A Whole New Queue

When you have a question, what is your favorite way to get a quick answer? Do you write a letter, pick up the phone or type an e-mail? Some contact methods are faster than others, and everyone has his preference, including your customers. With so many ways to contact carriers, you no longer can expect them to ask every question over the telephone. It might be more convenient for them to shoot you an e-mail, send you a fax or even request a chat through your Web site. As your call centers evolve into customer-contact centers where subscribers can reach your CSRs through various means, your CSRs must respond to every query in a timely fashion.

New computer telephony integration (CTI) software solutions have evolved to route faxes, e-mails, Web chat requests and even postal mail to your CSRs in the order in which they were received. For example, a CSR's first contact of the day might be a fax, the second an e-mail requesting a return phone call and the third a chat over the Internet. If a CSR must transfer a call or e-mail to another agent, all of the data about that customer transfers to the second agent's desktop.

"CTI in the past was used to shave a few seconds off call answering or pop a screen with some information about a customer," said Clyde Sawkins, Unisys worldwide call center director. "Times have moved on into the Internet, voice over IP (VoIP), interactive voice response (IVR) and speech recognition. Customers want all those as mediums to communicate with organizations."

THE UNIVERSAL IN-BOXBob Fletcher, Bob Fletcher and Associates president, said CTI solutions used to be embedded in the switch. Now, CTI and switch vendors have built a more open architecture so carriers don't have to depend on proprietary hardware platforms that run proprietary operating systems and software.

Carl Strathmeyer, Dialogic director of marketing for the computer telephony division, said taking calls through different kinds of media has caused manufacturers to make systems more modular. In the past, when all calls came through a toll-free number, you could handle them in order because they all came through the switch. Now that carriers offer many ways to communicate, they can't manage requests in the switch because they just can't stick an e-mail between two phone calls.

"Queuing should not be done in the switch; it should be done as another layer on top of the whole collection of communications mediums," he said.

Customers should be treated in the same way no matter how they communicate with you.

"If they send you an e-mail because they are on the Web or they have their (smart) phone in front of them, why should that be treated any differently than if they called your 800 number? They want the same fast response," Sawkins said.

Organizations that put e-mail addresses on their Web sites but have no way to determine who the customer is will be left behind, he said.

The latest dilemma for carriers is whether to use new CTI solutions to set up a "universal in-box," where all interactions are routed to CSRs in the order they arrive, or to dedicate certain CSRs to each technology.

Jerry Birdwell, Ernst and Young manager, customer relationship management practice, said dedicating specific CSRs to certain types of technology is inefficient. One client began offering e-mail six months ago. Its plan was to have a CSR answer the e-mail when he had free time. If the workload became too heavy, two people could answer it. The first day, the company received more than 1,000 e-mails.

"It had not planned for the capacity well enough to give timely service back to its customers," Birdwell said. "It was a complete oversight."

Others disagreed. Debra Depping, Western Wireless executive director, customer services, said her company will look for specific skills in its CSRs, then assign each one to handle certain interactions based on his personal expertise.

"I don't necessarily believe it is the same skill set for people who would handle inbound telephone calls as those who would handle inbound e-mail," Depping said.

Linda Baker, U.S. Cellular vice president of customer service, and David Benson, U.S. Cellular director, information systems, see skills-based routing as the answer to an increase in fax, e-mail, Web and VoIP requests. Within the next two years, U.S. Cellular will implement a fully loaded CTI application with links to Internet, IVR, predictive dialers and its billing database.

"Customer demand for automated information, whether it be through the Internet, over the telephone or through an IVR application, is of high demand, so we are trying to meet customer expectations as well as drive out costs," Baker said.

Through skills-based routing, the CTI application can take requests from various touch points, then route them to a specialty group, a specific CSR or a cross-functional universal agent.

Joe Adams, Interactive Intelligence vice president of market communications, said carriers need to build interaction-management platforms to handle each type of contact seamlessly. For example, Interactive Intelligence offers a software-based system that processes telephone calls, voice mail, fax and screen pops, as well as PBX, ACD, IVR and auto-attendant functions. The single system replaces the fax server, hardware for the PBX, ACD, IVR, voice mail and screen-pops, and integrates with the Web. If a customer faxes in a request, for instance, the system adds the fax to the same queue that routes phone calls to CSRs. When the faxed request gets to the top, the system assigns it to a CSR and pops it on his screen. Some companies have even added postal mail to the routing system by scanning letters and sending them to CSRs as e-mails with attachments.

"You can imagine how hard it is to track a physical letter inside an organization, but if you scan it in as an e-mail object, you can put it into a queue," Adams said. "We can tell how long it has been there, who answered it, how long it took to resolve and what the resolution was."

