Taking on the Multi-Channel Call Center
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The document discusses trends in multi-channel contact centers that increase agent workload complexity. It emphasizes that improving agent performance is important for customer experience. Emerging technologies like proactive communications, social media integration, and mobile/video support require new agent skills. Enterprises are investing in workforce optimization and home agent support to address these changes. Optimizing wait time can reduce costs by shifting activities like training into idle agent periods.
Taking on the Multi-Channel Call Center
- 1. Taking on the Multi-Channel Call Center Proven Strategies that Increase Productivity and Improve the Customer Experience 1
- 2. Knowlagent at a Glance Call center agent productivity solution Headquartered in Atlanta, GA Founded in 1995 300,000+ agents in 17 countries using Knowlagent SaaS 2
- 3. Art Schoeller Principal Analyst Contact centers Unified Communications 3 © 2009 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 2011
- 4. Eight emerging trends for contact centers Social Proactive Speech Media Communications IVR platforms Unified Customer Communications Analytics Multi-channel Video and SIP replaces CTI Integration Mobile support 4 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 5. Market forces drive a renewed interest in true contact center architectures IVR Phone Email Web Video SMS Chat Multimedia customer interaction platform (CTI) or SIP Social Media Workforce Component Knowledge Reporting mgt. management Quality Analytics Formal center Home agents monitoring Presence Business Intelligence Perform. Expert mgt. Access Business Remote expert eLearning Apps Virtualization 5 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 6. Communication channel usage trends…today 6 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 7. ….and tomorrow 7 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 8. And interactions will cross channels as well! Browse community Social forum Browse Web Browse Tweet Facebook page In Person Service Agent Sales Agent Contact Center Mobile IVR Mobile 8 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 9. Where enterprises will invest Which of the following upgrades is your firm planning for your contact center(s) during the next 12 months? Multiple responses accepted Workforce optimization 43% Support for home workers 40% Computer telephony integration 40% Proactive outbound notification 39% Upgrade to IP 36% Upgrade IVR 35% Social media support 31% Add speech recognition applications to IVR 25% Multichannel integration 21% Contact center managed services 19% Multimodal support such as mobile SMS and video 14% None of the above 8% Don't know 4% Other 2% Base: 304 North American and European networks and telecommunications decision-makers at companies with 50 or more contact center seats. Source: Forrsights Networks And Telecommunications Survey, Q1 2011 9 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 10. Proactive Communications becomes cost effective way to reach customers • Outbound notification and alert systems for – Emergency notification – Collections – Customer care • Customer care represents fastest growing market segment • Reduce incoming calls and support revenue generation activities • Stand alone offering or blended IVR application • Support alerts to multiple devices, phones, cell phones, SMS, email • Allow customer to transfer to agent as needed • Uses advance speech technology for automated interactions 10 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 11. Mobile device and video support are becoming core requirements • Mobile device processing power and increased bandwidth open new opportunities for self service • Market growth due to increased use of cell phones as smart devices such as iPhone and Android to contact customer service • Video or video clips to smartphones become increasingly popular in EMEA where video phones widely supported • Integration to contact center means another pathway for connecting with an agent 11 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 12. Contact center integration of social media Observations • Smaller volumes – may not require full queuing, routing, reporting structure • Highly unstructured • The entire industry is ‘on a journey’ exploring social media metrics Recommendations • Connect with departments leading social media effort – marketing for branding and demand generation, consumer response for complaint handling, support teams managing ‘crowd source’ communities • Ensure that issues that are surfaced in other departments get visibility into the contact center (entry into knowledge base) • The need to textual analysis skills in the enterprise. Can be leveraged across knowledge base, social media, email, chat, and speech analytics • Possibly position social media handling as career path for senior agents 12 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 13. Implications for agent skill development • A new call for ‘blended’ agents? • How to engage the home agent? • The unstructured nature of social media • New self service channels (mobility, proactive outbound) – what happens when a call is extended to an agent from these channels? • With a continued tough economy where turnover is low – how to keep agents engaged and ‘fresh’? 13 Entire contents © 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
