The next generation of customer care

Voice-only call centers will soon be as outmoded as switchboards and rotary-dial phones as network service providers and enterprises venture into the next generation customer care

Several important business drivers are forcing the telecommunications industry to pay increasing attention to customer care. On one hand, deregulation and competition give rise to large churn rates in mobile, paging, and long-distance services. The churn rates can range from 15% to 40% annually, with the cost of acquiring each new customer often exceeding $1000. 

On the other hand, the technology of the Internet and e-business has revolutionized customer-to-business (C2B) as well as business-to-business (B2B) communications. To illustrate the above transformation, a 1999 report by Forrester Research has the following projections for the speed and size of this transformation:

Table 1:  Changes in C2B communications channels
Year	Voice	Web (text chat, VoIP)	E-mail	Others (fax)
1997	97%	1%	2%	0%
1999	60%	14%	23%	3%
2003	5%	56%	30%	9%
Source:  Forrester Research Report, 1999

Even though one could debate the precision of these projections, no one doubts the trend. These statistics clearly tell us that the traditional voice-only call centers are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of customers in the age of the Internet and e-business.

Providing more with less

Those business drivers are pushing the network service providers and enterprises to provide more and better customer care. To become competitive, however, they also need to control cost, as customer service makes up 18% of the personnel-related expenses in the traditional wireline business. For example, a 3% reduction in a labor force of 30,000 service representatives in a major North American network service provider could result in annual cost savings of $63 million. Network service providers and enterprises are therefore facing the dilemma of needing to provide better service with smaller staffs.

It might at first appear impossible to provide more and better customer care while simultaneously spending less. A combination of the clever use of the newer technology and a properly formulated business strategy and operation process, however, could achieve those dual needs. The solution involves several components:

• intelligent self help

• intelligent email processing

• a new generation of call centers

• customer relationship management (CRM).

Let’s take a closer look at each of these components (Also see Next Generation Contact Center).

Intelligent Self-Help

The first component of the solution is to allow the customers to do as much on their own as possible. This does not mean we just dump the problem on the customer’s lap; it means that we provide the tools for customers to find information and answers to many of their questions on their own. 

Web technology provides a basic platform to do that, of course.  But that must be coupled with intelligent search/data-mining engines to guide the customers through a vast amount of data, distributed across many databases, so they can fairly easily find the information that they want.

Moreover, these intelligent self-help engines should also be able to provide answers to many of the customers’ frequently asked questions (FAQs). Of the more than 100 million “order-negotiation” contacts from the residential market each year, 20% generate inquires from customers about pending orders-–many of which, given the opportunity, the customers would rather handle via the Internet.

Such tools are available now and will become even more sophisticated with time. And although these tools are still in the early deployment cycle, early adopters indicate that customer-facing, front-end staffing could be reduced by as much as 30%, and the number of subsequent e-mail inquiries could be reduced by as much as 50%.

Intelligent E-mail Processing

Customers using intelligent self-help tools via the Web who still have additional questions, or customers who do not have such tools available to them, will send e-mail inquiries. Forrester Research projections indicated that such e-mail inquiries are expected to increase at an extremely rapid rate. 

...market research studies...indicate that about 80% of...e-mail inquiries will revolve around a small set of common questions and issues. A knowledge base containing information to provide answers to these commonly raised questions and issues can be created.

In addition, other market research studies also indicate that about 80% of such e-mail inquiries will revolve around a small set of common questions and issues. A knowledge base containing information to provide answers to these commonly raised questions and issues can be created. Then the intelligent e-mail processing engine can search this knowledge base and either automatically provide responses to the customers or suggest responses for the customer service representatives’ (CSRs) consideration, thus largely automating a tedious process.

Intelligent self-help tools and intelligent e-mail processing tools could become very sophisticated and go beyond just word match. The search-and-response algorithm could be concept-based. For example, the tool could find answers that contain none of the words in the e-mail inquiry, or the answer to an e-mail question posed in one language could be found in documents in another language. Again, these tools are still in the early deployment cycle, but early adopters indicate that with the help of such tools, CSRs can handle between two and four times more e-mail messages, and also shorten the response times considerably.

A New Generation of Call Centers

We mentioned previously that the traditional voice-only call centers are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of customers in the age of the Internet and e-business. A new generation of call centers must be provided that can provide multimedia and multichannel interactions between customers and CSRs via a variety of access and transport networks. 

