Improve operational efficiency of call centers while meeting business strategies.

When call centers first came onto the business scene more than 20 years ago, their purpose in the enterprise was simply to process customer calls as fast as possible and as economically as possible. Their only strategic value for the enterprise was telephony cost-cutting and human resource economy of scale. Call centers provided a method and means to drive random, uninitiated and expensive customer telephone calls into a highly managed operations framework. For the enterprise, the ability to manage, monitor and drive discipline into this area was good news and "good enough." Never mind customer satisfaction, customer retention, providing great service or upselling for more revenue; just answer the call and move on to the next call as fast as possible. But as competitive pressures, cost pressures and market speed have increased in all industries and markets, so has the need, if not the demand, for a different view of the call center.

The late 1990s were exciting times for the world of traditional call centers in most enterprise companies. There was a growing trend to transform call centers from a necessary operational part, although unprofitable resource, of the company, into a strategic business initiative. In many cases, becoming the engine behind a customer relationship management (CRM) initiative focused on driving long-term customer relationships, leveraging and enabling the company's business strategies and driving new revenue-generating opportunities. For some companies, in changing or emerging industries, the call center has become the "silver bullet" to drive back the competition.

How Did We Lose Operational Efficiency?

In general, call center technology responded very well to this new view and role for the call center in the enterprise. With the introduction of intelligent screen pops in the late 1980s, skills-based routing in the mid 1990s, CRM software in the late 1990s and now the serious use of e-mail and Web media for customer interaction in the contact center, there is no debate on whether call center technology has morphed and matured to meet the new strategic role of the call center in the enterprise. Sticking to a retrospective mood, what's being debated at the "C" level of most enterprise companies is "Where's the beef?"

Where is the return on investment (ROI), the reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) and, finally, where did the ability go to optimize the operational efficiency of call centers? The questions of old are coming back. Was there something wrong with economy of scale and cost-cutting? Isn't a dollar saved still a dollar earned? Then why is this new technology costing me so much to implement and even more after it's installed in day-to-day operational costs?

Over the past 12 to 15 months, a new generation of contact center products has emerged designed to drive operational efficiencies while delivering on business strategies. These products are packaged suites containing sophisticated routing, robust reporting, computer-telephony integration (CTI), pre-built CRM integration, multimedia support, agent and supervisor applications and simple "single-point" management and administrative tools.

Suite Success

At the foundation of these suites is a new architecture focused on improving operational efficiency in much the same way that IVRs streamlined customer interactions--by automating tasks wherever possible, freeing human resources for more complex responsibilities. At the same time, the tools and applications built into the suite's architecture eliminate the islands of automation that used to exist when new technologies, such as CRM applications, e-mail response systems and Web chat, were first introduced into call centers. In the past, these technologies provided new capabilities, but actually had a negative impact on operational efficiency. The reason: they could not be managed with the same proven systems used for ACD technology (telephone calls) and they required reallocating and partitioning groups of agents. The company's disciplined operation and cost-cutting economy of scale went out the window when these disparate technologies came in the door. This is no longer the case with the new contact center suites.

These new packaged contact center suites meet both enterprise goals of operational efficiency and business strategies through suite-based applications that provide empowerment, software architectures that are holistic in all functions and media and, finally, by enabling real-time CRM strategies.

To achieve the highest possible degree of operational efficiency--and fulfillment of these business benefits--begin by asking a single question: Why have a call center supervisor peer over an agent's shoulder when an automated tool can do the same monitoring? The answer should be so obvious as to stimulate an immediate search for a better management approach. These new contact center suites have tools that empower agents to monitor their own performance, enable supervisors to become more involved in the implementation of business strategies, and facilitate integration of new delivery channels into the fabric of the existing management paradigm.

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Empowering Agents

This approach begins with "adherence tools" that empower agents to monitor their own performance. These tools compare actual agent performance against goals established with their supervisor. If, for example, an agent is expected to respond to 20 calls before 12 p.m., and he or she has not reached this objective, the agent can delay and shorten his or her lunch break, without having a supervisor tell him or her to do so. Or, if the agent is supposed to spend 60 percent of his or her time handling telephone calls, 10 percent responding to e-mail, 10 percent in Web chats and 20 percent in after-call activity, and the agent sees that he or she has been favoring e-mail response instead of another work category, the agent can simply adjust the workflows accordingly.

Besides freeing the supervisor for other tasks, this self-empowerment has a number of direct benefits for agents. First, it eliminates the specter of "big brother" that many agents find intimidating and counter-productive. Instead, it creates an environment in which agents are treated as professionals, not as unskilled staff who need to be constantly watched. As a result, agent job satisfaction increases and so too does retention. With higher retention rates, training costs are minimized and the overall skill level of agents will be increased. Rising skill levels, in turn, can enable supervisors to increase performance objectives--which, of course, improves operational efficiency and, almost coincidentally, customer satisfaction and service objectives.

