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How Mobility Transforms the Art of Customer Interaction

business brief

WIreless In THe ConTACT CenTer?

in a word, yes.

Those contact center managers, supervisors and agents who are embracing this new way of working are quickly realizing that mobility in a customer or technical support environment helps them solve customer problems on the first call, without putting callers on hold, with the knowledge that they’ve resolved the issue before the agent hangs up. more gets done in less time. for contact center managers, greater productivity and efficiency means higher customer satisfaction, lower costs and happier agents.

When we peer into the future of the contact center, we see a combination of technological forces like internet-based self-help on one end of the spectrum and an increasing reliance on subject matter experts for those with truly complex problems at the other. Technology is taking care

of the lower, simpler end. What can be automated increas-ingly is automated – usually in the form of an faQ page or peer-to-peer forum on the brand’s website. but with our own increasing comfort with getting help ourselves – remember that it wasn’t so long ago that logging on to a website to get questions answered was a pretty rare act – those times that we do need to call a brand’s contact center are usually reserved for more complex problems. and agents are therefore increasingly being asked to do more than simple customer support.

The new contact center agent needs to be highly collabora-tive, able to find colleagues quickly who can fill in the blanks for the more complex customer interactions. They need to be able to help with truly difficult issues without putting customers on hold or having to call them back. and in this age of social media, they’re being not only acknowl-edged- but increasingly tasked – with being the face of the brand. customer satisfaction more often than not begins with the contact center than the packaging or website. so again, it’s the link between agent and technology platform that either enables this seamless customer interaction to take place or makes it logistically impossible. We like it as customers when we’re talking to someone who stays with us until our problem is solved. customer service is hard enough.

and this is where we find customers turning to wireless headsets in their contact centers. Let’s look at a few examples and hear how they describe the challenges and real life benefits in their own words.

2WIreless In THe ConTACT CenTer?

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The stereotype of the contact center, of row after row of agents tethered physically to their terminals is shifting to a more flexible, natural, human model: agents are increasingly going wireless. And busi-nesses are benefiting from the change.

Wireless headsets in a contact center? Heresy! Blas-phemy! Agents are paid to stay put and get off the phone quickly! They’re supposed to move from call to call – and to not physically move at all! our met-rics are designed this way. Agents can’t be mobile, can they?

HoW A GovernMenT AGenCy Uses MoBIlITy To ensUre FIrsT CAll resolUTIon

When a federal contact center supporting multiple agencies needs to handle over a million calls a year with only 50 agents, efficiency, closure and rock solid reliability become high priorities. “We’re busy people,” the iT support manager told me with a laugh. “We use an avaya switch, voice mail and email system. and, we use a lot of jabra headsets.”

When we heard the typical day-in-the-life of the average agent working at this contact center, the need for in-office mobility became clear. “our agents have to print things out,” she continued. “We have shared network printers. so when you have to have a screen print to finish off a call, this mobility was important. We didn’t have to put the caller on hold. We manage so many varied calls, and we’re using so many varied applications, for them to be able to see what they need, looking at multiple screens, it’s helpful to be able to just print something out.”

sometimes, the agent’s role is more complex than simply interacting on the phone. in this center’s case, they often have to mail out forms and information based on their callers’ requests. “if you print a lot of envelopes, agents can print them up while they’re talking to the client. That way, we completely solve the customer’s problem while they’re on the phone. We don’t have to put them on hold and we don’t have to batch everything at the end of the day.” Knowing that you’ve completely resolved the caller’s question right there and then isn’t just good for agent morale, but good for customer satisfaction, too.

HoW A reGIonAl PoWer UTIlITy HelPs CUsToMers In reAl TIMe

When we asked the technical support manager of this pow-er utility why he switched from corded to wireless headsets for his 150 agents, he didn’t hesitate to tell us that it came down to getting more done with more flexibility. “What predicated our move to wireless? Productivity, flexibility and administration. We were running through so many batteries with the desktop amplifiers that our old corded headsets were connected to, it was ridiculous. before we went to wireless, it was almost a full time job requisition taking care of headsets.”

for power customers with specific questions about their utility bills or energy savings, the contact center agents in this facility were tasked with finding a wide variety of solutions in real time, often having to get up out of their chairs to retrieve documents. The ability to avoid putting customers on hold was a big customer service benefit. “We’re able to stay with the customer and keep the conversation going while we’re looking for a lead or a supervisor. it helps out immensely. We do a lot of printing and a lot of faxing, so we try to keep it as seamless as possible for the customer.”

and, as with so many new technological pilot programs in an office setting, as soon as one person gets something better, everyone soon wanted one. Word of mouth quickly made the new models very attractive. “basically, it’s like wandering around in the desert. once you find water, everyone else wants it too. it kind of just caught fire.”

