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The Smart Agent Desktop: One single sign-on, one better customer experience
By Randy Saunders
Contact centers are the information clearinghouse of 21st century business. Yet the talented men and women who await phone calls, e-mails, faxes and chat sessions are often hampered in their ability to be the great enterprise oracles they are so desperately needed to be, simply because their access to information is constrained by an unwieldy crowd of tools and applications that are not designed to work in aid of one another.
Even routine customer service interactions may require agents to interact with five, 10 or even 15 or more systems. Between pre-call setup, on-hook data retrieval and entry, and post-call wrap-up, agents can spend more time getting to the correct information than the time required for them to actually perform the work. Much of the time, these systems are ignorant of one another, requiring agents to log on each time they access a new system. This requires customer data to be rekeyed with each new program, each with its own unique interface that must be learned and mastered over time. Agents spend much of their time bouncing around applications, resulting in customers sitting idle or being forced to repeat their account numbers over and over again as new back-end systems are opened.
This balancing act is a drain on agent productivity, IT resources and � worst of all � customer patience. Put simply, customers and agents alike know that their interactions shouldn�t demand constant repetition and long wait times while agents marshal their resources.
There is an alternative. Smart, integrated desktops can take the power behind each and every point solution and carefully tailored application that powers a modern business, and place it all behind a single, coordinated interface. These unified desktops are designed to maximize agent productivity and minimize the administrative downtime created by knowledge application overload.
Developing the Smart Agent Desktop
Many contact center organizations don't have a readily identifiable agent desktop, or it may be more accurate to say that the agent desktop is characterized by whatever program the agent has to access at any given moment. Even organizations with fairly straightforward business models have faced a significant explosion in contact channel complexity over the past 10 years, and as a result, some companies manage their customers with literally dozens of programs. From green screen emulators and Windows client/server applications to browser-based screens, agents may be called upon to flip screens time and time again even to answer the most basic customer query. Such scenarios have bypassed a coordinated agent desktop effort in favor of asking each individual agent to use his or her brain as a data clearinghouse and relay center, putting unnecessary pressure on employees and introducing far too many potential points of delay or failure.
The single, unified agent desktop can pay rapid dividends throughout the organization. Changing needs � including new customer priorities, new business processes and new contact channels�put constant pressure on IT to update agent-facing systems to support new functionality. With a unified desktop, technology specialists no longer need to customize multiple software installations when new business initiatives require a change in the display and management of customer data. All interface changes are managed in a single, standards-based application, and as a result, all changes are published to the entire agent community at the right time.
Dynamic and Contextual Information at Your Fingertips
A unified desktop is a meaningless improvement unless it is accompanied by a unified view of the customer. The best unified desktops look at each customer as a single contact entry that may be referenced by numerous unique identifiers, such as a phone number, account number or contract ID. A sophisticated customer identification system such as an "e-address" makes it possible to recognize a customer and call up a complete, detailed history based on any one of their recognized unique identifiers. Rather than requiring customers to recall various identification methods to suit the needs of different service applications, customers may identify themselves with the one method they are most comfortable with or have closest at hand.
Using a single e-address as the portal to a complete customer record allows agents to transfer and escalate callers without missing a beat. All calls transferred within the network carry e-address data, ensuring that the same view to the customer opens on the receiving agent's desktop, saving precious seconds with a valuable customer instead of forcing the escalated caller to reiterate his or her personal details.
The Desktop as a Knowledge Management Tool
The universal desktop also serves as a crucial knowledge management tool. The term "information age" was once little more than a hopeful prediction, but the unchecked expansion of data and information sources in the enterprise proves that it is well upon us. Any technological barriers that once prevented the instantaneous delivery of crucial documents or analytical resources to the agent desktop have long since been smashed. Now, however, the sheer glut of information is itself an impediment to effective service.
Obviously, the right answer is not to pull back on the creation and distribution of corporate knowledge. Instead, companies should focus on clearly understanding all of the information resources that are available to agents at the point of interaction and devise strategies to deliver the best insight that the collected intranets, websites, PDFs, documents and spreadsheets have to offer. Agents need a resource panel that provides in-context access to the most relevant information at each and every step in the call resolution process.
Another key component of a tightly managed knowledge strategy is the ability to present agents with the best workflow tools for any call. Many contact centers that support a number of different product groups and customer campaigns face a difficult challenge: they can deploy different systems to service each customer group, or employ an inefficient and generic view that attempts to manage all customer interactions but is not very well-suited to any. However, an intelligent, unified front-end can be automatically adapted to present dynamic content based on call type, product group, or even an individual marketing campaign. This enables workflow designers to present agents with the best tools and resources to handle every interaction.
While the desktop's ability to dynamically change based on the interaction is obviously important, the ability to change and adjust the physical appearance of the desktop is critical as well. This is particularly important for a business that has multiple product lines or an outsourcer serving multiple clients. For example, the ability to adjust colors, fonts, graphics, and fields lets you create a unique look for customers, campaigns, or products. This makes it simple for agents to know where they are in the system while still maintaining a consistent and familiar desktop.
Each interaction, whether it is a sale or a save situation, requires that your agents be prepared to respond quickly to the unique demands of the individual customer and have the best decision support available. The universal desktop gives your organization the best chance to make the right decisions for customer satisfaction and profit growth, each and every time a customer interacts. The smart agent desktop is at its core a knowledge-enhancing tool, designed to provide agents with only the most relevant information and functionality to do their jobs, and only at the most relevant and appropriate times.
This article is an excerpt from the Cincom white paper "Grow Your Business: The Value of Knowledge in the Contact Center."
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Randy Saunders is the marketing director for Cincom's Customer Experience Management products. He can be contacted at rsaunders@cincom.com.
For nearly 40 years, Cincom's software and services have helped thousands of clients worldwide simplify the management of complex business processes. Cincom specializes in the five areas of business where simplification brings the greatest value to managers who want to grow revenue, control costs, minimize risk, and achieve rapid ROI better than their competitors: Data Management; Marketing, Sales and Customer Service; Application Development; Manufacturing Business; and Outsourcing. For more information about Cincom, call 1-800-2CINCOM (USA only), send an e-mail to info@cincom.com, or visit the company�s website at www.cincom.com.
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