White Paper | Contact Centers Overview

Contact Centers Overview

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White Paper | Contact Centers Overview

Table of Contents
WHAT IS A CONTACT CENTER? .................................................................................... 3 Short introduction ..................................................................................................... 3 Types of Contact Centers ............................................................................................. 4 Contact Center Activities ............................................................................................. 5 Contact Center Vertical Markets .................................................................................... 5 WHY IS EXCELLENCE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE SO IMPORTANT? .......................................... 6 Key features of Customer Service Excellence...................................................................... 6 Contact Center Resources Management............................................................................ 7 Recruitment ............................................................................................................. 7 Training ................................................................................................................. 8 Incentives................................................................................................................ 8 Benefits and Bonuses .................................................................................................. 9 Turnovers ............................................................................................................... 9 Absenteeism .......................................................................................................... 10 How to Decrease Turnover in Contact Centers ................................................................. 10 CONTACT CENTER PERFORMANCE............................................................................. 11 Contact Center's Efficiency vs Effectiveness ..................................................................... 11 Call metrics ........................................................................................................... 12 Technologies and methodologies to track and measure performance....................................... 12 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) .................................................................... 13 TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS TO RUN A CONTACT CENTER .................................................. 14 Applications for contact center software ......................................................................... 15 Benefits from IP contact centers ................................................................................... 15 Hosted or on-demand solutions - secure technical platform investment while growing ................ 16 Value added functionalities ........................................................................................ 17 New vs old technologies ............................................................................................ 17

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White Paper | Contact Centers Overview

MARKET PLAYERS.................................................................................................... 18

WHAT IS A CONTACT CENTER?

Short introduction
A contact center is a central point in a company from where all type of customer contacts are managed. In simple terms, a contact center is a technologically evolved call center that deals not only phone calls, but also e-mails, web inquiries, VoIP, faxes, web chats and even post letters. It is the front line of a business. One of the advantages of a contact center is the possibility it offers to its customers to decide on the medium they want to use to communicate with the company. A contact center must be designed to maximize investments lower operating costs and grow with the business while ultimately achieving a competitive advantage. A good contact center is focused on three mutually dependent business objectives: revenue generation, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Improving service delivery and customer experience is the main objective of most contact centers. An effective contact center

quickly answers customers contacts has a high first contact resolution rate is a significant source of revenue for the company continually improves processes, strategies and technology to constantly gain in service, efficiency and revenue generation has a positive thinking staff performance data is collected and analyzed through a well established process.

The channels contact centers offer for communication are: telephone - agent assisted, e-mail, fax, telephone - IVR self-service, physical correspondence, online self-service, sms/text messaging, telephone - speech self-service, web chat, web call back and web co-browsing.

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Types of Contact Centers

Contact Centers can be described as: Inbound (when it is the customer who initiates contact) Outbound (when it is the contact center that initiates contact) Blended (both inbound and outbound contacts are handled)

In a modern inbound contact center a considerable portion of the load is shifted towards automated response or speech-enabled systems usually referred to as self-service systems. Inbound contact center activity:

general queries (available products and services) account management (updates, password change, etc.) sales orders support issues cancellations and returns

Outbound contact center activity:

sales calls to new customers proactive customer service (e.g. informing of delays, delivery arrangements, etc. ) cross-selling or up-selling sales calls to existing customers debt collection renewals (sales calls to existing customers) customer satisfaction surveys

Blended operations can turn very cost-effective and time winning when implemented correctly.

