.

Rodgers says no matter how comfortable some customers are using e-mail and the Web for research, a company has to be equipped to interact with the customers in every way.

"An Internet business is blending multiple media: e-mail, fax, phone, and snail mail. You have to meet all of that," Rodgers says. "If you are in the process of buying a house and you're about to close and there's a problem you need to resolve in an hour, will you send an e-mail?"

For companies that invest in multifaceted sales and support centers, deploying technology such as e-mail management software and knowledge bases for frequently asked questions is only part of the solution.

Integrating phone and e-mail into a single center and training service agents on multiple disciplines are among the major hurdles.

Although many companies maintain separate job descriptions for phone operators and people who respond to e-mail -- much as they would distinguish between agents who speak different languages -- some say a blended approach will win out.

"Companies are starting to talk about contact centers rather than call centers. And they're getting away from efficiency and shaving seconds off a phone call," says Jay Wood, CEO of Silknet Software, in Manchester, N.H., which sells Internet-based commerce and service software. "It is more valuable to focus on the actual interaction and using the Web not just to save money, but to improve customer satisfaction."

Giving customer service representatives access to data such as customer history, purchases, and previous contact with the call center agents is one way to improve service. And although the Web is generally viewed as impersonal, a company can maintain a personal touch with the online customer.

Subscribers to Bell Advanced Communications, the ISP arm of Bell Canada, can submit requests to resolve technical questions over the Web. Consumers fill out an e-mail form with drop-down menus, which helps to pinpoint the problem. The e-mail is picked up by the call center, which either answers the question immediately or tries to respond within one hour.

This system, based on Silknet's eService 98 application server, speeds up what was taking a swelling staff of call center agents more time to do.

"From a customer service perspective, it provides good context. It keeps the personal aspect alive," says Maggi Williams, director of business development at Bell Advanced Communications, in Hull, Quebec. Williams hopes to see a portion of cases handled on a self-service basis.

"Right now agents close the cases," Williams says. "In the future, I'd like to see cases closed by the customer. Allowing customers to close it themselves keeps them in the driver's seat. In customer service, it's empowering."

This form of online "managed contact" also gives Bell Advanced Communications insight into what kind of information customers are interested in, which may, in turn, generate selling or marketing opportunities. The company is experimenting with using one-to-many chat software, adding voice over IP to its Web site, adding higher levels of service, and providing graphics for online tutorials.

A support incident can be a good opportunity for cross-selling, according to analysts and vendors. For example, a PC vendor could advertise accessories as a buyer is configuring a PC online. Observers cite studies that show it is much more efficient to serve and market to existing productive customers than it is to rustle up new business.

Who owns the data?

For Williams, a chance to improve service and hold down staffing levels is what drove her to the Web. But the financial benefits of automating service online can be huge.

Cisco Systems' celebrated extranet has helped to set the bar for potential savings from leveraging the Internet. Cisco calculates that it saves $550 million annually in its customer care division alone. Now 77 percent of all questions are handled online, with a 20 percent higher customer satisfaction rating compared with 1995, and 98 percent accurate, on-time repair shipments.

But going into development, revenue generation was not even one of the top four goals, says Mark Tonnesen, director of IS at Cisco, in San Jose, Calif. The corporate goals behind the site's construction were to make it easier to do business with Cisco, improve customer satisfaction and customer productivity, reduce the time required to make business decisions, and develop stronger, more strategic relationships with partners and customers.

"Electronic business is not just a point of sale," Tonnesen says. Whereas traditional systems design limited outsider access to information, "developing tight integration with customers -- both partners and suppliers -- to your front and back offices will give you more leverage and lead to faster cycle times, efficiencies, and ultimately higher customer satisfaction."

Unfortunately, most companies would be hard-pressed to present partners and consumers with a single view of customer information. Data is usually fragmented across many front- and back-office applications. Adding Web access to that scattered or cryptic data could make things worse.

"Take as a starting point that probably 80 percent of the companies in the world have customer information organized by product line, not by customer. Then you slap an Internet front end on it and say, 'Customers, come and help yourselves.' Guess what happens? Unless you pulled that information together around the customer account and across the different service functions and departments, you're going to have a mess on your hands," says Patricia Seybold, CEO of the Patricia Seybold Group, a research company in Boston and author of the book Customers.com.

Seybold cites the example of Microsoft's Web site, which in 1996 maintained 72 different instances of a customer's e-mail address for different departments.

"When you start looking holistically at a company's information, there are still dark lines between the functional areas, even in front-office service and sales," says Cambridge Technology's Zollars. "It's difficult to share culturally between the front and back office, too. People want [control of] the data."

These internal organizational hurdles can not only generate inconsistent or bad customer experiences, they can also cost companies money, analysts say. If a company isn't equipped to handle volume e-mail, for example, work-arounds or manual solutions are expensive.

Easing customer anxiety

Although there are a raft of front-office applications with functions from sales to the help desk, companies would do well to focus on their back-end systems, analysts and users say.

The core of Office Depot's extranet for business customers is the ability to check inventory and the status of orders. Customers can also buy online rather than fax in purchase orders.

"Product availability is one of the most important things to our customers," says Paul Gaffney, senior vice president of commercial sales at Office Depot, in Delray Beach, Fla. "We have a sophisticated supply chain. If you were to go on the Web and order products, we check inventory levels in the nearest Office Depot warehouse for next-day delivery."

The company was able to establish this extranet relatively quickly -- it began development in August 1997 and was launched last January -- because, independent of its Web work, Office Depot built a clean data architecture, Gaffney says. It was "relatively straightforward" to front its homegrown mainframe and AS/400 systems with Microsoft's Site Server, Commerce Edition, and a messaging layer to pass data. The most difficult technical challenge was accommodating the many different types of browsers, he says.

Experts say IT groups should not aim to immediately overhaul systems completely in order to improve sales and support. Rather, they should focus on "small wins," such as providing order status checking, which can be significant to customers.

"Giving customers a view into the status of their dealings with you turns out to be the highest value, and in some ways it's not high risk," Seybold says. "A lot of companies have problems with the transaction piece, doing that first. They wind up getting all tangled up in their underwear when it comes to security, order entry, and 'Are we doing a complete job?'"

Boeing, for example, gave its customers access to its spare parts information, Seybold says. Providing basic information such as parts availability and price lists gave customers a great deal of satisfaction without major investments.

Despite the potential problems, most companies simply don't have much choice but to appeal to customers online.

"It's not a matter of differentiating. Where you draw the line [between yourself and your competitors] is the service you deliver," says Thomas Freeman, vice president of SunTrust Online at Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks. SunTrust, like many other retail banks, is giving its customers access to account information and other services online.

"The electronic virtual world is growing so quickly. We're just keeping up to the speed of what customers are asking us for," Freeman says.

Martin LaMonica is news features editor at InfoWorld.