LiveChat in the Call Center Enterprise Economic Advantages and Best Practices Dave Flammia Director,

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LiveChat in the Call Center EnterpriseEconomic
Advantages and Best PracticesDave Flammia -
Director, Call Center Strategy
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Executive Summary

• Business overview
• Call Center overview
• LiveChat at EarthLink Background
• Economic Advantages
• Service and Support
• Implementation Best Practices
• Operational Challenges
• Opportunities
• Proactive Chat Sales
• Rule refinement ? The key to improving ROI
• Importance of Advanced Sales Skills

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EarthLink Corporate Overview

• Founded in 1994 Corporate HC in Atlanta, GA
• 2,200 employees
• 1B market cap 1.3B revenue 0.73 EPS Y2006
• 5.3M customers (Internet Access, Web Hosting,
  Voice)
• Access strategy has evolved into Total
  Communications focus
• Big 4 initiatives
• Voice over IP
• Municipal Access
• Helio
• Corporate telephony via New Edge Networks

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EarthLink Call Center Overview

• Global Call Center Operations with 7 Partners, 17
  unique centers, and 4000 representatives
• WFM, Strategy, Telephony, Reporting, and Training
  centralized at Corporate Offices
• Sales/Saves focused in domestic call centers
  Support and Service located in Philippines and
  India
• 42 India
• 30 Philippines
• 20 US
• Partners are responsible for hiring and training
• Key metrics (CSAT, QA, AHT) are measured and
  driven at the agent level via Partner Performance
  Team

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LiveChat History at EarthLink

• Launched Service Support LiveChat channel
  (click to chat) in 1999 as part of a broader
  eSupport strategy (including email and self-help)
• 250K contacts serviced via livechat in 2000
  planning to handle 2M customers in 2006
• Keys to growth
• Superior service levels
• Marketing by leveraging existing touch points
• Channeling
• Sales Proactive Chat deployment in 2004 S S
  Proactive Chat test underway
• Outsourced chat 100 in 2004 to India

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Economic Advantages

• Using LiveChat to take costs out of your business
  while improving your customer experience

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Why Chat?

• Customer contact choice
• Teaches customers to self-serve
• Most immediate way to help customers while they
  are on-line
• Agent productivity benefits
• Easier to transition off-shore
• Cost savings

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Consumer Interest
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Customer Optimization Hierarchy - 2001
of Customer Requests Resolved
Cost Per Contact
Web Support
Free (?)
0
(PSCKBMyAccount)
IVR
45
(Call routingSolutionsEmergency Msg)
E-Support
23.9
(Chat-Email)
Outsourced CS Voice
3.51
3.3
Outsourced TS Voice
6.82
12.5
Internal CS Voice
7.31
25.8
Internal TS Voice
15.14
34.5
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Customer Optimization Hierarchy - 2005
of Customer Requests Resolved
Cost Per Contact
Web Support
Free (?)
0
(PSCKBMyAccount)
IVR
45
4
(Call routingSolutionsEmergency Msg)
E-Support
17
(Chat-Email)
Outsourced CS Voice
2.10
29
Outsourced TS Voice
4.00
50
Internal CS Voice
7.31
0
Internal TS Voice
15.14
0
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Agent Performance Chat Productivity Benefits
vs.
Phone
Chat
3 Max Chats
1 Call at a Time

• Chat Agent Metrics
• AHT 14 min.
• CSAT 81
• FCR 72
• ASA 1.2 min.
• Abandonment 5
• Average Concurrent Chats 2
• Output
• Average Total Daily Sessions 60!

• Phone Agent Metrics
• AHT 14 min.
• CSAT 78
• FCR 72
• ASA 2.5 min.
• Abandonment 10
• Output
• Average Total Daily Sessions 26

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Outsourcing

• Off-shore pricing advantages
• Pay per chat model
• Language vs. Chat text
• Identity
• Transcript Management
• Every customer interaction available for review
• Ensure agents are following correct procedures
• Vet-out communication issues quickly

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The Chat Cost Advantage

How?

