January 2005

The Benefits of a Blended Customer Contact Solution

By West Corporation

In recent years, companies have been forced to choose between either high quality or low cost when implementing a customer service solution. Domestic contact centers generally provided the highest quality service, but competitive pressures have forced many companies to go offshore to reduce costs.

Today, many of America’s largest companies are discovering that the best way to maintain quality while reducing customer service costs is through a mix of locations and solutions. As a leading provider of customer contact solutions, West Corporation provides its clients with an ideal balance of quality and cost savings through blended solutions utilizing domestic, near-shore and offshore contact centers along with home agents and the latest in interactive speech technology.

In addition to higher quality and reduced costs, there are numerous advantages to blended solutions, including:

Expandability: One of the inherent features of a West blended solution is that it combines multiple contact center options and home agents with some of the largest speech-enabled port capacity in the industry. This combination makes it easier for companies to absorb unforeseen spikes in call volume and offload transaction-based volume or FAQs.

Built-in Backup Systems: In addition to standard backup systems, a blended solution gives you additional security. Should any one location be unavailable due to unforeseen service interruptions, West’s Virtual ACD automatically routes calls to other available sites or remote agents. West’s infrastructure is fully redundant and monitored by a state-of-the-art network operations center staffed 24/7/365.

Ability to Prioritize Callers: Your best customers deserve extra-special attention. With a blended solution, callers can be intelligently routed to the agent who best suits their needs. This specialized routing can be based on a number of factors, including the quality of service they require, cost or location. In most cases, this prioritization can be implemented with no additional contact costs.

West’s blended solutions are customized to meet the changing needs of their dynamic corporate clients. Using robust technological capabilities developed and refined over the past 18 years, West can provide its clients with up-to-the minute reports that are tied to benchmarks selected by the client.

West Corporation’s blended solutions are changing the future of customer contact centers and are becoming the most efficient and cost-effective way for today’s companies to make sure customers and prospects receive the type of outstanding service they expect.

For more information, please contact West Corporation at 800-841-9000, or visit www.west.com.

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