Customer Experience Management: Part Two - Call Centres

Read Part One here

Directly addressing customers’ concerns can enable operators to reduce churn and increase profits – crucial in today’s competitive market . But it is important to understand that Customer Experience Management is not just about the ‘first call resolution’ or the ‘average handling time’

The lesson? listen to your customers!

A great example is T-Mobile Austria, who successfully increased customer satisfaction and effectively reduced churn by listening to their customers. Following an inbound call, an email was sent to customers to gauge their feeling regarding the call and its outcome. A senior manager called back customers who reported an unsatisfactory opinion of the call to discuss and, hopefully, resolve the issue. 

This gave customers a sense of importance and perception that their issues were being taken seriously. As a result T-Mobile recorded an 89% change in positive satisfaction, Customers who were leaving or who had expressed an interest in leaving  were 20% more likely to extend their contract and most significantly, a 5% reduction in churn.

Listening creates impressive results

This example really shows how listening to your customers can have impressive outcomes, results that are backed up by this chart, which looks at why customers stay and leave.

82% of customers in the US stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer experience – why?

• 73% left as a reaction to rude staff
• 51% due to unknowledgeable staff

63% of customers, however, said they'd return if they received an apology or correction from a supervisor or head office.

How much would that apology or correction really cost? Next to nothing, but the financial benefits of having an established customer stick with you are obvious.

Managing customers in a more individual way, so they remain happy can easily be resolved with additional training. Whilst call centre turnover can be high and there is a need to keep costs low, spending that extra time addressing those points can have huge benefits to your company. It can be [up to] 10 times more 
expensive to win a new customer than retain an existing customer.

Addressing these issues and creating a positive experience is crucial, but it’s extremely important that the whole customer experience is frictionless. Proactive CEM is better than reactive CEM. Put yourself in a position where you don't need a senior staff member to call up a disgruntled customer because their experience was exemplary from the start!

In the next part I'll be looking at Social Media and Customer Experience.
You can find part one here


CoralTree Systems is a leading provider of innovative BSS solutions, whose clients include some of the market’s leading communications operators. 

You can find out more at our website www.CoralTreeSystems.com


This blog post was written by Craig Maxwell-Brown - Business Development for CoralTree Systmes Ltd.
TMobile Austria Study: Here
Cusotmer Retention Study: Here

Expectations that have sped ahead: efficiency is crucial

In this fast paced society in which we live, we expect everything to work, and work quickly. When a customer orders a new package, or wants a new service – your BSS systems should work seamlessly, quickly confirming the order and putting into action the necessary steps to deliver. This efficiency of delivery is the expectation by both consumers and businesses alike.

Efficiency is core to how a business should operate and technology should aid this, not hinder. The goal of CRM, billing or order processing system is to manage the customer seamlessly through the required steps, in the shortest possible time for both the customer and the agent.

Old systems tire with the test of time

Traditional BSS systems were not built to cope with the technology of today. They have been built up over many years, by patching software together. The result is an unstable and inefficient system, based on something that was designed many years ago.

Operational efficiencies

Next generation BSS solutions provide a more robust and reliable solution. Traditional systems have a tendency to crash and encounter issues. Any system downtime creates customer frustration and an unmotivated workforce. Further benefits of modern BSS systems are reaped from their support of quad play services, joining up the customer data into one view, as well as providing a speedy service. These all create operational efficiencies, keeping costs low and productivity high. 

A single view of customer data enables opportunities for analysis, enabling operators to be far more adventurous when it comes to package and service offerings, as well as providing the customer a better service. Knowing they have a system that can handle more complex services helps increase customer retention and new customer uptake.

There are no questions about the advantages of advanced BSS solutions, but why should providers invest? Without development of the core functions in delivery to a customer, churn is inevitable. Future technologies will be unsupported and those companies will be uncompetitive in the marketplace. In order to survive in this tough society, speed through operational efficiency is crucial.

CoralTree Systems is a leading provider of innovative BSS solutions, whose clients include some of the market’s leading communications operators. 

You can find out more at our website www.CoralTreeSystems.com

This blog was written by Natasha Geldard, Marketing Consultant for CoralTree.

Customer Experience Management: Putting yourself in the Customer's shoes.

The customer experience has long been considered an important factor in the telecoms industry. But is the industry doing everything it can to enhance existing customer relationships? Operators have to start putting themselves in the customer’s shoes, to really understand the service expected.

The reality of the market challenges operators have faced, such as reduced margins and ARPUs, as well as increasing competition, has meant customer service systems was not such a priority. However, investment is crucial. Traditional CRM systems are not able to provide the customer experience needed to ensure loyalty, especially with the popular rise in new technologies.