Concurrent multiple customer interactions

Website IVR segmentation

Content Management

FCR higher than email

Easy to Outsource, particularly off-shore

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What is Chat saving EarthLink?

• 175K chats _at_ 75 FCR 131K
• 131K Chats x 6 call 786,000
• 786,000
  -131,000
• 655,000/month

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Service and Support

• Implementation Best Practices
• Operational Challenges
• Opportunities

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Deployment

• LiveChat launch should be focused and start
  gradually. Key considerations
• Website location
• Customer segment
• Problem type
• Website Integration is critical
• Should be first choice for contact when customers
  are on-line
• Provide livechat access when search engine
  returns no results.

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Operations

• Measure livechat agents/queues like phone
  agents/queues (AHT, ASA, ABR)
• Call Centers must revisit the concept of agent
  output and develop new productivity metrics
• LiveChat use as primary escalation platform
  provides real-time support for SMEs to frontline
  agents

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Staffing

• Chat provides variety in the workplace
• Support employee longevity/attrition
• Training requirements are unique
• Multi-tasking skills
• Typing
• Cross-functional product mastery
• WFM challenges
• Effect on Occupancy
• Blended agents

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Using the Technology to your Advantage

• Starts with Root Cause Analysis
• Evaluate contact drivers
• Classify CDs into similar type issues
• Build problem type routing scheme to match
  customer contact with the appropriately skilled
  agent.
• Use Push Technology and Pre-Formatted Responses
  to increase agent productivity
• Increased Customer Satisfaction
• LivePerson exit-survey system provides real-time
  customer feedback

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Content Management - Website IVR
Collect problem and sub-problem type detail
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Content Management - Pushed to Rep
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Use of PFRs to Increase Rep Performance
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Exploring Opportunities Proactive Chat for
Service Support

• A chance to evaluate the potential of engaging
  existing customers who are in the act of seeking
  help
• EarthLink is currently pilot testing the
  LivePerson proactive chat technology on its
  support and billing web sites to evaluate the
  opportunity for
• Decreased costs
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased agent productivity

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Proactive Chat Demo
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Targeting Customer Behaviors

• The invitations are sent out based on business
  rules that are designed to target those customers
  that appear likely to abandon self-service or
  skip it altogether.
• The following behaviors will result in an
  invitation to chat, subject to agent
  availability
• Spending 2min on a KB article
• Visiting http//support.earthlink.net/contact/phon
  e
• Receiving the error page in My Account
• Spending 60secs on the My Account password reset
  page
• Visiting http//support.earthlink.net/contact/emai
  l/

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Early Pilot Test Results
Potential
Proactive Chat invites only fire when agents are
available
Lots of interest! Compares to 12 to 15 in Sales
Targeting problem types Increases your chance of
success
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Reduce Support Costs The Contact Channel Shift

• Week Ending 9/30 9,721 Proactive Chats
• With roughly the same week-over-week total
  support contacts, 6k sessions appear to have
  been shifted from the phones to chat.

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Increased Customer Satisfaction
Customer Comments

• First time using the chat. Very helpful and
  easy. thanks so much.
• I was asked if I needed assistance simply by
  entering the support area...problem totally
  resolved
• The fact that live chat support contacted me,
  while I was dealing with the problem, and fixed
  it, is very impressive
• Just experienced the live chat version of your
  help service today very cool. Totally helpful.
• I am new to EarthLink and while I was trying to
  figure it all out, a window popped up asking me
  if I needed help!  How great is that!  Then to
  talk to a real person was terrific.  Thank you,
  Earthlink

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Improved Agent Productivity

• Average Concurrent Chats The average number
  of chat sessions an agent is handling at
  any given time.
• Agent Utilization The percentage of an
  agents available time that they are engaged in
  a chat session.

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Sales

• Rule refinement ? The key to improving ROI
• Importance of Advanced Sales Skills

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EarthLink Contacts

• Dave Flammia flam_at_corp.earthlink.net
• Mike Murphy murphyjam_at_corp.earthlink.net