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A Unified solution eliminates the reporting difficulties presented by a conglomeration of point solutions. All channels report through a single system. As a result, all information on agents, queues, resolution status, and other key metrics, are automatically consolidated across all communications channels. A Unified solution also resolves the issues presented by multiple systems with multiple business rules. All rules related to routing, workflow, agent skills, and prioritization are managed centrally. Any change, input a single time, is reflected across all elements. The result is easier administration, more effective routing, and more accurate and consistent treatment of customers. A Unified solution provides the total customer view required as well. With all customer contact points managed from a single platform, agents can more easily access all relevant information, regardless of the communication channel. The result is faster, more accurate resolution of customer issues, more productive, less frustrated agents, and more satisfied customers. As an alternative to a collection of disparate point systems, a Unified contact center solution provides the benefits of consolidated reporting, consistent business rules, and a total customer view without requiring complex, time consuming, expensive custom system integration. The net result is a comprehensive multimedia contact center solution that controls the chaos and delivers real benefits to managers, agents and customers. |
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Advantages
of an Intergrated Call Center6
Critical Benefits
of an Enterprise-Wide Call CenterWhat
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| Wiyaka(CMA) provides consulting services for call centers. New technologies and management techniques are changing call centers dramatically. The potential for serving customers better, expanding opportunities for agents, and increasing efficiency is tremendous. Wiyaka understands the trends and their implications. We can help you identify appropriate technologies and guide you through planning, implementation, and management issues. |
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An enterprise-wide, integrated call center solution, in which a single, large-scale center or group of regional centers meet all of an organization's needs, requires a set of capabilities and technologies that can meet several stringent requirements:
Identify and implement technology that does the following:
As call centers mature and grow, the one thing you can count on is change--change in technology, personnel, processes, products, services, and customers. An organization must be able to shift gears quickly to meet new business needs. Unfortunately, integrating new systems and technologies can often take many months, which is more than enough time for the business environment to change completely.
A multimedia contact center strategic plan is an opportunity to look at the big picture of how the separate components interrelate. It's important to start the process free of preconceptions and to keep all options open. Don’t assume that anything is sacred, but do respect your staff's views. A call center strategic plan typically includes analyses of the following:
Whatever the scope of the project, we always keep the caller in mind. It is our goal to find the primary reason for the calls. If your center generates sales, each call is potential revenue and should be encouraged at every opportunity. If your center provides customer service only, look for ways to reduce call volume; not by discouraging callers, but by making it unnecessary for them to call. In many centers, a high percentage of callers are concerned with only a few issues. Could you improve your brochures and other communications so that customers don’t have as many questions? While reviewing equipment, Wiyaka will ascertain its capabilities and actual utilization in the call center. Often, helpful features have not been activated. Learning your systems' potential is necessary to get your money's worth. Vendors frequently release upgrades offering new, more efficient technology. Is anyone in your organization in charge of researching the market to keep an eye on technology trends and migration, the "wonders of modern science?" Wiyaka does this on an ongoing basis by staying abreast not only technology trends, but what is being successfully adopted.
Network-based offerings are also evolving rapidly, and many of the newer products are terrific for controlling costs and improving service. Entirely new services may exist as well. Does your current service plan and pricing structure suit your needs? Are you blocking calls with busy signals or opening the network to hackers due to lax security? Is networking among multiple sites really necessary, and if so, is it deployed effectively?
Any kind of automated answering system (IVR/VRU) or automated attendant menus should be carefully reviewed with particular attention to scripts. Are they up to date, documented, easy for the caller to understand? Do they feed calls to the right ACD groups? During one particular audit, we found a number of scripts that routed calls to the same ACD group and served no purpose except to increase the hold time, not to mention customer frustration. In another case, over 15 percent of callers selected numbers on the phone that did not correspond to any script option. We later discovered that this was due to frequent script changes. So, once your scripts are accurate, try not to change them too often. Wiyaka will check your VRU completion rate, as well as its trend, to determine whether your automated system is doing the amount of work you expect. We will also provide the appropriate technical specifications necessary to support FTB’s business/service requirements to facilitate the replacement of the Brite Connect IVR.
