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proposed modern Contact Center. One direct result of the fusion is the creation of absolutely consistent and automated enterprise level reports. This links each contact, regardless of channel and medium, to an accounting of the first responder, intermediate and final responses taken.
The availability of end to end transaction reports will eliminate the need for trying to match inbound contacts with CRM documentation, this means the call center manager/supervisor can easily now associate the total level of effort for each transaction. This will enable:
- Better staff planning.
- Better understanding of each type of transaction i.e. the length of call paired with the issue description and better feedback to the agents. It is a significant improvement over guessing which contact matches which issue in your CRM system.
- In-depth analysis, leading to better benchmarks for each type of issue handled by the center.
- Objective evaluation of the strengths of each agent based on the call time versus the documentation time and accuracy of the documentation to the call. “Quality systems do this today when both the voice and the system screens are captured but for a limited volume of calls. A fully integrated IVR/CRM solution ensures that all calls are now captured to allow trending or in depth analysis.” (Melody Aires, Call Center Specialist)
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This example unfortunately also shows how call centers concentrate still on delivering a unified message and not on solving the caller’s real concern. Currently electrical company call centers use IVR announcements to advise callers of major service interruptions as early in the customer’s call as possible. This type of “self help” announcement eliminates much of the call volume that continues to an agent, eliminating the need for restrictive customer responses - but only when IVR self help systems are integrated to real time reports from the fast reaction responder teams working the power infrastructure. Adding an IVR update thread to the service management alarm/alert function would close that loop quickly. Building on the fusion of Contact Center and Incident/Problem Management systems, collaborative SOA systems can make this solution work efficiently. We predict tools will move in this direction.
Self service is important, but does not substitute for the perception of belonging provided by personal contact. Collaboration of call center technology and OSS systems can enable a great balance of self service and personal touch, but only if the correct customer policies are chosen.
Great Leap
When Collaborative SOA technology is added to the CC and CIM systems and these are linked to similar SOA enabled corporate support infrastructures, a new level of customer attention becomes possible. In the late nineties, Grove delivered the first general, commercial implementation of the collaborative workspace. Inside the TMF a Javaspace-based, collaborative workspace was demonstrated as part of the Fine Grained
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Melody provides this example of how this issue directly affects Contact Center performance:
“In reviewing call stats at the agent level, there is a need to investigate long duration calls to determine why the call was over the target talk time and handle time. To determine why a call took longer than expected the call needs to be associated to a CRM or some type of ticketing system documentation. To find the right ticket you must search by inbound ANI to find the account and then search the account records to find the incident report. This process is very time consuming for a supervisor or manager, and may not yield a match.
For example, in the deregulated electric power industry there are times when power outages cause huge spikes in call volume, during these high call volume periods agents are instructed not to quote a repair time to the customer or create trouble tickets as the outage is a known issue. During a routine review of an agent’s call handling statistics we found one agent that consistently had a 20 second longer handle time the comparative agents. Unfortunately no recordings were available of the calls nor could we find any data to indicate why the calls were so long. After an exhaustive search we found the agent was opening a trouble report for each call and telling the customer the repair time. This took days to find and pair with the calls. It resulted in feedback to the agent to cease documenting and quoting repair times for known outages. If we had better reporting we could have found these quickly and stopped the agent from making the same mistake over and over.”
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NGOSS Catalyst. Javaspace tools are now available as open source licenses. These systems allow a direct conferencing of the customer centric contact agent, the repair team, the customer account executive and, of course, the customer. Direct interaction will increase cohesion when everyone is polite and informed. There will be no hand off delays or worse, lost interactions. Everyone sees the same data, communicates via conference chat or conference call, and shares in the solution – buy-in is complete and absolutely auditable.
Because collaboration workspaces are just entering the market in wide acceptance, we expect that these will first be used with “captive” client populations such as independent sales agents, globally dispersed workforces, and membership organizations. This will provide the real life laboratory in which to work out the best polices and procedures around this budding technology.
We are bullish about the impact of real integration and the synergies to be derived from the new tools. Our enthusiasm is somewhat tempered however by our bet that Contact Center management and rewards will lag too far behind to reap all of the possible benefits. We will keep you posted on our results as the first truly integrated Contact Centers come on line – stay tuned!
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