The Contact Center Blog

Software as a service (SaaS)

It was great to see the comments on my first article “Virtualization in the Contact Center” - how it made a positive impact on your business and for others a “kick-start” for deployment.  You may have been wondering, where I disappeared to?   I have been quite busy with new deployments in summer and hope to post more consistently in the coming months.

Software has always been known as something you install with hard (CD/DVD media) or soft (downloadable) goods.  Software had a traditional way of running “installed” on the company’s infrastructure (servers/personal computers).  This now changing with software as a service (SaaS).

Many of you have heard the coined term as “Web 2.0”.   This is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web.    Software company’s were quick to adapt with Web 2.0 and offer Software as a service (SaaS).    With this business model in mind, we no longer rely on local computer overhead and software licensing duplication.   Many new and existing software vendors offer a pay-per-user approach.  

What are the advantages?   To save money by not purchasing servers (low monthly obligation versus high up-front cost), instantly able to scale and be flexible to business demand, faster time to market, security (most SSL encrypted) and reliability (cloud based server clusters).  Most software as a service (SaaS) programs run directly from the web browser or may require a simple installation of Sun Microsystems JAVA (minimal administration from an IT perspective).

What are the disadvantages?  No internet - No application!  Software as a service (SaaS) is not perfect and it will not provide the same benefits to all users.   To the point, some may find it hard to give control or trust to third parties to manage their applications and data.  Certain contact centers would require industry specific business applications for which software as a service (SaaS) solutions are not available and companies without clear business objectives and defined business processes will not benefit by it.

Are you going to utilize software as a service (SaaS) this year or next year?  Do you currently use it?   Do you use Google Docs? Open Office?  Office Live?  Virtual Hosted ACD/IVR/Agent consoles?  Predictive Dialers?  Workforce Management?   CRM?    What successes/challenges have you come across?  I am looking forward to your feedback on this service.  

New report shows 68% of consumers hang up if they have trouble hearing an agent

Last week I was reading my industry news emails and came across a bulletin from Contact Center World, titled "Call Center Frustrations May Cause Consumers to Shop Elsewhere".  While I automatically thought - "well, yeah!" I still clicked through to see what proof this article contained, and am happy I did.

The first line catches the readers eye - 68% of consumers hang up if they have trouble hearing an agent.  This includes a bad connection, poor voice quality, faulty speech recognition software, an agent mumbling on the phone or having an accent that is thick and difficult to understand.

The report, as pointed out in the Contact Center World article, is based on a survey of 3,925 consumers in the United States, U.K, Germany and France, and makes a good point about the investment a call center needs to make in their services.

Call centers are in business to serve people.  So it astounds me when some companies don't properly invest their time and resources in technology and people that work for them.

When you look to hire an outsourced call center, there are many things to consider to ensure proper fit.  However at the forefront of your questions should be an inquiry into the technology used, and people hired to work on your project.  Does the technology meet industry standards?  Are agents accent-neutral and easy to understand?

Customer call you for help, so don't leave them unsatisfied!  An inbound call center is your opportunity to really impress your customer base with exceptional customer service and quality - so take it!

Back to School? It’s All The Same In The Call Center Industry!

With kids hitting the classrooms yesterday to begin a new school year, the term “back to school” has been all over the internet, radio, tv and social media.

Summer is over, many have taken their vacation time and are back in the office, and it’s time to get back to the grind.

Yet, in the call center – there never was a summer break.  Sure, there are different companies whose business is based on season, but in an outsourced contact center there is never a lull.  Which is one reason why you can rest-assured that service levels remain consistent throughout the year – our agents are never out of practice, and proper Workforce Management technology ensures that optimal staffing levels are maintained at all times.

Ahh, the organization of a call center and its smooth operation.  Now if only your back-to-school routine could be this smooth.

