Waterfield Technologies

A recent Ernst & Young survey on Global Consumer Banking reported that 48% of customers around the world plan to change banks because of general levels of service.

In today’s post-crisis banking environment, it is more critical than ever for banks to maintain strong relationships with their customers. Improving customer engagement and loyalty through personalized customer service, convenience and proactive outreach is proving to be a measurable competitive advantage.

At the same time, there is increasing pressure to cut costs throughout all financial service organizations. The two goals seem opposing on the surface, but are they?

In our sophisticated communication environment, the ability to balance great service with the need to contain costs may seem further than ever from reach. But is it?

We’ll discuss the advantages of modern contact center systems, including ways to:

Use business intelligence, personalization and analytics to streamline and enhance self-service interactions
Segment the customer base to drive revenue through tailored product offerings, up-sell and cross-sell offers
Deepen customer relationships with proactive outbound customer engagement and notifications
Address changing customer communication preferences including mobile and social channels
Simplify compliance with evolving industry regulatory requirements
Understand how personalized self-service can be used to cost-effectively strengthen your brand, increase loyalty and obtain new customers.

In a recent whitepaper entitled “Social Media Services: Trends in Customer Care Outsourcing”, International Data Corporation (IDC), a leader in market intelligence for telecom and information technology, looked at some of the key trends and differentiators in Social CRM.

A key point in the study is that Social CRM is still very new ground. Making an investment now allows organizations to “get in on the ground floor” and lay the framework to support additional channels as they evolve, and to be part of the creation of the best practices for what works in the social sphere. As the technology evolves, it’s likely that social will cease to be an “add-on” or optional support channel and much more likely that it will become standard to CRM implementations due to customer expectations. (This evolution may happen faster than you think: per a recent story on MediaBistro, 71% of 16-24 year olds indicate the first thing they do when they have a problem with a product is go online, and the shift to social channels is not exclusive to that demographic. ) The overarching goal is to create a single, unified view of the customer. This way, appropriate social media interaction with the customer can be conducted with the appropriate history and context.

Some of the key differentiators of social CRM that will require your business to put new best practices into place are:

• Channels are now customer-dictated. While voice-based call centers offer only inbound and/or outbound IVR customer service, consumers will chatter on social networks of their choice, at whatever time they see fit. Your strategy and technology for monitoring and responding via these channels will necessarily evolve. Technologically, the biggest challenge will be combining all of these communication channels to maintain a single view of the customer, so that social interactions can be tailored to the individual with the same history and context as a voice interaction where an agent has the benefit of a screenpop with all the relevant information.
• Conversations are continuously adapting, and non-scripted. When issues are escalated from automated systems, call center agents still can often work off of a script while social conversations are more likely to go into tangents and often have a different set of rules of (n)etiquette. Agents may need special training, particularly if they are not digital natives.
• New metrics are important. Because of the visibility of social channels, there is now significant transparency into the sentiment about your brand. Appropriate analytics will need to be implemented to separate the signal from the noise and evaluate not just sentiment, but also efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment for your efforts. Reporting tools and dashboards can assist subject matter experts and other stakeholders in assessing this data.
• Timeliness is critical. Much like how channels are customer-dictated, many businesses – particularly large ones – will find there is a 24/7 expectation of rapid responses via the social channel.

Once these core competencies are understood, they are used to enable the three critical activities in the social space: listening, understanding and responding. Each phase incorporates different elements of the aforementioned core competencies. Listening requires appropriate tools and analytics; understanding requires sentiment analysis and the ability to put feedback into context; responding requires accuracy and timeliness.

At Voxeo, our Prophecy and VoiceObjects platforms let you create a social CRM tailored specifically to your business, and provide unified self-service across channels so that you can reach customers in the way they want to be reached, whether it’s via SMS, social media, mobile apps or voice. To learn more about the ways in which consumer expectations are evolving in the social and mobile space and how your business should be responding, check out our whitepaper, “Unified Self-Service: Delivering On the Value Of Multi-Channel Customer Interactions.”

