Putting the “solution” in Resolution
by Aspect on February 28th, 2012
The following is a special guest post from Paul Stockford, President and Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research.
First call resolution (FCR) has become a big deal in the contact center industry worldwide. Many contact centers now use FCR as an operational efficiency measurement rather than more traditional metrics such as average handle time (AHT). Despite the growing popularity of FCR as a contact center key performance indicator (KPI), there are many uncertainties surrounding it, not the least of which is how to make it happen and how to measure FCR when it does.
Saddletree Research works very closely with the National Association of Call Centers (NACC), a not-for-profit industry membership organization based at The University of Southern Mississippi. In late 2011 we conducted a joint research project among 125 contact center end-user executives that explored a number of industry issues, including FCR. We discovered that 51 percent of respondents are currently tracking FCR one way or another. Some use customer surveys to try to track FCR, some use data analytics, and some use quality monitoring. Most interesting were the many comments we received from companies that are trying to implement and track FCR but are struggling with how to go about doing so.
Putting the measurement issue aside for the moment, I have long believed that the important first step in the quest for FCR is to find a way to make it happen and the most efficient way to do that is to rely on unified communications (UC). The beauty of UC is that it allows the customer service representative to access the resources necessary to resolve a call while the customer is still on the line rather than having to call the customer back, or have the customer call back, at a later time once the necessary resources have been accessed. UC enables new levels of efficiency in the customer service process, streamlining enterprise communications to the benefit of the customer and the agent’s performance metrics.
Aspect has become the de facto market leader for UC solutions in the contact center, attracting the attention of companies such as Microsoft for partnership arrangements and, as of last week, attracting the attention of Dell Services. Dell Services has partnered with Aspect to deliver a Microsoft-based UC solution to the contact center and across the enterprise. This partnership will significantly increase Aspect’s visibility and opportunity in and beyond the customer service function.
Lining up partners like Microsoft and Dell Services should also heighten the awareness of UC as a FCR solution in the contact center. The contact center industry is typically slow to embrace new concepts and solutions but the endorsement of UC and, by extension FCR, by such industry luminaries as Microsoft and Dell Services should go a long way toward accelerating the adoption of UC as a FCR enabler in the contact center.
For those contact center professionals struggling to find a solution that enables the implementation and tracking of FCR in the contact center, it’s here and it’s called UC. Unlike solutions such as customer relationship management (CRM) which underwent years of overblown hype before settling into its role as a useful enterprise solution, UC’s benefits are easy to articulate and quick to attain. Partnering with full service suppliers such as Dell Services makes Aspect a convenient one-stop shop for UC in the contact center. Beyond that, Aspect’s partnerships with industry luminaries such as Microsoft and Dell Services should remove the FUD factor for contact center buyers.
The timing for Aspect’s Dell Services partnership is ideal as it aligns with what our survey reveals to be increased interest in FCR in the contact center. The fact that UC goes hand-in-hand with FCR won’t hurt Aspect’s efforts in the least.
Diapers and Dialers: What Contact Centers Can Learn from Target’s Pregnancy Predictions
by Tim Dreyer on February 27th, 2012
Last week, Mitch Wagner, editor in Chief at The CMO Site put out a blog post on how Target Knows You’re Pregnant Before the Stork Does that I thought had some interesting relevancies to the contact center space. Not on pregnancy predictability of course, but more on customer intelligence.
In his post, Wagner notes that many pregnant women starting their second trimester make revealing purchases like unscented lotion, calcium and magnesium supplements and other scent-free soaps that indicate that they may, just may, be nearing a trip to the maternity ward. By keeping an eye on customer trends like this, the company can be, ahem, very targeted when they send out baby product offers like wipes and formula. Target knows that gaining the diaper devotion of these new-mother shoppers early can mean loyalty for years to come.
The key to this intelligence is data analytics, or specifically, predictive analytics. It is taking the huge lump of sometimes unworkable customer data and converting it into usable analysis. There are obviously privacy concerns involved here, but social consumers as a whole tend to be more receptive to providing businesses with personal information as long as it’s not misused and results in deals and offers specialized to their interests. Send them offers for World of Warcraft, and you may lose their loyalty.