Virtualization in the Contact Center

Virtualization is a software-based platform that allows a single physical host machine to create and run one or more virtual machines at the same time. Virtualization software is used to emulate a complete computer system in order to allow a guest operating system to run; for example, allowing Linux to run as a guest on top of a PC that is natively running a Microsoft Windows Operating System. Over the past few years virtualization has been creating a buzz around the contact center and information technology industry. Names like Virtual PC, Virtual Server, Citrix, VMware and Hyper-V should sound familiar to those with a technological background.

There was a time when you needed separate physical hardware for each operating system (Unix, Linux, Windows) and separate physical hardware for ACD/CTI packages and network services (E-mail, Database, CRM, Windows Active Directory, Novell NetWare, File/print sharing and custom line of business applications).  Rather than pay for many under-utilized server machines, each dedicated to a specific workload, server virtualization allows those workloads to be consolidated into a small number of fully-used machines. 

With virtualization readily available today, this is a battle we no longer fight. There are many benefits to consolidating the number of physical servers in your environment by taking advantage of the many different server virtualization products (i.e. VMWare and Microsoft Hyper-V) on the market. These benefits include:

• Lower number of physical servers: Reduce many under-utilized server machines, reduce point of hardware failures, maintenance costs and power consumption.
• Server consolidation: Increase space in the telecom/data center.
• Testing fixes/upgrades: Before going ‘live’ in a production environment with software upgrades or hot-fixes, your data center now has the capability to create an exact replica of the production machine (Virtual-to-Virtual or Physical-to-Virtual) and test the hot-fix or software patch which determines if it works or if it impacts another application.
• Reduce Costs: No longer worry about buying new server hardware due to life-cycle/performance issues, make a Physical-to-Virtual migration to your virtual server with ease.
• Failover/Backup: Make fully redundant hosts or backups of ‘live’ servers with the click of a mouse, restoring services with ease.
• Operating System Flexibility: Being able to deploy multiple operating system technologies on a single hardware platform (i.e. Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, Unix and Linux. 

Have you virtualized your contact center? If so, please share how you did it and if it has made a positive impact on your business.

As Twitter’s dominance continues, how will retailers and contact centers react?

Twitter has emerged as a dominant form of communication online.  It connects with your Facebook status, it can be updated by various different platforms on a cell phone, desktop or through a good-old web browser.

I was reading the paper this morning and was somewhat surprised to see that even the Berlin Wall has made it onto Twitter – quite literally.  The Berlin Twitter Wall went online Tuesday, inviting anyone to share their memories of the wall and its collapse on November 9, 1989.  This struck me as interesting – and really hit home how significantly Twitter and other social media impact our every day lives.

In reality though, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.  We are no longer in a world where we must seek out the news – with RSS feeds, following specific people on Twitter, Facebook Communities and the like – the news is coming to us.

So how are businesses using it?  How has Twitter changed the way we do business?  Businesses have begun to adopt live chat as a means of communicating with customers, however this cuts out the IVR greeting used to welcome  customers when they call for help – the automatic greeting that could,  for example, inform customers of new promotions or current problems with service.  I think that there is great potential for Twitter to pick up the slack here, and work simultaneously with live chat and email customer service.

The question is, have businesses really caught on to this idea yet?  And since it is in the realm of good customer service – how is this going to affect the contact center industry?

"OneApp" Helps Enhance Lower End Mobile Devices

Microsoft OneApp has been in development for a while. The biggest thing that stood out to me was in the first sentence of an article I just read, "Microsoft on Monday announced plans for mobile software that aims to allow people in emerging markets to access various Internet programs using lower-end feature phones." 

The article goes on to talk about how OneApp will let users with older cell phones access the same popular social apps being used today, such as Facebook, Twitter, and MSN Messenger. OneApp makes things virtual, or follows the "cloud" concept - meaning apps aren't stored on the phone but accessed virtually.

I talked about it briefly before, "Cloud Telephony". From a user standpoint, it makes it easier for people's everyday needs (shop, socialize, etc). From a  service standpoint, businesses and companies can take advantage and have another channel to effectively serve their customers. Especially with a market and demographic that can be predominantly found in the virtual world.

