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			Business Research: Contact Center, Customer Performance Technology Research: Business Intelligence, Operational Intelligence Imperative Research: Business Innovation, Performance Improvement, Process Improvement Vendor Research: AIM Technology, Aspect, CallTower, Cerebit, Cisco Systems, Enkata, Envision, Five9, Genesys Telecommunications Lab, HardMetrics, Informiam, Inova Solutions, InQuira, Intelligent Results, Jacada, KnoahSoft, Latigent, MediaTrac, Merced Systems, Microsoft, NICE Systems, Noetica, Nortel, Oracle, Portrait Software, Queplix, RightNow, Salesforce.com, Saratoga Systems, Symmetrics, Syntellect, unica, Verint, Witness Systems, InfoCentricity, ClickFox
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Summary
The latest research from Ventana Research shows that many companies are diversifying the communication channels through which they interact with their customers. This expansion creates new challenges, particularly in understanding how customers use different channels and which channels are most successful at fulfilling their expectations. Without insight into this behavior and channel effectiveness, it is difficult for companies to optimize the use of the various channels or to improve the customer’s experience regardless of channel. ClickFox has one of the few products that enable companies to gain these insights at a level of detail that allows them to understand trends over time.

Assessment
Our research shows that although direct phone calls to agents still constitute by far the highest volume of customer interactions, many calls initially are handled by an interactive voice response (IVR) system, and more companies are relying on IVR and their Web sites as automated self-service channels. These technologies help reduce the number (and cost) of agents in the contact center, but they also make it harder to understand the customer’s experience because the customer is one step removed from direct contact with the company. There are technologies that allow companies to capture high-level data on how customers are using these interaction channels, but to date they have been cumbersome to implement and often have not delivered the level of detail that businesses require.

ClickFox has patented technology to extract detailed data from IVR, Web servers, agents’ desktops, handheld devices and other remote devices such as kiosks and point-of-sale (POS) terminals and to tag it all to specific customers. The data then can be combined with data from other sources, such as a customer database, to produce a detailed analysis of which customers have used which channels of communication, when, what they did using them and what the outcomes were. Companies can use this information to identify patterns of customer behavior that they can use to improve future interactions. ClickFox calls this customer behavior intelligence (CBI), and its product includes a simulation tool called an application performance modeler that allows companies to model the potential impact of changes before they are put into operation. It also includes analysis and visualization capabilities that allow information to be displayed in various formats. Among them are three specialized reports that help companies identify customers who are most likely to buy or to defect, customers who may be carrying out fraudulent activities, as well as what factors are driving customer satisfaction up or down.

ClickFox has obtained some of these capabilities through technical partnerships, the latest of which, with Genesys allows users to increase the sophistication with which they route calls to agents in the contact center. Through an interface, they can link the ClickFox customer profile data to the Genesys routing software, which can be configured to route calls based on the customer’s interaction history and overall behavior profile. In this way, companies can take another step toward ensuring that customer calls are routed to the most appropriate agent, which should increase the likelihood of the call having a positive outcome for both customer and company.

Market Impact
As companies increase the number of channels they deploy to support customer interactions, it becomes harder to keep track of who is doing what, let alone how to improve performance. Most vendors of contact center technology provide reports on transactions handled by their equipment, but these reports often come in formats that aren’t easy to digest, and the data is difficult to integrate with data from other channels. Keeping track of Web transactions has been especially challenging, involving a great deal of effort to tag each line of code before the data can be extracted and analyzed by Web analysis tools. One vendor – SAS – recently launched a product that significantly reduces the effort required to track Web activities and present it in more useful ways. ClickFox, for its part, is the first vendor to go one step further and provide the capability to track activities across multiple channels, providing a comprehensive picture of customer behavior.

Recommendation
Research by Ventana Research this year and last shows that companies plan to increase their channels of communication with customers during the next three to five years. Using these alternatives effectively will be critical to making and keeping customers happy. We believe that ClickFox’s tools provide a unique approach to showing how customers are using and reacting to these channels, especially IVR and the Web. We recommend that companies wanting to gain deeper insights into their customer behavior and the outcome of their interactions consider ClickFox CBI.