The connection here is that the tighter you integrate your customer contact center with your CRM, the better able you will be able to use and convert data. Add in predictive functionality like speech and text analytics, and you can develop a workflow that will improve the decisions you make, the actions your agents take, and sometimes the direction the enterprise chooses. Without this integration, you have data that you may or may not be able to use.
You can read more on predictive analytics as a part of the Microsoft Data Platform here. I predict you will 
Latest FCC Report and Order: What This Means for Your Business
by Serge Hyppolite on February 23rd, 2012
In a Report and Order issued February 15, 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sought to create uniformity between the FCC and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules for autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls.
In the two years prior to this decision, many telemarketing companies have been required to adhere to FTC regulations, which have been more strict than those enforced by the FCC. This order brings the FCC’s standards for autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls in line with the FTC’s standards.
In essence, the new FCC Report and Order requires the following conditions for all autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls to wireless and residential lines:
- Company must have express prior written consent from the consumer. An existing business relationship is no longer considered consent.
- Consumer must have the ability to verbally opt out during a recorded call; or, if a voicemail has been left, the consumer must be able to call back and opt out.
- Company must maintain an abandoned call rate of 3% or lower for each calling campaign, over a 30-day period.
- Calls made by health care-related entities to residential lines relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) are exempt from TCPA requirements.
Who is Affected?
Many contact centers may already be in compliance with these new, more strict FCC rules. Businesses that have been required to comply with FTC regulations will experience no change in operations from the FCC Order.
Those that will be impacted fall into a group of businesses that the FTC had classified as “exempted groups.” These groups include common carriers, banks, credit unions, savings and loans, companies engaged in the business of insurance and airlines, and agencies conducting intrastate telemarketing calls.
This subset of businesses, including telemarketers, that have been operating as exempted groups and following the FCC’s less restrictive guidelines over the past two years will be directly affected by the FCC’s new Order.
Still Awaiting Further Decisions
The FCC’s new Report and Order does not address the TCPA telemarketer liability standard issue, which still remains under consideration at the FCC. This issue requires the FCC to determine whether companies would be held strictly liable for the actions of the third party telemarketers they contracted for services, or whether an agency standard would apply, which would shift the liability to the third party.
Although the decision regarding enforcement of an agency standard could have far-reaching consequences for the telemarketing industry, we are monitoring this decision closely and will bring you the latest information as it becomes available.
Next Steps: Achieving Compliance
As a leading provider of solutions that enable proactive outreach for sales, customer service and collections processes, Aspect can help companies achieve optimal productivity while complying with the latest TCPA rules. Our unified solution, Aspect® Unified IP®, offers a number of advantages that will help you ensure compliance.
For example, organizations can set call filters to avoid contacting consumers who have not provided express prior written consent. Parameters that control the pacing of the system can be set to operate within the two-second and 3% abandoned rules. And a built-in IVR self-service component enables consumers to opt out in an automated fashion.
Learn more by downloading Aspect’s complementary report, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA): Guideline for Aspect customers on the latest FCC Report and Order.
For specific guidance on how to configure your environment to comply with these regulations, we encourage Aspect customers to contact their account representatives or appropriate Aspect partners.
We also invite you to attend Aspect’s informational webinar, Achieving TCPA Compliance, scheduled for March 7. Register for this event now.
Golfbreaks.com Selects a Joint Solution from the New Aspect-Dell Relationship
by Tim Dreyer on February 23rd, 2012
We are excited today to announce a new strategic relationship with Dell Services aimed at enabling customers worldwide to acquire end-to-end next-generation unified communications solutions incorporating hardware, software, services and support from a single vendor. Centered on Microsoft® collaborative technologies, the relationship also gives customers the flexibility and scalability to tailor their private branch exchange (PBX) and contact center solution to best fit their needs. 
Many large organizations are viewing contact centers as a primary customer engagement point and increasingly as a revenue generation engine. However outdated telephony infrastructures or poorly connected contact centers can result in missed or dropped calls and negatively impact customer service. This can result in missed sales opportunities and potential damage to a company’s brand.
Golfbreaks.com, Europe’s leading golf tour operator, is one of the first joint customers of the Aspect-Dell relationship. Golfbreaks.com experienced the downside of an aging telephony platform that could no longer keep up with the service demands of their customers so the company sought out a contact center solution built upon an open, capable and affordable software platform. They are implementing a Microsoft-based unified communications solution including a full multimedia contact center infrastructure to replace its older PBX platform.
