Developing B2B self-service that works
- Posted:
- 14:28 24 Jul 2001
- Topics:
- Customer Management
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Whereas business-to-consumer (B2C) relationships often begin and end over the Web, most business-to-business (B2B) relationships have existed for decades the old-fashioned way: on paper, through the mail, via the phone or fax, or in person. As such, B2B customers are accustomed to very personalised - often one-on-one - support from the companies they have done business with for years. Offering these customers Web-based support will fail if it doesn't recognise the existing relationships between companies.
B2B self-service must be personalised; it requires first developing an overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy that integrates with other systems containing customer data.
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The objective of B2B self-service is not cost-driven; it is designed to open a new support channel for added customer convenience and satisfaction.
It's better to have no Web-based self-service than to have self-service that does not recognise and address these issues.
Findings and analysis
AMR Research interviewed companies that have implemented B2B self-service and questioned vendors of multiple backgrounds, including knowledge providers, niche self-service vendors, and CRM suite players. This research confirmed the following:
- Efficient problem resolution is the most important feature of B2B self-service.
- While high-tech companies are successfully using self-service, few other B2B verticals are doing so.
- Data integration
and knowledge management costs can equal or surpass application costs."Users need to take the lead by developing a demo scenario for customers in order to encourage brainstorming and discussion" Source: AMR Research - With few exceptions, best-of-breed self-service vendors will be shut out of B2B opportunities.
B2B companies must personalise self-service
For self-service to be productive for B2B customers, it must address their specific needs and recognise the existing relationship they have with a company. Otherwise, the customer won't change their behaviour and will continue to call a contact centre or
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Recognise - Identify a customer by name, organisation and role.
Personalise - Display and manage transactions for the customer's product portfolio, service agreements and entitlements, open enquiries, order status, and invoice and billing information.
Diagnose - Understand the intent of the inquiry (e.g., support related, order management related).
Respond - Provide resolution through integration with other systems (e.g., knowledge management, order management) and respond to the customer. If the issue cannot be resolved online, provide workflow to escalate the inquiry (e.g., to contact centre or account manager).
Performing these actions requires integration of the key systems that contain customer information, namely legacy CRM, Enterprise Resource Management (ERP), and supply chain systems. Our research found that, on average, users have between 5 and 25 different systems in place containing relevant customer information. From a functional perspective, these actions translate into personalisation, connectivity, knowledge management, and escalation.
Account managers and/or customer support agents often integrate these systems on the fly, by popping in and out of multiple systems to pull relevant customer data. Since customers cannot do the same, you should integrate these systems first before implementing self-service to ensure that unassisted interactions are productive for customers. Start by auditing your organisation's employees with the highest customer contact levels and reviewing customer support patterns to determine integration points.
Cost is not the only factor
There is ample evidence that Web-based support is significantly less expensive than phone-based support. A recent AMR Report Making CRM Spell ROI, ROR, and Beyond highlights significant user savings: simple calls cost $5 compared to 20 cents (25 times less expensive) online, and complex calls cost $80 compared to 50 cents (160 times less expensive) online. For B2C verticals that support high volumes of customers, the reduced cost is an obvious reason to implement self-service.
In B2B scenarios, however, the support issues are different. To begin with, B2B companies are supporting a known base of customers, and the volume is significantly lower. Moreover, nearly all of the early adopters that have implemented B2B self-service have said that the primary reason for doing so was to offer customers an additional channel - not a replacement channel - for support. In fact, most companies said that the goal is not to stop B2B customers from calling, but to offer customers the kind of support that best suits them.
Problem resolution a priority
If B2B customers go to the Web for support, they expect to be able to resolve their questions, not merely submit them. To manage this expectation, companies must address the issue of knowledge management. This includes the development and management of a knowledge base, cleansing knowledge previously used only for internal purposes, and determining internal processes for knowledge authoring and knowledge usage.
Companies without an existing knowledge base need to examine support enquiries to determine what types of requests are most frequent. The answers to these requests, as well as general product information, form the beginning of a knowledge base.
Companies with existing knowledge bases must include a process to review and cleanse the knowledge before going live with self-service. One company reports that it stopped self-service altogether for six months until it could review and cleanse legacy information for customer consumption.
Getting employees to accept and use knowledge systems is an issue that can't be overlooked. Some knowledge engineers fear losing their expert status by providing open access to their knowledge; others need to be trained to use the system so it can "learn" even when they already know the answer to an inquiry. Some companies have developed incentive programs for knowledge authoring, based on the number of answers an engineer provides and how often other support analysts utilise those answers. When evaluating self-service applications, be sure to determine what workflow is available for authoring, reviewing, and publishing knowledge.
Self-service at Honeywell Industrial Controls
Honeywell's Industrial Control (HIC) division, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, is comprised of two divisions: Industrial Automation & Control, which provides advanced control software and automation systems, and Sensing & Control, which provides solid-state sensors, optical-based sensors, industrial safety products, and more. To support its 4,000-plus customer base, HIC has unified contact centres in North America, Europe, and Asia.
HIC's self-service technologies allow customers to perform multiple support tasks: find their own solutions or application tips, check delivery status, and enter service requests. If a customer can't immediately find an answer in an unassisted manner, HIC uses customer tracking and escalation for complete problem resolution. Many of these tasks are made possible by integrating the self-service component to back-office applications, such as order management, dispatch, and manufacturing systems, as well as by integration with the contact centre.
