Call first

Despite the move toward mixed media, interactive technology to streamline customer interaction, the phone is still king in current customer transactions

As businesses across industry sectors battle for market share, they are seeking solutions that customize their service offerings. With the advent of e-mail, fax, voice and video over IP, collaborative Web browsing and chat, more companies are turning to mixed media interactive technology to streamline and personalize customer interactions with an eye toward boosting customer loyalty. 

Despite these technology advances, more than 70% of all business transactions are still taking place over the phone, according to The Gartner Group, the Stamford, Conn.-based research group.

Evidence of this can be found in customer contact centers everywhere. One such center, located in Tulsa, OK, is operated by DAC Services, a supplier of pre-employment screening services to more than 6000 firms in the transportation, convenience store, security and gaming industries. DAC Services also provides computerized information to more than 7000 insurance businesses in support of their underwriting processes. The customer service representatives (CSRs) at DAC Services’ contact center still field hundreds of calls daily from client companies awaiting verification of job applicants’ prior employment, places of residence, education level, criminal records, driving records and credit histories.

Prior to mid-2000, the contact center had been relying on a DOS-based routing and queuing system that directed 90% of all inbound calls into voice mail. CSRs then returned these calls up to two hours later. DAC Services’ management recognized that implementing a new customer interaction management (CIM) solution would not only increase productivity and minimize costs, but would elevate the company’s level of customer service.

According to a recent survey by International Data Corp. (IDC)...91% of responding contact center managers cited improved quality of service and customer satisfaction as their top reason for evaluating new contact center solutions.

According to a recent survey by International Data Corp. (IDC), Framingham, MA, 91% of responding contact center managers cited improved quality of service and customer satisfaction as their top reason for evaluating new contact center solutions. DAC Services’ requirements for an upgraded operating platform also included increasing the number of live call interactions; better handling of customer voice messages; increasing agent productivity; shortening call interaction time; efficiently matching callers with the most appropriate CSR; and the efficient monitoring, reporting and managing the capabilities of the contact center.

Blending Old and New

The biggest challenge facing DAC Services as it evaluated various CIM solutions was the integration of the old with the new. Management sought a universal, NT-based platform that integrated with legacy applications and data, yielded high-volume customer processing and seamlessly supported its new customer relationship management (CRM) database. These factors would facilitate an environment in which CSRs access the information they need when they need it, enabling the company to meet or exceed customers' expectations for convenience, immediacy of response and instantly available information.

In January 2000, DAC Services turned to Composit Communications USA and its flagship product, CIMphone, an all-in-one CIM product for contact centers. CIMphone works well with applications from other companies, back-office systems and legacy systems to manage customer interactions across multiple channels. During implementation, CIMphone easily interfaced with DAC Services’ existing Lucent Definity G3 switch and Pivotal eBusiness Relationship Management software. Using Lucent computer telephony integration (CTI), Composit was able to quickly integrate all contact center components, and the system went live in just three months.

Harmonizing Customer Interactions

Through its flexible, open architecture, CIMphone enables the delivery of multiple services such as interactive voice response (IVR), dialing, speech recognition, IP telephony, intelligent interaction routing, multimedia queuing, CRM integration and fax. The solution also offers Web-enabled interactions like e-mail, voice and video over IP, collaborative browsing and chat.

In addition to supplying these critical components, Composit was the only solution provider to offer a call-proxy feature to DAC Services. Call proxy gives callers the ability to disconnect a call while leaving a data item such as a voice message or customer ID number to hold their place until they are first in queue. When a caller is first, he or she receives a return call from an available CSR who has reviewed the data item.

Similarly, CIMphone’s call-me-back feature allows customers to leave a voice message requesting a return response from a CSR. The caller may provide instructions or request a specific CSR or a preferred date and time to call back. This feature helps balance CSR workloads between peak and off-peak hours.

Soon after implementation, DAC Services began to reap the benefits of CIMphone. Instead of 90% of calls being deposited into voice mail, that same percentage of calls is now being answered by CSRs who can access client-specific information in real time, eliminating the need to ask the customer unnecessary or redundant questions. This saves CSRs’ and customers’ time by automatically retrieving customer information from a searchable knowledge base and displaying it on a representative’s desktop to ensure rapid, consistent responses. 

Thanks to CIMphone’s intelligent routing capabilities, more complex customer queries are directed to the most appropriate CSRs. This ensures that the representatives most capable of answering specific questions will be involved in the interaction from the very beginning, thereby enabling quicker resolution. If a CSR needs to transfer a call to another representative, the appropriate data will remain with the interaction from start to finish.

But better CRM doesn’t necessarily mean more frequent customer contact—it could mean less. CIMphone’s “while-in-queue” capabilities provide wait times, place-in-queue announcements and customer self-service options.

A Better Bottom Line

Since CIMphone’s implementation, DAC Services’ contact center has been able to:

• shorten the length of most phone calls and increase the number of calls handled per CSR per day;
• increase productivity among CSRs, thereby increasing the level of service without adding staff; and
• increase customer satisfaction by delivering prompt, courteous and knowledgeable service that doesn’t require callers to repeat their questions as they are routed through the organization.

But CSRs and customers aren’t alone in their appreciation of CIMphone’s features. Management is now better able to define and allocate resources by monitoring CSR activity and queue status. The solution’s administrative tools provide an architecture to capture and analyze information, allowing managers to define business rules, routing decisions and workflow scenarios.

The end result is a more streamlined operation that allows DAC Services to focus on business—not the technology behind the business. Now the company is better able to manage customer contacts across every point of the customer relationship lifecycle, without extensive modifications to existing systems and in-depth training programs.
Tim Crawford is the senior vice president of operations and chief information officer for Total Information Services in Tulsa, Okla. He can be reached at timc@tisi.com.

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