Due to increasing volume, which let’s face it, is a great problem to have, Golfbreaks.com required a way to meet the increased customer demand without increasing headcount and to basically do more with less. The lack of channel integration was putting a strain on their agents and systems, increasing administration time. With new support for SMS and email, as well as tight integration with their CRM system, Golfbreaks.com’s customer should find booking with them easier and quicker than ever.
So the point of the post, aside from announcing the adorable offspring of our new relationship, is this: your platform might be good enough for you, but is it good enough for your customers?
High Availability Helps the Contact Center Meet Consumer Expectations
by Chris O'Brien on February 22nd, 2012
There’s an old saying (or curse), “May you live in interesting times.” This is particularly apt for the world of customer experience. The pace of change virtually guarantees that things will be interesting for the foreseeable future.
Consumers are embracing new technologies and new ways to communicate, and the impact is far-reaching: with the world of information available to them, consumers have become much more proactive in finding answers for themselves—and much less patient when companies can’t resolve their issues.
As reaching out to the contact center becomes a last resort for customers, the stakes grow higher. Consider recent research by Datamonitor/Ovum, which surveyed 5,000 consumers across 16 countries on their attitudes and expectations for customer service. From the study:
“In virtually every country, customers ended at least one relationship per year due to poor service. Across all countries surveyed, about 7 in 10 consumers have ended a relationship.”
Clearly, it’s not hyperbole to regard every interaction with your customers as make or break. Without the right tools and functionality, the contact center is at a distinct disadvantage in addressing customer issues. Business continuity also takes on added importance: if the contact center platform isn’t robust enough to be dependable in all settings, the company is at risk of alienating customers at critical times.
In a given year, businesses may be susceptible to the impact of natural disasters or other events that threaten their operations. The tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, in May 2011, reinforced the need for thorough disaster planning and recovery, and contact center operations are a critical function in such situations.
Against this backdrop, companies should ensure that their systems deliver dependability and availability in line with industry standards. What may have been an acceptable level of service even a few years ago might now be lagging behind the competition and consumer expectations. The failure of Amazon’s EC2 cloud offering in April of last year, which continued over a full business day, and the reaction by its customers and media demonstrated how dramatically expectations had changed.
Aspect has long understood the importance of business continuity to contact center operations, and our commitment to providing dependable solutions informs every phase of our development process. Recently, Aspect asked Miercom to conduct a full evaluation of its next-generation solution Aspect® Unified IP 7® to verify that it delivers the mission-critical high availability demanded for today’s customer contact environment. View the complete summary of Miercom’s test report to see how Unified IP 7 earned Miercom Performance Verified certification.
Find out more about how your business can enhance its contact center capabilities without disrupting existing operations, register for the March 27 webinar: High Availability for the Contact Center: Ensuring Customer Service Continuity. Experts from Miercom and Aspect will share their insights on meeting evolving customer expectations, with advice to help you limit or eliminate the experience of downtime for customers interacting with your contact center.
HarborOne Earns Award for Comprehensive Customer Service Strategy
by Chris O'Brien on February 21st, 2012
In the drive to deliver excellent customer experience, companies face two competing timelines. On one hand, emerging technologies and communications channels are raising customer expectations, requiring more coordinated, nimble efforts in the short term. On the other, companies need to lay a solid foundation that will also allow for flexibility as needs evolve in the coming years.
When companies are able to balance both priorities, the results can be truly impressive. Aspect client HarborOne, the largest state-chartered community credit union in New England and one of the top 100 in the country, offers a blueprint for how it can be done. On top of achieving substantial costs savings and improved performance, the company is
gaining recognition for its vision: Ventana Research, a business and IT research and advisory services firm, awarded HarborOne its 2011 Business Collaboration Leadership Award.
The accomplishments are the culmination of efforts that began several years ago. At the time, HarborOne’s executives evaluated their operations and identified the contact center as a priority for strengthening customer relationships and increasing revenues. The team developed a multiyear vision for how it could transform the company to deliver better customer service and support business growth.
