January 2000

BY RICH TEHRANI,
GROUP PUBLISHER, TMC

Daily, I am bombarded with e-mail requests from companies desperate to learn how to integrate e-commerce, CRM and contact center technology into a cohesive business strategy. I try to answer these questions, but it is impossible to give each question the attention it deserves. To make matters worse, many of the messages I receive contain requests for a short list of companies with a particular specialty in integration for a certain company size.

At the last CTI™ EXPO (which has now become Communications Solutions™ Expo), CRM companies were in their glory. Companies are in a frenzy to start serving their customers before they lose them forever to competitors. When your competition is a Web click away and service is a key differentiator, a lack of world-class service means you might as well begin posting the "going out of business" sign.

I feel compassion for companies striving to put together a cohesive strategy to serve their customers effectively. Technology changes rapidly and numerous acquisitions make choosing products more difficult than ever.

In the November 1999 issue of this magazine, I discussed reverse auctions and how a company called buyingedge.com was at the forefront of this technology. I further went on to mention that the individuals who created this company, now called buyersedge.com, are from IMA, which has been producing call center software since the early 1980s. To put this in perspective, IMA's products were launched more than a decade before most other players in the CRM market even existed. The problem with many companies that have been in existence this long is that they are out of touch with technology, but IMA is still at the forefront, as evidenced by their buyersedge.com affiliation. The length of related experience at IMA led me to believe that it would be logical to address the multiple questions I receive through a Q&A session with IMA’s president, Al Subbloie. A transcript of this meeting of the minds follows.

How does a call center that is just learning to become a contact center become the heart of a company’s e-commerce strategy?

Over the past three years, most companies have created separate organizations between the call center and their e-commerce initiatives. The reason for this was the feeling that e-commerce business requirements are very different than call center requirements, requiring very different skills and technologies for e-commerce implementations. This strategy has created another silo to integrate, increasing the challenge for the call center and the Web center to integrate toward a complete contact center, and sometimes confusing the actual customer with an inconsistent response.

The first thing a company must do is look at the problem differently. Instead of viewing the contact center requirements from the inside, or seller’s point of view, the company must look at the problem from the buyer’s perspective. Customers’ demands for products and services do not discriminate between channels, begging for consistent treatment across all contact center channels, either voice or electronic. Customers do not care very much about technology, but do care about quick and personalized responses, no matter how they choose to demand service.
The e-commerce boom is forcing companies to implement both agent-assisted and automated response technology, fully integrated between the call center and the e-center, resulting in a complete contact center solution.

A burning question remains, however. Should it be the call center or the e-center that takes the lead in this transformation? This will vary by company, but the call center has the history and experience to provide world-class service in most organizations, while the e-center today has the unique position of understanding the recent technological advances available for electronic response, which is still in its infancy.

The right answer is to put these two organizations under the same roof.

What should you be aware of before you implement next-generation contact center technology in your company?

Most important is the need to view the technology from the customer’s viewpoint, as opposed to the company’s. This is a common mistake made by most organizations, and it usually results in an inconsistent experience for the customer, who should be the most important constituent in the relationship between company and customer.

A second important element is an understanding of all the available technology for response management from the voice channel to the electronic channels of e-mail and Web interactions. Many of these technologies are new and changing faster than most companies can keep pace with.

A third consideration is a sound strategy for integrating the inevitable patchwork of unique but advanced technologies that support response management across the varying channels. These technologies are offered by many different vendors, none of which support an integrated offering.

How can a company integrate the many disparate databases and types of contact methods into a seamless CRM/eCRM strategy?

It is postulated by the analyst community that a complete voice-to-Web contact center offering will not be available from a single vendor for several years.

This belief is causing many companies to implement point solutions for immediate challenges in the contact center, such as e-mail and Web response, without an organized strategy for integrating the contact center. This undoubtedly results in a patchwork approach that is difficult to maintain and may not reach acceptable response levels for the customer across channels. The costs are also very high for integration and total cost of ownership of a complete contact center solution given the custom integration approach of what could be as many as 10 different vendor points.

There is a more intelligent way to solve this problem. A few vendors, such as IMA, are getting very creative by coming to market faster with a foundational technology strategy that provides the fabric for integrating these multiple point solutions. This fabric is called the customer management platform, which out of the box ties together the many different vendor point solutions required in the contact center from voice to Web, and also elegantly supports change. In the end, the integration of these technologies will be even more important than the point solutions that make up the integrated solution. In short, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Without this fabric approach, a company must either hire or become a systems integrator to perform this integration, and the need for constant change will be an ongoing development effort over the life of the solution, resulting in a much greater total cost of ownership.

How do call center outsourcers fit into the CRM equation?

Call center outsourcers have traditionally complemented an organization’s CRM strategy by providing highly productive relationship management for the call center component of the company’s total CRM approach. Over the past two years, the outsourcing industry, primarily set up for voice channel support, experienced a general slowdown in growth. This was primarily due to the overall increase in Web traffic, which was at the expense of decreases in voice traffic.

