Adoption of digital channels continues to rise with mobile online access accelerating the trend. According to an Accenture report, customers use on average 3 digital channels. Genesys believes the key then is the ability to not just offer the channels your customer’s desire, but to also preserve the context of all interactions across those channels on a single platform in an effort to diminish siloed activities. This is why Genesys customer ESRI turned to Genesys solutions to redesign the overall customer service experience.
ESRI is the world’s premier provider of GIS mapping software solutions. GIS technology leverages geographic insight to address social, economic, business, and environmental concerns at local, regional, national, and global scales. To keep up with the needs of a fast growing customer base, ESRI needed to redesign the overall customer service experience. As a result, ESRI now offers seamless voice, Web chat, and email customer interactions that meet — and exceed — their customers’ unique service demands and expectations.
Charting a New Course
As ESRI’s business expanded over the years, customer support interactions became increasingly complex, which made it harder to ensure that service levels were met. In order to better support their diverse customer base — many of whom integrate the company software in their own solutions — ESRI sought new ways of optimizing the customer experience. First steps were to identify outdated processes, design new ones, and then implement new technologies.
One clearly outdated process was a customer support system that could not scale. Until just a few years ago, processes for handling incoming customer queries required manual tracking and routing. And while customers could call or send an email to request support, the engagement was mostly offline. As a consequence, the service outcome was less than optimal. Overall, complex cases could take up to 10-15 days to resolve, and ESRI had little visibility into what kind of service levels they were delivering or how effectively they were using agent time.
Redesigning the Customer Experience
ESRI needed to stop and rethink because customer satisfaction was falling. A multi-channel approach was needed, since many customers were demanding that they offer different support options.
ESRI worked with Genesys partner Contact Center Service (CCS) to implement the Genesys Digital Customer Service solution that ESRI needed to build a multi-channel desktop supporting chat, voice, and email interactions in a single interface. ESRI had several goals. They wanted to give customers a choice of channels, ensure that the same agent could handle a customer interaction even when it crossed channels, and wanted to make sure that first contact issue resolution was achieved.
Connecting Customers with the Right Resource the First Time
Today about 300 agents handle voice, email, and Web chat interactions. Each agent works across all channels, and their unique desktop can handle all channels simultaneously.
ESRI’s interaction routing uses business rules to automate the routing of calls, email, and chat sessions according to pre-defined criteria including agent skills and availability. Since every agent handles all interaction channels, the routing solution also considers the number and types of interactions the agent is handling at any given time. Customer information that is attached to the voice, email, or chat interaction is maintained throughout the life of the interaction.
The flexibility means that agents can work on multiple media simultaneously, seamlessly convert a voice interaction to an email interaction, and transfer email interactions to a virtual queue for further intelligent processing.
Integrating Web Channels
As part of its Genesys-based solution, ESRI added chat support, using customized Web Chat with integrated file transfer capability for their specific requirements, including:
- File attachments up to 1 gigabyte integrated with the chat window
- Ability to ‘remote desktop’ — take control of the customer’s desktop for uninterrupted troubleshooting sessions
Customers can open a chat window and attach documents, notes, hyperlinks, and the problem file — all while chatting in real time with the agent. The customer can also allow the agent to take control of the window to find or correct a software setting quickly and effectively, and resolve any issues of concern. For ESRI 50% of interactions occur on the phone, 40% via email, and 10% of interactions are chat-based, and that number is growing.
Measureable Improvement in Customer Experience
ESRI has seen measurable and sustained improvements in metrics reflecting the customer experience, including:
- Customer survey satisfaction rat¬ings increased from 82% to 93%
- 25 point increase in Net Promoter Score
- Increase in first call resolution from near zero to 70%
- Real-time and historical insight into service levels
- Improved support efficiency through interaction management and routing
Thanks to the Genesys Multichannel Solution based on a single customer experience enabled platform, the ESRI customers are delighted. They know ESRI will go the extra mile for them. In fact, one of their competitive brand differentiators is the ability to deliver consistently superior experiences for customers. They know — even before they engage with ESRI — that they will get the answers that they need. 
To learn more about the Genesys Customer Experience platform please visit www.genesys.com/platform-services