By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
Anyone in the business world has heard or even used the mantra - You have to spend money to make money. No where does this apply more truth than in the call center. Established to provide customers with a point of contact with the company, the call center is often the biggest drain on capital with little focus on driving revenue.
To combat the high costs of call center operations, many organizations have implemented interactive voice response (IVR
) systems in order to provide an automated process to answer a customer’s call and then hopefully effectively route callers to the proper call center agent.
While these systems can help productivity, research has shown that more than 80 percent of consumers dislike IVR. When the call center is focused on serving the customer and keeping them satisfied and loyal, operating a system that the customer hates is counterproductive. So, how does the call center achieve its objective of providing its customers with high quality service while also controlling costs? The answer is simple: VoiceXML.
VoiceXML allows for the creation, modification and personalization of its applications which can provide substantial cost savings over proprietary and traditional IVR systems. Due to its ease of application development, VoiceXML also allows companies to leverage in-house resources instead of depending on specialized developers.
Additionally, VoiceXML has proven to be at least three times faster in terms of application development compared to traditional IVR and it offers off-the-shelf applications. And, because IVR requires a second silo infrastructure from existing Web infrastructure, where VoiceXML does not, IVR proves to be much more expensive.
VoiceXML will also allow for ease of integration with existing application server
infrastructure. This enables the reuse of e-businesses investments in a flexible, distributed architecture that is a significant departure from the legacy IVR platform needed in the past.
An organization or call center searching to get out from under the iron of a legacy IVR system can benefit from the flexibility of options available with VoiceXML. The solution can either be deployed behind a company’s firewall
on their own premise or can be hosted by a service provide for rapid development with minimal up-front costs. These solutions can be migrated to on-premises platforms as needs grow and change to provide the company with maximum control and cost savings.
The cost advantage with VoiceXML is significant. When employees handle routine telephone requests, the company can spend more than $5 per call. When a call is handled through a VoiceXML telephony portal, the cost is often close to zero. These cost savings are a result of improved customer loyalty, lower operating costs, increased system performance, higher automation rates, reduced call wait times and caller abandons, increased first-call resolutions rates and improved agent productivity.
The case for VoiceXML is compelling. Organizations can improve customer and employee satisfaction while lowering operation costs and improving productivity. Additionally, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will have access to enterprise-class infrastructure that fits within their budget. Given these features and benefits, VoiceXML is likely to dominate the market.
Small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly looking to VoIP to help save on telecommunications expenses as well as gain access to a wealth of new and exciting applications that are designed to help them grow their business and help their employees become more productive. If you’re still waiting to learn about the benefits of VoIP for the SMB, don’t delay. Come to INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO EAST, January 23–26, 2007 to learn all your need to know to take advantage of the latest in telecommunications. See you in sunny Ft. Lauderdale!
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) | X |
| A hardware- or software-based computer system that enables incoming callers to interact with voice prompts or verbal commands....more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X |
| A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Application Server (A/S) | X |
| There are many kinds of Applications Services. This is just one example which shows the structure of the IMS architecture where potential Applications Servers optimize content as well bandwidth....more |
Firewall | X |
| This is called a Stateful Inspection for a firewall to check, alert or audit the status (state) of the TCP connection - SYN, SYN-ACK or FIN. In other words, this is what a firewall does, check for co...more |
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