Is it Possible To Reduce The Cost of Customer Service and Enhance The Consumer Experience?

Is there really a way to "Do More With Less" and increase customer satisfaction?  This is a popular theme within all business verticals in today's economic climate.

We have all experienced the frustrating scenario as a consumer where we seek information for products and services on-line, do not find the answer we need and then call a contact center agent only to be "transferred" and have to repeat the same set of questions with a new customer service channel to find the answer we are looking for. 

This leads to a negative experience, reduced satisfaction and higher cost for the company that is providing the customer service. 

By now we are all familiar with the options to enable multi-channel customer service via email, voice (live agents), live web chat  and self service via on-line search tools or IVR options; but how many companies provide consumers with consistency across all these channels? 

The key to increasing CSAT and reducing service cost is to enable a seamless escalation path across all channels and enable multiple communication channels for consumers to find the answer they are looking for.

How is this accomplished?  First it is important to understand where your consumers typically begin the process of searching for information when making a buying decision or customer service inquiry.

Let's take the example of a traditional company web site.  A typical consumer will start their search for information on the web.  By providing easy to use self service options on-line  the company is able to take the first step in handling the majority of questions via basic FAQ's or key word searches, this is also the most cost effective way to handle these contacts and reduce calls into the contact center. 

But what happens when the consumer does not find the information there are looking for?  Unfortunately for many businesses the consumer is then forced to call into the contact center which results in a higher cost to handle the contact with live agents and results in lost opportunity for those consumers that abandon because they do not want to call for help.

The most overlooked avenue to bridge the communication gap, provide your consumer with increased choice and reduce site abandonment is live web chat.  By providing consumers with the ability escalate from self service to chat companies are able to handle a larger portion of consumer contacts in a cost effective manner and further deflect costly phone calls into the contact center.

In addition, enabling this channel allows companies to collect valuable information on the web site by evaluating chat transcripts to make self service and web site enhancements that increase overall satisfaction and further reduce costly phone calls.

While there are some consumers that would prefer to call the contact center directly, a growing majority prefer to get answers while on the web, providing all three communication channels allows businesses to provide choice to the consumer for how they would prefer to interact with your business.

So what are the keys to a successful multi-channel strategy for your customer service? Aside from providing multiple communication channels that include web self service, live web chat and phone support the most overlooked component is consistent content across all these channels. 

Too often the information at the finger tips of the contact center agent is inconsistent with the content on the website, creating confusion for the consumer.  Consolidating content and answers to questions that is consistent across all channels ensures brand consistency, lower cost and increased customer satisfaction.

This is only part of the customer service optimization process. By tracking the questions that you do not have prepared answers for when customers escalate to a live web chat or a voice agent creates an immediate feedback loop where on-line self service tools can be enhanced to provide more useful and relevant information for your consumers. 

The reason most consumers escalate to an agent is because they did not find the answer they were looking for via self service. 

Thus, the key to reducing the cost of providing customer service and increasing CSAT for your consumers is to utilize the data collected at the agent level and then feed the missing content back into the self service or live web chat response library.  This creates an ongoing commitment to brand consistency, a more satisfied consumer and most importantly reduced cost to provide the service.

"Cloud" Telephony

I recently came across The IVR Blog by Angel.com, and was drawn to an entry refering to the term "Cloud Telephony". David points out"cloud" meaning, imagery and term being used more frequently. I personally haven't heard the term as much or don't recall seeing many incorporate it into certain imagery (Maybe I have, but just don't notice it). I probably see it more in diagrams and presentations.

Though I'm not familiar with it, I like the concept and agree with David's definition of it:

The notion that cloud represents is, to boil it down as I see it, the ability to access any solution you want, from any where you want, at any time you want — not being tied to hardware or installed software somewhere — and the ability to easily intermingle different types of solutions so everything works in conjunction.

He also points out the increased use of this in the telephony space. I think this holds true with not only this space, but in all spaces as well. To me, products or services of any kind need to have theflexibility to be adaptable and "do it all" with convenience. It reflect today's ssociety demands of wanting and needing things on demand, whatever it may be.

