Big Data and the Contact Center
by Michael Ely on February 1st, 2012
Watch any new phone advertisement, and you’ll see the focus has shifted from connectivity and call quality to data, lots and lots of data―from connectivity to your favorite sites to watching the game live and video connections. Data has become so consuming that a report from the University of California, San Diego entitled “How Much Information?” reveals in 2008 the average American consumed 34 gigabytes per day―before 4G was even available to the average customer.
With this much data, not to mention the amount of information available to the consumer, when someone makes the decision to reach out to a contact center, in most cases they will have as much information as the agent they reach. This isn’t saying the days of “Did you check if it’s plugged in?” responses are gone, but the contact center needs the ability to raise its game to keep up with the volume of data available to the informed consumer.
According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, “Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. That’s something like five exabytes (1018 characters) of data.” While the vast majority of this information is user-generated content (pictures, tweets, IMs, posts) there is still a massive amount of data collected on each individual. Your cell phone, car, and other devices can report your location along with any time you connect to any data network. Unified communications and other presence applications track what you’re doing and your availability nearly around the clock. Purchases get tracked by credit card, store and of course browser “cookies,” to say nothing of security cameras (a recent study found the average big-city resident walks into the view of a camera 75 times a day) and other devices designed to monitor access.
How much data does a contact center agent need? While only a small fraction of this information might be pertinent to why the consumer reached out to the contact center, access to the right information at the right time―especially to support cross-selling, collections, and even simply consumer relations―becomes even more critical. This is the foundation of “Big Data”―analyzing the huge volume of available customer information to determine what’s important to know.
Technologies such as Hadoop are considered foundational for data-intensive distributed applications such as business intelligence (BI). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 recently announced support for Hadoop integration to extend its BI functionality to the vast quantity of data available in social network and retail platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and eBay.
Imagine a consumer tweeting about an issue they had with a recent purchase. The contact center monitoring the social networks correlates the post to a recent purchase made by the consumer and sends a text message or email with a “click to talk” link. The consumer uses the link and the agent is supplied with the information on the purchase, the tweet, and a list of knowledge base search results on the issue. The agent can resolve the issue and, when alerted to the consumer’s upcoming birthday, offers a coupon for a related item. Big Data within the contact center enables this kind of proactive customer service.
Does your contact center have the functionality to take advantage of all of the customer information it collects?
Delivering value and standing the test of time
by Michael Ely on March 22nd, 2011
CRM magazine just announced its annual Service Leader Awards, and I was gratified to learn that Aspect had been named a leader in workforce optimization for the fourth year in a row. As a matter of fact, Aspect workforce optimization solutions have been recognized on this list for seven of the eight years it has been in existence. Our developers continue to do an amazing job, so I’m happy their dedication was recognized.
However, I don’t view this award as an invitation to rest on our laurels. Instead, it’s an annual reminder that Aspect needs to stay focused on what really matters—leadership, innovation, and longevity.
Delivering real value to customers
While some awards may involve gamesmanship and politicking, the CRM award is different, in part because CRM’s unique approach involves detailed feedback from several industry analysts with different companies across each category to ensure impartiality. And also because customer satisfaction is one of the three components solutions providers are gauged on. When the companies you serve give you a positive grade, there’s no better indication that you’re doing something right.
The way that Aspect delivers value to our customers is by giving them the tools to enable better service, strengthen customer relationships, and stay flexible in the face of a rapidly changing environment. At a time when many companies are struggling to maximize the efficiency of their operations, managing resources more effectively in the contact center—that is, ensuring that they have access to the right people to serve consumers—is crucial.
Providing comprehensive solutions
Do any of these names ring a bell: Maria Mariani, Soft-Art, Microlytics, Proximity, Circle Noetics, and Reference Software? If you can’t quite place them, you’ll need to step into the Wayback Machine. In the early 1980s, these companies developed and marketed spell check software for PCs. While they enjoyed initial success, their lack of a comprehensive offering caused them to perish as spell check was quickly absorbed into word-processing programs.
In an environment that is changing dramatically with each technological breakthrough, individual products are just that: a solution for one small piece of an expanding, evolving puzzle. The companies that continue to provide value and thrive will be the ones that have a full suite of solutions to ease implementation and integration, speed time to value, and enable greater flexibility.
Aspect’s roots in the call center have given us a unique perspective on the many components that are required for companies to provide an outstanding customer experience.
Pursuing a well-articulated vision
Recently, Aspect CEO Jim Foy predicted that within the next ten years, the contact center as we know it will be gone―essentially integrated into the enterprise. While this view might strike some as far-fetched, I see it differently: it reflects our long-term commitment to enabling company-customer collaboration.