Want to learn how Voxeo can help unlock your communications and deliver a better customer experience? Please contact us!

Waterfield Technologies & Voxeo have partnered to put proven best practices, industry standards and the latest technologies at your fingertips — with less upfront expense and fewer headaches. Partnered solution focuses on customer retention, competitive positioning and profitability for banks and credit unions.

Orlando, FL – Waterfield Technologies, a leading provider of customer service solutions, and Voxeo, the Unlocked Communications™ market leader, have partnered to address the unique customer care and communication challenges facing today’s financial institutions (FIs). This partnership will revolutionize the way banks and credit unions interact with their customers in five major areas to improve customer retention, competitive positioning and profitability.

“Focusing on customer loyalty and engagement has always been key to successful revenue growth for companies; however, the current economic pressures facing banks and credit unions across the country has amplified the importance of these initiatives,” said Anne Bowman, chief customer officer at Voxeo. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ loyalty to their primary banks fell to 23 percent in November 2011 from 32 percent in September 2010. “Banking customers are more likely than ever to switch their primary bank, creating a huge need for the industry to hone communications efforts that lead to increased loyalty,” she said.

Voxeo optimizes the way companies communicate with their customers using Interactive Voice Response (IVR), text, mobile web and social media. Waterfield has joined the Voxeo Connect partner program as a Certified Partner to offer deep expertise building and deploying solutions for financial institutions.
Together, the companies will deliver advantages in the following key areas:

1. Customer Experience Improvements. By leveraging the latest technologies and best practices, financial institutions can better balance the conflicting goals of improving customer loyalty while lowering costs. Many financial institutions haven’t updated their voice customer service channels in years. Waterfield and Voxeo enable personalized self-service capabilities that dynamically adapt to individual customer preferences, streamlining common requests for a better user experience and resulting in fewer overall transfers to a representative. The solution is also “multi-channel ready,” for a unified customer experience across voice, text, chat, mobile web, and native mobile platforms such as iOS and Android.

2. Proactive Customer Care. The most progressive financial institutions are using outbound IVR and SMS to offer customers the information they need, when they need it–and even before they know they need it. For example, outbound efforts can provide payment reminders, notifications and low-balance alerts to improve customer loyalty while reducing overall support costs. The solution easily integrates with common core banking platforms and utilizes existing business intelligence systems to enable personalized up-sell and cross-sell offers that drive revenue and increase Customer Lifetime Value.

3. Integrated Business Intelligence. IVR systems are a frequent source of customer as well as organizational frustration. When self-service is done properly, it’s a win for the customer and the business. The Voxeo and Waterfield solution offers built-in, actionable analytics and reports to eliminate the “black box” aspect of legacy voice platforms thus enabling customer-focused teams to easily pinpoint issues in real-time, better understand customer behaviors, and identify opportunities to enhance the overall service experience. This baseline understanding will empower organizations of all sizes to adapt and evolve their customer strategies to compete in today emerging financial marketplace.

4. Self-Service Administration. Unlike legacy IVR systems, Voxeo and Waterfield offer a solution built on known web standards for flexibility, control and ease of management. This standards-based platform enables FIs to utilize their existing IT staff to make routine changes and update self-service menus as dictated by the business. This capability represents a fundamental shift for FIs who have historically been captive to black box legacy IVR vendors for maintenance and upkeep of critical customer-facing voice channels.

5. Simplified Security and Regulatory Compliance. Banks are facing increased regulatory pressure to protect the privacy of customer data. With a 100 percent standards-based, certified-compliant solution and capabilities such as two-factor authentication and in-queue PIN validation, Voxeo and Waterfield ease the complexities of ensuring automated customer interactions are secure.