Does going wireless in the contact center really seem so far-fetched now? once you hear the words of contact center managers who have made this switch, it not only seems possible – but very reasonable.

so WHy CHoose JABrA?

Three reasons come to mind.

reAson #1: PAIrInG

first, the role of the contact center is increasingly becoming more complex. a rapidly changing business environment requires that agents be in a state of continuous training. To this point, jabra’s ease of use and the simplicity with which support personnel can quickly pair a secondary headset becomes a critical advantage.

as our power utility manager explained, “What really interested us in the jabra Pro 9400 series was the pairing feature. We do one to four classes a year and they’re pairing up agents with leads, so once we showed them our new jabra wireless headsets, they were thrilled. They said this would make their lives much easier.”

The government agency mentioned above agreed, saying, “What we liked about the jabra product was that it was

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Going wireless in this contact center means com-plete first-call resolution, improved customer service and happier agents.

Going wireless in this contact center means greater productivity, improved customer service and easier agent support.

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so simple when you were doing training to pair two headsets,” they told us. “The ease of use turned us on to jabra headsets. The LcD screen tells you what stage you’re in and just a lot of the functionality of the jabra headsets was really good. so is the voice quality.”

With jabra, supervisors can quickly pair their wireless headset to the agent’s and seamlessly move into the role of agent coach, all without interrupting the flow of business.

reAson #2: DensITy

Density – or the interference caused by having too many wireless headsets in close proximity to each other – will start causing trouble with as little as a few dozen users in a room. call collision or cross talk is bad enough in a standard enterprise environment, but in a customer-facing contact center where voice quality and intelligibility drive customer experience, it’s unacceptable. for a contact center manager looking to take his or her agent pool wire-less, having a wireless density problem is an immediate deal-breaker.

moving a contact center to wireless headsets across the board can dramatically improve customer service and speed up first call resolution – as long as you are able to avoid density problems.

fortunately, you don’t have to figure this out on your own. jabra has already solved this problem for you.

reAson #3: erGonoMICs

The ease of pairing multiple headsets and the technical ability to fit more wireless headsets into a dense environ-ment may be critical technological advantages, but the last aspect we need to discuss concerns the humans on the other side of the technology – your agents. all the invest-ments in the world won’t help you improve your customer service metrics if your agents keep turning over. so let’s talk about the human part of the equation. agents, like all people, just prefer to be wireless.

being untethered in the workplace – even in a contact center environment, where agents are expected to be focused on their callers and often physically located in one place – means something more nuanced than just the connection with the terminal. We can easily agree that workers who can do whatever is necessary to solve their customers’ problems are more productive, whether trouble shooting a product or collecting documents that needs to be mailed out. but let’s also consider that agents who are comfortable, can easily change position, pace, walk and stretch are happier, too. Knowing your employer

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thinks this much of you also goes a long way in retaining your agents. more personal freedom equals more comfort, happiness and trust – as well as less turnover.

“Who wants to be tied to their desk?” our governmental agency support manager rhetorically asked us. “You’re stuck there enough already.” We couldn’t agree more.

once we realize that we can shorten average call times, increase customer satisfaction, lower call abandon rates and increase agent retention, the thought of moving our contact center to wireless headsets doesn’t sound so far-fetched anymore. Technical challenges like density have been successfully dealt with, supervisor headset pairing takes seconds and agents themselves are generally happier.

Do your agents need to get up and collect documents to serve your customers – like our power utility, above?

Do your agents need to handle a wide variety of tasks, making first call completion a high priority – like our governmental agency, above?

if the answer is “yes” to any of the above – or, if your agents just prefer to be wireless, like the rest of us – then perhaps you should give jabra wireless headsets a careful look. Like many customers who have taken their first step down this path to greater productivity, you can work with your jabra sales representative to get a pilot program put together today.

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Isn’t it time you took your contact center wireless?

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FInD oUT More

Different working environments demand different headset solutions. The jabra range of headsets for contact centers and offices offers a wide choice of hands-free communica-tion technology covering virtually any requirement.

To find out more about which jabra headset solutions are relevant for specific working environments, please contact jabra at www.jabra.com/contact-center.

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ABoUT JABrAjabra is the brand of Gn netcom, a subsidiary of Gn store nord a/s (Gn) - listed on nasDaQ omX. jabra employs approxi-mately 850 people worldwide and in 2011 produced an annual revenue which amounted to DKK 2,106 million. jabra is a world leader in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of a broad range of handsfree communications solutions. With a reputation for innovation, reliability, and ease of use that goes back more than two decades, jabra’s consumer and business divisions produce corded and wireless headsets, plus mobile and in-office speakerphones that empower individuals and businesses through increased freedom of movement, comfort, and functionality.