March 1999

Ready For The Call At SNET's Call Center

BY ERIK D. LOUNSBURY, C@LL CENTER Solutions

Since beginning outsourcing operations the first week of March 1998, SNET Call Center Services has been a beehive of activity. The Call Center Services subsidiary of Southern New England Telecommunications Corporation (SNET) is situated on three floors in an unassuming office building in the heart of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Presiding calmly over the bustle of activity is Call Center Services President Cathy Bradley.

Ms. Bradley explained to me that SNET created this separate subsidiary to sell to wholesale and retail customers that were large businesses within the state, with a focus on selling long-distance telephone service. SNET launched its call center by making calls to sell SNET's long-distance services, but soon started offering its services as an outsourcing teleservices center providing high-end inbound customer service.

"We are a quality provider with brand equity," said Bradley. Backing up this claim is a number-one position in a 1997 J.D. Powers and Associates ranking for customer satisfaction among mainstream users of residential long-distance service. "The demand is for 24 x 7 and multiple access - and we provide around-the-clock services for Web, e-mail, voice mail and inbound calls," continued Bradley. Among its current duties is responding to e-mail from the SNET Web page (SNET.com) and routing them to the correct department. Their policy is to respond to all e-mail within one hour.

While a natural extension of its SNET call center operations is calling for other telecoms, the SNET Call Center Services is also targeting health care and financial services providers to deliver support for key accounts in Connecticut. In these areas, SNET Call Center Services has among its clients Yale New Haven Hospital (for which it provides patient information and physicians' answering and emergency paging services) and United Health Care. It also is the outsourcing partner for a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) in the Los Angeles area. Among its inbound, third-party verification, and billing inquiry/repair services, SNET Call Center Services provides help desk services for Message Works and has wireline, wireless and overflow for wireless services. Bilingual reps receive inbound calls from South and Central America for assistance with long-distance payments. These bilingual services are also available to support other customers with bilingual programs.

Unlike many call center operations, SNET Call Center Services hasn't experienced large turnover churn. One reason is that SNET puts its agents on a career track - 18 out of the original 20 agents have been promoted. "Jobs are seen by employees as growth opportunities. They are a visible statement of achievable goals," emphasized Bradley. Another reason is that many of the agents are part of a program sponsored by the State of Connecticut that is aimed at providing viable jobs for former Welfare recipients. The program is providing an incentive to these workers, and they are responding enthusiastically at the opportunity to be able to provide a source of income for themselves and their families as well as work in a job that provides a sense of pride in accomplishment and a chance to build a career.

Bradley and her management team consider themselves lucky to have been able to attract the representatives who staff their call center. Currently they have more than 150 courteous and well-trained agents. They train 10 new employees every two weeks and are looking to expand in the near future. There are two on-site training rooms that can accommodate 20 agents each. These stations can also be put online in case they are needed.

All agents are monitored both regularly and randomly for performance and training purposes. Reports from SNET's performance monitoring system from NICE Systems indicate that SNET's representatives are doing as well as or better than the competition.

Supporting the agents is an excellent teleservices infrastructure put together by a team led by Senior Specialist in Telecommunications Tom Gilmore, who told me of the details of the setup of the call center.

The call center has a variety of ISDN, PRI and T1 lines. An AT&T Definity G3 system provides automatic call distribution for calls coming into the center. CTI functions are provided by ATT CallVision and NabCTI (which is capable of call blending) from Nabnassett. To guard against any calls being lost, dual processing in Definity and between Definity and CTI servers cover failover.

Outbound preview dialing is provided by DAVOX's UNISON program. Scripting (such as different rates for different customers) is built into the desktop for outbound calling programs.

For inbound calls, the teleservices structure has the ability to capture automatic number identification (ANI) and dialed number identification service (DNIS). IMA's GEO provides screen pops of customer information based on DNIS, so when a call arrives at the agent's desktop, the agent is armed with knowledge of who is calling, previous transactions with the call center, and which offer the customer was responding to. Detailed customer information resides on an Informix relational database running on a RISC 6000 platform.

For internal use, the call center has a 100MB Ethernet LAN running on a NT server and a voice mail system from Octel. In cases of power shortages, a generator provides backup power.

On their desktops agents have teleservices software from IMA, which includes GEO, EDGE and AdvantEDGE. IMA's Cyber EDGE is used for Internet services.

Among the services agents perform using these various software packages is coding callers as to their potential or status as high-end customers. The system also provides lists of disposition codes for call status. Cognose software can tailor a variety of campaign reports to customer specifications.

A large, clean visual workspace is provided on 21-inch monitors that sit on all of the agents' desktops, which are run on PCs with Pentium ProII 64MB RAM and a 3.4MB hard drive. All agents have access to a directory of frequently called numbers and corporate directory on their desktop.

As Kathy Bradley explained, "It's our job to help our customers perform better by finding what problems the customer is having with a campaign." SNET Call Center Services provides its clients with thorough statistics that benchmark sales and close rates so they can apprise customers as to how a campaign is going and provide consulting services as to how to improve the campaign.

From technology to human resources to consulting services, the SNET Call Center has it all in place to provide its clients satisfied customers.