UK Borough Engages with Residents in the Cloud

May 1, 2012
Sarah Barrow, Head of Customer Services & Administration, Wokingham Borough Council

Sarah Barrow, Head of Customer Services & Administration, Wokingham Borough Council

As head of customer services & administration at Wokingham Borough Council in the UK, I’m responsible for ensuring the 160,000 residents, as well as businesses, of Wokingham Borough are well-connected to the Council. This is not just done via phone or in-person meetings anymore. Communication has modernised with the shifting culture, so we’re finding more of our customers now prefer to use email, mobile devices and social media. So we’ve been mirroring their preferred forms of communication with the cloud-based LiveOps Platform, which I recently spoke about at the IQPC Call Centre Europe conference in London.

Communicating with such a diverse customer base is always a challenge. Modern communication methods dictate much faster response times and with resource pressures from Government, we had to find a solution that improved the organisation and efficiency of our responses. LiveOps gave us the ability to manage all types of customer contact in a holistic way. The LiveOps Platform enables the Council to monitor and respond to residents’ comments and questions in real time via email, SMS, web chat, and social media. Utilising cloud technology in our contact centre facilitates and encourages home and flexible working, saving 50 percent in office space, increasing productivity and decreasing sickness and absenteeism. The way in which we have engaged with our residents using Twitter during a recent major change to their council services has had a very positive impact on public perception.

By working with LiveOps, Wokingham Borough Council has reduced costs and administration, shrunk its environmental foot print, increased the quality of communication with our residents and has been recognized nationally for outstanding customer service communications. By enabling real time interactions with our residents, we are making people’s daily lives better — a powerful and wonderful outcome of moving to the cloud.

Sarah Barrow

Head of Customer Services & Administration
Wokingham Borough Council

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Posted by LiveOps, Inc.

LiveOps at 2012 Call Centre & Customer Services Summit

May 1, 2012
Ann Sung Ruckstuhl, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Ann Sung Ruckstuhl
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Last week LiveOps met with dozens of industry leaders at the Call Centre & Customer Services Summit in Northamptonshire, UK.  Top managers in customer services, contact centres and business operations took time out to quiz vendors on how they could add business value.

The hotels and leisure, financial services, retail, gambling and consumer goods manufacturing sectors were well represented, as were local government and housing associations.

“Compared to September 2011, the mood of the summit was significantly more upbeat,” reported LiveOps’ European Sales Director, Mark Edgeworth.   “Attendees were putting a lot of emphasis on wanting to build long term relationships with service providers they liked, tackling strategic issues in partnership with them, rather than just plugging a functional gap at the lowest price. It seems companies are ready to invest in customer service again, to help them compete.”

Key drivers for investment included the need to replace legacy systems, contracts falling due for renewal and managers wanting to replace software that was no longer supported. Both Avaya and Mitel are causing considerable frustration for customers facing hefty bills to upgrade to a supported version of their software.  “People are feeling really trapped and quite hopeless. It should be of concern to the whole industry that some installed software providers are so severely limiting clients’ ability to deliver best practice service,” says Mark.

Attendees were frequently feeling stuck on an old voice system that didn’t give them the flexibility they needed to run a modern contact centre.  Or wanted to consolidate a multiple of different systems giving different communication channels, such as email, SMS or web chat, into one system they could easily integrate with their CRM.  Sometimes both.

“This year the summit was all about overhaul, improve and replace,” says Mark.

Attendees understand they can now use technology to improve customer service and automate tasks, while retaining or improving service quality. They want technology that will enable them to simplify the contact centre, whilst opening up new channels and working practices and at the same time lifting service response times and quality.

Managers want to keep the same number of agents in their contact centres, but use technology to enable their current teams to handle increased messages or call volumes, without losing quality.

We were particularly impressed with the passion from Velux Windows, Mothercare and Kenwood for making smart use of technology to improve service delivery for their customers.

There was a real buzz at the Summit about the potential for cloud delivery and it was great to be able to step lots of the attendees through what it could mean for them and their businesses.  Especially for those looking for a staged escape from legacy systems or installed software.

We created a bit of a buzz ourselves too, attending as LiveOps for the first time, rather than Datasquirt who had become regulars at the event.  It was exciting to be able to showcase the fully integrated range of voice, social and mobile capability, and talk about how much LiveOps clients enjoy the freedom of ongoing upgrades and pay-as-you-go flexibility, with the comfort of great aftercare.

Thanks to Forum Events for hosting a format that works for clients and vendors. The team can’t wait for September’s Summit in London!

Ann Ruckstuhl
SVP & CMO

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Posted by LiveOps, Inc.

Is Your Contact Center Keeping Up with the Shifting Social Media Landscape?