In North America alone, HIC takes more than 80,000 support enquiries a month, approximately 5% of which come through HIC's Web-based self-service capabilities. HIC uses a combination of software from Siebel Systems and Webridge, though, as an early adopter of self-service, CIO Rob Baxter says that at least 20% of the functionality required was developed internally. According to Baxter, "Self-service is still an immature market, and we didn't really want to be a guinea pig. But we wanted to employ self-service capabilities to help customers share information globally."
Unequivocally, HIC's biggest challenge in going live with self-service had to do with knowledge management. "We had information in separate systems that was owned by different departments," says Baxter. "Additionally, much of it was internally focused - certainly not organised to provide customers with the experience we wanted them to have. And perhaps most challenging of all was the fact that each system had its own data model."
HIC addressed this problem by first defining a customer-centric data model that could be employed across the organisation. Once this was accomplished, HIC needed to cleanse data and integrate systems. Six months, 100 people, and $4m later, HIC was able to confidently launch its self-service capabilities to its customers, which it did by means of a very thorough process of using pilot customers, user groups, and regular communication.
Baxter's advice to others starting on this process? "First, work to understand what your customers need and determine your business case. And also understand that the process won't happen overnight! Customers need education. Finally, organise your project so that you can find payback in segments."
Few companies outside hi-tech are using B2B CRM
In looking at the overall penetration of CRM technologies, three verticals have been early adopters: high-tech, financial services and telecommunications. Of these markets, high-tech is the one predominantly characterised by B2B relationships. Because B2B companies are still developing CRM strategies, and given that this is by necessity a first step, it is clear why B2B self-service is still a very young market.
Much has been written about rising customer expectations and about how imperative it is for customers to be able to choose the channel by which they want to interact with a company. While AMR Research does not disagree with these concepts, our research demonstrates that, at this stage, they pertain more to B2C environments than they do to B2B. Nearly every user company reports that when customers are asked what they want or need from Web self-service, most don't have an answer.
Does this mean B2B customers aren't ready? Not necessarily. It does mean that users need to take the lead by developing a prototype or a demo scenario for customers in order to encourage brainstorming and discussion. As companies determine how to work with customers over the Web, the self-service market will continue to grow; it grew to nearly half a billion US dollars in 2000, and AMR Research predicts a growth rate of 163% in 2001, making the market worth around $1.5bn.
Implementation and training expensive
As with any technology, the cost of the application is only part of the picture. AMR Research's February 2001 report Report Card on CRM estimates that only 24% of the cost of CRM implementations is for the software; the remaining 76% is for implementation, training, and hardware. Self-service implementations are no exception.
In addition to these factors, however, users have to keep in mind that productive self-service relies on having knowledge management and customer data integration foundations in place first. Depending on the status of users' current CRM strategies that encompass these components, layers of time and cost may be added. Organisations should plan to allocate a minimum of 20% of self-service implementation costs for these related projects.
With few exceptions, best-of-breed self-service vendors will be shut out of B2B opportunities
As in any technology decision, determining the most appropriate vendor depends on a company's specific needs and what systems are already in place. Use the following categories to help determine which is best for you.
Knowledge management vendors:
Supporting complex products should be left to knowledge management vendors such as Kaidara, Primus, or ServiceWare. This type of vendor is experienced in helping users manage issues such as data cleansing and knowledge engineering as part of product functionality, and also in offering trained professional service resources for difficult knowledge management problems. In addition, while they offer self-service capabilities, they also integrate easily into contact centre environments.
Best of breed self-service vendors:
E-service vendors that provide one or multiple support channels will find the B2B doors difficult to open.
1. Vendor viability is a significant issue for billion-dollar companies that need enterprise solutions.
2. Most of the e-service providers position their products, sales efforts and results around the pain points of B2C. This approach will not be successful with B2B.
3. E-service products focus more on issues such as e-mail avoidance, FAQs, and auto-responses and less on issues of knowledge management and integrating key customer data.
4. Self-service is also available from interaction management vendors such as Interactive Intelligence or CELLIT. However, these vendors focus on bringing all interactions together into a universal queue rather than selling standalone self-service functionality.
Partial CRM suite vendors:
Companies such as eGain, Firepond, and Kana have all acquired knowledge management capabilities from Inference, Brightware, and ServiceSoft via Broadbase, respectively. In addition to knowledge management, these vendors also have other pieces of a CRM suite, which makes them more suitable for B2B self-service than e-service providers.
Complete CRM suite vendors:
Suite vendors provide the necessary integration to back-office and/or supply chain systems, which are critical to meeting self-service requirements. They also understand the enterprise sales approach and pain points of B2B customers. While e-service vendors might have had some early successes in B2B in situations where companies needed temporary fixes, it is likely that users will outgrow these systems as they more fully-develop CRM strategies.
Recommendations:
1. Be careful of using B2C justifications, approaches, or solutions in developing B2B self-service strategies.
2. Evaluate current customer management procedures and customer support patterns and needs first. Determine which portions can be delivered over the Web.
3. Use information gathered from the above assessments to determine which systems need to be integrated or developed to bring support online. Consider a phased approach to expedite the self-service launch; this will give you a competitive edge.
4. Communicate with customers early and often through the process of creating and rolling out self-service. Understand that the process will be iterative, as customers become more knowledgeable about how self-service can benefit them. Be prepared to offer training or incentive programs to encourage adoption.