John Marino, president at Waterfield Technologies, said, “Industry analysts acknowledge Voxeo as a leading provider of IVR and multi-channel self-service. To that, Waterfield adds many years of financial services experience and pre-built interfaces to most of the common core platforms utilized throughout the industry. The combined solution positions our customers to take advantage of the latest technologies to build stronger, more profitable relationships with their customers and better compete for new customers.”

“Institutions that view their contact centers and services as a cost of doing business will struggle in a market where the source of differentiation has shifted to the customer experience,” said Denny Adams, director of channel sales at Voxeo. “We’re partnering with Waterfield to help financial institutions uncover opportunities to improve customer loyalty, drive more revenue and achieve bottom-line costs savings.”

Learn more and read our whitepaper, “Slashing Costs and Improving Customer Care in Financial Institutions” at www.waterfieldtechnologies.com/solutions/financial-services/

About Waterfield Technologies
Waterfield Technologies is a leading provider of multi-channel customer service solutions for financial services and enterprise organizations worldwide. The company’s suite of solutions provides our customers the opportunity to improve the speed, quality and efficiency of customer, business partner and stakeholder interactions while reducing their overall assisted-service operating costs. Learn more at www.waterfieldtechnologies.com

About Voxeo
Voxeo unlocks communications. We loathe the locks that make voice, SMS, instant messaging, Twitter, web chat, and mobile web, unified communication and self-service applications difficult to create, manage, analyze, optimize and afford. Every day we work to unlock the neglected value of these communications solutions with open standards, disruptive innovation and a passion for problem solving–fueled by a company-wide obsession with customer success. We do so for more than 250,000 developers, 45,000 companies and half of the Fortune 100 from our headquarters in Orlando, Beijing, Cologne, and London. Visit us or join our conversations on the web at www.voxeo.com, blogs.voxeo.com or twitter.com/voxeo

In collaboration with Consent Media, Waterfield Technologies designed and developed a mobile campground/RV application for Woodall’s, a leading provider of information about RVing and family camping for over 70 years.

Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot

The Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot iPhone app provides complete campground information that details the amenities, services, types of campsites for over 12,000 campgrounds and RV parks across North America. It also details many camping discounts offered at parks. Private campgrounds also include Woodall’s 5W/5W Rating System, which is the most trusted consumer campground rating.

Click here to learn more about the iPhone app and Woodall’s.

About ConsentMedia

Consent Media has been delivering results-driven digital media and marketing solutions long before it was consensual or defined as “digital”. Since 2001, the Consent Media executive and account management team has strategically lived, used and leveraged the digital media technologies of wireless, mobile, voice marketing, interactive voice response (IVR), e-mail marketing, broadcast, video, and social media to cost-effectively acquire new customers and enhance loyalty by extending the lifecycle value profitability chain of existing customers.

By delivering innovative lead generation, new customer acquisition and ongoing retention and loyalty marketing programs, the Consent Media team has assisted many of the world’s leading retailers, healthcare, financial services and insurance companies measurably drive down costs while growing incremental revenue.

Mark Davis Joins Executive Team as Transportation Leader

Tulsa, OK – August 4, 2010 – Waterfield Energy is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Davis as Vice President – Transportation Products and Services, effective August 2, 2010. Mr. Davis takes over responsibility for gas gathering, intrastate and interstate gas transportation products, services, clients, and staff.

Mr. Davis is an energy and transportation industry executive with over 27 years of experience in software, consulting and the energy business. Prior to joining Waterfield Energy, Mr. Davis was Director of Natural Gas Solutions at SolArc Inc., and was instrumental in the building of Quorum Business Solutions’ transportation products. Mr. Davis also worked at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Tennessee Gas Pipeline, Tenneco, ARKLA Gas, Louisiana Intrastate Gas, and Columbia Gulf serving in various roles. Mr. Davis has a bachelor’s degree & MBA from Our Lady of the Lake University.