When speaking about "clouds" I immediately think of social media and technology. Think about devices, programs, and applications that are designed to connect together - they all fit somewhere within this theoretical "cloud".

Mobile Live Chat?

We're already used to seeing this - business workers, teenagers, and college students alike fiddling away with their mobile phones checking emails, playing games, text messaging, or just acting like they're busy! I see this everywhere too, on the the streets, public transit, airports, malls, etc. I'm guilty of most of these things.

Earlier this week, I saw the release of the new iPhone 3GS. There are so many applications the phone already has on top of some of the new features. You can do anything and practically everything on it. For Blackberry users, they can "pin" each other for free. These smart phones save people time, and almost become a remote for everything they need.

In North America, we're finally starting to see some of these 3G/4G technologies in action. Social media applications are compatible with mobiles. As we move closer to this being the norm, is it a far stretch to see a successful Live Chat application or gateway users can access on their phones? People already try to maximize their time while traveling, being able to communicate with stores, banks, companies, etc. on the go would definitely make things more convenient. At the same time, you do it without disturbing those around you.

I personally can see it easily. Next time you're on a train, airplane or even mall - look around and see how many people are casually fumbling around with their mobiles. Despite this, the obvious obstacle will always be consumer adoption. Theoretically though, it makes sense. Maybe a new feature for the next iPhone - you never know. 

Will Internet Savvy Web 2.0'ers Lead to the Demise of the Traditional Call Center Model?

Recently, I have read that Twitter of all things is apparently the cause of significant call center layoffs. It was stated that more people than ever are taking advantage of corporate Twitter sites to ask customer service questions, which means less traditional phone call inquiries (you can read the article here ).

And what is this I am hearing about 'super users'? -people that enjoy products so much that they surf the web and online corporate communities, jumping at the chance to help their fellow users by answering customer service questions. From a recent tmcnet.com article:

Since last summer, Verizon has transferred much of the responsibility in certain divisions that require high levels of customer service to volunteers - people who have a passion for the wireless, Internet and TV technologies that Verizon peddles, and who like to feel useful. Sound strange? It is. But it's also true. They're called "super-users," and they work through online forums that are gradually developing into self-sustaining databases where customers can go to answer all their questions.

Does this all mean that the end of the traditional customer service call center is near?

I don’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong, there are great self-service companies out there like Bazaarvoiceand Lithium, and they have a place in this ecosystem, but I think people are forgetting to examine the other side of the spectrum and companies like Zappos.com- the reigning King of the customer service experience.

How does one explain Zappos.com’s success in this new self-help world? For gosh sakes they don't even set limits for how long their agents can talk to callers, and I believe the longest service call they ever had was over 5 hours.....

My current thought is that there is a middle ground, and that appropriate and tempered call deflection is the key to success.

What I mean by this is:

Companies should take advantage of these new technologies, incorporating items like robust self-help sections to their websites, and they should also use communication channels like Twitter, live chat and email (which are usually more cost effective than voice support to deploy because of concurrency). But as is the case with Zappos, there is no replacement for the service that can be achieved through voice support. The experience is unparalleled, and for more complicated support issues it is the only viable channel that can be used to adequately understand and address a customers needs.

Although a lot of startups are finding the initial cost savings of self-service tools appealing, as these companies mature, if they hope to develop a long term and re-occurring customer base they are going to have to invest in multi-channel customer service which is anchored by traditional phone support. Simply put, customer’s expectations are higher than ever, and consumers expect a multitude of contact options so they can interact in the way they feel most comfortable with a company.

To conclude, I think self-service is here to stay, and I think it works amazingly well for simple customer services issues. In these challenging economic times, the technologies discussed will also help businesses to reduce their overall customer service expenditures. With that being said, call deflection can only be taken so far. For companies that care about their brand and their overall customer experience, there will always be a need and a role for the kind and caring customer service representative who is available to speak with consumers by phone.                         

-Tim Peters