Traditional CRM issues

The trouble with traditional CRM systems is that they provide an introverted view of customer interaction. For far too long, companies have focused on quantitative measures, such as the Average Handling Time and First Call Resolution. None of these performance indicators addresses the way the customer felt and responded to the interaction.

An example; a customer calls up to enquire about altering his package because he keeps nearing his usage allowance. The agent informs him that he can’t until he’s been with them for six months and the call ends. Now, the call was quick and during that first call it addressed the customer’s question, but the customer was left with an unsatisfactory response. This most likely left the customer frustrated and created an unsupportive view of the operator.

The customer perspective

The challenge is for the service provider to see things from the customer’s perspective. An IBM whitepaper ‘From Social Media to Social CRM: What Customers Want’ shows just how out of touch businesses can be with what the customers really wants and expect. Demonstrated in the chart below by the misperceptions of the purpose of customer interactions through social sites.

Click to view in full size

Operators need to understand the importance of good customer experience, before anything can be done about it. If customer experience is done right, it can be hugely beneficial to business – from driving profits and an upturn in sales, to creating a more valued and satisfied customer base. Part two of my series on customer experience management will explain more about how to do customer service, the way the customer would.

Read Part Two here

CoralTree Systems is a leading provider of innovative BSS solutions, whose clients include some of the market’s leading communications operators. 

You can find out more at our website www.CoralTreeSystems.com

This article was written by Craig Maxwell-Brown, Business Development Assistant for CoralTree Systems.

Calling RPG on the AS400 from Java

A practical article on calling RPG on the AS400 from Java

RPG is the native language on the IBM as400 midrange server (aka iSeries, system i and now just "i"). In a recent project I had to find a way to call a number of RPG programs from a Java application. If you're in this situation then there are a few options available.

• PCML (the subject of this article)
• SQL Stored procedure
• Integrated web services server (IWS)

Stored procedure
One possibility is to write a SQL stored procedure using RPG which could be called from Java using JDBC. This option may not be viable depending on the parameters your program needs. A stored procedure is good for returning result sets of records but you can only return one and you can't pass one in.

Integrated web services server (IWS)
If you want to quickly expose an RPG program as a web service then you might want to look at IWS. This is a quick way to get up and running but there are a number of limitations.

• If you want multiple operations on the same wsdl you have to write them all as procedures in the same service program
• If using a service program IWS only supports up to 7 parameters including both inputs and outputs
• IWS only supports contract last development. In other words you have to write the code first to get the wsdl.
• The generated wsdl has a number of duplicated elements which you have to manually remove to tidy the appearance.
• If you change the parameters or operations you have to go through the whole wizard again on each machine you deploy to.
• Arrays are fixed size in RPG so IWS always returns all elements, even if some are simply blanks.

PCML
The most flexible method is Program Call Markup Language (PCML). This is an API that IBM provided for just this scenario. PCML is an XML language for defining the parameter list for an RPG program. This can then be used from a Java application.

Generating the PCML
You could write the pcml file by hand but a better way is to get the RPG compiler to generate it for you. First lets write a simple RPG program that we want to call.

1:  D CONVTEMP    PR         Extpgm('CONVTEMP')   
2:  D iCelsius           9 3 Const            
3:  D oFahrenheit          9 3            
4:  D CONVTEMP    PI                     
5:  D iCelsius           9 3 Const            
6:  D oFahrenheit          9 3            
7:   /free                            
8:    // We could get an API to return whatever we like here  
9:    oFahrenheit = ((iCelsius * 9) / 5) + 32;         
10:    Return;                          
11:   /end-free                          

Yes it's the cliche web service example to convert temperature from Celsius into Fahrenheit. It's a good one to start with though because it is has both an input and an output but is still fairly simple. Note that the input parameter has been defined as a const, this is significant when we generate the PCML.

To generate the PCML from here you need to prompt compile and set the following options. Set PGMINFO to *PCML and INFOSTMF to a path on the ifs where you want your generated file to go e.g. /mylib/CONVTEMP.pcml. Doing so gives the following PCML.

1:  <pcml version="4.0">  
2:    <program name="CONVTEMP" path="/QSYS.LIB/PCMLTEST.LIB/CONVTEMP.PGM">  
3:     <data name="ICELSIUS" type="packed" length="9" precision="3" usage="input" />  
4:     <data name="OFAHRENHEIT" type="packed" length="9" precision="3" usage="inputoutput" />  
5:    </program>  
6:  </pcml>                         

We now have an XML file that describes how to call this program. Notice that the iCelsius parameter has been set to input but oFahrenheit is inputoutput. This is a result of setting iCelsius to a const parameter. When making a PCML call you must set a value for all input parameters. The default is inputoutput which can go both ways but is inconvenient if you don't have an input value to set. Unfortunately there's no language feature in RPG to set a parameter to output only so you have to adjust these manually.