Empowering Supervisors

At the same time, by eliminating the need for supervisors to continually monitor agents, adherence tools empower supervisors to take a more active role in converting the call center into a powerful business tool that is fully responsive to changing business strategies. If a new product is launched, for example, the supervisor can suggest ways the call center can assist in marketing, selling and supporting that product. Then, after appropriate agent training, performance profiles of the adherence tools can be updated to reflect tasks associated with the new product.

Supervisors are also empowered to leverage call center investments with other tools that enable all media delivery channels--4telephone, fax, e-mail and Web chat--to be centrally monitored, and operationally viewed, with the same discipline previously only available for telephone calls. With a single interface to a single set of tools across these channels, call center agents can be easily deployed, as needed, to any channel. Then, with other capabilities of the operational tools, they can be re-deployed as conditions change. A single interface, for example, would enable supervisors to respond if telephone lines fail and e-mail volume picks up dramatically. Seeing this situation, all that would be required is to temporarily change routing parameters--and performance goals of the adherence tools for each agent.

With all media channels easily integrated into the standard workflow of the call center, training overhead is reduced because all channels rely on the same tools. This also eliminates human errors which otherwise would be likely to occur as agents toggled between different interfaces. Finally, with no training, and a single interface for all media, implementation times and costs are minimized.

Tools that let supervisors determine the requirements of those in a queue at any point in time can also trigger appropriate action. By evaluating the contact center suite's "real-time" management reports, for example, a supervisor may determine that a large number of individuals has serious problems with a specific product. He may then respond by adjusting skill routing parameters so that rather than being answered by first-tier agents, these calls are automatically and immediately escalated to experts in the contact center until the crunch period passes.

Intelligent Virtual Routing 

Some of the new contact center suites have virtual routing engines that can even automate these responses, adjusting routing parameters and workflows in response to real-time information about the call center operating conditions, agents' available skills or specific customer data. Some contact centers, using this intelligent virtual routing, have seen a 20 to 30 percent improvement in contact volume capacity with the same number of agents. Additionally many have benefited from the inherent "real-time" intelligence in the suite. Take, for example, the scenario of a call center for an insurance company based in the Northeast, where 600 agents are equally divided to service home-owners insurance, auto insurance and health insurance customers. If a snowstorm hits the region and the volume of auto claims calls increases, the system can automatically divert calls to health insurance agents who have some cross-training in handling auto-related inquiries. This functionality allows the enterprise to continue achieving critical service level commitments as events occur in real-time.

Similarly, these suites have tools that can automatically reach into CRM databases, assess real-time customer data and determine the value of a particular customer in the context of this information. If a customer has called multiple times in a single day about a single problem, for example, the routing paradigm may be automatically adjusted to give this customer top priority handling.

Holistic Solutions

Consider solutions that take a holistic approach, serving to join the various parts of a call center into a cohesive unit. With such solutions, when a call center is enhanced with a new service delivery channel, such as e-mail or Web chat, that medium can be operationally viewed as an integral part of the call center--and managed, as is any other medium, with the same tools already being used. The result: no negative impact on agent workflow.

While functionally multivendor solutions may appear robust, integration may become an issue. Does the agent, supervisor or manager interface work the same across all media? Are reporting capabilities comprehensive, integrating transactions and results from all channels? Will there be a point-the-finger-at-the-partner game when one piece of the solution fails or when support is needed?

To avoid the need to even ask these questions, let alone contemplate the consequences of unsatisfactory answers, you may wish to consider looking for a single "packaged" solution with out-of-the-box functionality in all areas of the call center and for all media types--whether they are currently being used or not. No custom coding should be required to achieve this functionality so that implementation time and costs can be minimized, even while ROI is accelerated. Such a solution can cost as much as 75 percent less than multiple point solutions or multivendor solutions, and be implemented in less than 30 days, as compared to the more common 60 days with the alternatives.

The Bottom Line

What it comes down to is this: by implementing the latest generation of operational boosting call center suites, you can create the contact center of the new millennium--a truly blended resource where all media, and all types of interactions, can be seamlessly integrated into efficient workflows. A proven resource, the call center can now be elevated to its rightful position as a powerful strategic business tool that cost-effectively meets customer needs and strategic objectives. The bottom line: with the right tools, call centers can continue to meet the increasingly common business mandate to meet customer needs by doing more, faster and for less cost. That's operational efficiency.

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BY Al Baker, Siemens Global eCRM Solutions

Al Baker has global product management responsibility for the eCRM business unit at Siemens Information and Communication Networks. As vice president for eCRM product management, he leads a global team that oversees the product management, product marketing and development direction of contact center products and partners in the Siemens HiPath ProCenter product portfolio.