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Contact Center Activities

Most common activities contact centers are involved in are:

collect information general inquiries technical support sales sales support product and service information customer service customer retention polls and surveys

Contact Center Vertical Markets

Contact Centers support businesses in most industry sectors:

finance (banking, insurance, credit cards, credit checking agencies, loans, debt collection) services (non-physical service offerings to public and business) outsourcing and telemarketing (telemarketing companies and large full-service outsourcers) transport and travel (public transport, airlines, information and booking, travel agents) food and drink (brewers, food suppliers) telecommunication (mobile and fixed line operators, sales and support) medical (health care and pharmaceuticals) manufacturing (often product support and queries) retail and distribution (tele- /e-shopping, parcel carriers, logistics, catalogs) IT (technology sales and service, Internet providers)a public services (government, local authorities, agencies, emergency services, education) entertainment and leisure (hotels, ticket booking) utilities (gas, fuel, electricity, water) motoring (manufacturers, rental, assistance) printing and publishing (newspaper and magazine ads, subscriptions, etc.) construction (builders, building suppliers)

The fastest growing global vertical market is the public sector (where eGovernment initiatives

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continue to grow and the formalization of departmental customer handling leads to the growth in contact centers) followed by health care, retail & distribution, entertainment and transport & travel. These sectors continue to grow driven in part by the necessity to support online interactions.

WHY IS EXCELLENCE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE SO IMPORTANT?

For any business customer retention is essential. The American Management Association estimates that repeat customers generate 65% of an average company's business and it is well known that it costs several times more to attract a new customer than it does to retain an old one. Big revenue companies have long ago shifted from "meet customer's expectations" to "exceed customer's expectations". With the possibility the Internet offers, customers who were badly serviced, easily share their experience with the whole community via blogging, forums and even videos. This is creating bad image to the company and prospective customers will run to the competition. It is no longer accepted that a customer cannot get through to an agent quickly or not receive answers to his questions. Thus, all activities of a contact center MUST be focused on providing excellent customer service.

Key features of Customer Service Excellence

better and faster service delivery increase customer satisfaction gain repeat business increase credibility and loyalty with customers better manage stressful situations

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Contact Center Resources Management

A recent report shows that globally, salary costs alone make up 69.0% of the contact centers overall costs, reaching a high of 74.9% in North America and bottoming out at 64.0% in Africa and the Middle East. The average percentage of budget spent on technology is just 8.6%, with a high of 9.8% in the Asia-Pacific region and a low of 6.5% in North America. ('07 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report, Dimension Data group). Other costs relate to rent, telecommunications costs, utilities, taxes and other. Based on the fact that staff related costs make two thirds of the contact center's operating budget, management at all levels is focused on staffing solutions.

Recruitment
Qualities that contact centers look for in prospective agents:

customer focus empathy responsibility problem-solving ability to understand and follow instructions critical thinking advanced PC skills or even hi-tech

Common agent recruiting methods within a contact center: employee referrals online recruiting via own corporate Web site (career section) advertisements in a local or regional newspapers online recruiting via job banks site employment agencies

Usually, the recruitment process takes the candidates through telephone resumes, interviews, face-to-face interviews and references from past employers.

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Training
When the ideal candidate is selected, the company invests in his training. Most new comers never worked in a contact center before, they need to be trained not only on company's products or services specifics but also on common concepts and technology the contact center uses. On average, induction training takes 3-4 weeks. Induction training consists of two parts: customer care (listening and emphasizing, turning an angry customer into a happy one, etc. ) skills specific to the job (system navigation and application usage, product/service knowledge, etc.)

Ongoing training is manifested via team-leader coaching (on average 2 hours/week) and annual two-week courses. Some big contact centers have a dedicated training department. It is also possible to have external training.

Incentives
Incentive plans and recognition programs are a form of reward for employee's dedication to the business. They help motivate staff, make them feel valuable and important and increase productivity. When building an incentives plan, following must be taken into consideration:

purpose (determine the specific goals to be achieved) people (what employees must be focused on to achieve the desired results) value (the outcome that will be created if objectives are achieved) allocation (when the incentive will be paid to participants) monitoring (plan progress, documentation and communication to participants and superiors)

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Benefits and Bonuses

In most contact centers employees can enjoy benefits like: paid leave (sick leave, vacation, bereavement, holidays, personal business, etc.) insurance (medical, dental, life, accidents, etc.) retirement and savings plans service recognition education (university, masterclasses, seminars, etc. )

Bonuses can be awarded as money (most appreciated by employees), prizes, gift certificates, vouchers and coupons. Human resource optimization helps to improve agent performance, resulting in more efficient and more effective service.