More recently, some outsourcing firms have successfully reengineered themselves to provide both voice and Web interaction management. These companies have seen a rebound in growth due the successful implementation of electronic forms of response management. It is clear that this industry’s future success in the CRM equation will be based on the successful integration of the electronic channels with the contact center. Given the complexity of these electronic channel technologies, outsourcers can grow by offering value-added services along with proven call center capabilities.

What do outsourcers need to do to make themselves ready for the future?

Outsourcers face many of the same challenges other companies face. The requirement to provide the integrated contact center is real, and must be solved by the outsourcer to enable world-class service to the customer. The advantage for the outsourcer in the short term is that few corporations have solved this problem, leaving a window of opportunity open for approximately 15 to 18 months for the outsourcer to offer a unique set of capabilities to the typically slower-moving corporate community. Also, since the outsourcer has the advantage of being the best at providing call center service, the extension to electronic contact services should naturally be placed with the same outsourcing firm.

The next 15 to 18 months will mark a resurgence of growth in the outsourcing industry, but more importantly, there will be a separation of winners and losers in this industry based on these players’ success or failure in adopting integrated contact center technology and philosophies supporting e-commerce.

What is the most promising new technology that will affect our ability to forge successful customer relationships?

Key technologies are those that support electronic response management, such as e-mail response, Web chat, voice over IP, personalization, self-service and channel management. However, rather than focus on any of these individual eCRM application offerings, many of which are relatively new, it may be more appropriate to focus on the concept of component OO technology and Java. The reason for this is based on the looming problem created by these point solutions. While each is solving a specific business problem in total, these eCRM offerings are creating a much bigger long-term business problem: integrating consistently and easily to treat customers equally and according to their expectations across all channels. As a result, the only way to proceed with more than 8 to 10 offerings from as many vendors is to create standards, or underlying fabrics, off-the-shelf to support the integrated approach. Only a true component approach can work given the complexity of weaving this fabric from multiple threads. The result must be interchangeable and scalable at the same time.

The bar has gone up for the vendor community to provide and adhere to standards and component designs to accommodate this complex dynamic.

My thanks to Al Subbloie for helping me with this column. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to address them to Al at [email protected] and myself at rtehrani@tmcnet.com.

Sincerely,

Rich Tehrani
Group Publisher
rtehrani@tmcnet.com 

Yes, the world is changing at a rapid pace. As you have read in my interview with Al Subbloie of IMA, implementing a CRM solution today can lead you to hundreds of vendors and still requires you to piece together the disparate technologies yourself. This cannot continue forever and in the end, we can expect one of two outcomes. Either a handful of vendors will be left standing after a whirlwind of acquisitions, or open standards will emerge which allow us to mix and match best-of-breed solutions. Let me offer as an example e-mail routing from one vendor and Web chat from another. These disparate systems will need to share information from a common repository.

So how do we address a market that moves as fast as contact centers and CRM? We need to face the fact that the world is not slowing down and dependence on technology increases daily.

The one bit of advice I can offer is that under no circumstances should you sit on the sidelines. You need to research heavily and begin to implement the latest technologies in your organization. Trade magazines such as this one are a great place to get started, especially when augmented with the Web. The only missing link is trade shows, the one place where you can see live demos, interact with your peers and engage in real-time question-and- answer sessions.

I compare the blinding pace of CRM technology advancements to the continuous processor performance gains seen in the PC market. You know that as soon as you buy a PC it is on its way to obsolescence, yet you realize that you need PCs to stay in business. The CRM market is in a similar situation.

In light of the fact that there are so many shows to choose from, the important decision on your part is how to decide which event best suits your needs. To that end, we have once again put our heads together and come up with the most unique ways for you to benefit from Communications Solutions™ Expo (formerly CTI™ EXPO). Our decades of experience in the call center market help us understand what information you need to make informed decisions about how to implement products and services necessary to your organization.

For example, we pioneered the use of learning centers objective areas on the show floor where you can learn about the latest technologies in a hype-free environment. We have been providing learning centers free of charge to attendees for years because we realize objective education is scarce in this industry and we do our best to provide you access to information that will help make your product selection job easier.

At the next Communications Solutions™ EXPO, to be held April 26-28, 2000 in Washington, D.C., we will have two important learning centers that will be vital sources of information for all readers of this magazine. The first is an E-Sales–E-Service learning center where you will witness the latest products and services that enable your organization to effectively sell and provide first-class service electronically.

Additionally, there will be an ASP (application service provider) learning center that will keep you up-to-date on one of the latest trends in call center products…the absence of these products on-site. In fact, ASPs allow your call center to outsource applications in a manner that frees your company from continually updating the technology in your contact center. ASPs are already providing Web chat services for a variety of large companies and this trend is expected to change the way companies purchase hardware and software in the future. This applies not only to CRM and contact centers, but all industries.

I would like to extend an invitation to you to visit the exhibit hall at Communications Solutions™ Expo, April 26-28 in Washington D.C. If you register today via the Web at www.comsolexpo.com, your registration will be free, saving you $50. I hope to see you there.