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October 4, 1999Howard Rosenbaum
Center for Social Informatics School of Library and Information
Science Indiana University
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/hrosenba/www/Pres/11pdc/index.html
Customer Service for Electronic Commerce:
A Driver of Organizational Change
Customer Service for Electronic Commerce:
A Driver of Organizational Change
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Customer service
I. What is customer service?
• Two views
II. Using web-based customer service
• A model of web-based customer service
• Examples
III. Web-based customer service and organizational change
• Cultural
• Process-oriented
• Technological
• Structural
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Customer service
I. What is customer service?
Ecommerce changes the way business is done by:
Shortening time to market
Reducing costs of marketing, sales, and after-sales activities
Encouraging new relationships between firms and customers
Creating a digital supply chain, and
Improving the ROI on marketing and advertising
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Customer service
Etailer (US/Canada) will be worth $36.6 billion (1999) (Thompson, 1999)
European ecommerce revenue will be $430 billion in 2001 (55% of US ecommerce revenues) (Andersen Consulting, 1999)
UK ecommerce will generate $15 billion by 2000, up from $4.8 billion in 1999 (NOP Research, 1999)
Ecommerce will generate $3.2 trillion globally by 2003 (5% of global sales revenue) (Forrester Research, 1998)
Business-to-business ecommerce generates 2-3X the revenues of business-to-consumer ecommerce
US b-2-b ecommerce will be worth $$1.5 trillion by 2004 (ZDNet, 1999)
[All estimates in US dollars]
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Customer service
Two views of customer service: the firm
It is at the end of the value chain (Porter 1985)
The activities needed to keep a product/service working for the buyer after it is sold and delivered
It is a linear process with three phases separated by time
Pre-transaction: organizational buy-in and preparation
Transaction: minimize the time between ordering and receiving the product
Post-transaction: customer care
It is a set of activities a firm engages in to win and keep customers over and above assembly and sale activities
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Customer service
Two views of customer service: the customer
This is a life cycle model with four stages
Assessment: do I need the product/service?
Acquisition: how and where can I buy it?
Ownership: where the product/service is used
Retirement: should I get another one?
If the customer engages in another transaction, the cycle begins anew
She can be at different stages of the life cycle at any given moment if she has purchased different products from the firm at different times
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Customer service
Firm and customer views of customer service
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Customer service
I. What is customer service?
• Two views
II. Using web-based customer service
• A model of web-based customer service
• Examples
III. Web-based customer service and organizational change
• Cultural
• Process-oriented
• Technological
• Structural
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Customer service
Ecommerce companies are competing to acquire customers - one at a time (Sterne, 1996)
...Look at how you can focus all of your IT investments behind a single, winning strategy: make it easy for your customers to do business with you! (Seybold, 1998)
Online the balance of power shifts toward the customer... If...a customer [is] unhappy, they can tell thousands of people….if [they are] happy, they can also tell thousands of people. With that kind of megaphone in the hands of every...customer, you had better be a customer-centric company (Bezos, 1999)
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Customer service
Questions:
What are some common strategies used by ecommerce firms to provide customer service and support?
How will customer support processes contribute to the “stickiness” of ecommerce web sites?
How will organizations change to accommodate the demands and requirements of web-based customer support?
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Customer service
Solitary Interactive
Asy
nch
ron
ou
sS
ynch
ron
ou
s
Autoresponders “Pushed” content
Email support Opt-in mailing Conferencing (Lists and newsgroups) Webboards
Knowledge base FAQ/Help pages Streaming video VRML/QT files ----------------------------Tracking systems Order verification Accessing accounts and profiles Comparison pricing
-----------------------------Chat Instant messaging Live webcasts “Call-me” service
A model of web based customer service
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Customer service
Solitary asynchronous options
Autoresponders deliver files to customers
Fortune Magazine’s “Fortune Investor” http://www.fortuneinvestor.com/help/help_main.asp
Some autoresponders understand customer email, send an appropriate answers, and directs email that they cannot answer to the appropriate people
American Finance and Investment www.LoanShop.com
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Customer service
Solitary synchronous options: static
Complex knowledge bases allow searching for technical information from multiple access points
Microsoft Product Support Services http://support.microsoft.com/search/default.asp
Help pages can be customized
One site has an international clothing size conversion chart, a metric conversion chart, and an explanation of global shipping rates, available in several languages
eOFFprice http://www.amoff.com/
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Customer service
Solitary synchronous options: dynamic
Customers access files such as purchase histories, address books, special occasion reminders and account settings, all but the first can be edited
Amazon.com www.amazon.com
Or managing portfolios and conducting real-time research
E*Trade http://www.etrade.com/
Or real-time tracking of orders and shipments
FedEx http://www.fedex.com/
United Parcel Service http://www.ups.com/
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Customer service
Interactive asynchronous options
The most popular option is email used by customers to communicate with the firm and other customers
One site has email links to the Cork Dork, the Food Dude, the Recipe Queen, and the Webmaster
Virtual Vineyards http://www.virtualvin.com/exec/query?page=file&file=shop/ contact.html
Firms distinguish themselves by the speed of their response - one promises a response to technical support email within 24 hours
Roxy.com http://www.roxy.com/commerce/roxy.cgi?url=roxyhome
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Customer service
Interactive asynchronous options
A listserv mailing list or USENET newsgroup can be used by customers and the firm to discuss specific products and services
SBBS www.sbbs.com
A webboard moves the computer conference to a web page, where participants’ postings are added in a threaded, sequential manner
Nemetschek http://nemetschek.com/
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Customer service
Interactive dynamic options
Firms are experimenting with real-time chat with customers
CDE Software http://www.cdesoftware.com
Some are trying live webcasts for customer service: technical support webcasts for registered users
Microsoft support.msn.com
A “call me” button is a link connecting a customer to a customer service representative over the telephone while the customer remains on the web site