I believe that the true value in customer contact comes not from achieving a high rate of first-call resolution. Instead, the contact center will take on an expanding role as the vital bridge between consumers and the enterprise: tracking their issues and concerns, providing them with access to experts, facilitating a robust dialogue, and reaching out proactively to nurture relationships. Aspect is committed to making this vision a reality.
So while the CRM award is validation that we’re helping customers meet their business goals, it’s also added motivation to stay focused on the value Aspect can provide to companies five or ten years from now.
How your organization can strategically tap the cloud
by Michael Ely on March 1st, 2011
The cloud has been garnering a lot of attention lately, and with good reason: hosted applications such as software as a service (SaaS) and communications as a service (CaaS) offer cost-effective ways for smaller businesses to greatly enhance their technology capabilities while avoiding substantial fixed investments. You can also add information as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), such as Windows Azure, to the list of cloud-related offerings. Meanwhile, the array of configurations—private vs. public vs. hybrid clouds—can cause significant confusion among executives looking for answers.
In the midst of the hype and excitement, it’s crucial to understand how the cloud can create value for your organization. The cloud isn’t just about hosting; instead, its real power is that it enables companies to take advantage of infrastructure and capacity in ways that offer their organization the greatest benefit. …Read more >
Openness might not be a virtue, but open standards help customers
by Michael Ely on February 14th, 2011
I found Kevin Kieller’s “Is ‘Openness’ a Virtue?” article full of many areas to think about. Admittedly, there is a lot of marketing fluff around being “open,” but there are some definite advantages for customers who use vendors with open interfaces.
First the premise:
“And if interoperability is the real virtue, does it matter whether you interoperate based on open standards or proprietary standards? Isn’t it most important to ’get the job done,’ to deliver a reliable and functional solution?”
Of course a functional, reliable solution is the goal, but how many times do you want to create an interface and “adapt” it to whatever you’re trying to talk with? Many companies have a conglomeration of communications platforms, acquired for different purposes or through acquisitions. The project may start out making X talk to Y, but then what about X talking to Z, and Y talking to Z? Heaven help you if you have a single channel from X through Y to Z. Ever see what a document translated from English to Chinese then to Spanish looks like? Do I really want to implement 3 adapters that inevitably have to normalize their connections, losing the extensions of each of the proprietary protocols? Seems pretty painful to me.
Using an industry communications standard like SIP means everyone is talking the same language and is expected to exhibit the same behaviors. The problems come when vendors make optional components mandatory because they added a dependency in their platform which won’t work without it. That’s why few companies trust that two different vendors’ SIP devices can just work together. Optimally, they should be able to connect them and know they’ll work, just like a USB flash drive.
There are a number of “closed” interfaces where the vendor won’t even let you see the API unless you pay a fee and then that same vendor requires you to go through extensive testing to become a certified partner. These are used to control who is allowed to use these interfaces, often blocking out competitors so that they can’t insert themselves into a customer’s deployment. Typically, it’s the customers who suffer, since they can’t take advantage of a competing platform. An “open” standard means everyone can see the interface and use it to build solutions that foster cooperative competition, allowing the customer to get the best of both vendors.
The reason being “open” is so important is that as a customer, you don’t want to be locked into a single vendor when someone else has something that you need that’s even better. Who can afford to rip out and replace what they already have if it works, but want to add another product to it?
One point I fully agree with: being open is not a virtue for the vendor, but it sure is a benefit for the customer.
How healthcare organizations can tap the cloud for archiving
by Michael Ely on February 7th, 2011
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included $22 billion for health information technology and extended the reach of security requirements for healthcare providers. I recently read a great white paper published by Symantec Health on medical image archiving that nicely deals with the issues, costs, and key needs for the long-term data storage and access. It’s one of several recent articles that nicely illustrate a key point: while the cost of disk storage has gone down radically, there are lots of “hidden costs” involved in maintaining a world-class archiving solution, not the least of which include:
- Availability. Having storage mechanisms that take hours or days to retrieve data isn’t an option for today’s immediate response needs.
- Security. Most of this data needs secured access and possibly encryption to prevent unauthorized use.
- Disaster Recovery. Keeping just one copy at one site is asking for trouble if the water main breaks or other unforeseen problems arise.
- Infrastructure. Power, building, and hardware replacement costs need to be figured into the long-term strategy. …Read more >
Testing the value of social media training: A personal experiment
by Michael Ely on February 3rd, 2011
I received an email from the Workplace Training Center (by the editors of Briefings Media Group) recommending the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites as a training mechanism for employees. Since employees are already familiar with using these types of tools, the idea is that they will accept going to these sites more readily than going through more formal corporate training.