Some of the solutions are:

e-learning (provide online training at an agent's desktop) quality monitoring and logging (monitor agents' qualitative performance) messaging systems (keep agents informed of contact center status) hiring and recruiting tools (help managers hire the right people) agent scorecards/ key performance dashboards (provide performance targets and results to agents and supervisors)

Turnovers
Average agent attrition is 24%. ('07 Global Contact Center Benchmarking Report, Dimension Data) The most common reasons for agent turnovers include:

better opportunities outside the organization low pay repetitive work inconvenient work hours abusive calls

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lack of career and development opportunities pressure and monitoring by management lack of support poor working environment

Agent turnover impacts:

service quality lost productivity higher training selection and hiring costs employee morale higher stress

The lowest turnover rates exist when the agents have minimal customer interaction or when they possess full control over the interaction.

Absenteeism
High stress, management pressure and poor working environment lead to abusive absenteeism and sick leave. Extended staff absence can cause major problems with contact center performance and the customer experience. The remaining staff end up over-worked and stressed, with low morale that will lead to more absence.

How to Decrease Turnover in Contact Centers

Since turnover rate is alarming, managers' main concern is how to motivate and retain staff. Below are listed some of the most common practices that management falls back on.

make flexible work arrangements (part-time, temporary, homeworking) open communication and heart create partnerships emancipate actions keep high morale

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provide good training and necessary tools to perform the job fitness facilities on site and recovery areas work space animation (live green walls, pets)

CONTACT CENTER PERFORMANCE

Performance is maintained with a perfect balance between cost control, revenue generation, customer satisfaction, and employee satisfaction.

Contact Center's Efficiency vs Effectiveness

The top three items of defined strategies in most contact centers are: customer satisfaction quality/process improvements technology strategy

Efficiency is associated with quantity, while effectiveness with quality. Efficiency can be increased if the right technology is used (like speech-enabled systems, IVR and self-service technologies). Effectiveness is the ability to evaluate performance from the perspective of the customer, but is problematic because the metrics are difficult to capture. Efficiency is measured by set metrics like: call handling time speed to answer call abandonment rates

Effectiveness can be assured by following methods:

scripting

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call monitoring call recording customer surveys

Customer satisfaction survey methods: IVR written outbound external agencies

Call metrics
While understanding what is happening within the contact center is key to performance, knowing why it is happening is key to improvement. The performance of contact centers has traditionally been measured by observation of key metrics, usually related to cost and efficiency. Most common contact center metrics:

average speed to answer calls percentage of calls answered within a certain time average call length percentage of dropped calls agent activity (call time, wrap-up, administration, idle mode) conversion rates (contacts converted to sales) call volume (number of calls answered compared to available time, number of orders logged and confirmed) customer satisfaction based on after-call customer input percentage of first-call resolution

Technologies and methodologies to track and measure performance

Real-time monitoring (management dashboards, automated alerts, wallboards) is commonly used to make sure that everything runs smoothly within a contact center.

