July 1999

FLEXIBILITY AND INTEGRATION
In Next-Gen Customer Relations Centers

BY BRUCE TSUJI

There's no doubt about it: the future holds a host of exciting new applications that will transform the traditional call center into an Advanced Customer Interaction Center (ACIC). But if you consider the value of a company-s existing assets - in telephony equipment, IT systems and infrastructure, Web presence, and in people - will this revolution be worth it?  The answer is yes, if the process change and the new call center technology are flexible and able to integrate with existing assets.

THE CHALLENGE: MULTIPLE ASSET OPTIMIZATION
Many corporations, including consumer products companies, entertainment companies, financial services firms, technology companies, travel agencies, remote shopping services, and utilities, have invested heavily in call centers. Using data from a variety of market research firms and other sources, Mitel recently estimated that by 2002 there will be more than 77,000 call centers worldwide employing almost two million agents. The Gartner Group of Stamford, Connecticut, has forecast a 20 percent annual growth rate through 2002, and the call center market should hit $1.5 billion in sales by 2001.

But the size of the market pales in comparison with the investments being made in the people who staff these centers. As call centers metamorphose into ACICs and change from being cost centers to being profit centers, the importance of agents will be magnified. Those with the best product knowledge, the most polished phone presence, will become the corporation's "star" sales people, nurturing customer relationships that are too valuable to be interrupted.

As competition has become more fierce and maximizing the call center investment has become more important, blended centers have emerged. These are staffed by agents who perform dual functions: receiving reactive, inbound calls and making proactive, outbound sales calls.

There's another considerable asset as well: the Web. When I speak at customer gatherings, I often ask the audience a series of questions. First, I ask who has call centers, and there's a near unanimous show of hands. Then I ask how many have corporate Web sites. Again, there's near unanimity. But when I ask how many people have integrated their call centers with their Web presence, few hands, if any, are raised. I get another near unanimous - and positive - response to the question, "Would you like to integrate your Web response systems with your call center?"

For many companies, the fact is that their Web site is cut off from the most important customer care function. In some scenarios, Web-generated communication has to be printed out and carried physically to the call center. Clearly, the challenge is seamless communication regardless of the transfer mechanism. The solution -creating an ACIC - demands the flexible integration of new business processes and technologies, while addressing their impact on the people who will use them.

CHANGES IN PROCESSES
As ACICs enable a convergent customer service environment, organizations must design and enforce bullet-proof fulfillment processes. If an existing call center is having trouble handling telephone inquiries, imagine the chaos when fax, e-mail, and Web-chat inquiries are added. Another, perhaps more subtle, change is at the management level, where IT and voice administration will become much more integrated.

But of all the process changes, the most important is the upgrading of the function of the call center within the organization. This has implications for the recruitment, training, and retention of agents, but it also has a profound impact on the way businesses integrate the ACIC with the enterprise.

TECHNOLOGY: MOVING TO OPEN SYSTEMS
Convergence technologies based on open systems and industry standards provide the flexibility and “plug and play” modularity that eases integration with existing PBX platforms and Centrex systems. These technologies support interfaces to standards-based databases and business applications, and require minimal development effort to integrate third-party call center applications.

Emerging standards-based technologies let call center staff concentrate on servicing customers in the shortest time possible, maximizing agent effectiveness and overall productivity. They include:

Web Integration: Incorporates Web and e-mail events with other call center interactions. For example, customers can request call-backs from the corporate Web site, or communicate with agents through real-time, online text messaging.

Intelligent call distribution: Includes skills-based routing and call routing based on detailed customer data.

Advanced Call Handling: Unifies all call center media into a single system to monitor inbound customer calls and queue times, recover abandoned calls, and enable agents to respond based on service level agreements and business rules.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Sends callers to the optimum agent(s), enabling callers to easily navigate through the call center, and reducing queue times. Often the IVR allows customers to get the information they need without dealing with an agent at all.

Desktop Computer Telephony: Gives agents critical caller information during or before the customer interaction through screen-pops.

Voice/Fax/E-mail Messaging: Allows agents to respond to customer inquiries in the medium preferred by the caller.