As Wayne F. Dunn, senior vice president and chief technology officer of HarborOne, noted, “We knew we needed a future-proof platform that could take us there.” As a foundation, the company selected Microsoft Lync and SharePoint to enable collaboration. HarborOne then added solutions from Aspect to unify elemental contact center functions, give agents greater access to information and experts, and track interactions through enhanced transparency, metrics, and reporting.
HarborOne’s success offers four lessons for other companies seeking to achieve improved contact center performance.
Develop a long-term vision. Technological advances will only accelerate going forward, so companies must ensure that their investments in the contact center support flexibility and customization. Considering how the iPad has transformed the business environment in just two years, being able to adapt to changing conditions is imperative.
Take advantage of existing IT investments. Providing the contact center doesn’t have to mean starting from scratch. In addition, companies that have already implemented in Microsoft unified communications solutions are already well positioned to tap products that can integrate seamlessly with their existing platforms.
Understand what customers expect. HarborOne recognized that its consumers were looking for a higher level of engagement across a number of channels, such as IM, social, and potentially video. Across industries, companies are recognizing that customer service can be not only a competitive advantage but also a revenue generator.
Empower management to optimize the workforce. Contact center managers and supervisors need the information and ability to respond to spikes in volume and emerging issues in real time. Enhanced metrics and reporting deliver the latest information, while the best solutions enable quick and easy alterations to business rules.
Most companies can achieve improvements by adding the right functionality to their contact center operations. But as HarborOne demonstrates, the benefits of a comprehensive strategy for customer service are substantial.
FIRST: A “Fair, Innovative, Respectful, Sincere and Trustworthy” Solution
by Chris O'Brien on February 17th, 2012
So rarely in business are we given the opportunity to build anything from scratch. In fact, the luxury of a blank slate is almost nonexistent in the IT world, where legacy systems are regularly retrofitted, adapted, and coaxed into to accepting new technologies. The far more likely scenario – you can call it a challenge, or an opportunity, depending on your outlook – is to be given a new strategy or business direction that must be met using existing systems and materials, with minimal additional outlay.
Leaders with the right creativity and vision will immediately seize upon the inspiration that no matter what systems exist within an organization, the opportunity is always there to restart and rebuild as long as there is a better, more effective way to approach it.
This was the climate of innovation we encountered when we began
consulting with Newport City Homes in 2009.
Now recognized as the UK’s leading not-for-profit Registered Social Landlord, Newport City Homes approached Aspect as a newly established government agency that was facing the difficult task of migrating existing systems and developing an entirely new technology infrastructure. Its Board, executives and staff were determined to introduce a culture of excellent resident services and to develop a solution that would conform to its organization’s FIRST values: “Fair, Innovative, Respectful, Sincere and Trustworthy.”
Microsoft® Infrastructure
At a network level, Newport City Homes adopted a 100MB meshed network to link its three main sites, with broadband serving smaller offices and other sites; while in the front and back office, it invested in a range of Microsoft solutions including Microsoft Office®, Service Manager, Microsoft SharePoint® 2010 and Windows 7 on the desktop. In order to improve the quality of customer interactions, it also developed a sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system based on the Microsoft Dynamics® 4.0 platform. Microsoft OCS (Office Communication System) system, now known as Microsoft® Lync™, provided its high-quality VOIP telephony solution.
By December of 2010, with its contact center handling an increasing volume of customer calls, Newport City Homes began seeking a specialized contact center solution that could integrate with and complement its Lync and Microsoft Dynamics platforms. According to Nigel Ward, Newport City Homes’ Information Services Developer, Aspect Unified IP was the right choice:
“We looked at many different solutions, but Aspect was the only one that gave us confidence to integrate with our existing Microsoft infrastructure and enable us to fully execute our unified communications strategy. We anticipate the platform will play an important role in improving our contact center efficiency and effectiveness.”
Awards and Recognition
Without a doubt, the Newport City Homes implementation team had a clear vision for exceptional customer experience that helped Aspect develop and build their successful, next-generation solution.
Newport City Homes has since been recognized for its success in creating a world-class computing and communications infrastructure. At the 2010 UK IT Industry Awards, it was named “Small IT Department of the Year.” It also won the “Delivering Customer Driven Services” and “People’s Choice” awards at the 2010 Welsh Housing Awards.