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Metrics most often used to assess performance:

overall staff costs customer satisfaction rating staff attrition rates calls per hour or other call volume-related metric customer attrition / churn rates first-time call resolution overall revenues customer lifetime value / average deal value

Some of the technologies used to retrieve and analyze data to measure performance are: Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Voice Response Unit (VRU) Automated Call Distributor (ACD)

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The CRM is a continuously evolving process focused on maximizing profit from customers, as a result of understanding them, treating them with care and fulfilling their needs. CRM is an application overlay on top of a database intended to maintain historical event data and allow a company to manage customer interactions in an organized way. The CRM enhances customer experience through strategies such as segmentation, personalization, telephone number strategies and single views of the customer. CRM solutions: value-added routing (skill-based routing reduces call-handling times, allows customers to talk first-time to an agent who can solve their issues) an optimized agent desktop (saves navigation and wrap-up time) cross-selling (offering a customer additional items in related or unrelated categories) and up-selling (offering a customer who just placed an order, either a bigger/ better deal on a more expensive item than the one just bought)

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TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS TO RUN A CONTACT CENTER

Is it possible for a contact center to achieve high customer satisfaction at low operational cost? The biggest challenge in contact centers is determining the number of agents to be assigned (capacity planning) such that the right level of customer satisfaction is achieved at the right operational cost, given the fore-casted future arrivals, service times, time a customer is willing to wait, as well as the routing policy at the Automatic all Distributor (ACD). Thus, proper technology is indispensable for good running of contact centers.

How to choose a contact center platform?

Managing customer relationships across multiple channels requires an integrated communication system platform that is capable of handling all types of customer interactions efficiently. So, when it comes to choosing the software to be implemented in a contact center, there are some criteria that should be taken into consideration. Is it going to be a totally new contact center or are you thinking of upgrading an old one? What is the total number of users that will need access to this software? Is it going to be inbound, outbound or blended contact center? What functions would you like this contact center software to perform? The choice is big, however there are "must-have" standard applications to be considered and many software packages include most of them:

ACD - intelligently route inbound calls CTI - display caller information on agents' screens automatically Predictive Dialer - dials batches of phone numbers for connection to agents Auto Dialer - dials batches of phone numbers to automatically deliver messages Call Recording - record and archive calls Reporting and Tracking - track contact center statistics Workforce Management - manage call volume to agents IVR - provide touch-tone or voice interaction for callers Call Blending - handle inbound and outbound calls simultaneously

Choose a vendor that offers more than just a feature set. Training and support, as well as a commitment to making the solution perform the way it needs to perform, are essential. Software alone will not bring optimization.

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Applications for contact center software

Contact center software can be used for many different applications. Some of those include:

general customer management help desk monitoring/recording/reporting business continuity/disaster recovery virtual call centers using homeworking agents

Customer management of central contact center functions is available in a Web-based interface, meaning it doesnt require extensive training. The contact center help desk assists customers through a variety of communications channel including phone, e-mail, and chat. Managing the multi-media aspect of modern help desks is an important application for contact center software. Skill-based routing ensures that customers are connected with the right agent who can best answer their questions. Help desk agents are provided with information and tools to respond efficiently (FAQ knowledgebases and case management systems). Supervisors can have access to staff performance and customer experiences using real-time monitoring and reporting, historical reporting, and voice recording functions. The disaster recovery plan ensures that if disaster strikes, operations can go on as usual or are at least minimally affected. The specific software can include built-in redundancies by duplicating the contact centers IVR, call flow and call processing operations. Virtual contact center software enables agents to work anywhere there is an Internet connection and phone. This enables the company to use agents located in different time zones, ensuring 24/7 coverage without having to maintain multiple physical locations.

Benefits from IP contact centers

Companies that successfully implemented IP technology remarked that they only gained from this. The benefits of an IP contact center are:

Reduces network management fees and carrier costs.

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Simplifies the management of multiple ACDs Eliminates the need for multiple copies of the same application. Provides contact center technology cost-effectively to branch offices, satellite offices, retail locations and remote or at-home agents. Optimizes agent usage. Routes each transaction to the most appropriate agent. Provides a single, unified view of contact center operations Facilitates the standardization of service quality.