“Bringing Mark Davis to the executive team was a key component of our growth strategy for Waterfield Energy,” said John Marino, President of Waterfield Technologies. “The rest of the board and I wholeheartedly endorsed bringing Mark in to lead our transportation practice. Waterfield Technologies is extremely pleased at the growth and success of our energy software affiliate, and adding Mark Davis solidifies our long-term strategy in midstream transportation.”

Pete Waldroop, CEO and President of Waterfield Energy, added, “Mark Davis is a tremendous addition to my executive team. His knowledge of the transportation business and his commitment to customer service are unequaled. Feedback from our clients has already been extremely positive.”

About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit www.waterfieldenergysoftware.com.

Tulsa, OK. — June 3, 2010 — Waterfield Energy is pleased to announce the appointment of Pete Waldroop as president and CEO, effective May 17, 2010.

Waldroop is an energy expert with more than 16 years of experience in the full-system lifecycle of software, process design/analysis and project management. He has worked extensively in upstream energy, midstream energy and in the transportation and marketing sectors. His client list has included Fortune 500 energy and utility companies from across the country.

Waldroop was previously a founding partner with Capitalize Consulting, a professional consulting services firm focused on the energy, pipeline, and utilities industries. He also previously was a founder and executive vice president of Quorum Business Solutions, an energy industry software provider. Formerly, Waldroop also was a consulting manager in Accenture’s Energy Solutions Group. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University.

“We are extremely pleased to have Pete leading the energy software company. His deep experience in energy consulting and software are a great match for our team and product suite, and we expect Pete to grow the company significantly in coming years,” said John Marino, president of Waterfield Technologies. “The Waterfield family is committed to the growth of the energy software company, and bringing Pete to the company is just one of the many substantial investments we’ve made in this business.”

Waldroop echoed the sentiments, saying: “Waterfield Energy Software is providing an exciting opportunity for me to use my skills and background in a new way. I’m looking forward to this challenge.”

About Waterfield Energy Software
Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Waterfield Energy provides software to the energy upstream, midstream, and transportation markets. Its employees are a mix of experienced energy and technical development resources, brought together to create world-class software for the dynamic energy industry. For more details, please visit waterfieldenergysoftware.com.

Waterfield Energy brings to the market an entire midstream energy suite of products. Based on a comprehensive gas processing solution which handles the complexities of virtually any gas processing plant, the suite provides comprehensive gas transaction management from custody transfer to plant tailgate. All processing allocation models and contract types are handled by the product. The suite also includes integrated accrual, budgeting and forecasting tools which can also easily be linked to other processing solutions.

For more information, see Waterfield Energy Software at waterfieldenergysoftware.com

OutSystems announced the latest release of their 5.0 Agile platform last week.

Here’s the post from their blog regarding the release, its new features and some of the product details.

Give us a call to schedule a demo of the software or let us know if we can help you get a version downloaded and setup in your environment, at no cost!

From OutSystems.com:

In this version we’re taking agile a step further; not only are we supporting the entire application lifecycle management for web applications, we also added support for IT teams to rapidly develop business processes using agile methodologies.

Traditionally, business process development was done at a different pace using different tools than IT used for application development. However, one of the biggest challenges facing the business process world is the integration of business processes with applications; which meant one of them was always waiting for the other.  And, in the case of our customers who already use the Agile Platform, web application development was happening faster than business processes development.

With version 5.0 of the Agile Platform, we have closed that gap! Using the new Business Process Technology capabilities of the platform, IT teams can develop business processes totally integrated with web applications in an agile manner. All artifacts that the Agile Platform provides for Web Application development – like TrueChange technology, 1 Click-Publishing, Real Time Monitoring, and so on – are also available for business process development.

To develop this new capability, the OutSystems R&D team partnered with one of our customers, Van Ameyde, to design and implement this capability. Van Ameyde uses business processes intensively for insurance claims processing and has very heavy change demands for those processes. Customer participation has been key to the development of the new 5.0 functionality, and we believe that it led to a pragmatic implementation of Business Process Technology that will allow IT teams to fulfill the needs of the business from a process perspective, as fast as they have been doing for web applications with the Agile Platform.

