The Nexus of Forces in Action – Use-Case 5: Multi-Channel Customer Service

 

Summary

The ability to coordinate customer service response across different contract channels and devices – the Customer Experience (CX).

Primary Industry Sectors

After-sales services, entertainment media subscriptions

Business Value

Improved customer choice, retention, ARPU, efficiency of multi-channel sales and operations management, resource efficiency management, reduce labor, stock costs, consistent code development that can interoperable across different mobile devices. Improved testing, efficient and consistent user experience across web and mobile channels. Global sales and operations management, resource efficiency management, reduce labor, stock costs.

Key Business Functions

CRM, after-sales service management, automated telephony response, automated speech recognition, social network marketing, SSO functionality and user experience, CEM

Primary Actors

Online consumer, customer service manager

Secondary Actors

Channel marketing coordinator, product portfolio marketing manager

Machine Actors

Customer behavior analytics, customer service (AI speech recognition) automation, social networks, CRM account management app, BAM, mobile social apps

Key Technologies

Cloud platform, online portal and marketplace, master data management, CMS, multi-device form factor translation, content streaming, proxy management

Main Scenarios

  • Customer service contact management
  • Cross-device management for single customer account view; e.g., view same account on tablet, cellphone, laptop, set-top box
  • Customer preferences and behavior analytics – obtain view of a marketplace catalog and/or account profile data for a customer and/or supplier
  • Customer views stock, places order, and monitors progress of order on multiple mobile cell devices (multi-operating system)

Key Data

Master Data

Customer account, marketplace store catalog

Current Observations Data

Current device being used

Historical Data

User experience of device used in past

Query Data

Customer account status, customer feedback, customer transaction request

Action Taken Data

Synchronization of data from different input device sources

Real Business Examples

Pardot and Salesforce1

“With the introduction of Salesforce1, salesforce.com’s new customer platform (downloadable as a mobile app), developers, software vendors, and customers across the world can connect every device, every app, and all of their customer data using new APIs and mobile tools – making Salesforce1 the fastest way to connect everything, everywhere.”

“As a part of the salesforce.com family, Pardot has already been integrated into this next-generation platform. By downloading the Salesforce1 app, you will be able to see a list of your Pardot lead and contact records from within the app, including information like Pardot scores, grades, campaigns, comments, notes, and more.”

(Source: the Pardot website.)

Additional Considerations

Existing Interoperability Standards

  • Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allowing web page formatting for mobile devices
  • Common digital content delivery standards; e.g., MPEG-4 format for playback on mobile devices
  • Digital licensing technology standards, digital rights management (see DRM in Wikipedia)
  • SSO technology standards, identity management standards; e.g., the OASIS Security Assertions Mark-up Language (SAML)
  • APIs for connectivity of multiple device sources (vendor standards)
  • Mobile app standard development code base standards for portability between different mobile OS (vendor standards)
  • Speech recognition standards; e.g., ETSI Distributed Speech Recognition

Comments on Context

Development of additional services can be developed with a partner ecosystem to enable additional services to be experienced and consumed across multiple devices with consumer choice.

Preconditions

  • Development of an ecosystem of content and devices to support a multi-device experience
  • Type of device formats supported
  • Support for SSO functionality