Are there opportunities for rebuilding within your organization? What stands in your way? Were you successful in integrating new technology with legacy systems, applications or processes? We’d love to hear your story.
The Value of Listening to What Your Customers are Telling You
by Chris O'Brien on February 16th, 2012
Among the many classic episodes of Seinfeld, one of my favorites is when Kramer becomes the MoviePhone operator, though without any of the tools he needs to provide good customer service.
Once he exhausts his ability to provide the right answer, his fallback is to ask, “Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you want to see?”
Many companies that are struggling with customer service are desperate for someone to just tell them how they can make their interactions with consumers more effective. It’s not hard to understand why. As fast as the customer experience landscape is evolving, it’s difficult for even the best organizations to keep pace. However, the information and answers to enable better customer service are often closer than you think.
At Aspect, we’re big advocates of harnessing the information that customers are already providing to improve their experience. On this blog, we’ve shared a number of approaches for optimizing customer experience.
Data analytics. As we’ve noted previously, companies are sitting on a wealth of insight in the form of data they capture through customer interactions in the contact center. So the key is to implement the capabilities and processes to extract the value from these data
Social media monitoring. As consumers have adopted social media channels to express their feelings about companies and products, business leaders are struggling to understand how to track and address issues from these sources. It’s clear, however, that social media and what it can tell companies are too valuable to ignore.
Expert voices. One of the most difficult challenges with customer experience is to take a step back and understand the larger trends shaping the industry. With the benefit of these perspectives, companies can gain a comprehensive understanding of how to react to rising customer expectations in a strategic and sustainable way.
In an effort to practice what we preach, we’re holding the Aspect Customer Experience (ACE), on June 19-22. Over the past few years, we’ve found that part of what makes this event so valuable—to our executives as well as attendees—is that the agenda is developed in part based on feedback and surveys from our customers. So if you allow me to channel my inner Kramer, why don’t you tell us what you’d like to see?
With this information, we’re looking forward to a stimulating program that directly addresses some of the issues and challenges our customers face in delivering excellent customer service and improving the performance and effectiveness of their contact centers.
I’ll be sure to share the customer insights that emerge from ACE in a future blog.
Things We Heart
by Chris O'Brien on February 14th, 2012
I admit it, I’m feeling the love. It’s Valentine’s Day after all, and when you work with folks who are as passionate about customer contact as the people at Aspect, the love tends to spread.
Here’s who we’re feeling particularly amorous toward right now:
Tim Dreyer hearts ZDNet:
“Paul Greenberg had an excellent post recently, Social Media Companies Make Moves, which talks about four social media companies making an impact in the customer-facing and employee focused technology marketplace.”
Chris O’Brien hearts lifehacker:
“Lifehacker is, quite simply, a treasure trove of brilliant ideas. I love finding out that there are simple solutions to problems I never even realized I had. If life were a product or service… Lifehacker would be the answer to a better customer experience.”
Jane Hendricks hearts Forrester’s Kate Leggett:
“I personally love Kate Leggett’s blogs – all of them. I’d have a hard time picking just one but her recent one on Data Quality is a beauty. Not only is she visionary, she is very well grounded in the practicalities of the customer experience and what the contact center can deliver and how they can do it better.”
Who do you love? What are your favorite blogs and must-reads? Let us know!
The Art-of-the-Possible Comes to the Contact Center
by Mike Butts on February 10th, 2012
Business leaders make decisions based on past experiences. Even when we think we are being innovative, we are still innovating from what we know and what we’ve seen succeed.
To illustrate this point, CIOs have jumped on the opportunity to increase organizational productivity by deploying one-stop SharePoint portals. SharePoint portals have migrated from simple document repositories to internal communications sites and external corporate web sites. Some businesses, such as mine – a former Microsoft consulting agency – ran its entire operation using SharePoint. Research shows that businesses that once viewed SharePoint as the “go to” place for content are extending its role into “the place where business gets done”. SharePoint makes it easy to envision the art-of-the-possible and perhaps even remove the word “impossible” from our vocabulary.
Given SharePoint’s ubiquitous presence in corporate IT environments, and the drive for customer intimacy, it’s time to bring the art-of-the-possible to the contact
center and tackle productivity and efficiency in an entirely new way.