April 9, 2012
Eric Salas, Product Marketing

Eric Salas, Director, Product Marketing

Earlier today, Facebook announced their $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, and last week Pinterest skyrocketed to become the third-largest social network behind Facebook and Twitter. When you consider how quickly the social media landscape can shift, you also have to wonder how companies can keep up with all the new and different ways customers want to interact with their brands–not to mention the sheer volume of interactions that could potentially be generated by them. Are customers going to be “pinning” a photo to initiate a service request any time soon? Perhaps they already are in some cases. But no matter what the latest trend might be, it’s clear that companies have to be better prepared to engage with customers wherever they choose to be.

One of the reasons to choose a cloud-based, multichannel technology platform in your contact center is to ensure that you are better prepared for the ever-shifting social landscape. At LiveOps, we’re seeing more companies utilize our cloud platform to enable their contact centers to engage more effectively with customers in social media, and work more closely with their marketing teams to deliver a better customer experience in social channels. And, by leveraging a social-enabled cloud platform, enterprises can deliver customer service more quickly in new channels. Look for another post in a few weeks from Keith McFarlane, Chief Architect, that will go into more detail about how LiveOps cloud technology can help you meet the challenges of the new social media landscape.

In the meantime, here are a few more “must-reads” from the past week on social customer service:

Pinterest Is Now the Third Most Popular Social Network in the U.S. …

socialtimes.com4/6/12

Marketing wants to own ‘Social Engagement?’ Think again.

blogs.gartner.com4/9/12

20 Tips on How to Deliver an Amazing Customer Service Experience

thesocialcustomer.com4/4/12

Not All Fun and Games: One Call Center’s … – Social Media Today

socialmediatoday.com4/4/12

Clearing Up the Customer Service/Customer Experience Confusion …

www.1to1media.com4/6/12


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Posted by Eric Salas

Some Thought-Starters on Social Customer Service

March 22, 2012
Eric Salas, Product Marketing

Eric Salas, Director, Product Marketing

Just last Thursday, we were at the Cloudforce event in San Francisco listening to Marc Benioff ask an audience of 17,000 people, “how does your enterprise bridge the social divide?” Well, the week has definitely flown by very quickly, but here at LiveOps we continue to have conversations around this topic. We are passionate about learning more and sharing ideas to help companies become social enterprises. More specifically, how can we help guide companies as they look for ways to bridge their contact center to their customers via social and mobile channels?

Below are some recent articles and blog posts I came across this past week that you might find useful on the topic of social customer service. I’ll be back soon to share some more!

Eric Salas

Director, Product Marketing

10 reasons why customer service has failed to wake up to social …

econsultancy.com3/14/12

Stop Making Mistakes with “Social Media Mistakes” by Brian Cantor

www.customermanagementiq.com3/12/12

The State of Social Customer Service [Infographic] | Our Social Times

oursocialtimes.com3/16/12

It’s a Brave, New, Social World

blogs.gartner.com3/8/12

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Posted by Eric Salas

Cloudforce 2012: Bridging the Social Gap Between Companies and Customers

March 16, 2012
Marty Beard, President and CEO

Marty Beard, President and CEO

“Welcome to the Social Enterprise” was the main theme of yesterday’s Cloudforce 2012 conference. Marc Benioff covered a variety of categories under this theme during the keynote. One of the categories was customer social network, which revealed a gap in social media communications between companies and their customers. LiveOps is helping to bridge this communication gap by transforming customer interactions in the cloud.

In the past decade, there’s been a major shift in communications. Social Customer Service is now a “must have” and not just a “nice to have.” This was demonstrated by leading-edge company case studies showcased in Marc’s keynote yesterday. Salesforce.com is enabling SMBs to service social customers today. To service social customers on an enterprise scale, however, companies need even more powerful cloud solutions, such as LiveOps Platform and LiveOps Applications, with the following attributes in order to ensure both quantity and quality of service:

  • Agent Productivity – Giving enterprises the tools to serve customers right, regardless of how the communication comes in – Email, Chat, Voice, SMS, or Twitter
  • Management Oversight / SLA – When managing your workforce, analytics and metrics such as Abandonment Rate, Time to Resolution, and Conversion Rate are key
  • Intelligent Routing – Customers can interact in the channels they choose and these interactions are routed to the right agent in the right channel at the right time
  • Voice – Regardless of social media channels, people will continue to use the phone as the most personal and immediate way to communicate

When done incorrectly, this has a serious impact on the bottom line as measured by:

  • Brand equity
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Share of wallet
  • Loyalty for repeat purchase
  • Customer Lifetime Value

I’ll close with this final thought. I believe that the 17,000+ people who attended this conference can’t be wrong: the social enterprise is here. The wait is over. This is true for the customer service contact center. LiveOps’ vision of managing customer interactions in the cloud, no matter what channel the customer chooses, is real. Isn’t it time you bridge the gap with your customers and become a social enterprise, too?

-          Marty Beard, President and CEO

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Posted by LiveOps, Inc.

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