Most account management tasks are routine and mundane. But they can be incredibly time-consuming for customers and expensive for enterprises, especially in customer care environments where most transactions are still carried out on the phone, on paper or even face-to-face at branch offices.
Rather than allowing account management to be a drain on their own time and money, as well as that of their customers, organisations should be looking to automate these tasks through self-service systems. The manage component of self-service allows customers to manage their account online using service enhancing tools. (Click here for an overview of the other building blocks of self-service.)
Account management in a self-service system should provide a range of options for invoicing and account customisation that help to make life easier for customers:
Invoicing
Invoices, bills and statements are at the heart of the enterprise's relationship with the customer. A high proportion of calls that come into nearly all call centres relate to simple billing and invoicing queries, such as requests for the amount to be paid or bill reprints of historical statements.
Getting customers to deal with such queries online is a win for the consumer and enterprise alike.
Kevin Meltzer, Business development director, Consology
Getting customers to deal with such queries online is a win for the consumer and enterprise alike - customers can deal with invoicing queries at their own leisure, any time of the day and without needing to waste time holding for a call centre agent. Companies, meanwhile, deflect many routine calls away from their contact centres, freeing call centre agents up for more valuable client interactions.
Some invoicing tasks that can be automated with self-service systems include enabling clients to:
* Check their account balances - billed charges that appeared on their last statement and unbilled charges updated in real-time;
* Review and validate charges by searching and sorting line items;
* Look up previous invoices, statements and bills; and
* Create reprints of old bills.
Account customisation
Many of the changes that customers need to make to their accounts can easily be moved online, simplifying the task for the customer and encouraging greater usage of advanced features.
Some examples of these tasks include:
* Managing the account profile by updating personal information and address change details;
* Personalising the account, for example, by creating categories for account entries for easy reporting and analysis of charges. A credit card user could, for example, create categories such as 'clothing' or 'entertainment'; and
* Managing corporate hierarchy to create and maintain multi-tiered account groups and privileges.
The corporate hierarchy function is powerful for organisations that have many business customers. A corporate admin manager could use this functionality to manage the allocation of mobile phones to employees. He or she could set up standard templates for different types of employees and allocate budgets, features and more to different employee profiles. It becomes easy to compare spending among different users and to allocate costs to the right cost centres. This level of functionality is a great way to build loyalty with corporate customers.
Just like the 'research' component, the 'manage' element of a self-service solution allows customers to spend less time on the phone or in a branch by allowing clients to do more online. Customers enjoy the convenience of managing these tasks in their own time and feel empowered by the control and insights they have into their accounts. The 'manage' element is the foundation on which advanced 'transact' and 'interact' features can be built into the self-service ecosystem.
* Subsequent Industry Insights in this series will look more closely at the 'transact' and 'interact' components of an effective self-service system.
* Kevin Meltzer, Business development director, Consology
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