WHO ARE YOU?Linda Wokoun, Ameritech vice president of call-center operations, noted one CTI issue specific to the wireless industry. Most of Ameritech's customers call regarding billing issues, and they normally do not call from their wireless phones; they call from home or the office so they can look at their bills while they talk. Automatic number identification (ANI), which identifies the caller, and dialed number identification service (DNIS), which identifies the number called, do not help in cases where the mobile number is the only phone number you have in the customer's profile.

"There are more problems with CTI in wireless than in a landline environment," she said. "You could ask (customers) to type in their cellular number, but most people don't know what it is."

Shawn Hoy, Kansas City Cellular One director of customer service, said his company expected such issues with CTI, so its initial goal was to make its IVR 25% to 30% effective. So far, Cellular One has met its goal. After benchmarking against competitors, it decided this accuracy rate is good compared with the rest of the wireless industry.

Depping said Western Wireless is looking into addressing ANI issues by encouraging customers to enter a PIN code into the IVR to help CSRs quickly access vital information. Such a solution also could help when several customers have the same home phone number, such as in a roommate or family situation, or when co-workers share a PBX. Right now, ANI shows the family's name or the company's PBX number, but PIN codes can tell CSRs which specific person is on the line.

Strathmeyer said the most successful CTI systems allow an open-ended list of phone numbers from which a customer might call. These systems are self-learning if you set them up right.

"If I call from a phone you have never seen me use, once the agent finds out who I am, there should be a button on the screen to push that will add that number to my profile."

FINDING A SILVER BULLETPerhaps the biggest challenge associated with new CTI solutions is choosing the right one. Companies announce hundreds of new CTI products and upgrades each year. Sawkins said before you seek out a solution, you should create a working group made up of employees from each of your departments. Everyone must learn to understand the other disciplines and what they can bring to the table. This working group should create a strategy that outlines what you will do, how you will do it, and why you will do it.

Depping said Western Wireless has a process to determine whether a vendor can meet its key requirements. Once it narrows down the pool, it asks a selected group of vendors to supply it with proposals. The company further narrows down the group based on the vendors' responses, and then it visits sites to watch the products in action.

"We recently did (a site visit) for a call-quality monitoring system to see if it really worked. It was interesting because one of the three was not actually working," she said. "We would not have known that if we hadn't gone to the customer's site. The opportunity to talk with other customers about their experience is critical."

But Sawkins warned that you should not be afraid to get ahead of the game.

"If you are going to lead from the front, you have got to be out there on the wild side a little bit, otherwise you will always be a 'me too,'" he said.

Like Depping, Cellular One's Hoy said his biggest challenge is understanding new CTI tools and figuring out how to integrate them into his call center. Most solutions are not standalone, Hoy said. Cellular One would have to change processes and procedures to find a way to blend new CTI solutions with its current strategy.

"When someone is trying to sell me something, I am not positive it will work, especially when they contact me through cold calling," he said.

Adams suggested that you make a list of functions that the system should support before you purchase a CTI solution. Some things to look for: PBX, ACD, IVR, voice mail, auto attendant, fax server, Web integration, e-mail, paging and screen pops. In addition, be sure your CTI solution will notify customers of the response time, whether they e-mail a question or call you. Always give them the option to be called back if hold time is above average.

When you start thinking about CTI, U.S. Cellular's Benson said don't bite off more than you can chew. His company is phasing in CTI so that it can learn as it implements the solution.

"Instead of sitting back and doing some huge project with a long life-cycle development that will be outdated by the time we are done, we are building on top of each layer with pieces as we go forward."

Think of how many times you have called your bank, preferred airline or creditor. You enter your account number, but once you reach customer service, the CSR requests your account number again. Are your customers facing this same headache? Several CTI experts theorize on what causes such frustrating scenarios.

Jerry Birdwell, Ernst and Young manager, customer relationship management practice: "The company is not using coordinated voice/data transfer. You call in, the voice portion goes through the voice path through the PBX, but the data is left in the IVR. The company didn't know what your number was. When a company uses CTI and coordinates a voice/data transfer, the data is in with the voice, so as the voice routes through the PBX to the live agent, the data is pushed to the appropriate destination."

Bob Fletcher, Bob Fletcher and Associates president: "The first reason is that the IVR did not pass your information through CTI. Something happened where it did not connect, and the company has to ask for it again. The second reason is that you were in queue for a long time, and it no longer passes the information; it drops it. The third reason could be that it doesn't want you to realize you are in queue. It has no way to capture data the first time, and it is just giving you something to do."

Clyde Sawkins, Unisys worldwide call-center director: "If a company has a good CTI solution, customers should not have to enter their customer number twice. It may have to ask you more security questions, but the basic information should be there. Companies that do this give IVRs a bad name."