New Capabilities in Contact Center Technology

Not all recent contact center capabilities are new, what’s new about call-center technology is the ability for these capabilities to be quickly and inexpensively integrated. Small businesses have always needed call center technology, they have just never been able to afford it. Not only the call-center technology, but as far as tying it into your back-office systems has been heinously expensive.

Telephone company equipment was proprietary way back, twenty years ago — both the hardware and software were created solely for the use of the telephone company, so that when you wanted to integrate computer equipment with telephone equipment (known as CTI or computer-telephony integration), the costs were exorbitant because the computer systems were probably proprietary as well, so you needed programmers who understood the intricacies of not one but two arcane systems.

In recent years, considerable change has taken place. Call center service software runs on standard industry servers, just as databases do; integrating applications in such case is much simpler than it used to be. More importantly, most telephony systems now also run on industry-standard servers, rather than on proprietary hardware.

Finally, the convergence of voice and data networks — on which voice transmissions use the Internet protocol — makes call-center integration even less complicated, and less expensive to implement.

Specialized call-center capabilities have been integrated, at the same time that voice and data networks have converged as well. At one time, you may have had to separately purchase automatic call distribution (ACD) software, which distributes calls into queues for agents, and integrate it with IVR software, which, as noted, routes calls to the appropriate department. It seems silly now, but Bern Elliott of the analyst firm Gartner notes that a major shift in the last few years has been for vendors to offer a full portfolio of such products. “The differences between the products have been significantly reduced, and people want to get them through a single vendor or through a partnership,” he says. “Any vendor that you select now comes with the complete package,” notes Dan Coen, vice-president of call centers for CallSource, which offers call center services on an outsourced basis. “You should be leery of a niche player, not because they won’t do that particular thing well, but because they can’t scale” as you need to add capabilities.

And that integration, is what a call center is about. It’s people supporting people. All you really need is for the most basic call center is a person and a phone. People get so caught up in the technology that they forget what’s important.

Virtual Call Center

Virtual Call Centers have led the SME’s successful contribution to the economy’s rise. They too have provided the best services according to a recent study. But what is a virtual call center? How different is it that a physical call center? A virtual call center is a call center where in the business or the company agents are physically detached and isolated rather than being stuck in work stations or be in a building, which the company owns, along with other agents of the company.

There are several positive aspects to this kind of arrangement. This is mostly beneficial to the employees since the work schedules are more flexible, there are no strict dress codes to follow and they will be given the comforts of their homes. Having a job in a virtual call center is perfect for those who would want to have stay at home jobs. Second, this arrangement will also be beneficial to the company since the set up will means less costs and expenses especially on housing, lease and equipment.

So why is it to your advantage if you would switch to a virtual call center from physical ones when considering hiring a call center for its services? One, the set up to which virtual call centers are made is designed to ease for both the employee and the employer. Less costs with maximum profits, the number one reason why businesses and companies exist. Second, the company could provide better services through a systematic approach to receiving calls and rendering services. Another is that virtual call centers do not require your businesses to pay for additional accessories.

Some companies do give the illusion of having a physical call center set up when the reality is that they are virtual call centers. This is because it will look more professional, the client or the customer will be led on to think that they are calling a particular department that will cater to their needs the best possible way when in fact they are calling a call center which is outsourcing and catering to multiple companies and organizations.

But despite these, the success rate of a company is sure to increase when a virtual call center handles the outsourcing. More people are calling in and inquiring, lesser payments for the company because of less expenditure of the virtual call center itself and not to mention the performance of the agents will be closely monitored.

This is a proof of the ongoing evolution of the call center industry and because of all the good it brings, the virtual call center will certainly lead the new generation of call centers in bringing the outsourcing industry into a whole new world.

Increasing Productivity in Contact Centers

There are helpful technologies are available for agents to help themselves in improving productivity, the key agent self-help tools include:

*Collaboration tools (between agents and supervisors) to makes real-time planning, tracking and exception handling easier and allows agents to log in and view schedules and request changes. These not only automate shift bidding, but also introduce a higher degree of fairness in awarding shifts. An automated rules engine is able to factor in seniority or ‘bonus points’ and assign shifts accordingly.

*Knowledge bases intuitive to provide access to complex product/service information to the agent while interacting with the customer (and typically can be similarly accessed by customer self service applications)

*e-learning tools to provide focused training (‘soft’ call handling and negotiation skills as well as product/service knowledge and cross/up-selling techniques).

In virtual contact centers, there are not a large amount of tools that empower an agent to self improve. What does exist are systems and application that store and make information available to agents to improve themselves through e-Learning. These are usually merged with a Quiz that an agent would take to assess their level of knowledge. This is useful for teaching technical skills and keeping an agent’s product knowledge up to date but does little to improve the agent’s customer interaction skills. There are some new technologies that uitilizes call evaluation scores and feedback from customer surveys to generate an agent performance profile. This in turn can be used to identify specific agent weaknesses and make suggestions on areas of improvement. This can then be used to optimize the use of agent development resources. If knowledge is a weak area online knowledge systems can be suggested as a solution. If knowledge is good but tone is a problem then an interaction with a trainer may be recommended. The automation of development of the identification areas through the merging of quality assurance and customer feedback and analysis using modern statistical tools to is an exciting frontier. It must however focus on improved training resource usage rather than reducing the amount of agent training and up skill.

Workforce management can put up web screens for agents to measure themselves against numbers of contacts taken, adherence and improving their own resolution times as they mature. It can also allow them to see who is in the queue ready for taking contacts before they make a judgement move to go into research mode or whatever your classifications are for being in a "not ready state". The first time a representative listens to themselves taking a contact, they are able to start improving how they respond to customer needs. Recorded contacts are also used as training instances for new hires. Ticketing tools allow you to build knowledge by looking at other technicians/representatives answers or solutions to issues. No one needs to be there to help them search - and it allows us all to improve upon our communication skills.