trouble tickets by the modern Contact Center. Ideally each group should access the same customer relationship management tools from the first to last contact with a customer. This will result in end-to-end process accountability, better information collection, and a greater sense of belonging and responsibility on the part of all the elements of a company, as they jointly interact to solve a problem. And we showed how the advent of IP telephony, multimedia, email, chat, and collaborative web browsing are tools that empower the customer in interactions with the company. Now we explore how some specific technologies that are utilized in the Contact Center can improve the inter-working of other groups in the larger company.

When the customer interaction is easily directed to short-term interactions, which can be resolved by the Contact Center agent [today usually called a customer service representative (CSR)] suffice, today’s Contact Center applications technology enables a well-engineered machine. Calls, chats or emails are answered in short order. Agents are monitored or recorded for post call analysis and subsequent agent training and tuning of the message. Elaborate work scheduling applications insure the correct CSR coverage for any skill group at any time. The old check lists and scripts followed by older Call Centers have become comprehensive, query-based knowledge systems and topic-driven identification of referrals. While this may suffice for identifying and expediting the replacement of a broken phone, this engineering, which is geared to a CSR spending the least time possible on a call, in order to clear the greatest number of calls in a day, is unsuitable to the longer-duration issues typically experienced in the SOC/NOC resolution process. No longer is the ‘shortest time to clear the call’ a reasonable goal. Bell Canada discovered this when they instituted a pilot project to record all calls arriving their call center.

Bell Canada’s Use of Analytics

At the May IMCI Call Center demo and conference in Dallas, Bell Canada described their impressive results after initiating a project to explore recording calls as a method for improving the interactions of their CSRs with customers. In call center jargon, this recording and analysis is called Analytics. Impressive new applications, in part enabled by IP telephony and in part by the reduction in storage costs for digital calls, allow a company to seriously consider recording every single call that reaches a CSR. And not just the voice is recorded, the screens on the customer service desk are captured (or the chats or web browsing) allowing the complete interaction to be stored for later analysis. Bell Canada established a pilot program to record a majority of the calls arriving at the call center for their Media delivery service.