The First Internet Bank of Indiana http://www.firstib.com/customer_support/
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Customer service
I. What is customer service?
• Two views
II. Using web-based customer service
• A model of web-based customer service
• Examples
III. Web-based customer service and organizational change
• Cultural
• Process-oriented
• Technological
• Structural
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Customer service
A commitment to customer service is a commitment to organizational change
Customer-initiated transactions begin an information flow that impacts on sales, marketing, inventory and suppliers, support and service, accounting, quality control, and delivery logistics, and the web team
“Islands of information” and “information silos” where information is tightly controlled impede the flow
Valuable information will be lost unless the web site is integrated into back end systems
There must be easy and rapid information exchange occurring in real time among organizational units
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Customer service
A culture is needed which embraces at least the following:
What business units do is done for customers, whether or not the people in the unit have direct interaction with them
From the initial visit to the web site through the full range of interactions a customer has with the firm, her experiences should be fast, efficient, informative, and transparent
People having direct contact with customers should be encouraged to listen and to respond quickly and effectively
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Customer service
Replace the stereotype of the customer with a more complex, segmented and multi-faceted picture
If employees believe that all customers are the same, this information will be discarded and useless
Continually solicit customer feedback
Negative comments help the firm understand what works on the site and in the customer’s ecommerce experience, what is problematic, and what can be improved
To ensure that this information is used, people should be responsible for following each instance of feedback from initiation to resolution
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Customer service
Customer information is essential to business success and should be shared widely throughout the organization
Customer service representatives should have easy access to this information whenever they interact with a customer
Product development people should also have access as they work on versions of the firm’s products and or services
Efficiencies and innovations in dealing with issues of customer information and service should be rewarded
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Customer service
Changes in business processes and workflow
Web technologies reduce costs by making certain business processes faster, more efficient, and less expensive
Others (building brands, marketing, customer loyalty and service) become more expensive
By examining the processes and activities involved in doing business on the web, firms can streamline and adjust them to better support ecommerce activities.
To do this, they need to understand how customers actually do business with them and how employees do business with customers
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Customer service
An adequate set of metrics is needed for measuring successful web-based customer service
Reliable processes are needed to capturing data for these metrics
Metrics exist for offline customer service (ex: call centers) but have not yet been developed for the web
Existing metrics may be easily adapted for ecommerce, but this effort is not yet underway
There is a need to develop benchmarks of web-based customer satisfaction so that they can be compared to those that have been gathered for years for call centers
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Customer service
Technical changes
There must be an infrastructure to support a large and complex web site
It must support various combinations of solitary, interactive, asynchronous, and synchronous customer service options
Ecommerce also requires a high level of system integration linking the web front end to the firm’s back end systems
Web-generated customer information has to flow to appropriate business units in real time to create and maintain product knowledge bases and dynamic customer profiles
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Customer service
Structural changes
Job responsibilities will change with new positions added and old ones dropped
To manage web-based ecommerce, there should be three teams:
Technical
Sales and marketing
Content
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Customer service
A technical team which has the primary responsibility of designing and maintaining the web site
A webmaster works with programmers and database designers
The goal is to continually improve the site in response to customer input, competitive analyses of rivals, and changes in technology
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Customer service
A content team responsible for publishing the site
A team needs at least a technical writer and a graphic design specialist
In a larger firm, these positions can be managerial
The technical person oversees a distributed publishing process
The graphics person works with the outside design firm
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Customer service
A marketing and sales team which has responsibility for the ecommerce activities on the site
A manager is responsible for high level activities
Marketing and advertising strategy, working with the other business units that need information from the web site, and determining customer service options
Team members might include a customer profile and knowledge base manger, a customer service manager, and a web site information analyst
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Customer service
Relationships among the teams will have to be worked out
There may need to be a manager who is responsible for coordinating the teams
Also, the entire ecommerce division will have to be placed in the organizational structure
To whom will they report?