1:     <data name="OFAHRENHEIT" type="packed" length="9" precision="3" usage="output" />                        

Java dependencies
To make a PCML program call you just need the jt400 jar on your classpath. You can either use the IBM version that comes bundled with the AS400 or the open source JTOpen version.

If you use maven then you can simply declare it as a dependency like this.

1:  <dependency>  
2:          <groupId>net.sf.jt400</groupId>  
3:          <artifactId>jt400</artifactId>  
4:          <version>6.7</version>  
5:  </dependency>                     

This works fine but sadly the JTOpen developers stopped publishing to maven central at version 6.7 (current version is 7.10 at time of writing).

Calling the program
This is everything you need to make the program call. The Java class below is a simple test that opens a connection, calls the program and returns the result.

1:  import java.math.BigDecimal;  
2:  import com.ibm.as400.access.AS400;  
3:  import com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlException;  
4:  import com.ibm.as400.data.ProgramCallDocument;  
5:  public class ConvertTemperature  
6:  {  
7:          private AS400  as400;  
8:          public ConvertTemperature()  
9:          {  
10:                  as400 = new AS400("SYSTEM", "USERNAME", "PASSWORD");  
11:          }  
12:          public BigDecimal celsiusToFahrenheit(BigDecimal celsius)  
13:          {  
14:                  BigDecimal fahrenheit = null;  
15:                  try  
16:                  {  
17:                          ProgramCallDocument pcml = new ProgramCallDocument(as400, "CONVTEMP");  
18:                          pcml.setValue("CONVTEMP.ICELSIUS", celsius);  
19:                          boolean rc = pcml.callProgram("CONVTEMP");  
20:                          if(rc)  
21:                          {  
22:                                  fahrenheit = (BigDecimal) pcml.getValue("CONVTEMP.OFAHRENHEIT");  
23:                          }  
24:                  }  
25:                  catch(PcmlException e)  
26:                  {  
27:                          e.printStackTrace();  
28:                  }  
29:                  return fahrenheit;  
30:          }  
31:          public static void main(String[] args)  
32:          {  
33:                  ConvertTemperature ct = new ConvertTemperature();  
34:                  ct.celsiusToFahrenheit(new BigDecimal(25.2));  
35:          }  
36:  }  

The second parameter to the ProgramCallDocument constructor is the path on the classpath to the PCML xml document. I created a file called CONVTEMP.pcml and put it in the src/main/resources folder. To keep things simple this is the root classpath folder, the .pcml suffix is not required as it is implied.

The PCML API will automatically handle converting Java types to AS400 types and back again. In this example the packed decimal from the AS400 becomes a BigDecimal in Java.

This is obviously a basic example that works as a proof of concept but there are a few additions worth mentioning if you want to use this in a production environment.

Adding connection pooling
Each time you create an AS400 object you're opening a physical connection to the AS400. Each new connection creates a new job on the AS400. It's obviously a bit wasteful to then throw this away and start with a fresh connection on the next call. A much better solution is to create a connection pool.

First you need to create the connection pool object. This code should live in it's own class so the pool can be shared by different parts of the application. You could also load a properties file from the classpath to set the connection pool properties.

1:  AS400ConnectionPool pool = new AS400ConnectionPool();  

Now each time you want a connection you simply ask the pool. If no connections exist then one will be created.

1:  AS400 as400 = pool.getConnection("SYSTEM", "USERNAME", "PASSWORD");  

Remember to always return the connection back to the pool once you're finished with it. This should be done in the finally section of the try/catch block to ensure the connection is returned if an exception is thrown.

1:  pool.returnConnectionToPool(as400);  

Setting a library list
The PCML file generated had a fixed path to a specific library. In practice you may find the program exists in different libraries and you want to use the one at the top of the library list. To do this we must first change the PCML file to not hardcode the library.

Change this:

1:  <program name="CONVTEMP" path="/QSYS.LIB/PCMLTEST.LIB/CONVTEMP.PGM">  

To this:

1:  <program name="CONVTEMP" path="/QSYS.LIB/%LIBL%.LIB/CONVTEMP.PGM">  

1:  import com.ibm.as400.access.AS400;  
2:  import com.ibm.as400.access.AS400Message;  
3:  import com.ibm.as400.access.CommandCall;  
4:  import com.ibm.as400.access.ConnectionListener;  
5:  import com.ibm.as400.access.ConnectionPoolEvent;  
6:  import com.ibm.as400.access.ConnectionPoolListener;  
7:  public class AS400ConnectionPoolListener implements ConnectionPoolListener  
8:  {  
9:    @Override  
10:    public void connectionCreated(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
11:          {  
12:                  AS400 as400 = (AS400) event.getSource();  
13:                  CommandCall command = new CommandCall(as400);  
14:                  try  
15:                  {  
16:        String liblCommand = "CHGLIBL(QTEMP PCMLTEST QGPL)";  
17:                          if(command.run(liblCommand) != true)  
18:                          {  
19:                                  // Show the messages (returned whether or not there was an  
20:                                  // error.)  
21:                                  AS400Message[] messagelist = command.getMessageList();  
22:                                  for(int count = 0; count < messagelist.length; count++)  
23:                                  {  
24:                                          // Show each message.  
25:                                          System.out.println("System message: " + messagelist[count].getText());  
26:                                  }  
27:                          }  
28:      }  
29:          @Override  
30:          public void connectionExpired(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
31:          {  
32:                  // Not currently overriden  
33:          }  
34:          @Override  
35:          public void connectionPoolClosed(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
36:          {  
37:                  // Not currently overriden  
38:          }  
39:          @Override  
40:          public void connectionReleased(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
41:          {  
42:                  // Not currently overriden  
43:          }  
44:          @Override  
45:          public void connectionReturned(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
46:          {  
47:                  // Not currently overriden  
48:          }  
49:          @Override  
50:          public void maintenanceThreadRun(ConnectionPoolEvent event)  
51:          {  
52:                  // Not currently overriden  
53:          }  
54:  }  

Finally the event listener needs to be registered as an observer of the connection pool.

1:  pool.addConnectionPoolListener(new AS400ConnectionPoolListener());  

Summary
This is a basic example that shows how to call an RPG program from Java. To brush this up a bit for production you only really need a few classes to wrap the connection pool and loading of properties. This would allow you to set the library list on different servers with a simple properties file. I would use spring to load the properties and register a bean that holds the connection pool. If you have to support multiple environments then you could set the library list each time you get a connection. Alternatively it might be more efficient to pass the environment to the RPG program and handle it on the AS400.

Ben Thurley,
Senior Software Engineer at CoralTree Systems Ltd

You can view Ben's wordpress blog, with more articles, here

Ben has worked for CoralTree for over 5 years. In that time, his expertise and knowledge in new coding techniques and methods have helped us develop even better solutions for our customers.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily the views of CoralTree Systems Ltd.

The social media influence: who owns the customer experience?

The days in which social media was merely considered a fad are long gone. Consumers have embraced this new method of communicating to closed groups and the public at large. Businesses are catching up, having witnessed the impact social media debates have on their revenues. So, who is in the customer service driving seat? The customer or the company?

For communications operators, this question and answer is crucial. Ovum/Genysis reported that a whopping 73% of customer churn due to poor service. It is widely recognised that social media channels escalate any bad experience, with the disgruntled customer likely to tell the masses about their grievance, creating negative impressions of the operator.

Retaining control with new mediums

Retaining control and embracing the social media world has never been so important for the communications industry. Not only can it enable quick and easy resolution of issues and a more interactive customer experience, social media provides a wealth of insight to customer behaviours and desires. This in-depth data creates a huge opportunity for operators, and a huge headache.

The insight this level of information can bring can create profitable revenue streams for operators. Conducted correctly, a marketing campaign built on information from social media, or, even better, delivered directly through social media, will have more uptake, having positive effects on ARPU rates. Yet, the challenge for operators is how to manage, track, and analyse the data in the first place.

Single view of the customer

Creating a single view of customers is now generally the norm for traditional customer service channels, but adding data from social media, creates operational complexity for CRM systems. Can current CRM systems be adapted to effectively work for SCRM – Social CRM?

The answer depends on the existing system in place. In truth, some can, but it must be a next generation system that has been designed with the future in mind. Understanding that technology will evolve and one that truly combines the customer data into one record, which can be easily analysed.

For some time the major operators have had monitoring systems in place to respond to problems and understand more about their customers, but this next stage of engagement through social media is an exciting step. With the right BSS support, operators can target individuals with offers that are based on their specific behaviours. Some operators are leading the way and whether you view this as a frightening or interesting step, it can increase operator profitability.

The customer experience is now a two-way street. Consumers will continue to dictate how they want to be interacted with, and business will offer a variety of channels for them to do so. Whether social media will stay as popular for future generations, we will see, but for now, it is an important medium that operators should be engaging to enhance customer experience and drive revenue streams.

CoralTree Systems is a leading provider of innovative BSS solutions, whose clients include some of the market’s leading communications operators. 

You can find out more at our website www.CoralTreeSystems.com

This blog was written by Natasha Geldard, Marketing Consultant for CoralTree.