Along with Business Process Technology, version 5.0 includes many other improvements that will make developers a lot more productive. If you’re already using the Agile Platform, check the videos of some of the improvements we made to the platform. If you want to give it a try for yourself, the best thing to do is download the (free) Community Edition and try out the new capabilities of the platform.

We stumbled upon an older article from a CRM publication this week that makes some points that remain key problems for the customer service industry.  Though the article was written in 2006, it’s shocking to realize how few businesses are focused on solving these issues and how few technology solutions have emerged with a focus on these kinds of problems.

After you read the article, give us a call, we believe Convergy’s Policy Management Suite is the perfect fit in businesses today where customers are getting mixed, contradictory, service prohibitory, messages…..

Here’s a great excerpt:

Stranger Than Fiction (This Stuff Really Happened)
An automotive company began to charge customers for loaner cars regardless of what car they had purchased, how old or new the vehicle was, or how many vehicles the customer had purchased. An insurance company cancelled a customer’s service for non-payment, and then solicited that customer the next day for a different product. A packaged goods company sent out empty boxes to customers who had purchased out-of-stock products and then sent the product later under separate cover. Each of these occurred as the outcome of separate silo objectives intersecting and falling in an awkward heap on customers’ laps.

This is the gift we give our customers every day. They receive the defaulted experiences that come together in a dimwitted chain of events that has the customer wondering “Do they talk to each other?” “What are they thinking?” and “Why do I have to take this anymore?”

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Five Ways to Keep Your Customers
What customers really want is simple, and that is for companies to keep their problems to themselves, and to provide a seamless experience to them when they call, contact, communicate, or go to buy something. To stop customers from running out your door, begin to do these things:

1. Eliminate the customer obstacle course. We deliver discontinuity in the experience where the organizational breaks exist. It is in these hand-offs that customer failures occur, in this customer Bermuda triangle that we’ve created. Simplify the road map for customers. Make it clear for them how they can do business with you in a way that’s actually beneficial to them.

2. Desilo your Web site. Our Web sites are often the cobbled together parts created separately by each company division. Figure out collectively how you will serve customers on your Web site and deliver an on-purpose brand experience.

3. FIX (really) the top-10 issues bugging customers. You can probably recite the biggest customer issues right now. Do something about them. Customers read the lack of action as lack of caring and certainly lack of respect. We all overthink what the customer effort should be. Start by striking these top-10 things from your corporate wide to-do list.

4. Help the front line to listen. It has been programmed to get a certain output. Sometimes this means closing the call within a time frame, and often it includes some kind of cross- or upsell goal. It may be to meet with a quota of customers in a certain time period. Let them be human, give them the skills for listening and understanding, and help the front line deliver to the customers based on their needs.

5. Deliver what you promise. The customers have to strong arm their way through the corporate maze just to get basic things accomplished. They’re exhausted from the wrestling match, they’re annoyed, and they’re telling everyone they know. And, oh by the way–when they get the chance, they’re walking.

You can read the full article here

Great post from OutSystems regarding the use of Agile and Scrum in the application development of Fly.com.

The post summarizes a recent webcast from Max Rayner the CTO of TravelZoo.

Travel Zoo is travel publisher with 18 million subscribers and fly.com is an online app that helps you find the exact match to your air travel needs. During the webcast Max discussed the problem space, their agile approach, the innovative metasearch engine, how they managed a distributed team, challenges, key learnings and reasons for their success.

At the core, we are often asked about using Agile in “real world” scenarios.  The thinking behind the question is likely based on the presumption that Agile works best for internal, low volume applications.  Its great to see TravelZoo and Fly.com see so much success with the approach and the software tool.

The full, original post is located here.