June 1998

BY GREGG KERLIN

Solution Vendor: Aspect Telecommunications Corp.

Adaptec is the "bandwidth" company of the computer industry. Specifically, Adaptec's high- performance I/O, connectivity, and network products are incorporated into the systems and products of many computer and peripheral manufacturers. Because it sells highly technical products such as SCSI host adapters and networking cards, Adaptec's call center is critical to providing customers with technical support, answering questions, resolving problems, and fulfilling sales orders. In order to increase both customer satisfaction and employee productivity, Adaptec has implemented computer-telephony integration (CTI) technology as part of its call center strategy.

SOLVING TWO INFORMATION ISSUES
Adaptec's call centers provide live technical support to customers during business hours, and a paging system is in place for after-hours support. The call center also supports a sales group that is essential to fulfilling customer sales orders, especially during special promotions when call volumes skyrocket. Between both technical support and sales, Adaptec receives as many as 2,500-3,000 calls per day, which is nearly one million calls per year.

Adaptec faced two problems with its existing call center system. First, Adaptec was not getting full database entries on customers. The company's call center agents and technicians frequently had insufficient time to enter all the customer information required for the database, as the amount of time required for inputting customer information was often longer than the entire call. This hindered Adaptec's ability to support customers quickly and efficiently, and it made reporting difficult.

The second issue was that customer calls into the center were not routed automatically. Adaptec has 26 technical support groups, most of which specialize in a particular product area or technology. In addition, there are five different sales groups, and all of these specific groups necessitate skill-based routing. But Adaptec's customers were being sent from one group of agents to another with no relationship continuity.

AUTOMATING THE CALL CENTER
Adaptec decided to automate its customer information entry, delivery, and call routing processes with CTI. They chose to integrate the Aspect Telecommunications Prospect CTI System with a third-party help desk (from Remedy Corp.) and Adaptec's own sales automation applications. The total integrated solution provides several new features.

Automated Data Entry And Call Routing
An automatic call distributor (ACD) now prompts callers for specific input, including their phone number, computer operating system, and an Adaptec product name. The goal is to get the customer call to the right support or sales group based on the operating system and Adaptec product in use. The ACD passes the caller's input to the CTI system and Adaptec routing application, which then selects the most appropriate agent group for the call.

Some call routing is enabled by customer information already contained in the help desk database (in this case, Remedy). For example, the system might route a customer to the same group or person that has handled their calls in the past, thus preserving the relationship continuity. The help desk database decides what kinds of skills are needed, and the Prospect CTI application helps route the calls in a cooperative system.

Automated Screen Delivery of Customer Data
The ACD system then finds the next free agent within that skill group and signals the CTI system to automatically pop the customer information onto the agent's screen just before the call is delivered. The routing system enables very specific customer information to be sent to the agent's desktop. For example, a technician can see which potential solutions the customer has already tried, and a salesperson can see whether a customer has any outstanding support cases.

Getting all this customer information onto the screen once took Adaptec's agents one to two minutes, on average. With the new CTI system, the average call time has been cut by approximately 24 percent. That extra time and productivity is saved across 2,500 calls per day. This integration has also increased call-to-data-entry rates from 50 percent to 95 percent.

BEYOND AUTOMATION
Adaptec currently transfers calls between three call centers, each utilizing Prospect CTI. Adaptec is on the cusp of implementing a solution with screen synchronization among multiple remote sites. The company is already executing some skill-based distribution across multiple sites. For example, if a product expert is not available in one call center site, the customer call is automatically transferred to the same product support group in another site. Only when that specific product group is unavailable does the customer call go to an agent in another group.

The CTI system also supports several dozen Adaptec technicians who telecommute from home. These agents get screen pops on their home workstations using Aspect WinSet, which is part of the Aspect ACD System. The WinSet desktop OCX (an independent program module that can be accessed by other programs in a Windows environment) software "talks" to the Aspect ACD System and lets technicians use their PCs to answer and place calls with the equivalent functionality of the physical Aspect TeleSet phones used in the call center.

CONCLUSION
Adaptec's entire CTI system took approximately 120 man-hours to implement. To keep its business strategies flexible, Adaptec can easily modify the CTI system "on the fly" as new groups and different routing relationships among agents are needed. And, looking farther forward, Adaptec's ability to implement new strategies for increasing customer satisfaction and call center efficiency will be easier because of the additional automation and management tools put in place today.

Gregg Kerlin is a product manager for Aspect Telecommunications, a company that creates total solutions for mission-critical call centers around the world. Aspect focuses exclusively on the call center, bringing companies closer to their customers. Solutions include ACDs; CTI application software and tools; interactive response systems; and planning, reporting, and forecasting tools. Aspect consulting services help companies plan, integrate, staff, and manage call centers. For more information, contact the company at 408-325-2200 or visit their Web site at www.aspect.com.