January 1999

With CTI Technology, The Customer Can Be Always Right

BY JAMES WETTERAU, TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS COMPANY

Does your firm embrace the philosophy, "the customer is always right"? Of course, any business that wants to stay competitive in today's marketplace would say yes. The real question is, what have you done to live by this philosophy? To prove your commitment to customer service, you must equip your service centers with technology that enables you to retain existing customers and attract new ones. Customer service systems that use computer-telephony integration (CTI) provide a fast, accurate service that addresses a wider range of customer concerns than traditional call center systems.

CTI merges telephone and computer technology to provide faster access to more information and a smooth transition between the telephone conversation and access to caller information. It allows companies to provide better customer service by giving service agents an accurate customer profile when customers call. It also reduces your cost per call because it requires a small number of agents to support it.

CTI Utilization Today
CTI systems allow your call centers to rapidly and accurately resolve a customer's concerns based on the complexity of those concerns and the customer's value to your company. When a customer calls a company's hot line to reach a service agent, the call is routed through the telephone network to a corporate automatic call distribution (ACD) system. A CTI server routes the call to an interactive voice response system (IVR), which may satisfy the customer's needs and eliminate the need to speak to an agent. If the concern cannot be resolved on the IVR level, the IVR will qualify the customer's information by collecting data about the caller. The IVR then routes the call to a service agent.

The CTI software then instructs a middleware server to display a "screen pop" that contains all of the customer's essential information on an agent's workstation. As the agent talks with the caller, the agent collects and enters additional information into the database.

When the agent finishes the call, the associated data record is closed out and the agent is ready to receive another call. CTI also keeps detailed records of the call length, disposition and agent assignment. The end result is a satisfied customer who will be more inclined to continue to do business with that company.

CTI As A Management Tool
Because CTI systems record specific information about every call made to the call center, they are great tools for call center managers. CTI systems collect call volume, call time, abandoned calls and other data to determine what level of service a given customer should receive. Management can use this information to track the progress of corporate strategies to retain and attract new customers. If call volumes or abandoned calls increase, management can react and better meet customer needs.

CTI systems also collect this data by type of customer inquiry so that customer service can be categorized according to each customer's importance and value to the company. This way a call center can make sure it gives its company's high-value customers the appropriate level of service when they call with a concern.

Case Study Of A CTI-Enabled Call Center
At one health care service organization, CTI systems significantly cut costs and improved its call center's performance. Before CTI systems were implemented, the call center consisted of disparate paper records and a manual call transfer process. Agents were required to explain the nature of the call to the caller before they could transfer the caller. The database was limited and did not work as efficiently when forced to handle large call volumes.

This organization decided it had to introduce new services, increase marketing and provide better customer service. The CTI-enabled system deployed by the company improved recordkeeping, call and data transfers, and better handled increased call volume. A CTI product was installed on a Windows NT platform instead of going with an expensive ACD LAN upgrade. The agent phones that were connected to the ACDs are now plugged into the CTI server's ports. This allows the CTI server to use the ACD as a transmission path and to control the call routing. The health organization also incorporated with customer service software, which provides a much richer repertoire of information on formatted screens. This product is also compatible with the Call Link CTI software and allows agents to view screen pops that contain customer information.

The health organization's customer service call center experienced dramatic improvement in the first six months after CTI systems were deployed. Call volume doubled without creating a need to hire additional agents. The organization's virtual call center also reduced the cost per call because they experienced only a slight increase in the need for service agents to support the CTI systems. Customer satisfaction is also improved because the agents have much more accurate customer information to help customers.

CTI And The Future
CTI systems will enjoy a successful future as more companies recognize how much they will add to their customer service organizations. Companies will reap the benefits of higher call volume coupled with reduced cost per call rates. Once organizations learn how CTI systems improve convenience, recordkeeping and call handling, they will be hard pressed to return to systems comprised of simple call transfer and separate data records.

James Wetterau is a principal with Technology Solutions Company working with advanced network computing. He has more than 30 years of networking solutions experience in LAN and WAN technologies. He has helped clients integrate data and telephony in their customer service centers as they deploy CTI technology.

