150 9.10 Establishing electronic processes
9.10
We'll also see the emergence of all-IP-based intelligent routing switches
in the contact center. These switches will allow customer interaction to be
routed on the basis of channel, nature of interaction, and nature of response
required. If agent involvement is required, agents will be fully briefed and
perhaps prompted on the nature and tone of the response to be given.
Connectivity will ensure that agents also have services at hand to provide
customer-specific response. None of this is possible using traditional voice
contact.
Customers will quickly see the advantages to be had in communicating
this way, given the added-value services they can expect. The traditional voice
contact "island" will get smaller and diminish as IP-based communications
become more and more ubiquitous. Therefore, a core competence in any
CRM-oriented organization (outsourcer or insourcer) is the ability to em-
brace and maximize Internet protocol-based communications and contact-
center processes.
Also, the only method for capturing the nature of voice interaction (so
that all customer engagements can be captured in a common database or data
warehouse) is for the agent to manually categorize the nature of the customer's
voice call or for the voice call to be digitally recorded and tagged with a catego-
rization descriptor. Therefore, digital voice recording and voice messaging
processes will be embraced in the same manner as text messages (or at least in a
similar manner).
One obstacle to this type of development is the relatively limited func-
tionality of VolP call-center applications compared with fixed-line telephone
applications. However, my view is that the sheer advantages for both sides in
conducting business using Internet protocols will cause application function-
ality to improve and for IP contact centers to become the norm by the middle
of the present decade. Therefore, my recommendation would be to embrace
the IP channel for all forms of customer contact~voice and text, synchronous
and asynchronous~and to invest in technologies and processes that recognize
the longer-term importance of the Internet as a communications medium.
Establishing electronic processes
Establishing formal processes for customer relationship management cannot,
any longer, be completely internalized. As has been hinted in this chapter, and
in Chapter 4, new integration standards are emerging to allow disparate
customer-oriented applications to be integrated. The delivery of data to cus-
tomers and internal customer-facing representatives will increasingly be a
9.10 Establishing electronic processes 151
matter of putting information where it is needed. However, processes must
also be made virtual so that services can be provided on the Internet.
The provision of Internet services requires the development of standards
to support electronic processes. However, the development of such services is
more exciting because, as was discussed in Chapter 4, Web services can com-
bine a company's internal services with those of external organizations.
However, the definition of the process or workflow has to be defined by the
company itself.
The importance of this is immense. It again confirms the diminishing
importance of aggregation and cooperation in providing excellence in cus-
tomer service. However, it provides a unique opportunity for organizations to
constantly define and refine services to make the process of doing business
immensely easy, seamless, and highly value added.
The provision of value-added Web services demands that processes be
defined so that all services can be glued together. In a presentation at the W3C
workshop on Web services, Hewlett-Packard's position paper on business
composition makes the point very succinctly:
The effectiveness and efficiency of business processes impact directly
the profitability of a company. It is in the best interest of e-service
providers as well as e-service consumers to understand the opera-
tional requirements for their cooperation. An e-process defines the
interactions between the company owning the process and the
e-service providers involved in its implementation. In particular, an
e-process defines the orchestration activity needed to enable the
cooperation between e-service providers. As traditional processes
were designed around the operational model of customized business
applications, e-processes should be designed around e-services. A
clear understanding of the business interaction model of an e-service
is paramount. 2
The authors continue by describing three phases involved in evolving a set
of e-processes. The first phase focuses on the integration of internal assets.
Process technologies~such as workflow~are used. This phase allows an
organization to separate business logic, resource logic, and application logic.
In the words of the authors, this means that "process can be controlled,
m
m
"A Framework for Business Composition," Hewlett-Packard. Prepared for the W3C Workshop on
Web Services, April II-12, 2001, San Jose, CA.
I Chapter 9
152 9.10 Establishing electronic processes
managed, and evolved separate from the applications." In phase 2, external
resources are leveraged but on a case-by-case basis. In short, processes can util-
ize e-services provided by business partners. In a CRM context this might
mean a vendor vertically integrating front-office functionality with a sup-
plier's inventory system. However, the arrangements for cooperation between
parties still require negotiation and hardwired arrangements involving lawyers
and negotiators.
The third phase, however, is true dynamic integration. Here's how the
authors put it:
Beyond such static use of external services, fully dynamic e-processes
make decisions each time they are executed in order to invoke the
best available service that can fulfill the customer's needs. The tradi-
tional design-deploy cycle of phases 1 and 2 has changed to a
per-instance set of decisions...In order to stay competitive, service
providers should offer the best available service in every given
moment to every specific customer.
Standardization of services is essential if this degree of flexibility can
be offered. Standards are in development~and some were discussed in
Chapter 4. There are, however, a variety of key areas that need to be addressed
by the standards to allow true e-processes and services to be developed.
In Chapter 4 we focused on how XML was becoming the definitive stan-
dard for describing Web services. However, put more generically, services will
need to be described if they are to be appropriately incorporated into an
e-process. In the Hewlett-Packard paper, the authors make the point that they
are not necessarily proposing a "common, global ontology" but rather meth-
ods of defining and discovering ontologies.
Other areas that the standards bodies need to examine include the follow-
ing. The service interface needs to be specified. Transactional processes need
to be defined, as well as security of interactions between services, contractual
issues, and mechanisms for discovering services.
The reason I feel it's important to highlight the concept of dynamic
e-processes (and the technologies that will define them) is because I do believe
that those organizations that define their processes in this way will obtain sub-
stantial competitive advantage.
Indeed, the creation of dynamic e-processes will allow entirely new cus-
tomer experiences to be defined. Customers will be able to define the nature of
their engagement with organizations in ways that were previously unimagin-
9.10 Establishing electronic processes 153
able. The Internet will truly become a CRM conduit and will act as facilitator
to so-called traditional business processes when Internet access becomes truly
ubiquitous.
The following chapter discusses at length the importance that research
should play in helping to define these dynamic e-processes. The fact is that
technologists will never get processes right unless they do something that
doesn't, as yet, come as second nature~understand their customers. In short,
customer research--and some would argue that survey researchers were early
protagonists of CRM~is about to start playing an important role once more.
I Chapter 9
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