All too often, contact center productivity is hampered by departmental silos, lack of enterprise knowledge, little to no access to subject matter experts, no real-time metrics, untracked manual processes, limited training and much more. Let’s envision a day where your contact center agents and management teams have a single, “one-stop” interface they use to begin and end their work day, that easily manages all of the different technologies they tap into throughout the day. SharePoint is that key enabling platform that allows everyone within the contact center to stay focused on the task at hand: delivering business value to customers and the enterprise.
Let’s explore some of the possibilities.
- Agent and Supervisor Communication and Collaboration – Create a My Workspace page where agents can access what they need from the corporate CRM database, access their Outlook email messages and assigned tasks, and readily see who’s available for IM chats, voice calls, screen shares and more using Microsoft Lync unified communications capabilities without ever needing to switch screens or open all of those applications individually. Now, consider getting more creative with this My Workspace page – integrate real-time agent metrics, company announcements, team statistics, employee and team recognition, work and vacation schedules, contact center and project schedules, and so much more. The beauty of SharePoint is that it can consolidate all of the information and process needed, and expose the right piece and the right bits of information to the right user. No longer are you hindered by disconnects between agents and supervisors – every player sees what they need when they need it.
- Knowledgebase – How many times are agents and supervisors looking through stacks of notes or hunting around shared drives and desktops for that one document they need? With a centralized knowledgebase, you can turn all this information – including documents, videos, and the notes that pass between the people within the contact center – into a centralized source for both information and collaboration. SharePoint’s powerful search engine allows employees to search information using visual search clues such as meta-driven navigation, thumb nails, previews and click-through relevancy to quickly find and refine search results. And the beauty of SharePoint is that the capabilities you use in-house can quickly be turned on for external consumption. Imagine the same powerful search and collaboration driving a customer self-help portal.
- Analytics – Without knowing where you are, it is difficult – if not impossible – to know where you need to go next. Putting analytics front and center – and putting them into the hands of those who make changes– can transform the culture from one of guessing to one of knowing. Within SharePoint, analytics can be integrated such that they are always visible and always available. For example, display agent and team performance metrics like upsell revenue and average handle time directly on the My Workspace page to align behaviors with strategic objectives. Provide holistic interactive dashboards and scorecards to front-line supervisors and management personnel so they are equipped with the best information to make the best decisions.
- Workflow Automation – Prevent process delays (and lost revenue and customers) while reducing human latency and errors by automating mundane, manual and complex business processes. Business processes such as opening new accounts, credit approvals, accounts receivables, policy management, etc. can involve a number of different workflows, employees with different skill sets, and several different departments. Use SharePoint’s workflow automation capabilities to move business steps through a series of logical and repeatable steps to ensure that business processes do not get bogged down or lost in the shuffle of everyday work. Use SharePoint to push tasks to agents while supervisors use a dashboard to watch service requests move through the system. Workflow automation is great for connecting the contact center to back office operations. It can help ensure that the organization is managing the customer experience holistically – from the initial inquiry through fulfillment – with full visibility along the way.
- Training – Turnover within the contact center remains a pain point even in this challenging economic environment. As new agents come on-board, few can afford the productivity delays that are common. In-person training and reinforcement is hard to manage and sending out document after document is impractical for both the trainer as well as the trainee. With SharePoint, you can reduce the time it takes to onboard new agents and increase effectiveness of existing staff by assigning short training videos to watch and you can easily test understanding with integrated testing. This entire process can be done through SharePoint. Videos can educate staff on new products, offers, campaigns, contact center etiquette, best practices and more. Create a personalized list of recommended videos to supplement training efforts. Make these training videos part of employee performance records and review cycles.
Chances are, your company already has a SharePoint deployment and the possibilities we have outlined have you thinking about the art-of-the-possible for your contact center and maybe even your organization. Possibly the greatest benefit of SharePoint is that you can design and deploy a strategy at a pace that works for you.
I would love to hear your ideas on how SharePoint is being used or could be used in your contact center. Drop me a note.
Till next time.
Mike
Improving the way companies communicate internally and externally with their customers is an important objective for all organizations. This blog is focused on levaraging the collective knowledge withing Aspect.