Fast Company is running a great slide show on the top 10 creative minds of 2006.  In reviewing the list, we spotted David McQuillen who heads up Credit Suisse's customer experience initiatives, and were linked to this article that offers some tremendous insight into how one company is working towards enhancing the experience of its customers.

The article starts off with this example, "Mothers in the small Swiss village of Bulach may have been wary of the man with a goatee staring at them as they struggled to navigate an ATM, grocery bag in one hand, fractious child in the other. But the man didn't care what their PIN numbers were or how much money they had in their accounts. He wanted to know, Why didn't they just put the bag down?" 

"The answer: The bags were paper, and when the ground is wet--it rains a lot in Switzerland--putting them down means getting the contents soggy. Now, thanks to the man with the goatee, Stephan Kubler, the moms using the ATM at the Credit Suisse branch in Bulach can keep their groceries dry, by resting them on an inch-high grille."

Now, could you imagine if companies showed that level of dedication to their online customers?   We could (and should) start seeing more of that in 2007, and that would make for a Happy New Year for both businesses and consumers.

Earlier this week, we posted about a new study from Ascent Group on first call resolution.  Today, Ginger Conlon at the 1to1 Blog had a great post on  the topic. She spoke with Rob McDougall, president of Upstream Networks, to get some tips on resolving customer questions efficiently.  We found these two points to be particularly interesting:

Information access. Companies should give agents easy access to the information they need to handle customers’ queries. “Easy,” meaning that agents should not only have that access, but also know how to get to the information they need. If it’s too much of a challenge, they’ll instead rely on what they know (or think they know).

IVR mazes. If a customer gets lost in a confusing or lengthy IVR, expect them to zero out to get to a human being.

How can companies address these issues? When it comes to dealing with telephone inquiries that come in from the Web, the answer is simple...cross-channel data passing. With cross-channel data passing, agents get a screen pop of the customer's activity as soon as a call is generated, so they don't have to waste time re-authenticating customers that were already logged in online.  Plus, the context of the online session can be used to bypass annoying IVR systems and route the call to the most appropriate agent instantly.

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

As the New Year approaches, everyone's looking forward to what's coming up in the future. 

SearchCRM.com asked some of the industry's leading experts their thoughts on what's in store for CRM in 2007.  Some interesting insight from analysts at Yankee Group, SSPA, Forrester and Beagle -- and others -- on the role of analytics, hosted solutions, SaaS and (of course) Click to Call.

MarketingSherpa is running a case study today profiling a viral marketing campaign conducted by Opel, which leveraged eStara's click to call technology, to generate buzz and boost leads for the launch of the Astra TwinTop.

Here's a summary from MarketingSherpa on the Prepare Your Hair campaign case study, "With all the email clutter, it’s difficult enough to make a momentarily positive impression on consumers (i.e., open and read the offer). But what if your aim is to unveil a personalized experience that intends to generate buzz for a new product? And not simply for the near future but also for the long term? See how one European automaker synchronized video-messaging and telemarketing in a viral email campaign to create an unforgettable experience for users."

A new study by the Ascent Group finds that 60 percent of companies are experiencing increased first-call resolution (FCR) rates . This represents a tremendous improvement in a crucial area of customer service, however, 40 percent of companies surveyed either saw no improvement, or were unable to determine any gain.

According to coverage of the survey in destinationCRM, "Companies that are improving their FCR results focus on general process improvement, providing call center agents with more tools and knowledge-based content so that they can handle a customer's needs while on the phone, rather than requiring a follow-up call."

CRM/knowledgebase integration and creating a seamless cross-channel  experience is key when it comes to lowering call resolution times. One tool that companies should consider to help lower call handle times is  Click to Call.

Using cross-channel data passing, eStara's Click to Call ensures that merchants have a complete view of a customer regardless of how they are interacting with the business.  Imagine a customer who starts a transaction on the Web and ends up completing it on the telephone. When this transition happens, it is critical that the merchant retains as much information about the customer as possible – not only from a sales perspective but from a service one as well.

Cross-channel data passing allows multichannel merchants to equip their sales and customer service agents with a competitive edge by delivering the context of a customer’s online session to the agent.  Sales conversion rates increase dramatically when agents are supplemented with additional customer information and their immediate needs.  

For example, cross-channel data passing has allowed one major Internet retailer to cut the length of its average call time by 72 seconds.  When you multiply those 72 seconds by the thousands of inbound calls a contact center receives in a day, it really adds up.  This improved efficiency enables agents to speak with more prospective customers, which will inevitably lead to increased revenue and higher customer satisfaction ratings.