Make Your Contact Center Smarter: Best Practices

Brian Spencer, President

Contact Center Definition

Contact centers are a combination of people, process and technology organized to achieve a specific mission through communications

Strategic Makeup

• The type of contact center defines its goals

• These goals dictate the critical processes

• People are selected and trained to perform critical processes

• Technology is used to enable/improve critical processes or drive meaningful efficiency

Need Drivers & Processes

Profit Center

A profit center directly contributes revenue and profits to the company

Cost Center

A cost center does not contribute revenue, at least not directly, to the company

Need drivers by type of call center

• Drive revenue growth• Develop processes to scale with

demand• Maintain or improve operating margins• Verify applicable regulatory compliance

• Control costs• Develop processes to reduce or deflect

demand• Maintain a defined level of customer

satisfaction

Critical Processes

• Compliance• Agent training & development• Best practices identification

• Agent training & development• Escalation / dispute handling• Satisfaction measuring

Value Equation

Reactive

Proactive

Impact on Success

Compliance

Call scripting

Best practices identification

Training & Development

Compliance• It’s reactive – only used when

audited

• Low value – used to meet external standard, not business driver

Call Scripting• Somewhat reactive – develop

once and change when necessary

• Modest value – consistency is critical, but a call script process is only the beginning

Best practices identification• Moderately proactive – need to

seek them out

• High value – knowing what drives business results provides control

Training & development• Very proactive – takes consistent work to develop talent

• Highest value – builds consistent use of best practices for maximum results

Voice Documentation

Address critical processes across spectrum1.At minimum one gains compliance and protection2.Use as reaction to exceptions to identify best practices3.Be active and constantly develop people and process

Recording for Compliance

Compliance Requirements

• Revenue protection• Avoidance of penalties and fees• Avoidance of bad press

• Reliability• Efficiency of data retrieval

Value of Compliance

Solution Drivers

• Security• Authenticity verification

•FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule•FTC Telephone Order Merchandise Rule•Various SEC and FINRA regulations

Case Study

• Deployed Voice Documentation for liability management• Protect revenue through fast retrieval of recordings to

verify sales and retain customers• Use authenticity verification to admit voice documents as

evidence, protecting assets

“If a customer complains about service they received, we’re able to play the call back for them. It eliminates the need for he said/she said situations and is veryeffective.” Jorgia McAfee, VP Operations, CPSS

Recording for Best Practices

Best Practice Identification Process

• Increase revenue by sharing good sales technique• Increase revenue by reducing bad practices• Control cost by reducing wasteful practices

• On demand accessibility• Live or historical monitoring

Value of Best Practices Identification

Solution Drivers

• Ability to share examples with team

•Reactively monitor agents who produce exceptionally good or bad results

•Reactively monitor teams producing exceptional results

Case Study

• Began with compliance requirements for transaction verification

• Moved up the value ladder by developing a training process around best practices

• Overall performance soared with sales increasing over 35%

“We use the calls every night in our sales meeting as a training tool, playing back the calls of the day… We’veincreased our business flow and reduced headcount.”Thomas Reamer, Director IT, IMS

• Establish performance standards and metrics for critical processes

• Systematically evaluate performance• Base training, promotions and changes on performance reports

Recording for Development

Personnel Development Process

• Increase revenue through improved performance• Control training costs by focusing on those demonstrating ability

• Control personnel costs by reducing non-performers

• Recordings linked to evaluations

Value of Personnel Development

Solution Drivers

• Reporting on evaluations• Graphs for easy analysis

Case Study

• Perform outsourced marketing and sales services• Implemented rigorous training and development

processes to improve their product• Share voice documents with customers and prospects to

demonstrate their competitive advantage

"It's actually given us a competitive advantage we never initially expected. We can drop our customers and prospects a CD to demonstrate quality assurance just like that, and all the information is there, including thecalls themselves." Mary Dedrick, COO, Performark

Making the Center Smarter

• At the individual level a contact center peaks at its smartest single agent

– The person that tough customers ask for by name

• Top organizations surpass this ceiling by networking knowledge, creating a cumulative effect

– “that’s a great question, let me consult our knowledge base and see what our experts say…”

• This is easy in non-real-time interactions where the agent can take time to research

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How does this apply in a real-time contact center?

Knowledge Networking

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Inefficient Efficient

Imprecise

Precise

Why Voice Documentation?

Voice Documentation is more than recording

• Authentic copy of original call

• Markup tools to highlight key points

• Annotation tools to append call with notes

• Segmented sharing for efficient collaboration

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The Effect on the Center

Voice Documentation facilitates an efficient, precise transition from a real-time contact to a

non-real-time contact

• Not all contacts can be resolved in real-time• Voice Documentation is the most efficient and

accurate means to transition into non-real-time• The result is knowledge networking with the best

equipped person• Includes complete audit trail with full annotations

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Voice Documentation – Enabling Best Practices

• Compliance and protection through reliable recording, efficient retrieval and authenticity verification

• Best practices identification through reactive monitoring of live calls and recordings along with email sharing

• Personnel development through consistent processes linking individual calls to performance trends, gaps and training initiatives

• Efficient knowledge networking, making the contact center smarter

As a solution, Voice Documentation can address all levels of the value equation in a

profit center

Questions?

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