Hosted or on-demand solutions - secure technical platform investment while growing

In-house contact center infrastructure typically requires the following elements: PBX, ACD, IVR, e-mail router, agent-facing tool, self-service tool, database, reporting tool, fax server, cobrowsing tool, voice logging and recording for quality monitoring, and voicemail system. Understanding and selecting the right set of products is quite time consuming. By contrast, ondemand software is simple to use because it uses a familiar graphical user interface and all the tools are pre-integrated. Hosted or on-demand solutions can mean anything from network-based routing, to the complete outsourcing of a contact centers operations. An on-demand contact center software solution leaves the complexities of setting up multi-channel support technologies to the provider. Benefits of hosted contact center software:

Achieve rapid time to value by deploying your contact center agents with only a browser, an Internet connection and a phone. Integrate remote, central and home offices, and outsourcers. Reduce costs eliminating the need for proprietary contact center software and hardware installed locally at your site. Easy to configure. Advanced security and uptime guarantee. Improve contact center productivity by routing each interaction to the right agent, right away. Reduce average call time thanks to screen-pop, integration with CRM. Identify staff training opportunities with quality control functionalities. Supervisors can quickly and easily obtain reports about performance across all

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communications channels.

Value added functionalities

Value added software is able to extend functionality of the contact center: it supplements companies standard offer and stimulates incremental demand for their core services. Value added solutions:

Significantly enhance your call handling capabilities and processes. Create more intelligent, personalized interactions with your customers. Link your staff together for faster communications. Offer possibility to enjoy more agile, secure, and reliable operations. Focus your resources on your core business.

Examples of value added contact center solutions are: distributed IP; homeworking, reporting, quality monitoring, and workforce management; proactive contact management; self-service.

New vs old technologies

Contact centers operate either on traditional or IP technology. Traditional call centers use time division multiplexing (TDM)-based technologies. IP contact centers differ from traditional circuit-switched operations in that voice traffic is converted into packets of data and carried around the contact center (or between contact centers) on a data network, rather than a voice network. The IP contact centers are running on two types of architecture: IP-only and hybrid, where both IP and traditional TDM infrastructures are used. There are many reasons to consider changing from a traditional to an IP contact center, including:

IP enables virtual contact centers, homeworking and the remote office model IP promotes the successful take-up and management of multimedia customer interactions More affordable functionality is made available to smaller contact centers IP reduces the cost of maintaining two networks There is more flexibility to add and change agents in an IP environment There is a reduction in call charges between sites via IP trunking

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IP supports to reduce staff attrition through allowing flexible working The boundaries between contact center and the wider business are breaking down, and IP is a common theme across all parts of the enterprise IP infrastructure may be cheaper to upgrade than a circuit-switched platform

Video contact centers are growing popularity both in self-service applications (one-way video contact) and in interactive contact (customer-agent video call). Key features of such interactions are:

the self-service experience is faster and more interesting personalization - visual agent interaction may enhance trust improved communication - a picture is worth a thousand words - reducing call costs higher customer perception of the level of service new revenue streams from advertisers 'voice to video' switch enables agents to demonstrate a solution to a person visually

The virtual contact center consists of many operations which are linked together so as to be viewed and managed as a single contact center. Virtual contact centers offer:

larger pool of skills available more balanced work across contact center locations easier and more flexible scheduling global coverage offer 24/7 availability dynamic choice of outsources

MARKET PLAYERS

The contact center market has been consolidating for a number of years as vendors have broadened their product portfolios. This has enabled vendors to increase some sort of control in client accounts. At the same time, it has helped customers reduce the effort of managing multiple vendors in their environments, as well as reducing the costs associated with expensive computer telephony integration (CTI) middleware and customization to get disparate systems to work together.

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Different contact center infrastructure vendors offer differing abilities to manage the migration from traditional circuit-switched technology to newer IP-based systems. The leaders of the contact center infrastructure market are:

Cisco Avaya Genesys Nortel Aspect Software Interactive Intelligence Oracle CosmoCom Intervoice Siemens Communications

They have a broad geographic coverage, a clear vision for how contact center needs will evolve and a proven track record for delivering contact center products.

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