BY ROXANNE KOHLIN, SARATOGA SYSTEMS, INC.

Out Of Focus
I recently had occasion to call the customer service department at the bank that holds the mortgage on our house. After going through five levels of voice interactive menus, and waiting for over 15 minutes on hold, I hear, "This is Jeff, may I help you?" I put down the soda I was in the middle of gulping, and, nearly choking, said, "Yes. Please." Jeff (name changed, to protect myself from a lawsuit) then asked me for some pertinent information to pull up my loan record. I then had to confirm all the information they had about my loan record and me. Finally, we got to the point where I could explain the reason for my call. After a lengthy explanation, Jeff informed me that he had no authority to perform the action I was requesting. He transferred me.

After holding for another 10 minutes (thank heavens I have a speaker telephone!), I was connected to Dorothy (name changed again). After giving Dorothy my loan number and confirming my address and phone again (you see, my record did not follow when Jeff transferred me to another service agent), I explained the reason for my call. As you can probably already guess, Dorothy was not able to perform my requested action either, but assured me she knew who could. My protestations at yet another transfer were stymied by her confidence that the next person could really help me! She transferred me.

I waited. The phone rang and rang. ("At least I'm not in a queue," I thought happily. "Perhaps this person really WILL be able to help me!") After more rings than I cared to count (I stopped counting at 50), the phone was answered by Margaret (of course by now you know that's not her name). Although I had to AGAIN give my loan record number so Margaret could access my account; she did not make me verify the information after I told her I had done that twice already. Luckily for me, after about 45 to 50 minutes (most of which was on hold), I was able to get the service I requested without another transfer.
I hung up.

Of course, I will need to call next week, to make sure the request was processed. After my previous experiences with this company, I have learned not to trust them. You may be interested to know that we have refinanced - with a different bank! Had the first bank employed CTI applications, the outcome may have been different.

Call centers today are undergoing (or at least attempting to undergo) some of the most sweeping changes in their history. Managers focus on the "bottom-line," attempting to turn service centers into "profit centers." Call center representatives are constantly urged to focus on not only providing service, but to remind customers of past-due bills, market new products, upsell, cross-sell, and hurry up and get the heck off the phone so they can answer more calls!

Hence, customers can feel frustrated trying to find the right agent to deal with their issues, then ultimately rushed off the phone when they do get routed to the right department. Is this really customer service - or is it merely disregarded by companies as an expensive, but necessary, function? What effects will these experiences have on customer loyalty and retention?

Today's call centers need to change from being product or service-oriented to being customer-oriented, i.e., customer-focused. Customers want (and should be able) to have one phone call do it all. With computer-telephony integration (CTI) in their applications, call centers can easily provide this desirable service.

What Is CTI?
CTI is the combination of telephone and computer technology. This combination enables voice and data processing equipment to work together so that information may be exchanged in a more expedient, efficient manner.

Put another way, computer telephony is the underlying technology that coordinates the actions of computers and telephone systems. This technology has existed in commercial form since the mid-1980s, but it has been exploited in only a few niche markets - particularly in large call centers, where call volumes could easily justify the cost of complex, custom-built systems.

At first, applications that were "nonvoice" required a distinct set of dedicated "terminal equipment" (a telephony term for any user device connected to the telephone network). Facsimile machines conversed only with other facsimile machines, computer devices sent data files only to other computer devices, etc. But in the 1990s, the disparate sets of equipment have begun to overlap, and "general-purpose" computers have emerged as a point of convergence. Today, computers can send and receive most any kind of information that passes through the telephone network. They can act as facsimile machines; they can interact with human speakers through voice synthesis and recognition; and they send and receive data in numerous formats. These same computers may also house numerous records of data about your customer base, with not only the obvious address and phone number, but also the products they own, their ordering and billing information and often, much more. It is this convergence, with the general-purpose computer serving as the interface point as well as the data store, which makes computer telephony so intriguing and potentially valuable to companies providing service to their customers via the telephone.

