by Ross Daniels, Director of Solutions Marketing, Cisco

The customer service market is in the midst of a major transition as businesses of all sizes embrace capabilities such as social media, web-based agent workspaces, and network-based recording and analytics to forge deeper, proactive relationships with their customers. To fully understand this transition to what Cisco first termed as Customer Collaboration, however, it's important to consider it within the context of three waves of innovation and investment in the customer care industry. Conceptually, we can refer to these waves as cost, relationship, and experience. Each of the waves had a clear beginning, but they are ongoing and cumulative in nature. Businesses and organizations that truly understand these waves are better able to deliver world-class customer care that strengthens customer loyalty and generates additional revenue, while lowering costs.

WAVE 1- COST & EFFICIENCY: This wave began in earnest in the 1980s and was focused on the contact center as a PLACE seeking fast, predictable outcomes and minimal expense per customer interaction. Cost management technologies are exemplified by 800 Number (or Freephone) service and the Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) itself. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems were deployed to divert calls from more expensive agent assistance to lower cost self-service, and comprehensive reporting tools were developed to monitor and optimize each phase of the call flow. More recently, businesses have deployed workforce optimization (WFO) and analytics tools to further reduce costs. And, of course, tremendous savings have been realized by the ongoing migration of contact centers from circuit-switched to packet-switched (IP) networks.

Although Wave 1 began over thirty years ago, it continues to this day as businesses and organizations constantly strive to cut expenses. Modern innovations include Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking to optimize multimedia routing, contact center as a network service, and virtualization of the agent/supervisor workspace.

WAVE 2- THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP: This wave has its roots in the 1990s as contact centers evolved from being primarily a place to also encompassing a SYSTEM comprised of web, IVR, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) elements. Customer care expanded beyond workflows being executed by people in a building to include the processes, applications, and data associated with the larger system. This provided the ability to dynamically adjust the level of self and assisted-service based on the value of the customer--and the interaction--to the business.

Wave 2 is about knowing the customer and what they need so that their interaction with the business can be optimized. This requires knowledge of the customer's history, status, and context--including any information gathered during the actual call.

The evolution of this wave continues today with the integration of new care channels such as social media and improved analytics that can provide real-time guidance to agents and supervisors during the call.

WAVE 3- THE COMPLETE EXPERIENCE: The third wave began in the mid to late 2000s as consumers moved beyond the traditional channels of business interaction to embrace new media and access methods such as video, mobile, and the social web. Bringing these new customer touchpoints into the network of people and systems within a business is the challenge of Wave 3. To respond, the contact center is now evolving to an ENTERPRISE SERVICE, as the processes of customer care literally need to be available to and orchestrated across a variety of people and systems both inside the company and beyond. The new metrics include Net Promoter Score, cycle time from the opening to the closing of a customer interaction, and first call resolution.

Wave 3 customer care is much more proactive than previous models. For example, businesses are using products to find and respond to positive and negative customer experiences in social forums, and to reach out to consumers in response to key life events.

RIDING THE THREE WAVES: As we have seen, the contact center has evolved from a PLACE to a SYSTEM to an ENTERPRISE SERVICE in response to the goals of lowering costs, improving the customer relationship, and delivering a complete experience. So how can companies successfully manage each new wave, even as the previous waves roll onward?

The first principle is for businesses and organizations to seek the right balance amongst the waves in support of their specific business goals and brand. It's also essential to select a vendor (or vendors) with a proven track record of navigating through multiple market transitions and with an architecture that accommodates previous investments as well as future capabilities.

Finally, it's important whenever possible to leverage innovations that can simultaneously improve the customer relationship and experience while increasing efficiency and lowering costs--in short, riding all three waves at once.