November 1998

BY RYAN HOLLENBECK

Saturn, a car manufacturer, and Centrobe, a provider of enterprise customer management solutions, combined forces to improve the quality of customer interactions at Saturn's 100-person Customer Assistance Center. Although this call center had an ACD, and hence a wealth of statistics, these statistics didn't tell the Saturn-Centrobe team everything it needed to know. Saturn-Centrobe needed convenient access to qualitative information about customer interactions, particularly since the team wanted to further Saturn's philosophy of customer service. Specifically, Saturn wanted to spend time with customers, cultivating a personal touch. Accordingly, Saturn didn't put a high priority on minimizing call time. It did, however, want to ensure that customers were handled properly, and that customers could access any appropriate information.

BASIC APPROACH
While Saturn was responsible for defining its call center's overall approach and basic goals, Centrobe played an active role in realizing Saturn's vision. Centobe, consistent with its enterprise customer management (ECM) practice, acted as Saturn's technology partner. Centrobe also co-managed the call center, helping Saturn acquire and retain customers by maximizing Saturn's lifetime value to its customers.

Saturn-Centrobe decided all these goals were contingent on agent and manager training. More specifically, Saturn-Centrobe wanted to institute better leadership and coaching methods. Originally, these methods were informed by manual notes, written by call center managers after they reviewed tapes of agents speaking with customers. Saturn-Centrobe, however, soon became interested in a more sophisticated recording and monitoring solution after it installed an Aspect ACD in 1996. Eventually, Saturn-Centrobe implementing a customer interaction recording solution from Witness Systems.

SYSTEM ATTRIBUTES
More (And Better) Feedback
The new system provides abundant feedback, and as such represents a significant improvement over the old, manual system. "When you received feedback, it was valuable feedback, but those occurrences were few and far between," explained Paul Rockwell, Saturn-Centrobe systems administrator. "With the new system, you receive feedback more frequently and stand a better chance of advancing your skill set to become a better agent or manager."

Saturn-Centrobe is selective about when it monitors, however. According to Rockwell, the frequency of random monitoring depends on the customer support consultants' skill levels. The new reps are frequently monitored for mentoring purposes. Reps with more experience are monitored less often. About 20 percent of their customer interactions are recorded.

Since it is so easy to increase the quantity of data derived from random monitoring, Saturn-Centrobe is in a position to notice improvement opportunities that may have been overlooked before. "You can never predict what type of calls people are going to be on," said Rockwell. "If [your monitoring] is random and frequent, you can record a good mix of calls."

Agent Transparency
An important part of the configuration for the recording software is agent transparency, which means agents can sit anywhere in the call center and still be randomly monitored through the system's CTI link. "It's an added benefit that they don't have to sit at a special desk with special equipment. They can take calls and be recorded from virtually any PC and desk with an Aspect phone in the center," said Mike Leach, team leader for the Saturn-Centrobe systems group.

Tight Integration Between ACD And Monitoring Systems
The client/server recording software, which runs on a Pentium Pro 200 MHz server with 128 M and 9 GB of disk space, connects to the Aspect ACD via Aspect's Real-Time Bridge, which provides the recording software with a data stream showing the status of the switch via an Ethernet interface. The Real-Time bridge is a switch interface unit (SIU). The SIU runs on a Pentium 166 MHz server with 32 M and 1.6 GB, and it enables the recording software to identify each agent who is currently at work and the PC terminal at which the agent is seated.

CONTACT CENTER CAPABILITIES
The attributes just discussed are already helping Saturn-Centrobe improve customer service. But there is, in addition to these attributes, an attribute Saturn-Centrobe isn't taking advantage of now, but plans to exploit in the future.

The recording system isn't limited to capturing voice conversations between Saturn team members and customers. It is also designed to record other kinds of interactions, including e-mail and Web interactions. Thus, the company is in a position to evolve from the call center model (voice interactions only) to the contact center model (any medium, at the customer's convenience).

Ryan Hollenbeck is the director of corporate communications for Witness Systems, a developer and supplier of customer interaction recording solutions for contact centers. The company's Witness software is deployed by call center managers as a coaching and training tool. For more information, contact Witness Systems at 770-754-1900, or visit the company's Web site at www.witsys.com.