The first computer-telephone applications concentrated on media processing, with only limited call control functions. Many of the first voice mail systems answered only incoming calls, presented a greeting and then recorded the caller's message. Such systems consisted primarily of media processing functions, with call control functions limited to detecting a ring, answering the call and hanging up after the message had been taken. By comparison, newer telephony applications have incorporated services like calling line identification (CLID) which allows for lookups by incoming phone number in these rich customer data stores, thereby providing screen "pops" of the customer record prior to the customer service agent answering the phone.

How Does CTI Focus My Call Center Application?
CTI can enable you to deploy customer relationship management (CRM) applications that monitor or control calls, whether they are intended for large call center environments or for use on individual desktop PCs. CT-integrated applications can perform standard telephony activities such as making, transferring or receiving calls. The CTI-empowered application adds value to your CRM system by retrieving data relevant to a call or displaying information about customers before the call is answered, or in the case of outbound calls, before it is placed.

A CTI-enabled application can favorably affect productivity and make for one-stop customer service by allowing agents to:

• Collect data from the caller via the system (e.g., an interactive voice response unit),
• Route calls to appropriate agents based on the input from the customer,
• View details of the customer's account record (via screen pop) prior to answering the call.

This can be accomplished without any input from the agent. In the case of systems that utilize automatic numbering identification (ANI) or calling line ID (CLID), when either inbound or outbound calls are placed, that number is passed to the application for lookup in the database. The customer record "pops" up on the agent's screen as the call is ringing. In the case where an IVR is being used, a customer can enter a particular identifying number (e.g., account number) which the CTI application then uses to look up the customer's account record and display it automatically on the agent's desktop.

Other functions that CTI-enabled applications allow include:

• Transferring the customer record to another agent along with the call itself,
• Placing outbound calls directly from the application in the computer screen,
• Placing multiple calls, one right after another (progressive dialing) without having to touch the telephone handset.

When customer relationship management systems are shared throughout the enterprise, queries about outstanding orders can be answered quickly and new orders may be placed without having to duplicate customer details that are already in the system. Data entered or created by other departments may be shared, allowing customers' questions to be answered by any agent as opposed to having to be transferred to the department that "owns" the data or is allowed access to those particular screens. Plus, customers won't have to reiterate information if, for some reason, they do need to be transferred to other departments, which is a big plus in your customer's eyes.

The Customer Is The Focus
Using my mortgage bank's customer service application as an example, here is what that scenario could look like with a CTI-empowered application:

"This is Jeff. I'm sorry we've kept you waiting for the last six minutes! What may I help you with, Ms. Kohlin?"

"Oh, you know who I am - and how long I've been waiting?"

"Yes, Ms. Kohlin. When your call was transferred to me, I got your account record and how long you've been in our wait queue along with it. Are you still at 3350 Your Street in Yourtown, USA?"

"Yes, I am."

"Great, then our record is up-to-date. Are you by chance calling about your request last week to forward the escrow impound balance to your personal bank account?"

"As a matter of fact, I was."

"OK. Well, according to the note I have on your record, the money was transferred yesterday afternoon, and it should be acredited to your bank account by this afternoon."

"Wonderful! I appreciate your help. Did you perform this transaction?"

"No, Margaret in our payment processing department did, but she wrote a note in our system that allows me to see what occurred. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"I don't suppose you can tell me the date the loan was paid off, can you? Do you need to transfer me to the payment department?"

"Certainly I can tell you, Ms. Kohlin! According to the system, the payment department recorded the loan as paid in full on the 27th. You should be receiving the letter of confirmation of payment by the 5th, since it was sent on the 29th."

"Well, Jeff, that answers all the questions I had. Thank you so much for your help."

I hung up, thinking I will refer this company to my friends and associates. They are focused on their customer - me!

Roxanne Kohlin is product management director for Saratoga Systems, Inc., which has been a developer and supplier of customer relationship management (CRM) software for more than 11 years. Saratoga's business solutions and enabling technologies, including AvenueService and AvenueCTI, provide for complete, yet customizable, out-of-the-box solutions that help result in fast, readily-adapted customer relationship system implementations.