From Intelligent Call Routing To
Intelligent Contact Management
BY PAT KELLY, CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
For most -- if not all -- enterprises and service agencies, the tsunami
called e-commerce threatens to overwhelm call centers.
Business-to-business e-commerce, according to Forrester Research, will
likely grow from more than $150 billion in 1999 to over $3 trillion by
2003. Forrester also predicts that online business-to-consumer
transactions in the U.S. alone will mushroom from last year's $20 billion
to $184 billion by 2004. Jupiter Communications estimates that 85 million
people will shop online by 2003. By 2010, according to Goldman Sachs,
business-to-consumer e-commerce could account for 20 percent of retail
sales.
Every day, more Web sites offer "click-to-talk" or
"click-to-chat" functionality, which permits real-time, live
collaboration between call center agents and browsers. This, added to
exponential growth in online commerce, means that call centers will have
to handle -- will have to master, in fact -- huge spikes in contact
volumes simply to enable enterprises to serve new and existing customers.
Published in late 1999, a survey conducted by Jupiter Communications found
that call centers ranked second (to fulfillment) in vulnerability to
failure in the event of a rapid increase in transaction volumes.
"Sites have typically been focusing attention more on the front
end of their Web ventures -- site design and Web server capacity,"
rather than on the fulfillment and call center functions, Jupiter noted.
Simply keeping the call center up and running effectively to maintain
customer service levels is only the beginning; it does not take into
account the new, value-added services contact centers will have to deploy
to retain those customers on a consistent basis.
Therefore, functionality such as intelligent call routing (ICR) will
play an ever more strategic role in maintaining the highest levels of
service. As enterprises expand and distribute their call center operations
-- with multiple locations, more agents and specialized agents -- they
also increase the likelihood of misdirected calls, and the number of
confused, impatient and irritated customers.
ICR will have to work hand-in-hand with emerging Internet-enabled forms
of interaction such as Web collaboration, chat, e-mail and (especially) IP
telephony. These varied media are turning the traditional call center into
a multimedia customer contact center.
Managing this complexity is a highly critical issue facing contact
center and service bureau managers. Their most pressing needs are
solutions based on open standards (allowing the implementation of a
best-of-breed solution), scalability (enabling it to support both new
users and new applications), high reliability and fault tolerance, and
investment protection.
The advent of network-based computing provides a platform for advanced
ICR services: a solution we call intelligent contact management. These
services will support "traditional" telephony-driven call
centers as well as emerging multimedia-based contact management
applications, along with the distributed architecture necessary to support
a growing number of agents in geographically dispersed locations.
Intelligent contact management distributes data from multiple channels,
such as IP networks, TDM (time division multiplexing) networks, fax and
e-mail, to enterprise resources like ACD (automatic call distributor) and
IVR (interactive voice response) systems, agents working in a distributed
environment and desktop applications on an open, scalable infrastructure.
The ABCs Of ICR
For each incoming call, intelligent call routing software typically
receives a route request from the carrier network. The software determines
who is calling and why, using call-related data such as dialed number and
calling line I.D., plus caller-entered digits and information obtained
from a customer profile database look-up, if available. The software also
identifies what answering resources are available to meet the caller's
needs and where those resources are located based on real-time conditions
such as agent skills, agent availability and queue lengths.
ICR software is flexible. As conditions change, it can be optimized to
route each call to the optimum answering resource anywhere in the
enterprise at any given moment. It enables caller segmentation, which
improves call routing and handling effectiveness. Automatic caller
identification matches each incoming caller to the most appropriate
answering resource, then supports that resource with relevant customer
information.
In addition, many ICR software systems include integrated IVR and CTI
(computer-telephony integration) capabilities. IVR often acts as an
additional answering resource, handling routine transactions without agent
intervention and enabling call center staff to focus on more complex,
revenue-generating calls. The screen pops of CTI harness information from
a centralized, enterprise database or other applications to reduce call
times and improve the quality of the agent-customer interaction.
Defining Intelligent Contact Management
Intelligent contact management is an enterprisewide customer-contact
platform that integrates multivendor networks, automatic call distribution
systems, IVR systems, Web servers, databases, desktop applications, agents
and other resources.
It wraps ICR capabilities with new multimedia contact applications on
an extensible, open network infrastructure that can forward scale to
accommodate more users, more call centers and new value-added applications
and services. There are eight basic components to an intelligent contact
management solution:
1) Advanced Call Routing enables the intelligent contact
management platform to effectively segment callers, balance calls across
the enterprise and deliver each contact to the best enterprise resource
the first time. This intelligent distribution capability can be delivered
to calls originating from a carrier network connection or from peripherals
such as ACDs, a PBX, an IVR system or a Web or e-mail server. It also
optimizes each customer's entire transaction for contacts that flow
between sites, among agents or skill groups, or into and out of IVR
systems.
2) Customer-Profile Routing extends the sources of data
available for making contact-routing decisions and for populating agent
desktop applications. Intelligent contact management software can perform
a customer profile database lookup during routing to more effectively
segment customers and determine the optimal destination for each contact.
Information obtained from customer relationship management (CRM) packages
can be used to even more precisely match customers with agents and expand
the data available to screen-pop applications. The information obtained is
delivered to the selected agent with the contact, maximizing efficiency by
eliminating data retrieval from the desktop.
3) Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) offers a rich set of
data to business applications, providing enterprisewide call-event and
customer-profile information to a targeted agent desktop or business
server. At the server level, real-time and historical information can be
provided by multiple networks, ACDs, IVRs, Web servers, business
applications, databases and the system itself. Industry-standard
interfaces allow companies to more effectively use their corporate
resources with minimal custom development or systems integration to
implement CTI quickly and cost-effectively. An open software architecture
easily integrates server or desktop solutions -- whether existing or new
-- and enables users to choose applications that best meet their business
needs. Scalability is possible to support an unlimited number of client
connections, and delivers distributed fault tolerance across the
enterprise.
4) Consolidated, Enterprisewide Reporting collects real-time and
historical data necessary for mission-critical contact center reporting.
An open architecture allows for the consolidation of timely and accurate
information from carrier networks, the Internet, ACDs, IVRs, Web servers,
databases, business applications, individual agent desktops and other
resources. Contact, customer and peripheral data can be collected and
stored. Data regarding individual agents in the contact center enterprise
can also be collected, eliminating the need to gather this information
from individual switches while providing increased reporting flexibility
and a comprehensive picture of agent activity.
5) Web Interaction gives immediate assistance to customers who
need information above and beyond what is provided on the corporate Web
site. These real-time Web requests can be routed using the same business
rules applied to contacts arriving from a carrier network. Every request
-- with the accompanying customer profile data collected over the Web --
is delivered to the most appropriate agent anywhere in the enterprise. As
voice applications move from circuit-switched to IP networks and as
phone-based and Web-based customer support merge and blend, the
convergence of media types is enabling richer interactions and greater
personalization of applications and services. The next-generation customer
contact center will be characterized by multimedia contacts (customer
choice), integrate seamlessly with Web presence and migrate from switched
to IP infrastructures. It will combine the value of personal interaction
solutions with the information value of the latest automated interaction
systems as both experienced personnel and up-to-the-second, integrated
information resources are brought intelligently to bear on individual
customers to maximize the value of each contact.
On an implementation level, this requires:
Adding customer service functionality to a Web presence.
Some customers show that cross-sell and upsell rates, typically in the 4
to 6 percent range, jump up to 40 to 60 percent when live collaboration is
added to a company's Web presence.
Adding Internet presence to call centers. The Web-enabled
call center market is projected by Frost & Sullivan to reach U.S. $1.3
billion by 2006. This will be the result of forward-looking companies
integrating their e-commerce activities, on all levels, with traditional
customer service activities in order to maximize staff efficiency,
minimize wasted customer time, eliminate inconsistent information and so
on.
Applying the optimal resource to every customer interaction.
Flexible business intelligence is required to continually match the
optimal resources to every customer contact and request, be it a highly
trained specialist to close a major sale or an IVR capability to handle
simple requests such as account balances.
Putting in place the infrastructure necessary to project a holistic
brand image across all channels of customer interaction. As contact
channels proliferate and consumers' competitive choices multiply, it is
essential that a unified customer experience underlies all customer
interactions across all channels. This requires exchanges (personal,
informational and application) to flow easily through the network to
reduce friction, compress time, present a unified brand with unified
values to increase loyalty and, ultimately, anticipate individual consumer
needs.
6) Remote Agent Support extends the call center environment by
providing CTI, contact distribution and reporting capabilities to branch
office and small office/home office (SOHO) agents, as well as to knowledge
workers throughout the enterprise. In addition to skills-based routing, it
can provide soft-phone, screen pop and third-party call control
functionality for remote agents, delivering a single, network-to-desktop
CTI solution for the enterprise. By incorporating agents from beyond a
contact center's physical location, companies can better use existing and
on-demand resources, fully extend CTI functionality across an entire
enterprise regardless of agent location and eliminate the need for ACD
extension products. Remote agent support also expands hiring options,
improves agent retention and lowers the costs associated with turnover by
increasing agent location options.
7) IVR Integration supports customer identification and
segmentation, skills-based routing and IVR load balancing, and also can
extend the value of IVR investments. An open interface allows any IVR
application to communicate with the intelligent contact management
platform, enabling the IVR to act as a routing client, as a managed
resource, as a queue point and as an information source for consolidated
real-time and historical reports. A service control interface controls IVR
scripting, providing a single, unified scripting environment to which
business rules can be applied. This also supports call queuing at a
premises- or network-based IVR and pulls calls from queue when an
appropriate agent becomes available anywhere in the enterprise.
8) Workforce Management Integration leverages contact-volume
forecast data and agent schedules generated by workforce management
systems, enabling a company to more effectively allocate daily resources
while facilitating long-term planning. For example, scheduling data can be
used in routing decisions and to generate adherence reports comparing
forecasts versus actual performance.
Deployed And In Operation Today
Intelligent contact management solutions are being deployed today and
positive results are unmistakable. For example, in 1995, one large
insurance company had one call center to handle all of its operations. In
the five years since, the same company has opened two additional call
centers and now employs more than 850 agents who handle more than ten
million annual calls. By implementing intelligent contact management --
particularly advanced CTI capabilities -- the company has been able to
lower its average speed of answer by 40 percent and reduce abandoned calls
by 30 percent.
Results such as that ultimately translate to superior customer service
and competitive advantage.
Pat Kelly is director of product marketing in Cisco
Systems' Internet Communications Software Group.
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