CRM is a business strategy that focuses on the customer as the core of the business. It has become synonymous with a group of applications that are designed to consolidate all that is known about a customer and their history into a single location. All customer-facing employees and media (web, IVR, branchs, fax, email, etc.) can then access this location to insure that consistent, correct information is passed to the customer. CRM can be deployed in steps, each with specific strategic objectives. For example, one may be providing screen pops to the agents of the customer’s information with their telephone call. Without CRM, the most that can be screen popped is one or two pieces of basic information. In all cases, CRM requires access to a central customer database. CRM applications provide detail activity reports in a consolidated format. In some cases, activities normally requiring manual entries on the phone (entering call type, wrap time, etc.) can be performed by the agent in the CRM application while they are working with the customer’s data.
It is widely recognized that a Call Center runs on its numbers, its reports. To run an effective contact center, accurate and comprehensive reporting is essential. You must know the status of queues, campaigns, agents, and other metrics. Generating these reports for a single system can be challenging enough; consolidating them across multiple systems handling multiple contact media can be a nightmare. If an agent spends four hours handling inbound telephone calls, two hours responding to email, plus one hour on web chat sessions, can you easily determine that that agent actually worked seven hours? If a customer requiring technical support sent an email two days ago, conducted a web chat session on the same issue yesterday, and followed up with a telephone call today, can you accurately measure the time required to resolve the problem? One solution to this reporting problem is to build custom interfaces between each disparate point product handling each communication channel. The cost of building these custom interfaces, however, is significant and this cost is typically on-going. As each element of the system changes – for example, you upgrade your IVR or your ACD –the interfaces to other systems may need to be modified. In short order, you may well find that a growing portion of your budget is being absorbed by system integration expenses, leaving fewer resources for other priorities There is a price in terms of time as well as money. Because of the custom system integration work required to build and maintain multiple interfaces between disparate systems, implementing upgrades and adding new capabilities is delayed.
To run an effective contact center requires well-defined business rules. These govern how contacts are handled, priorities followed, agents assigned, and other key actions are executed. Establishing these business rules takes time, and they must be regularly monitored and adjusted as conditions change. To optimize performance in a contact center handling multiple communication channels, the business rules should be input and maintained consistently across all channels. For example, when a customer moves into premium status, that change should be reflected in how they are treated in inbound telephone queues, email and web chat queues, the IVR and perhaps in the logging/recording procedures as well. Similarly, when an agent is certified for a new skill and capable of handling a new set of customer issues, that agent ’s new skills should be identified in all the systems which could route a customer to that agent. This capability is essential to intelligent routing of customer contacts. In most contact centers, however, maintaining consistent and accurate business rules involves managing them separately in each disparate system with each new entry or change. With hundreds of agents and thousands of customers, it is easy to see how this process could quickly prove burdensome. One solution, again, is custom systems integration. But as discussed in regard to reporting, custom system integration involves significant downside: high expense and long delays.
In our review, one key technology element deserves the highest priority; a customer database housing all that is known about the customer. The database must archive and associate every multimedia channel selected by a customer to complete a transaction. A typical problem in a contact center handling multiple customer contact channels is consolidating all relevant information in a single database where the agent can actually use it effectively. Too often, if a customer participates in a web chat, then sends an email, and then follows that with a telephone call, the contact center sees three customers, not one. The agent handling the last contact, the phone call, is completely unaware of the web session or the email. The lack of information is frustrating to the agent and to the customer.
When it comes to staffing and management, you're probably well aware of how staffing affects service. However, we will dig deeper and look at part-time personnel utilization, as well as general hiring practices, and how these impact your turnover and absentee rates. Watch how your call center's performance is affected by training programs, staff coaching, quality monitoring, supervisory ratio, reports and management tools usage, and management efficiency in general.
There has recently been much emphasis on process reengineering, and some amount may be needed. You want to do the job well, but at the same time, make sure the job focuses on the right things. There is little benefit in automating a process that could simply be eliminated.
In the final analysis, everything must work together. All systems must transmit accurate information, and communications between the call center and other departments must be effective. Transfers within the center must ensure callers a smooth (or invisible) transition. Customer satisfaction and fast call handling may no longer be enough. Customers want their calls resolved during the first contact, and management wants the work to yield the greatest return on the investment.