If you have a call center, establishing a Web site may not make a lot of sense unless you take the extra step of integrating it with the rest of your operations. True, a Web site - even if it isn't integrated with your call center - will serve to accommodate customers who want to access your products or services via the Internet. But introducing automation without cross-technology integration may prevent you from achieving automation's objectives, namely, increased productivity, reduced costs, enhanced customer service and greater revenue. In short, a nonintegrated Web site may lead to missed opportunities and additional administrative burdens.
WEB SITES: ADVANTAGES AND PITFALLS
Establishing a Web site is basically a way to provide customers an automated means of interacting with your business. In this respect, a Web site functions much like interactive voice response (IVR). In fact, the advantages and pitfalls of Web sites resemble those encountered with IVR.
On the up side, both IVR and the Internet allow you to accommodate those customers who prefer to transact business via automated services. Your Web site can provide fax-on-demand, e-mail response, automated order entry, financial information...the list goes on and on. Thus, Web applications, like IVR, can take some of the burden off of agents in the call center. Further, the Internet is a relatively easy, cheap way to get in front of potential customers.
On the down side, some of the problems of IVR are recurring in our early experiences with the Internet. Soon after IVR was introduced, applications such as fax-on-demand, automated order entry, financial services, and service and dealer locators were created and customized for individual companies. But roadblocks to productivity quickly surfaced. In some cases, carefully scripted call flow schemes didn't quite fit customers' service needs, and some automated systems failed to provide (or made inadequate provisions) for those customers who wished to speak to a live agent. Sometimes automated applications were simply inappropriate for the business purpose at hand.
The same problems that limit the usefulness of IVR can limit the usefulness of your Web site. Thus, if you have or are about to establish a Web site, be sure to ask the following questions:
Is an automated application appropriate?
What if the application, however carefully designed, doesn't quite fit your customers' service needs? What if your customers really do need to talk to a real person?
HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR WEB SITE
With Web sites, as with IVR, it is important to recognize there are limits to what you can accomplish with any isolated automated device. Eventually, the time comes to consider the benefits of an integrated approach.
Those with a flair for the obvious might quickly suggest Internet telephones for access to real people or 800 numbers on home pages. But resorting to Internet telephones opens up additional infrastructure, standards and quality issues, and customer acceptance could be a problem. Also, Internet telephones represent only a partial solution, since those who lack access to the technology are unable to get service. Posting an 800 number is a popular solution, but because it isn't integrated, the potential for enhanced productivity is lost. And, in many cases, nonintegrated technology equates to mediocre service for customers.
So how do we put together a truly integrated multimedia call center? The surest (and probably fastest) way is apply existing technologies and infrastructure to the problem. Make the common technologies flexible. Explore existing technologies that directly link World Wide Web browsers to live service agents. Consider initiating callbacks from the Web using the common, everyday telephone (with a little help from CTI).
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF CTI With CTI, you can tailor options to the current call center situation and to your customers, even if they contact you via the Internet. This isn't just sexy technology for technology's sake. The applications and business solutions are real. Here are some examples:
Selling Mail Order Merchandise
A mail order company updated its Web site with new merchandise offerings, order tracking and promotions. However, projections for sales from the Internet were disappointing.
The company concludes potential customers are reluctant to reveal credit card numbers on the Web. To overcome this problem, the company installs Internet CTI software which allows the customer to click on a button to talk to a live agent. Now, the customer can access the call center, schedule a callback and complete the transaction over the phone at a convenient time.
This example shows that Web "surfers" who need to talk to a real person can determine whether and when they want to connect to a live agent. Moreover, the decision can be based on information (provided by the system) about agent availability. If a customer decides not to wait, he or she can schedule a time for an agent to call back. CTI also provides links from the Web transaction to the agent desktop using screen pop.
Other benefits include the ability of the company to upsell. Because call center agents see, via screen pop, what the customer was viewing, they can initiate a conversation about a particular item that was looked at, but not ultimately ordered. The technology provides for secure credit card transactions, by allowing customers to give information over the phone.
Providing On-Line Help
A major telecommunications company is using Internet CTI in its help desk operations. Customers surfing for technical support can choose to speak to a live agent, which immediately connects a representative if one is available, or queues a callback request and delivers detailed information about the customer and the customer's request. This particular call center is using the same integrated technology for their inbound call center to provide length-of-anticipated-delay announcements to callers. The result: messages, not callers, wait in queue for agents.
Companies with technical support are moving rapidly to establish a presence on the Internet. Customers may look at many pages of on-line help regarding a technical problem they are trying to solve themselves. If they are unsuccessful on their own, they are required to call an 800 number, which often leads to 20 to 30 minutes of agonizing hold time.
With Internet CTI, customers enter relevant information about the problem into a message form. The information is routed to the technical support call center along with a list of the help pages visited. This information is used to route the call to the most qualified technician who will then research the problem and have suggestions ready for the customer. Customers are happier, and the company doesn't have to pay for the 800 number network time that accumulates while aggravated customers sit on hold.
Selling Classified Advertising
Before installing an interactive computer-telephony system, a Philadelphia newspaper's abandon rates were as high as 32% on calls to the classified department because agents were unavailable. That meant lost revenue from customers calling to place ads.
Today, the newspaper's CTI system plays a delay announcement and gives the caller the option of queuing a message. This application has reduced average abandon rates to 8%, allowing the paper to capture a large percentage of orders that might have been lost previously.
Customers are more willing to hold if they do so as a matter of choice after being informed of the wait time. And, if they are not willing to hold, they are much more inclined to have a software agent hold their place in queue than go away entirely. The paper plans to extend this application to their Web site, allowing customers to compose an ad on the Web, then click a button to talk to a real person to confirm the ad and place the order.
After reading this example, you may ask, "How does Internet CTI impact call center management?" With calls coming in from yet another source, traffic management might appear to become an issue. But it's manageable. Essentially, you turn your Internet inquiries into callback requests and outbound calls, which are more easily managed than inbound calls because the customer isn't holding the line, wasting time. The demand curve for agents is essentially flattened, and queues are more efficiently managed.
CONCLUSION
We all need to provide the service options our customers want. However, we also need to provide cost-effective solutions, and to work with a supportable, easy-to-maintain infrastructure. But how to get started? Implement technology in phases. Don't change everything at once, and try to do the easy, packaged stuff first. You can score an early success, and gain trust from customers (be they internal or external) for the migration. Don't force the migration on them. If you ease them through the transition, they'll be more likely to cooperate, and to thank you in the end.
[Author Affiliation]
Brett Shockley is CEO of Spanlink Communications. SpanLink's computer-telephony products include WebCall and ExtraAgent. WebCall allows customers who find you on the World Wide Web to ask to speak to a live agent from your Web page. It can also make use of your existing call center ACD and business computer systems to maximize efficiency and customer service. ExtraAgent allows callers to make choices based on their estimated wait in queue.
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