Business relationships have always been based on interactions. Until now most of these interactions have been through conventional means, such as the telephone. But now more and more of your business interactions are over the Internet, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Are you ready to handle this change?
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Interactions: The Foundation
of Business Relationships
www.egain.comInteractions: The Foundation
of Business Relationships
Executive SummaryBusiness relationships have always been based on interactions. Until now most of theseinteractions have been through conventional means, such as the telephone. But now more andmore of your business interactions are over the Internet, and this trend will continue for theforeseeable future. Are you ready to handle this change? This paper introduces a new categoryof products and services that help you manage your business interactions over multiple channelson the Internet and other points of contact.
The Changing Nature of Business InteractionsAll business relationships, indeed all relationships, are initiated, developed and enhanced througha series of interactions. We make our prospective customers and partners aware of our productsand services, we answer their inquiries, we ask them questions to qualify their interests, weexchange information to seal the relationship, we fulfill our obligations, we provide them serviceand support during the course of the relationship, and we continuously work on ways toenhance the relationship. We undertake these interactions every day, and the way we undertakethem is an integral part of the way we conduct our business. In fact, they are so commonplacewe don't even think twice about them.
But we should, because the landscape has changed. Think about it. It used to be that mostinteractions were through a limited number of ways, such as face-to-face, letters and later thetelephone. And most of the interactions were with the same people-the account executive andthe service representative-so it was easy to maintain continuity of both style and context ininteractions. It was also a more relaxed environment-an interaction could span days, if notweeks. The methods of managing these interactions matched the nature of the interactions. Sowe had account executives maintaining notes in personal journals, service departments with apaper file for each customer, and so on.
Now look at the landscape today. We interact in so many different ways, on differentcommunications channels. Not only do we have face-to-face, letters and telephones, we nowhave email, Web-forms, and live chat over the Web. As the Internet becomes increasingly morepervasive, more and more of our interactions will be over the Internet, rather than throughtraditional media. A recent study estimates that email interactions will increase by 111%1between 1999 and 2002.
1 Hagen, Paul R., "Tier Zero Customer Support," page 7, Forrester Research, December 1999.
1 eGain Communications INTERACTIONSThis is not the only change in the landscape. Organizations today deal with a larger customerbase with fewer customer-facing employees. It is the exception rather than the norm to findaccount executives and service representatives working with the same people in the customer'sorganization over the lifecycle of the relationship. There are a number of reasons for this: newtools have made customer-facing personnel more productive; competitive pressures meanmargins are lower and companies have to handle more interactions with fewer resources; andcustomer interactions are now around the clock, rather than during normal business hours.
The last reason above is related to the third big change in business interactions: the expectationof immediacy. The concept of time isn't what it used to be. People want and expect fast if notimmediate responses to their inquiries, and will readily go to a competitor if they don't get quickattention. This is part of the reason that many customers are perfectly willing to help themselvesif you make what they want readily available and easily accessible. So much so that the studycited earlier also projects that Web self-service will increase from 37% of interactions in 1999 to87% in 2002.
And finally, while good business have always understood the importance of good relations withcustomers, studies in the past few years have quantified the benefits of long-term relationshipswith satisfied and loyal customers. Examples abound:
. A shift in retention of as little as 5 percentage points seems to account for more than a 20percent improvement in productivity, which in certain industries can increase profit by 502to 100 percent.. If consumers do not receive email responses w... [download for more]