The new generation of call centers must be able to provide for customers surfing the Web with real-time interactions with a suitably selected CSR. Those interactions can be multimedia and should include features such as Web-page co-browsing (CSR seeing the same page as the customer), Web-page pushing (with a click, a CSR can push a Web page to the customer’s communication device, and also vice versa), and form collaboration (customer and CSR can jointly fill out a form).

 It should also be able to integrate with messaging, so a customer can leave voice, e-mail, or fax mail when no CSR is available or the contact center is closed. And it should be able to support remote CSRs to provide virtual call centers so that, for example, a group of Spanish-speaking CSRs located in different parts of the country or world can act as a virtual group.

By providing a single system that can handle multiple types of customer interactions, the new generation of call centers not only provides better and more customer service but also operates more efficiently, thus reducing cost.

By providing a single system that can handle multiple types of customer interactions, the new generation of call centers not only provides better and more customer service but also operates more efficiently, thus reducing cost. Another important feature is that the new generation call center system can work closely with legacy call center systems to provide a smooth and economical migration.

New generation call centers first started appearing a couple of years ago, but it’s just a matter of time before most of the traditional voice-only call centers will transform into new generation call centers. There are many vendors with products in this area, although there are large variations in the features they support.

Customer Relationship Management

The call center system provides only a link between the customers and the customer service representatives. For the CSRs to provide the many functions of customer care, they need to access various front-office and back-office databases, applications and systems. A CSR providing customer care to a DSL customer, for example, must be able to access data associated with that customer’s service order, trouble reports and billing. Such data may be distributed in multiple operations support systems (OSSs). With proper interfaces between the call center system and these OSSs, integrated customer service support across multiple functional areas could be provided to customers.

A next generation call center system would also benefit customer service representatives who want to access information related to their company’s other products and services. A well-designed call center system with customer relationship management (CRM) applications built in allows the CSRs access to technical, operational, business, marketing and sales data. Such data can be presented in an integrated way, thus facilitating cross-selling and up-selling. This is one of the major reasons why call centers are no longer necessarily looked upon as cost centers, but instead as profit centers.

Providing the interfaces between the call center systems and these front/back-office systems to ensure maximum flow-through as well as to ensure these systems are integrated in a coherent manner is not a simple process. It requires senior management to set the proper business strategy to achieve this kind of operation process flows. It also may involve professional services consulting and systems integration to tailor the collection of systems and processes to meet the specific requirements of a particular network service provider or enterprise.

The Future is Ready Today

There can be no doubt that the technology of the Internet and the explosive growth of e-business are revolutionizing the ways that businesses and their customers interact. Voice-only call centers are destined to go the way of switchboards and rotary-dial phones as network service providers and enterprises begin venturing into this brave new world of next generation customer care.

Companies that want to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities offered by the next generation of customer care can take steps to assess their current customer care environment. The future of customer care is ready to be deployed today.
Peter Green is vice president and general manager - Customer Care and Billing business unit at Telcordia. Don M. Tow is director and principal consultant - Next Generation Contact Center Solutions within Professional Services’ Systems Engineering business unit at Telcordia.

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Next Generation Contact Center

The Telcordia Next Generation Contact Center (NGCC) is an example of the new generation call centers.  NGCC incorporates the four components and takes a best-of-breed approach.  It provides a comprehensive solution by selecting certain suppliers’ products as its base platform, developing additional value-added applications on top of this platform, and providing professional services consulting and systems integration with other products and services.

The major features of NGCC include:

• IP-based system architecture

• Multimedia and multichannel interactions

• Web-page co-browsing, pushing and form collaboration

• Integration with messaging and universal queue

• Global view of multisite contact centers

• Remote CSRs and virtual contact centers

• Highly scalable and reliable

• Multi-tenancy to facilitate network-based contact center services

• Automatic call distribution and interactive voice response as integral parts of the system, resulting in essentially contact center in a box

• Interworking with legacy call-center systems

• Open interfaces to other systems for CRM

• Integration with other supplier products to provide a more comprehensive solution

• One-stop for customer care

NGCC can be used by enterprises to improve customer service.  It can be used by network service providers to improve customer service, as well as to offer network-based (or hosted/managed) contact center services to their business customers.  In summary, by supporting e-business with a personal touch, NGCC can help a company improve its customer service, while reducing expenses and increasing revenue.--Peter Green and Don Tow

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