Real-time, Detailed Management Reporting: Improves productivity and service levels.

Open systems accommodate flexible transition to an ACIC and use standards such as TCP/IP to create distributed, virtual call centers. They also scale forward and upward, to address growth and new applications, from speech recognition to voice over IP.

PEOPLE
Reinventing processes and introducing new technologies are bound to have a significant effect on agents within the ACIC. Easy-to-use call center technology is a major need, because it impacts productivity and the working environment itself. Even if they aren’t exactly going from the boiler rooms to the penthouse, ACIC agents are moving up the corporate ladder as strategic customer service and sales personnel. This deserved elevation has implications for human resources (recruiting), human factors (environmental changes), and other areas that will enable companies to attract and retain critical customer relationship managers.

Developing a next-generation ACIC also will require skill transference. Agents who are used to telephone communication may require training in Internet-based response — even in the art of writing e-mail. After all, the spoken word has inflections that don’t translate to text, and well-meaning written comments can be misinterpreted.

THE ACIC TEST
Given all these requirements, the benefits of upgrading a call center to an ACIC are obvious: superior customer service, better agent productivity, and a platform for new applications. But how does an organization determine if it’s ready to investigate making the move? Here is a brief checklist:

• Do you need to upgrade or implement customer relationship management functions, processes, or systems?
• Do you need to upgrade or implement your help desk functions, processes, or system?
• Will a significant portion of your customers and/or suppliers prefer to interact with your organization through a variety of media: e-mail, Web, and fax, as well as voice?
• Do your customers or suppliers sometimes know more about your products and services than your customer-facing employees?

INDEPENDENT MODULARITY
In summary, companies can reduce risk and protect investments made in existing infrastructures through an independent modularity approach to ACIC implementation. The watchwords for this approach are flexibility, integration with current telephony hardware and database applications, and compatibility with many front office applications commonly used in service centers: help desk, customer service, order entry, and sales automation. This approach also provides ease of use, installation, and management for minimal training, maximum agent effectiveness, and a reduced administrative burden.

Bruce Tsuji is director, call center marketing, for Mitel business applications. Based in Kanata, Ontario, Canada, Mitel is an international voice communications supplier, and a recognized world leader in creating solutions that provide exceptional value to its customers. For more information, please visit their Web site at www.mitel.com.

For Surrey Metro Savings Credit Union — Canada’s second largest credit union — building an ACIC is a step-by-step process that requires integration with both the call center’s existing telecommunications system and enterprise data.

Surrey Metro, headquartered in a Vancouver suburb, has more than $Cdn2.2 billion in assets, 17 branches, and over 650 employees. Its call center, opened in 1995, has one hundred seats, and includes general agents and specialists in loans and insurance. In September 1998, the credit union began development of a suite of advanced call-center applications based on Apropos 4.0 customer interaction software.

“The rollout is planned for three phases,” says Geoff Malange, the project manager. “In phase one, we are testing the technology with eight to ten agents in our loans group handling inbound calls. During phase two, we will integrate the Apropos applications with our database management system to provide blended capabilities such as inbound and outbound screen-pops. Phase three will be the general rollout.”

With the end of the traditionally hectic pre-tax Retirement Savings Plan season, development efforts — encompassing Surrey Metro IT staff, Apropos, and Mitel — were ramping up again during the middle of the spring of 1999.

Malange sees two major benefits from the project: integration, and the delivery of new services. He also says the retraining of agent staff will be minimal: “Integration capability with our existing systems is very important. Apropos 4.0 is standards based, developed for Windows NT, supporting SQL, and running on a TCP/IP Ethernet LAN. It fits in with both our data and telecom systems. It interfaces with our datacom network, and has telephony programmability through the MiTAI application interface right into the Mitel PBX switch.”

Advanced convergence features — IVR, ACD, skills-based routing, agent blending, and reporting — are the ultimate benefit, however. “We’re moving toward allowing our customers access to our services the way they prefer, via the telephone, e-mail, or Web chats,” Malange says. “A centralized call center will provide this convenience at lower costs.”