Controlling contact centre chaos - Taking the unified approach
Steve Michaud
15/08/2007

Anyone running a contact centre is already well aware of the need to provide multiple channels of communication to their customers. For years, every trade show, conference and trade publication has been talking about adding and integrating inbound and outbound telephone channels – or a blend of both – voice portals, email and web interactions in the contact centre. Contact centre managers know about the potential cost advantages and they’re regularly reminded of customers’ demands to communicate via their choice of channel.

These same contact centre managers are also aware, however, of the dark side of comprehensive multimedia contact centres. They have seen the difficulties, through their own or a colleague’s painful experience, of actually implementing and operating one of these centres. What sounds great on paper or in a PowerPoint presentation isn’t necessarily so great in real life.

The typical comprehensive multimedia contact centre today is an accumulation of siloed solutions: automatic call distributor (ACD), voice portal, inbound telephone, outbound telephone, email, web chat, quality management, workforce management, often with fax and paper document management systems in the mix as well. The result is a chaotic, inefficient, expensive and frustrating mess for contact centres to implement, administer and maintain.

Reporting challenges
To run an effective contact centre, accurate and comprehensive reporting is essential. You must know the status of queues, campaigns, agents and other metrics. Generating these reports for a single system can be challenging enough; consolidating them across multiple systems and/or multiple sites can be a nightmare.
If an agent spends four hours handling inbound telephone calls, two hours responding to email, plus one hour on web chat sessions, can you easily determine that the agent actually worked seven hours? If a customer requiring technical support sent an email two days ago, conducted a web chat session on the same issue yesterday and followed up with a telephone call today, can you accurately measure the time required to resolve the problem?

One solution to this reporting problem is to build custom interfaces between each disparate point product handling each communication channel. But building these customised integrated interfaces can be cost prohibitive. And this cost is typically ongoing. As each element of the system changes – for example, you upgrade your voice portal or your ACD – the interfaces to other systems may need to be modified. You may well find that a growing portion of your budget is being absorbed by system integration expenses, leaving fewer resources for other priorities. There is a price in terms of time, as well as money. Because of the customised integration work required to build and maintain multiple interfaces between disparate systems, implementing upgrades and adding new capabilities is delayed.

Business rules administration
To run an effective contact centre, you need to have well-defined business rules. These govern how contacts are handled, priorities are followed, agents are assigned and other key actions are executed. Establishing these business rules takes time, and they must be regularly monitored and adjusted as conditions change.

To optimise performance in a contact centre handling multiple communication channels, the business rules should be input and maintained consistently across all channels. For example, when a highly valued customer calls, the contact centre should recognise the customer’s importance and modify how they are treated in inbound telephone queues, email and web chat queues and perhaps in the quality management process as well. Similarly, when an agent is certified for a new skill and capable of handling a new set of customer issues, that agent’s new skills should be identified in all the systems which could route a customer to that agent. This capability is essential to intelligent routing of customer contacts.

In most contact centres, however, maintaining consistent and accurate business rules involves managing them separately in each disparate system or site with each new entry or change. With hundreds of agents and thousands of customers, it is easy to see how this process could quickly prove burdensome. One solution, again, is to integrate all the products into a customised contact centre. But as discussed in regard to reporting, custom system integration involves significant downside: high expense and long delays.

Total customer view
A typical problem in a contact centre handling multiple customer contact channels is consolidating all relevant information in a single place where the agent can actually use it effectively. Too often, if a customer participates in a web chat, then sends an email and then follows that with a telephone call, the contact centre sees three customers, not one. The agent handling the last contact, the phone call, is completely unaware of the web session or the email. The lack of consolidated information is frustrating to the agent and to the customer, and can impact both the contact centre’s resources and the overall customer experience.

Controlling the chaos – The unified solution
Managers do have an alternative to the chaos of a multimedia contact centre comprised of siloed products. They can opt instead to implement a unified solution. A unified solution provides all elements required to run a comprehensive multimedia contact centre within a single platform. All the functionality – ACD, outbound dialing, self-service, email, web, fax, quality management, monitoring and recording – is inherently built into the system.

A unified solution eliminates the reporting difficulties presented by a conglomeration of point solutions. All channels report through a single system. As a result, all information on agents, queues, resolution status and other key metrics are automatically consolidated across all communication channels.

A unified solution also resolves the issues presented by multiple systems with multiple business rules. All rules related to routing, workflow, agent skills and prioritisation are managed centrally. Any change, input at a single time and place, is reflected across all elements. The result is easier administration, more effective routing and more accurate and consistent treatment of customers.

Unified contact centre capabilities
While a unified solution isn’t necessarily right for every contact centre, it is an option for most multichannel operations looking to reduce complexity. And in today’s competitive markets, it is important to take advantage of any process or technology that could potentially provide a competitive edge. The unified solution does offer companies that edge by allowing them to eliminate administration, reporting and integration issues, as well as by offering the capability for contact centres to “unlock” new functionality when it makes sense for their business and processes. Ultimately when selecting a contact centre solution, it comes down to meeting the strategic business objectives of the company and the needs of their customers.

- Steve Michaud is Director of Solutions Marketing, Asia Pacific at Aspect Software.

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