January 1999

Creating A Virtual Call Center Through CTI

BY LEO TOLEDO

CTI and the developing modern call center, driven by emerging technologies and the hard-number realities of business economics, are poised for a radical transformation. An old-fashioned labor shortage may be the biggest single problem facing today's call center manager. The booming economy in many regions of the United States has made it difficult to recruit, train, and retain competent agents, and continuing labor shortages have lessened the usefulness of call center CTI technologies designed to encourage agents to work both harder and smarter. Such shortages often reduce the viability of the customer service mega-centers, prompting many such centers to revisit the plusses and minuses of maintaining a single centralized location. In response to these dynamic market forces, a new CTI-driven call center model is emerging: the virtual call center.

Call centers are a natural and obvious application for CTI technology, but until recently, computer telephony within the call center universe has focused on such applications as delivering screen pops before the agent took the call and employing Automatic Number Identification (ANI) to trigger database lookups or to determine where the call should be routed. The integration of interactive voice response (IVR) applications brought another level of automation to the modern call center, prompting the caller for keypad or spoken input to activate database-driven responses.

These and other technologies are designed to reduce call-handling times and thus increase the call handling volume of the agent. However, shifting economies are changing the way call centers are managed. For the CTI industry, the good news is that those changes are also creating an expanded new definition of computer telephony integration.

DYNAMIC CALL CENTERS
The new configuration for customer service consists of multiple, smaller call center operations distributed in strategic geographic locations and linked by CTI technologies. This distributed multi-site model lets operators set up shop in regions with greater employee availability. It avoids the turnover and lower productivity problems associated with labor-short market locations, while still delivering the economies of scale associated with a true mega call center. It makes use of today's most advanced connectivity and database technologies, and it leverages the more flexible, open-standards CTI solutions of tomorrow.

This new approach creates, at last, the true virtual call center of the future. By intelligently balancing calls among geographically distributed call centers, the virtual call center maximizes the efficient use of all available customer service resources. Sophisticated measurement and analytical tools give managers both detailed and enterprise-wide perspectives on call center activities, supporting quick adjustments to reduce costs and improve service response.

CTI OPPORTUNITIES IN THE VIRTUAL CALL CENTER
In the new virtual environment, call centers can deploy a new and more expansive set of CTI applications. These innovative applications build on existing CTI solutions, while also utilizing a new generation of open protocols and standardized, interoperable hardware and software components.

The movement toward standards-based technology is one key to the success of the virtual call center. In addition, evolving standards are creating an increasingly stable foundation for computer telephony integration. The true virtual call center requires implementation of sophisticated call distribution, workforce management, and network management technologies. These advanced CTI solutions have been developed and refined and are now being deployed by some of the world's most successful call centers.

Call Routing
Pre-answer intelligent network call routing allows call center managers to create a virtual call center across multiple locations, using multiple carriers and linking automatic call distributors (ACDs) from different vendors. Callers are identified ANI or customer-entered digits and are routed based on user-defined values such as site staffing levels, average call handing times, service level goals, or the time of the day, week, or year.

Call Sharing
Call sharing is a key requirement to the establishment of a true virtual call center. Call sharing utilizes intelligent network call routing, a common database and distributed computing technology that allows calls to be shared among agents at geographically diverse locations. With advanced call sharing, customers receive seamless and consistent service regardless of whether a particular call is handled by an agent in Seattle, Miami, or anywhere in between.

Workforce Management
Of course, to gain the full business and economic benefits of the virtual call center, call center managers must also have a means of planning, monitoring, and controlling their agent workforce activities. Today's more advanced workforce management systems utilize scalable client/server architectures to optimize agent resources at multi-site operations and to provide dynamic staffing data to network call routing technology.

To provide full support for the virtual call center, intelligent network call routing should include workforce management attributes that allow the user to model the impact of pre-answer routing policies on call center goals, such as service levels, abandoned calls, and average handle time and staffing levels by site. Dynamic links between intelligent network call routing and workforce management tools are state of the art, ensuring that pre-answer call routing dynamics are driven by staffing availability at distributed locations. Workforce management, when integrated with the other elements of a virtual call center, allows managers to improve morale by implementing employee schedule preferences.

Network Administration
The final technical element of a virtual call center is network planning and management. A virtual call center can be configured to link multiple ACDs, while integrating workforce management, desktop automation, and call center management functions.

Good network administration would provide an enterprise-wide perspective that includes details on each site and a unified view of the entire virtual call center environment. This CTI system must create a seamless interface between ACD/MIS equipment from multiple vendors located at geographically diverse sites. Managers should be able to pose "what if?" scenarios, evaluate the effect of those changes on call center operations, and communicate changes instantly to all affected users. Finally, this network administration tool should smoothly integrate pre-answer intelligent network call routing, call sharing, and workforce management to fully support the virtual call center.

CONCLUSIONS
Because every call center situation is different, good CTI solutions for multi-site virtual call center operations will:

• Support call sharing among similar and dissimilar ACDs.
• Minimize the need for unnecessary ACD upgrades.
• Ensure fast deployment through products with open standards, versus complex approaches requiring custom software and professional services.

In the world of the multiple site virtual call center, the organization that uses CTI applications to assess the impact of pre-answer call routing on staffing and service levels can attain a competitive advantage. CTI systems that do not allow users to assess site-specific and enterprise service levels would be considered old technology. State of the art CTI technology for the virtual call center allows call centers to manage their networks, human resources, and desktop automation in real time, as part of a seamless and integrated operational process.

The virtual call center is a new CTI approach that answers the real-world demands of today's marketplace. When correctly deployed, it can yield happier employees, more efficient operations, and better customer service.

Leo Toledo is IEX Corporation's director, call center sales. IEX Corporation, with headquarters in Richardson, Texas, is a fast-growing, privately held company. Founded in 1988 and located at the heart of the Telecom Corridor, the company develops products for call centers, telecommunications carriers and private networks. IEX sells its products and services in the USA through its direct sales force and internationally through selected distributors. For more information, please visit the IEX Web site at www.iex.com.