Recently, Vanguard has been con- ducting interviews with companies about their use of IP in the contact centers, and we are finding all sorts of interesting and innovative applications. We’re doing this because we want to see if there are patterns of successful (and not-so-suc-cessful) applications, and also because we want to see how IP is helping to prepare for unified communications (UC) applications in the future.
Part of our motivation for these interviews is to better understand ways that investments in new systems, especially innovative solutions, can be justified. In other words, what works and what doesn’t. In many cases, we found that successful implementations share three characteristics:
• They are customer facing. That is, the investment facilitates direct communication between a company and its customers or business partners.
• The communication links enabled by IP and UC become embedded in an established or new workflow or process.
• The effect of implementing the communication link is to reduce cycle times or latency by eliminating or reducing the time waiting to reach someone.
these steps, there is a potential delay between the end of one step and the beginning of the next.
Companies that seek to be more responsive figure out ways to reduce the cycle times. Methods include automating the flow of information through the process or moving electronic images instead of paper. Many times, however, the challenge is delay in communication–waiting for the next person in the chain to respond to a question. In the mortgage example, consider what happens if the person approving the appli-
In many business environments, established workflows pause until the next person in the chain can take action or respond to a request. Consider the steps in getting a mortgage: the applicant completes paperwork; the application is reviewed; the property is appraised; credit is checked; there are more reviews and approvals; a closing is scheduled; contracts are prepared; the closing occurs; and money changes hands. At each of
cation needs to get additional information from the appraiser, who is sometimes out in the field and sometimes in the office.
For contact centers, reducing cycle times is an important goal. We usually call it “first-call resolution” or “ one-and-done.” We see many tools deployed to facilitate that goal, including contact management or CRM systems, knowledge management capabilities, skills-based routing, and many others. These tools work well as long as the requisite expertise is available within the contact center structure.
For many applications today, workflows are designed to stay within the cen-
ter. In fact, in many companies, the ACD resides on a telephone system separate from the rest of the organization. In the future, as increasingly strategic work is done in contact centers, this sort of isolation will become less effective. Business processes will have to be organized to reach beyond the center to achieve the first call resolution goal. The tools enabled by IP and UC capabilities will help companies reduce the customer contact cycle times.
We hear about many situations where a caller needs to connect with a specialist who can address a specific issue. The previous process was to take down the information and promise a call back. While sometimes that specialist is on call and available for an immediate conference call or transfer, frequently he has other responsibilities, is in meetings, or is otherwise unavailable for a phone call. The challenges with the call back include getting accurate information to the specialist, the likelihood of requiring the caller to repeat that information, the time lag in getting to the specialist, and telephone tag trying to reach the caller again.
Some companies implemented instant messaging (IM) solutions using “buddy lists” so that the availability of the specialists could be immediately checked. This was an improvement and enabled a contact center agent to conference in a specialist immediately. But IM requires the specialist to be constantly adjusting his availability status. The explosion of “reach” methods adds another layer of complexity–desk phone, cell phone, Blackberry, pager, etc.
Furthermore, in many applications, what’s required isn’t to reach a specific individual, but rather anyone who has a particular skill set. Blink. That sounds
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