August 1999

The Webplex:  The Result Of Web Site/Call Center Unification

BY TONY RYBCZYNSKI AND ANNE WYMAN

Call centers and Web-based commercial operations - these are still fairly distinct domains. They are merging, however, creating a new service model, one that assimilates established models, and also realizes the unique potentials of the emerging environment, an environment that admits the introduction of - the Webplex.

Is it too soon to speak of a converged Web/call center environment? Hardly, even though current market research often seems to treat Web commerce or e-commerce as something apart from call center operations. For example, according to the Gartner Group, call centers in 1998 transacted $600 billion worth of business. In the same year, according to figures cited by the U.S. Commerce Department, online retail trade ranged between $7 billion and $15 billion.

The Commerce Department, however, acknowledges that tracking Internet business requires new economic measures and measurement techniques. Part of the challenge is apprehending the incredible growth rates. (According to Forrester Research, global online business could grow to as much as $3.2 trillion by 2003.) Another part of the challenge is to appreciate how online transactions will become increasingly difficult to distinguish from call center transactions, in the sense that call center operations and online operations are merging. (According to the Gartner Group, by the year 2000, 35 percent of call center access will come from nontraditional electronic technology.)

In this article, we'll concentrate on the second part of the challenge, describing the unification of call centers and Web-based environments. This unification, it is widely acknowledged, proceeds apace thanks to the power of the underlying driver - the decrease in transaction costs enabled through the Internet. It is less common, however, for unification to be associated with its underlying enabler - the call center agent's ability to reassure and guide customers. Ideally, customers should be as comfortable on the Net as they are in a retail store, or on the phone with a traditional call center agent.

The call center's ability to put customers at ease will prove to be indispensable, if research into consumer Internet buying inhibitors is any guide. In one study, by Ernst and Young, reasons for not closing the deal online were ranked as follows:

1. concern over credit card privacy,
2. the need to see the product first hand, and
3. the desire to talk to a person.

The first inhibitor - security-  will be less of a concern as more secure systems are developed, and as the consumer gains trust in these systems. Consequently, it seems that the first inhibitor is well within the realm of the soluble, requiring no special explication here. The second inhibitor -  the consumer's desire to "kick the tires" -  will always be with us for certain products and buyers. As such, the second inhibitor resists "virtual" solution and will remain, perhaps indefinitely, a challenge for creative marketing.

The third inhibitor -  the need to talk to a person - is something yet again. It is, perhaps, the most interesting challenge, being neither so circumspect as the security issue nor so amorphous as the marketer's art. It is, moreover, within the purview of the Webplex. The Webplex unifies Web server technologies, legacy databases, and call center systems, creating a base from which to address the need for interaction and collaboration between customers and customer care agents.

SELF-SERVE INFORMATIONAL AND TRANSACTIONAL WEB SITES
Comparative shopping via Web surfing is the behavioral foundation for e-commerce. By engaging in this activity, a potential customer may:

• Access a business’s Web site. (Not a given, considering there are millions of sites to choose from.)
• Browse the products or services that are offered. (Designing a highly navigable Web site is more an art than a science.)
• Find enough information to make a buying decision. (A matter of anticipating the customer’s needs.)
• Place an online transaction.
• Achieve the desired level of customer service and become a loyal customer. (The end game.)

Too often, the consumer stops short of the last two steps. The customer may refuse to proceed if the site fails to provide information on any number of dimensions (product details, fit to personal needs, pricing, delivery, warranty, and customer support). The customer may object to the lack of ongoing customer service. The customer may feel uncomfortable entering credit card information. Or the customer may have doubts about how the product performs.

All these objections have one thing in common. They can be mitigated (and the likelihood of completing a transaction can be significantly enhanced) if the user is somehow allowed to initiate some form of human interaction.

INTERACTIVE WEB SITES
Human interaction can take place in real-time or in non-real-time. An example of a real-time interaction is a chat session, a mode that is increasingly comfortable for Internet users of all ages. An example of a non-real-time interaction is an e-mail exchange.

