Is there really a way to "Do More With Less" and increase customer satisfaction?  This is a popular theme within all business verticals in today's economic climate.

We have all experienced the frustrating scenario as a consumer where we seek information for products and services on-line, do not find the answer we need and then call a contact center agent only to be "transferred" and have to repeat the same set of questions with a new customer service channel to find the answer we are looking for. 

This leads to a negative experience, reduced satisfaction and higher cost for the company that is providing the customer service. 

By now we are all familiar with the options to enable multi-channel customer service via email, voice (live agents), live web chat  and self service via on-line search tools or IVR options; but how many companies provide consumers with consistency across all these channels? 

The key to increasing CSAT and reducing service cost is to enable a seamless escalation path across all channels and enable multiple communication channels for consumers to find the answer they are looking for.

How is this accomplished?  First it is important to understand where your consumers typically begin the process of searching for information when making a buying decision or customer service inquiry.

Let's take the example of a traditional company web site.  A typical consumer will start their search for information on the web.  By providing easy to use self service options on-line  the company is able to take the first step in handling the majority of questions via basic FAQ's or key word searches, this is also the most cost effective way to handle these contacts and reduce calls into the contact center. 

But what happens when the consumer does not find the information there are looking for?  Unfortunately for many businesses the consumer is then forced to call into the contact center which results in a higher cost to handle the contact with live agents and results in lost opportunity for those consumers that abandon because they do not want to call for help.

The most overlooked avenue to bridge the communication gap, provide your consumer with increased choice and reduce site abandonment is live web chat.  By providing consumers with the ability escalate from self service to chat companies are able to handle a larger portion of consumer contacts in a cost effective manner and further deflect costly phone calls into the contact center.

In addition, enabling this channel allows companies to collect valuable information on the web site by evaluating chat transcripts to make self service and web site enhancements that increase overall satisfaction and further reduce costly phone calls.

While there are some consumers that would prefer to call the contact center directly, a growing majority prefer to get answers while on the web, providing all three communication channels allows businesses to provide choice to the consumer for how they would prefer to interact with your business.

So what are the keys to a successful multi-channel strategy for your customer service? Aside from providing multiple communication channels that include web self service, live web chat and phone support the most overlooked component is consistent content across all these channels. 

Too often the information at the finger tips of the contact center agent is inconsistent with the content on the website, creating confusion for the consumer.  Consolidating content and answers to questions that is consistent across all channels ensures brand consistency, lower cost and increased customer satisfaction.

This is only part of the customer service optimization process. By tracking the questions that you do not have prepared answers for when customers escalate to a live web chat or a voice agent creates an immediate feedback loop where on-line self service tools can be enhanced to provide more useful and relevant information for your consumers. 

The reason most consumers escalate to an agent is because they did not find the answer they were looking for via self service. 

Thus, the key to reducing the cost of providing customer service and increasing CSAT for your consumers is to utilize the data collected at the agent level and then feed the missing content back into the self service or live web chat response library.  This creates an ongoing commitment to brand consistency, a more satisfied consumer and most importantly reduced cost to provide the service.

One small change can make a difference, if enough people take the time to do it. This is the concept around Blackle, the energy saving search engine, powered by Google custom search. Created by Heap Media, the goal of the site is to have enough people switch from a white to black search page, taking small steps to save energy in our everyday lives.

As Blackle states, "In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages. We <Heap Media> believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy."

This is a great concept, and allows everyone to make a small change that can have a great effect. I have converted this to my home page and do not find any issues with readability.

To make Blackle your home page visit - http://www.blackle.com/set-home-page/.

Do you have a cross-channel strategy? A true strategy? An article in the E-Commerce times article talks about how multichannel is the path out of recession. A good point it raises relates to cross-channel strategies and how it can increase sales conversions.

Many talk about the importance of having a multichannel approach to customer service, but to expand and benefit from this, you need to utilize them accordingly. It's not just about answering phone calls, emails, etc. How can you use a channel to make the overall customer experience as satisfying as possible?

For example, lets say a customer is shopping for a product online. She has a few quick questions before deciding to purchase - and has them answered through self-service modules on the website. Now that she decided to buy, she prefers to place the order on the phone as opposed to online - where a phone representative will easily fulfill the request.

Two benefits here: 1) The customer gets what she wants through the channels/means she's most comfortable with, and 2) from a service perspective, the handle time of the phone call is decreased and other calls are potentially deflected.

I know this was a very general example - but think about how many other scenarios there are. How can we leveragee a cross-channel approach and how do we optimize it? 

"Web 2.0" was announced yesterday as the millionth word in the English Dictionary, beating out Hinglish term "Jai Ho" and "Slumdog" from the popular oscar award winning Slumdog Millionaire movie.

Ironically, this comes at a time when actually using the word Web 2.0 has been common for some time. Mashable.com notes the trend in Google for the word began back in 2005 and now with social media descriptions becoming more the trend, Web 2.0 is a rare term.

What are your thoughts? What terms do you use to describe Web 2.0?