Microsoft, Salesforce Battle To Revitalize Customer Service (bloomberg.com) 18
Customer support has become a crowded battlefield in enterprise technology as software vendors from Microsoft to Salesforce rush to arm organizations with tools to create one-stop service centers. From a report: The attention is revitalizing the call center, a once-backwater unit that has long suffered from high turnover rates and minimal corporate investment. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Twilio and Genesys Cloud Services are among the companies that see the call center as a critical part of efforts to transform the consumer base from a sea of faceless pocketbooks to potentially millions of unique personas. It's viewed as a way to improve customer service and bolster brand loyalty at a time when businesses are increasingly worried about churn.
Zoom Video Communications was prepared to fork over $14.7 billion in stock to buy Five9 to gain a foothold in the contact center industry. But Five9 shareholders ultimately thought the price was too low and turned down the deal, a testament to just how much the sector is expected to grow in the coming years. "Instead of being a cost center, it's a lifetime value driver," said Vasili Triant, chief operating officer at UJET, a closely held San Francisco-based call center cloud software provider. As a result, "this space has drawn a lot of attention. Companies need to improve experience. Because of that, a lot of money has flown into it. When money flows into it, people see a huge opportunity."
Historically, customer support software was viewed as a money pit -- systems that were necessary to help field consumer complaints or inquiries but produced little return on investment. Many businesses simply wanted to pick a product, deploy it and forget about it. As a result, the market was fragmented between just a handful of top vendors, including Genesys, Cisco Systems and Avaya. But as more companies move those systems to the internet, that mindset is undergoing a seismic shift. For the last several years, the focus has been on helping call center agents provide better customer support and cut down on service times. That has meant taking steps like consolidating different applications onto a single desktop interface, alleviating the need for agents to toggle between different tabs to view customer data stored in various places.
Zoom Video Communications was prepared to fork over $14.7 billion in stock to buy Five9 to gain a foothold in the contact center industry. But Five9 shareholders ultimately thought the price was too low and turned down the deal, a testament to just how much the sector is expected to grow in the coming years. "Instead of being a cost center, it's a lifetime value driver," said Vasili Triant, chief operating officer at UJET, a closely held San Francisco-based call center cloud software provider. As a result, "this space has drawn a lot of attention. Companies need to improve experience. Because of that, a lot of money has flown into it. When money flows into it, people see a huge opportunity."
Historically, customer support software was viewed as a money pit -- systems that were necessary to help field consumer complaints or inquiries but produced little return on investment. Many businesses simply wanted to pick a product, deploy it and forget about it. As a result, the market was fragmented between just a handful of top vendors, including Genesys, Cisco Systems and Avaya. But as more companies move those systems to the internet, that mindset is undergoing a seismic shift. For the last several years, the focus has been on helping call center agents provide better customer support and cut down on service times. That has meant taking steps like consolidating different applications onto a single desktop interface, alleviating the need for agents to toggle between different tabs to view customer data stored in various places.
Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
and "Customer Service" are three words I've not heard in conjunction with each other.
Re: (Score:3)
and "Customer Service" are three words I've not heard in conjunction with each other.
Are you kidding? You know all those calls your phone gets that you don't answer because you have do-not-disturb turned on?
That's them. They want you to know that there is an issue with your windows license.
CRM (Score:2)
CRM solutions are always over-priced and bloated. Jack of all trades, master of none. Microsoft and Salesforce will not change that.
Re: (Score:2)
CRM solutions are always over-priced and bloated. Jack of all trades, master of none. Microsoft and Salesforce will not change that.
They aren't trying to change that. They just want whoever runs your company to buy more shit from them.
Customer Disservice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I won't hold my breathe about improving Customer Serivce. This whole concept of handing off support to some third party, mostly Indian/Bangladesh only angers people. Its not the people, its everything around them. How many times have I had to talk to someone and there's a language barrier. How many times have I had to call and someone doesn't know enough to help me. How many times have I called and someone constantly panders to me with the "Im sorry.." multiple times throughout the call.
Back in the 90s (yeah, old fart gripe), I worked at a software company and spent some time on customer service calls. We may not have had much training, but christ, we had organized books of stuff we could look through and after a week or two, you were fairly well versed on just about everything you needed. Put the skill back into Customer Service, turn down the pandering and you'll increase quality overnight.
Re:Customer Disservice. (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern customer service people have no power, and that makes them useless. I don't need a phone version of the limited options on your web site. Modern customer service folks follow a script and nothing more, it could be replaced by bots at any moment - see Amazon.
Re: (Score:2)
Just as importzntly, call center personnel need to be empowered to actually fix problems, such as issuiing refunds for products that don't work, rather than just being script readers. Indians are bright people - all they need is agency.
Re: (Score:1)
Outsourced text-based chat help is somewhat better because one is then not dealing with spoken accents, but those on the other side seem afraid to deviate from their flowcharts.
For example, right-clicking a list item to open a new tab wasn't working on their website. They said to clear my browser cache, reboot, etc., but the real problem was bad JavaScript libraries. I asked them to try right-click on their side and tell me what they see, because if they saw it also, then they'd stop implying it's my PC's f
All you need is localised call centres (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
One shot deal (Score:3)
>"Historically, customer support software was viewed as a money pit -- systems that were necessary to help field consumer complaints or inquiries but produced little return on investment."
Yep, and it shows. Works fine if you want to sell a product ONCE to someone. But if that product has problems and the customer can't get any reasonable support, you can expect that not only will they never likely buy from you again, but warn others, too.
Done correctly, good customer support not only can reverse bad experiences, but also give valuable feedback to fix what is wrong quickly to prevent further issues with other customers.
I have always been willing to pay more for products from companies that have good support. The same way I am willing to pay a little more for products in a physical store vs. online, for the convenience of having a (hopefully) working display, sales help, the ability to have it NOW if I need it, and a convenient way to return it for another if there is an issue. (There is a limit-5 to 15% seems reasonable, depending on the product).
Just let me email you! (Score:3)
companies that see the call center as a critical part
No ffs, I do not want to talk to support. I just want to send an email with all the technical details. Phone support is worthless.
Microsoft has customer service? (Score:2)
I mean besides the guys from India that want all your passwords...
How about (Score:2)
You get what you pay for.
Re: (Score:1)