We may recall that e-mail experienced some growing pains. Instead of improving customer service, the introduction of e-mail processes led to unmanageable volumes of customer e-mails. These resulted in lower customer satisfaction, reduced loyalty, and lost revenue. Eventually, e-mail response management systems emerged to handle customer service requirements. Today, there are highly scalable solutions, environments in which e-mail remains manageable, even if volumes grow very substantially over a short period of time.

Text-based inquiries need to be routed to the most appropriately skilled agents, who can respond via e-mail or telephone. Some systems use artificial intelligence to formulate responses automatically, while others route e-mail based on agent skills and provide response “templates” to reduce the agent’s handling time. IDC expects that close to 10,000 Web response systems will be deployed by the end of next year.

More sophisticated systems move away from the e-mail paradigm towards what one may call Web messaging. Web messaging offers a rich user interface using HTML and browser technology. Customers can post inquiries and then either return on their own to the Web site to pick up the response or be contacted through e-mail or a voice call.

Web messaging technologies are here today. There are already tools that allow agents to assemble multimedia responses that include text, images, screen shots, hypertext links, streaming audio, and video clips.

With the above, customer ease of use is paramount. Multiple interactions using voice, e-mail, and the Web must be “threaded” together through a transaction identifier, allowing the agent to see the entire transaction history when dealing with the customer. The agent’s access to this history will ensure that the customer receives consistent service during the life of the transaction.

Another form of interaction is speaking to an agent either while connected to the Web or sometime after on a scheduled basis. Click-to-talk buttons are one solution. Some systems result in an agent calling the customer back over a circuit-switched connection. In other cases, IP telephony is used end-to-end. In yet other cases, hybrid approaches are used whereby the IP telephony call goes through a gateway and is terminated on a conventional agent terminal (or telephone set).

These solutions generally provide several options, including immediate or timed callback. In either case, the advantage is that the approach is very easy for the customer — a simple phone call. Click-tracking software technology that monitors and records a customer’s movement around the Web site can be used to provide logical continuity between the customer’s Web session and the callback phone call.

In some scenarios, immediate callback requires the customer to have a free phone line. The apparent advantage of IP telephony is that the interaction can be concurrent and tightly linked with the Web session — without the need for a second voice line. For IP telephony to become practical, it will be necessary to meet a few key challenges: the widespread deployment of standards-based PC telephony (including good quality acoustical peripherals such as speakers, microphones, and handsets); significantly improved performance of the Internet for voice needs; and improved ease of use for consumers.

With 30 percent of U.S. homes having two voice lines, and with the increasing penetration of cable and 1-meg modems for Internet access, the use of circuit-switched voice with its ease of use and its support of high quality voice will continue to be a popular option.

There are, in addition to the circuit-switched infrastructure, other legacy investments that will continue to demonstrate value. Take, for example, existing call center investments. One attractive attribute of both e-mail response and voice callback is that they can leverage the significant human, management, network, and PC investments found in established call centers.

COLLABORATIVE WEB SITES
The next step beyond interactive Web sites is the ability to invoke some form of customized collaborative multimedia Web session between an agent and the customer. The agent could lead the customer through Web tours, transfer files (with detailed documentation), assist in filling out forms, or present product demonstrations or customer testimonials through video streaming. These capabilities can significantly enhance self-service, as well as real-time voice and text interactions, and enrich the customer experience.

The heart of such a system is a collaboration server, which requires “executables” in the form of previously loaded applications, dynamically loaded Java applets, or ActiveX controls. These are used to create connections between the consumer, the agent, and the collaboration server. Such servers include reporting features that capture details about the customer transaction for market research or training purposes.

Collaborative Web sites rely heavily on configured and dynamically captured user profile information, including device capabilities such as speed of connection, applications supported, IP address, and phone number. All this information could reveal marketing opportunities. In a fully leveraged collaborative Web site, these opportunities could be exploited by the appropriate marketing tools, which may include the ability to offer gold/silver/bronze memberships to exceptional customers (for example, including application software and special services for customers with megabit access capabilities).