A few months ago, I tried this as a social experiment myself, creating a private Facebook group to talk about new technologies and corporate roadmap topics. I then proceeded to announce it internally and even created a short video on how to get onto the group, see information, and post new articles. For a while, I was trying to post new links and documents I’d written for people to review multiple times a week. A few other people also started posting, and we ended up with about 35 group members.
Now, we’re averaging about 2 posts a month, with few responders. While I’m a strong advocate of getting information about new technologies and business developments, I think like everyone else I got out of the habit of checking the site! I also didn’t do exactly what the article ends with: “Ensure that employees are benefiting from this type of training.”
Social media can be a powerful tool, but it’s not without effort. The reason the best bloggers get a strong following isn’t just because they write good and timely posts. They keep it coming and continually check that their audience is benefitting from their postings. Just as most of the best-selling authors are voracious readers, the best bloggers also build on information written by others. There is more to social media than “post it and they will come” (my apologies to Field of Dreams).
Communications as a Service – New or just a new name?
by Michael Ely on January 28th, 2011
I’m always intrigued when I read about Communications as a Service (CaaS) as a new entry into the service market, since several of these services have been around for many years, some as old as the telephone itself. Of course the offerings today, including unified communications and IP contact centers, are so much more than dial tone and making calls.
As a recent HP white paper points out, CaaS is still a growing market, with small and midsize businesses eager to leverage the latest technologies with minimal IT staffing and infrastructure costs. Having limited business communications with just basic phone operations or even full PBX capabilities won’t cut it in today’s market where collaboration and customer service differentiate the winners from everyone else.
One of the white paper’s key lines offers advice to potential CaaS providers: “You need to be seen as a trusted advisor with them (SMBs).” Today, when a multitude of companies are offering solutions, finding a partner with the experience, portfolio, and lasting power to ensure your communications choices work— not only today, but into the future as well— is indispensible.
So while CaaS may seem like the same old story, it’s really about making communications seamless and efficient between your customers and within your business, without a huge infrastructure investment. And isn’t that key to the success of every business?
Two heads are better than one – but at what cost?
by Michael Ely on January 13th, 2011
In a recent post, Gartner’s Michael Maoz recounted conducting an experiment on collective intelligence as part of a presentation. He asked an individual for the Hubble Constant,* and when that person didn’t know, he then put the question to the audience of 300 to find someone who did. I like the experiment, though I think it left out a key parameter – the time (and therefore cost) spent to get the right answer to the question.
Asking the first person, who didn’t have the answer, probably took 10 seconds, costing little even if this individual was highly paid. Now multiply that times the 300 people asked (who had to take time to think about it even if they didn’t respond), then times 100 contact center agents handling 10 calls an hour for 12 hours each weekday – that’s 10,000 hours of time used each day. Extend the example to the contact center and you can understand why it’s vital to access collective intelligence in a smart way.
Admittedly, I’m exaggerating for effect: every customer will not have a question that an agent must seek outside help to answer. However, a study done in 2008 by Leo J. Shapiro and Associates indicates that more than 10 percent of customer issues require agents to find someone outside the contact center to assist in resolving them. Contact centers are about efficiently getting answers for customers, so using collective intelligence indiscriminately could cost more than you think.
This is why I believe capabilities like “Ask the Expert” are so critical. If Michael could have determined which people in the audience were most likely to know the answer and asked one of them directly, odds are he would have saved the time that the 300 people spent thinking about it.
Just as important as finding the right person is letting that person do their own job. Having the ability to schedule experts so they aren’t bombarded all day by the contact center (unless that’s their job, of course) is critical so that a business can use its highly skilled and highly paid employees in the most efficient manner while still providing outstanding customer service.
While I’m all for collaboration, the right solutions can ensure it happens with the right people at the right time to keep both your business and your contact center running at peak efficiency.
*The Hubble Constant is the rate at which the velocity of recession of the galaxies increases with distance. I had to look it up myself.
Tablets and smartphones are complementing—not replacing—the PC
by Michael Ely on January 5th, 2011
I’ve recently read several pieces, including the latest article from Information Week, about the death of the PC/laptop in favor of smartphones and tablets. Personally, I think the lines between devices supporting soft phones, touch screen keyboards, and applications are becoming so blurred as to almost make the discussion moot. Let’s look at the key functionality that users are seeking from their devices: …Read more >
Mobility with Lync
by Michael Ely on December 20th, 2010
Ever get halfway through a meeting and need to leave for the airport or your kid’s tennis match? With Lync 2010, it’s as easy as a mouse click to transfer the call from your desktop to your mobile device, using the same Bluetooth-enabled headset. In the coming year, when Lync will offer support for clients on mobile devices like the iPhone, the ability to use both mobile and desktop communications seamlessly may become a reality. Single number, find me/follow me, and presence through the same interface across multiple devices already in use will foster productivity and make business communications much simpler. …Read more >
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.