BEDFORD, Mass., Oct. 22, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cross-channel customer communications is now a reality, with mobile growth significantly scaling the number of customer touch-points. As a result, companies are increasingly grappling with evolving best practices across their customer interactions while striving to respond to consumer demand for cross-channel care, recognizing that perceptions at every touch point are critical to protecting brand value. Companies that leverage the mobile device to communicate more proactively across multiple channels will be rewarded with loyalty, revenue growth, and long-term customer satisfaction.
According to a recent Forrester report, it is imperative to provide cross-channel customer service in the way that customers want to receive it. In the 12 months prior to the survey, 68% of customers used the phone, 60% used help or frequently asked questions (FAQs), 54% used email, 37% used chat, 20% used SMS and 19% used Twitter (Forrester Research, Inc., Transform The Contact Center For Customer Service Excellence, June 2012). Customer service agents supporting these channels need access to the same information in order to ensure consistent service.
SoundBite's Proactive Customer Care Solutions transform contact centers into multi-channel interaction centers to enable customer service excellence. Proactive customer service provides important opportunities for engagement, especially as consumers increasingly demand more real-time, self-service options from their mobile devices. SoundBite's customer care solutions suite includes cross-channel:
- Surveys
- Product Recalls
- Enrollments
- Notifications
- Confirmations
- Welcome Messages
- Data Capture
SoundBite's Proactive Customer Care Solutions provide an enhanced customer experience through some key underlying technologies, including SoundBite's Preference Center, which enables organizations to capture, manage, and honor consumer opt-ins and channel preferences for each of these communications. In addition, SoundBite's Contact Center Text Messaging Solution and Agent Text Portal combine to enable automated customer care through the use of SMS keywords, short codes, and a predefined set of business rules. Interactive text conversations can be escalated to a customer support agent who can access the entire message history and respond accordingly through the portal. The entire text message conversation will transition seamlessly from agent to automation and vice versa, depending on the consumer's most recent response.
A Tier 1 US mobile carrier recently implemented SoundBite's Cross-Channel Survey Solution to improve customer satisfaction, identify detractors, and mitigate churn. SoundBite's solution is being used to launch a multi-question Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey, delivering over 1 million surveys monthly via interactive text messages. Respondents are segmented by their satisfaction levels, and SoundBite's integrated hosted dialer is then used to call back detractors to quickly resolve concerns and issues, providing a closed-loop process. The survey has achieved a 21% response rate, with 97% of the responses received in the first 24 hours. This enables prompt follow up with valued customers and the conversion of detractors into promoters.
"In today's highly competitive environment, it is imperative for companies to provide a better overall customer experience while uncovering and resolving potential issues before they result in customer attrition," said Debbie Braunert, vp of marketing at SoundBite Communications. "SoundBite's Proactive Customer Care solutions, including our consultative services, have helped our clients increase customer satisfaction, improve Net Promoter scores, reduce inbound call volumes, resolve issues, and reduce customer churn – all of which are critical as customer acquisition costs continue to rise."
"Our large-scale research shows that customer service success and high satisfaction leads to a significant increase in repurchase rates," said Bruce Temkin, Managing Partner of Temkin Group. "It's time for companies to recognize that connection with revenues and become more proactive in their customer service efforts, leveraging the multiple channels that consumers use for engagement."
SoundBite recently became a Bronze Member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), a global industry trade group whose members are responsible for creating and maintaining an overall positive customer experience.
For more information about SoundBite's Proactive Customer Care Solutions, please visit www.soundbite.com/proactive-customer-care.
About SoundBite Communications
SoundBite Communications (Nasdaq:SDBT), a leading provider of cloud-based customer experience solutions, enables organizations to build lifelong, profitable customer relationships across the full consumer lifecycle. It serves two global markets, the Hosted Contact Center and Mobile Marketing. Its solutions leverage the power of two robust platforms: SoundBite Engage, an interactive multi-channel communications platform providing integrated SMS, dialer, voice messaging, email and web communications; and SoundBite Insight, a preference management platform enabling intelligent, personalized communications. SoundBite powers nearly two billion customer interactions annually. Visit SoundBite.com for more information.
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