WEBPLEXES: E-COMMERCE FOR EVERYONE
A Webplex is the result of the unification of Web sites and call centers making e-commerce available, secure, and easy to use for a broad range of consumers and institutional and business customers/partners. Multiple service models (self-serve to complex collaborative multimedia sessions) need to be supported that are highly intuitive to the end customer, that are secure and private, and that integrate the Web and telephony environments.

Webplex Challenges
The Webplex is, to a large extent, defined by the challenges it must meet. These include:

• The ability to interact with the customer in whatever form the customer desires, in whatever language the customer prefers (a larger challenge in the global Web-based economy), and at whatever time the customer deems convenient.
• The ability to deliver transactions to agents who can best handle the customer’s needs. (The need for skills-based routing.)
• The ability to provide the consumer a pleasant buying experience, ensuring customer loyalty, while maintaining a sound business economic model.

These challenges will no doubt compel us to constantly redefine the role of the call center, even as they establish the call center as an inseparable element of doing business on the Internet.

Webplex Attributes
Webplexes are open systems with standard interfaces to customer information management databases, for e-mail integration (for example, via MAPI) and for voice callbacks (for example, via TAPI). Webplexes, the foundation of next-generation customer care centers, consist of the following functional components:

• A server farm, consisting of as many as hundreds of multipurpose and specialized servers. Application-aware server switches are an integral part of Webplexes, providing load balancing, server redundancy, and content-based routing across servers both locally and among Webplexes. Server switches monitor each class of request in real-time and offload low-priority requests when necessary, thus dynamically tuning and allocating server resources to satisfy customer-driven business policies. They guarantee 24x7 Webplex operation, maximize utilization of multiple servers, and enable response time management.
• Windows NT-based multimedia customer care server software, providing cradle-to-grave transaction control and reporting for both voice and data. The software should incorporate multimedia response management, enabling enterprises to receive, route, and track electronic inquiries generated from a company’s Web site, and to provide Web, voice, and fax callback, leveraging e-mail response templates and enhanced speech-to-text capabilities and speech recognition. It also includes collaborative application software that provides alternatives to self-serve models through page push, form sharing, application sharing, and IP telephony. Skills-based routing of requests to the agent best skilled in that product or subject area is an integral part of this system.
• Agent productivity tools with user-profile pop screens and the ability to recreate Web pages as viewed by the customer. These tools automate call center workflow and call scripts, and integrate and present data from multiple databases at the agent’s desktop.
• Management software that manages the Webplex as a system. This software should allow for automatic tracking and reporting on all text, voice, and video interactions. Reporting capabilities should extend to response times and agent efficiency (and track any backlog of electronic inquiries). Also, the software should generate customizable and standard reports.

Webplex Benefits
From a business perspective, Webplexes deliver many benefits:

• Enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty through highly customized and highly scalable informational, transactional, interactive, and collaborative services.
• Decreased operating expenses by leveraging technology to optimize use of network and human resources through server switching and call center management capabilities.
• New business, service, and marketing opportunities leveraging the connectivity of the Internet and the unification of Web server and call center systems.

CONCLUSION
Call centers are the workhorses of business. Electronic commerce and the Web are affecting every sector of the economy, influencing the ways in which products and services are delivered to consumers and businesses alike. The Webplex dramatically transforms the ways in which businesses interact with their customers, by unifying self-serve informational and transactional Websites and emerging multimedia interactive and collaborative call centers into total customer care centers.

Tony Rybczynski is director of strategic marketing and technologies and Anne Wyman is senior manager of Symposium Solutions, and both work for Nortel Networks’ Enterprise Solutions. This business unit offers a full range of enterprise terminal, workgroup, campus, and wide-area unified networks and applications, through direct and indirect channels. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.nortelnetworks.com. E-mail questions or comments to [email protected].