- 14. Multi-channel Support Increases Complexity and Impacts Agent Performance
- 15. Impact of Agent Performance on Service Metrics Source: November 2010 Knowlagent
- 16. Time Invested for Improvements Industry Average Composition of Secondary Loss 21% Training 17% Coaching Secondary Loss 12% 16% Team Meetings Primary Loss 17% 11% Projects Wait time 11% 9% Paperwork Call Handle time 9% Call Research / Follow-up 60% 17% - Email, Call Back, Knowledgebase, Etc. Category 1 Source: 2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey
- 17. Wait Time: Five Weeks of Really Bad, Boring Vacation Wait time = Five weeks; 2 minutes at a time. Secondary Loss 24 x 2 minute breaks/ day 12% (off-phone work) Primary Loss 120 x 2 minute breaks/ week 17% (Absenteeism, vacations , etc.) 480 x 2 minute breaks/ month Wait Time 11% 5,760 x 2 minute breaks/ year Call Handle time 60% Costs our industry $30 billion/year Source: 2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey Category 1
- 18. Wait Time: Five Weeks of Really Bad, Boring Vacation Wait time = Five weeks; 2 minutes at a time. Secondary Loss 12% (off-phone work) Primary Loss Active Wait 17% (Absenteeism, vacations , etc.) 11% Wait Time Call Handle time 60% Source: 2010 Contact Center Shrinkage Survey Category 1
- 19. Shifting Shrinkage into Active Wait Measurable productivity gains are realized by shifting 4.5 hours of training, coaching, and communications into Active Wait time each month. Labor Savings $810,000 Shrinkage $8,640,000 Shrinkage $8,640,000 Active Wait Time Wait Time $3,024,000 Wait Time $2,214,000 Handle Time $17,136,000 Handle Time $17,136,000 19
- 20. Push Almost Any Activity From Shrinkage to Wait Today Training/Knowledge Occupancy Compliance training FCR training Call Volume Performance Coaching on quality Communication Weekly union Tomorrow communications Occupancy Back-Office Claim or application Call Volume processing
- 21. Customer Satisfaction Getting First Call Resolution Done Major U.S. Telecommunications Company Using Knowlagent to deliver more training, coaching, and communications to over 45,000 agents Increased Delivery “Delivered more training time to a site in 5 days using RightTime than was delivered over 1 month when manually scheduling time” Improved Take Rate “71.7% take rate for RightTime vs. 59.4% take rate for pre-scheduled breaks”
- 22. Key Takeaways • Emerging trends in the multi-channel contact center increase complexity of agents’ job. • Improving agent performance is crucial for enhancing the customer experience. • Enterprise investment in workforce optimization and support for home workers is on the horizon. • Wait time is abundant and when optimized, lessens the impact of incremental costs of improvement. 22
Editor's Notes
- #7: Don’t feel that you have to offer all the communication channels available to your customer base. Pick the ones that you can support well from a biz perspective, and make sure that your channels are not implemented in technology silos. Also be aware that some comm channels, like chat, and forums tend to have much higer satisfaction ratings that others like, email.
- #8: Choose the comm channels as well that your customer base wants to use. If you have younger demographic, you may want to embrace the real time channels like chat, SMS or newer technologies like virtual agents or twitter more than if your customer base is older.
- #11: MATT: CUE for Poll QuestionPoll Question: Does your contact center have any plans to implement proactive communications to improve customer service efforts?YesNo
- #16: Original question asked of survey respondents: For any of the following that you measure, please select the impact of agent performance has on each on a scale of 1 to 4 where 1 is low impact and 4 high impactMATT: CUE for Poll QuestionQ:If you are tasked with improving a metric related to a customer experience, please select the statement that is true.Additional resources/budget have been allocated to make the improvementThe improvement must be made with existing resources/budgetI have not been tasked with this improvement
- #18: MATT:
- #19: MATT:
- #20: MATT: CUE for Poll QuestionQ: If you could turn unproductive time into productive time and gain an extra 2 hours per agent per month, what would you do with the time?Remove labor hours from the businessInvest hours in agent improvements (coaching, training, etc.)A combination of both
- #21: Matt: discuss finding time by moving shrinkage to wait time