Monthly Archive for July, 2007

Branding 101 - Don’t forget the phone channel

Published
by
Laura Bramschreiber
on July 25, 2007
in callcenter automation
. 0 Comments

Laura

The Oft Forgotten Phone Channel

Try this: go to any shopping mall and take a good look around. Look at the storefronts, the carefully arranged displays, the beautiful people hawking perfumes. A visual feast of delights to assault your senses and make you a true believer… in the brand.

Then call the 800 numbers for these same companies and that’s usually when the needle scratches off the record.

Companies obsess over maximizing the value of every customer touch point and yet, most of them miss the opportunity to engage their customers on a brand level through the phone channel. I would go one step further and say a large portion of these companies have 800 numbers that actual repel customers. The Website Touchtone Hell chronicles some of the most repellent 800 numbers around.

According to a recent article by the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), more than half of support issues are initiated by phone. So, it’s hard to believe companies would intentionally ignore the phone channel. And yet, most callers are still tortured by long hold times, confusing touch-tone menus and repeatedly told to visit a company’s website.

But alas, a glimmer of hope… A handful of companies have figured it out. Companies like American Airlines, Apple and USAA are actually extending their brands through the phone channel with personalized and often proactive service. For example, with the American Airlines ‘Remember Me’ program (see my June 21st comment), the company knows who the caller is and why they’re calling, before they ever speak a word.

In a world where touch-tone hell is still the norm, it’s refreshing when you actually do business with a company that has customer service continuity, whether that service is provided at the ticket counter, on the jet way, or by phone. There are a ton of retail and other companies who would do well to follow the American Airlines lead and invest as much in telephone self-service as they do on storefronts.

But I Just Gave You That Information!

Published
by
Abhijit Barde
on July 17, 2007
in caller experience
. 0 Comments

Abhijit BardeIt happens all the time.

I call a customer service line, navigate through a series of menus, provide all the relevant information – all along a comforting voice assuring me that I will be “connected to right specialist” – and when I finally reach an agent, I have to answer the same questions all over again.

It is frustrating.

It is waste of time for everyone.

A well integrated voice system that can deliver a “well-primed” caller to the agent can shave off 2-5 minutes of precious agent talk time – thus improving agent productivity.

But the real benefit is improved caller satisfaction and reduced aggravation as a result of not having to repeat the same answers to a live agent.

Organizations strike a balance between agent staffing levels and customer satisfaction by rolling out rich, data-aware voice applications to pre-screen and prepare the calls that are then delivered to agents.

However, the infrastructure complexities and costs involved in implementing such utopian ideas can alienate most organizations.

Come to think of it, in today’s world of instant messaging, on demand audio/video downloads, ubiquitous wireless hotspots, why do we still have antiquated telephone systems that can’t transfer phone data to an agent’s desktop?

That’s all there is to it.  Really!

So where does the data get lost? The underlying problem lies with the fact that we can’t attach data to a telephone call itself.  It has to be sent via a separate network (usually IP) and the data and the call needs to be synchronized to reach the right agent at the right time.

Today, CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) solutions perform the magic of providing transport of call data to agent’s desktop.  Most CTI solutions in the market are proprietary and can get expensive if the enterprise has multiple call centers with disparate systems from multiple vendors.

This gets further complicated if the calls are outsourced to an offshore location. However, a few technologies are reducing the cost and infrastructure barriers to implement a CTI solution. These systems use clever techniques to hold the call state in the network throughout the duration of the call — irrespective of where is call is terminating (local call centers or offshore centers). This allows associated call data to be stored centrally and can be accessed from any web browser.

On top of that, this kind of network architecture requires zero infrastructure investments at premise level.Things look brighter on the horizon as well. With SIP-VoIP along with SIP call control extensions (such as ECMA TR/87) tomorrow’s telephony system will be able interoperate more easily on open standards.

Using SIP, it will be much easier to associate call information to the call which stays with the call as the call gets forwarded to various SIP endpoints. After the underlying CTI plumbing is taken care of, this kind of architecture open a door to a whole suite of cool features that can be implemented cost effectively.

Typically, if you talk to any one who has worked on CTI implementation, more likely the person will talk in terms of key-value pairs. That’s the extent of information richness of the traditional CTI applications. Some of the sophisticated CTI solutions that can be implemented are:

Call Analytics: Imagine agent getting a screen-pop with a brief snapshot of how has the caller navigated during the automated call. Agents at a glance can figure out what options the caller has chosen in the speech app, how long he has been on hold, reason for calling.

Caller Analytics: While the call analytics provides rich information about the current call, the caller information can be tied to CRM systems like salesforce.com or Oracle to figure out how often this caller has contacted the company, reasons for calling, customer preferences, and customer life cycle stage.  Based on this information, agent can then provide personalized service to the caller.The possibilities are endless.

Once the CTI infrastructure hurdles are overcome, it takes little effort for companies to improve customer satisfaction and make sure I never have to say “But I just gave you that information!“