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Recently got a chance to speak with Avaya’s Vice President and General Manager of its Customer Service Applications Division, Jim Smith, about Avaya’s launch of their Communication Manager 5.0 solution, which the company has positioned as a more cost-efficient and reliable way to implement end-to-end SIP in the contact center. He and I talked at length about how SIP can effect a whole host of improved efficiencies in contact center operations.

RT: You’ve positioned the announcement as allowing companies to offer “faster service with a personal touch.” Can you explain what you mean by “personal touch”?

JS: Customers interact with businesses for a variety of reasons. They could be seeking information, shopping for a new service, trying to solve a problem, seeking an update, exploring additional products or services the business can deliver — the possibilities are endless. Whether a customer is reaching out via phone, e-mail or chat, Avaya offers solutions to ensure that each customer is matched with the associate best suited to meet their needs, every time. Caring for these customer relationships means going beyond an immediate, informed response to their phone call or e-mail — it means proactively reaching out to them with information they want and need. For example, if a customer always checks that a deposit has been made on a monthly or quarterly basis, proactively provide them with validation of that deposit.

Each person’s preference for interacting with a company is fluid in today’s world. Accordingly, Avaya offers multiple ways for customers to collaborate with businesses. An interesting and unique personalization that is emerging is the use of video to create a face-to-face interaction, enabling companies to deliver personalized service even when their “front line” is unavailable to assist.

For example, our video kiosk solution enables companies to serve customers immediately even if all sales resources are busy. When someone walks into the door of a cell phone service provider, or into a home improvement store, for example, they can walk up to a video kiosk and immediately get face-to-face assistance from a knowledgeable agent serving them from a centralized contact center. This type of personalized customer service is what keeps customers happy and keeps them from walking out the door and into a competitor’s store.

RT: Where do the majority of cost savings come from for companies that switch to the solution?

JS: One area where we deliver significant cost savings while helping businesses deliver an exceptional customer experience is with our Customer Service Editions. This full-service enterprise contact center suite offers solutions for intelligent routing, proactive customer contact, self-service and operational performance. Customer Service Editions enable companies with complex business needs to deliver the right level of access, convenience and personalization that are essential to nurturing customer relationships and building repeat business — to help companies provide a level of customer service that truly differentiates them from their competitors.

Additionally, SIP provides not only added flexibility, but new opportunities for cost reduction as well. SIP can simplify environments and make it much more cost-effective for enterprises to respond to changing customer preferences and business opportunities. The flexibility inherent in SIP enables new options for Avaya customers. We can deliver SIP to the agent desktop through existing CTI applications such as Avaya Interaction Center. Alternatively, customers can now use SIP end-to-end from the network to the agent desktop without requiring CTI middleware, enabling some companies to simplify their operations by eliminating complex legacy CTI systems and the maintenance and operating costs associated with them. And, with the new solutions Avaya delivered in January, businesses are lowering costs by using high-capacity SIP trunks and new low-cost SIP gateways to reduce hardware requirements. They’re reducing servers and complexity with new platforms that provide both communications and SIP/presence in a single server. New purpose-built SIP agent endpoints lower costs at the agent desktop. Basically, SIP delivers new ways to enrich the contact center with presence capabilities, while lowering the costs of providing premier customer service.

RT: What sort of KPIs (key performance indicators) might the solution help contact centers improve?

JS: Traditional measures of contact center performance are making way for new metrics as companies begin to look for ways to tie contact center performance to business results. Avaya demonstrates leadership in this space with patent-pending reporting and analytical technologies that link what is happening in the contact center with broader business goals. Managers across the enterprise are able to choose the KPIs that meet their specific needs — whether they are directly managing agents, managing one location, are responsible for the entire contact center across the enterprise, or are a line of business owner.

Let’s look at a couple of example of how metrics are changing. Historically, contact center managers may have looked at individual agent metrics in isolation. Today, our agent behavior reporting enables contact center managers to easily assess — in one view — whether agents are meeting targeted KPIs, whether that is within an individual group, by location or across the enterprise. In each instance, the manager is able to immediately drill from the big picture down into supporting details. Another example: contact center managers have long been focused on average talk time, and have encouraged agents to minimize talk time in order to contain the cost of agent salaries. But, in a revenue-generating contact center, what if you were easily able to combine talk time with revenue results? You might learn that an agent who tends to exceed average talk time by 20 percent, for example, is consistently bringing in double the revenue of other agents. In the past, looking at talk time as a KPI without having the information to link it with the business value, you would have chastised this agent. Now that you have the complete picture, you see that this agent is a role model! Combining talk time with business results is one example of next-generation KPIs that give companies the ability to ensure they are maximizing agent productivity while delivering premier customer service.

RT: The solution allows contact centers to offer “dynamic video content”?

JS: Dynamic video content is the ability to provide live video customer interaction or selectively stream video to video-enabled devices.

