Continuing with the success of the research conducted on the Customer of the Future, our second whitepaper in the series – “Some Customers Are More Equal than Others” – looks at how a customer’s needs and value to an organisation might impact upon the way they are served. The paper also reveals how contacts made by the customer of the future can be segmented by the call centre, how practical segmentation is, and what technologies exist to make the job easier.

In April 2008, JAM IP and Cisco sponsored a report by analyst group ContactBabel entitled The Customer of the Future.

The aim of the report was to evaluate how communication patterns have evolved over the past two decades with the development of the Internet and mobile technology, and specifically to analyse how those changes have impacted on the way the younger generation – the customers of the future – interact with others. As part of the Executive Summary to The Customer of the Future, JAM IP and Cisco produced a set of practical measures that organisations could undertake in order to better serve the customer of tomorrow. Each of these ‘Seven Steps to Contact Centre Heaven’ will be developed in separate white papers. We begin, here, with ‘The Death of the Queue’ – looking at why contact centres need to reduce the time they keep customers on hold and assessing what methods are most appropriate to do just that.

This report, commissioned by JAM IP, Cisco and Exony, examines this cultural shift and makes recommendations on how businesses can effectively address the needs of customers of the future, whilst continuing to serve the more established, less technology-driven needs of current generations. Future needs that must be considered are characterised by a total lack of acceptance of queuing, a failure of today’s marketing techniques to sway opinion and which therefore require a complete change in the way customer intelligence is managed.

The report is a synthesis of opinion obtained from legal experts combined with current trend led data. It assumes that a customer of the future is a UK citizen over the age of 18, economically active between 2010-2020. This allows the study to go beyond what can be seen happening today, without entering too far into the realms of science fiction.

Contact Centres have revolutionised the way the world does business. Companies have been able to generate substantial economies by creating a single point of interaction with their customers. Moving these operations offshore where labour is cheaper was expected to enable further significant savings. But a growing number of pioneers have found offshoring carries unacceptable downsides.

And in fact many high street brands are now repatriating their Contact Centre operations as they seek to re-connect with local knowledge, undo the damage to relationships and stem the flow of customers to rivals. But still the pressure to reduce costs continues.

Self Service technology has moved on apace in the past three years and has opened up a raft of automated services that can increase customer satisfaction and reduce operational costs. Used in the right way it can generate substantial savings while helping to build ever stronger brand trust and loyalty.

JAM IP’s whitepaper explains self service technologies and provides practical advice and a case study detailing how these technologies can be used to dramatically transform business performance.

In 2007, JAM IP commissioned ContactBabel to investigate how contact centres could be improving their outbound contact, with particular reference to the effect of mobile telephony and SMS on outbound strategy.

This whitepaper provides evidence of the growing cost of outbound telephony, as much as 22% year on year, as consumers provide their mobile number as their main point of contact. The paper also explores the growing acceptance of SMS as a business-to-consumer communication method, and explores how SMS can best be used to improve an organisation’s outbound strategy.