RT: Do you currently have any users who are offering such video content? Who and what kind of content?

JS: The explosion in video content on the Web is starting to change consumer expectations of this new media. Some of our early adopter customers are beginning to explore rich media applications and services to reach and retain customers. We have several customers evaluating and in various stages of implementing video-based customer service strategies. We soon look forward to working with them to publicize their successes but cannot provide their names at this time.

RT: Can you expound a little on the Avaya Interactive Voice and Video Response component? What is it and how are customers using it?

JS: IVVR is synonymous with the above customer use cases. While live customer to agent video customer service is a long-term future for most organizations, there are some today leveraging media independent platforms like Avaya Voice Portal as a basis for delivery of richer, more powerful self-service experiences that combine natural language speech recognition with visual queues like video and images.

An example scenario is servicing the needs of mobile device users through integrated voice and video. A satellite TV provider we are working with wants to offer their customers the ability to order movies and other pay-per-view content over a user’s 3G video-enabled device. The user makes selections while talking to an agent who selectively can stream videos of the latest movie trailers to her device and order movies. The movie is then downloaded to the customer’s satellite TV set-top box for viewing that evening.
Users receive faster service, confirm transactions more quickly, and are more engaged with video versus the traditional “music on hold” call treatment. Businesses benefit from more powerful visual branding, cross-sell/upsell and support.

RT: What functional benefits will SIP bring to a contact center?

JS: SIP, at its most basic level, is merely a mechanism to deliver additional capabilities and benefits to the end customer. With the simplicity and flexibility gained by using SIP, contact center managers are able to more quickly meet the dynamic requirements of their customers. When a contact arrives, not only do we know who is calling, but with the capabilities inherent in SIP architecture we have the surrounding customer context without requiring a complex, costly CTI application to deliver this information. Yet another benefit delivered by SIP technology is that of customer interactions enhanced with video. Since each contact arrives with context-sensitive information, when a customer contacts your business via an endpoint with display capabilities, a rich new set of possibilities come into play. Now self-help menus are no longer driven strictly by touch-tone or voice, but can include a display showing the available options. Customers who call from a cell phone or PDA and are waiting in queue can be shown related products and services via video, enhancing the company’s opportunities for cross-sell and upsell while improving customer satisfaction. These instances of expanded functionality are only a few of the plethora of options delivered by SIP. Essentially, the appeal of SIP is that it can improve the ease of operation of your contact center at a substantially lower cost of ownership, simultaneously offering exciting new capabilities.

RT: How will presence, multimedia-based benefits of SIP be used?

JS: Avaya introduced SIP and presence into the contact center over two and a half years ago, with integrated presence at the agent desktop. This enables an agent to immediately see who is “present” to assist — whether that expert is an agent or supervisor in the contact center, or a resource elsewhere in the enterprise. Agents are now able to instantly get the answers they need, driving first-call resolution and increasing customer satisfaction. SIP will continue to deliver new options for self-service. Envision a financial services customer going to the company’s Web site, and launching a chat session to ask a question. If there is a particular broker that the customer would like to work with, perhaps they could see the presence status of the broker, see that she is busy, and then make a decision — based on presence status of that broker — to either try later or choose another available broker. CiS

IT Growth Threatened By Shortage Of Domestic Talent
By Susan Campbell, Contributing Editor, TMCnet
Business growth in a variety of sectors is being threatened as a result of a new shortage of skills and talent in IT and business. According to recent Gartner research, traditional technical IT skills will not suit the burgeoning demand for developing IT and business together. Specific challenges exist domestically as Baby Boomers are nearing retirement, younger generations view IT as an unattractive career choice, especially when it involves a help desk or contact center situation.
Read the article at www.tmcnet.com/1682.1

Datamonitor Report: Convergys First, But Unlikely Last, To Pull Call Centers Out Of Canada
By Patrick Barnard, Associate Editor, TMCnet
A new report from market research firm Datamonitor shows what many of us already know: Companies are starting to pack up and relocate their Canada-based call center operations due to the increasing value of the U.S. dollar and the increasingly unfavorable exchange rate. Even call center outsourcing behemoth Convergys has announced that it will be closing some of its facilities in Canada in the coming months – this news coming directly from the mouth of Convergys CEO David Dougherty.
Read the article at www.tmcnet.com/1683.1

Who Ranks Tops In E-Commerce?
By Tracey E. Schelmetic, Editorial Director, Customer Interaction Solutions
You may have your personal preferences and pet peeves, but do you know who is really tops across the board when it comes to giving customers what they want? Think ketchup. And then think about Amazon. According to a survey released recently conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and the University of Michigan with e-commerce partner ForeSee Results, customer satisfaction with e-commerce is at an all-time high
Read the full article at www.tmcnet.com/1684.1

As always, I welcome your comments. Please e-mail them to me at [email protected]

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