If your business runs a CRM application, you qualify as a call centre. This is the opinion of Managing Executive of Tellumat`s communications group Rasheed Hargey. "If you have multi-touch points to everyone in your value chain, from suppliers to clients, you basically have a call centre on your hands," he says.
Hargey argues that call centres can be categorised as formal or informal, and that many businesses fail to realise that they operate informal call centres. This can mean losing out on the chance to increase productivity and avoid losing sales. Hargey claims that managing "presence" is vital to customer service, and that businesses should recognise the need for call centre technology that can help managers maintain good customer relations.
Formal call centres can be defined as the traditional, shift-based groups of agents - a concept that is well understood by most businesses. These call centres make use of high-end infrastructure and computer telephony integration (CTI) technology that allow for historic and real-time reporting, agent quality management and quick and efficient hearsay resolution with clients.
Informal call centres, however, employ no agents and usually involve regular company employees dealing with customers and suppliers. Hargey argues that management should employ the same kind of call centre technology in informal call centres, if they are serious about CRM. "The only difference is that you need a more sophisticated automatic call distribution (ACD) system, because it is harder to distribute calls in this kind of environment," he says.
"In this kind of informal environment," continues Hargey, "CTI should really be called CTA - computer telephony automation." He says the solution to informal call centre problems lies in skills-based routing. "We go into a client company and draw up a list of skills sets, such as administration, accounting, marketing, etc. Then we rate each staff member against these skills - effectively a high, medium or low rating. This enables us to give each skill set a direct dialling inward (DDI) number. Each caller can then be directed appropriately according to this index.
"Depending on the number dialled by the client, the call can be routed automatically. If nobody appropriate is found, the router can then direct the call to the next most qualified person to handle the call. The employee will be alerted by a PC notification that there is a call waiting, as well as the nature of the call. This means every caller is handled and helped, no matter what department they dialled," says Hargey.
DDI and caller line identity (CLI) services allow each employee to see who is calling and who the regular contact is, so that they can deal with the enquiry appropriately. Hargey claims this is vital to high-quality CRM.
"Presence management is everything," says Hargey. "Personalised voicemail messages can be created for specific clients so that they are dealt with appropriately." He says products like Inter-Tel`s call centre range are able to interface not only with Microsoft products, but also with most traditional CRM and database packages, like ACT! and Goldmine. "Our in-house development team can seamlessly integrate any CRM package as long as the core database is ODBC compliant," he says.
By automating key call centre functionality, using progressive or predictive diallers, database screen-pops and real-time reporting, call centre agents can be up to 120% more productive, Hargey says. "Automated call centres are far more productive, which translates to a real rands-and-cents benefit."
Real-time statistics made available to management of both informal and formal call centres allow for dynamic changes to be made, to ensure optimal performance. "This is particularly important for outsourced call centres that have service level agreements (SLAs) to adhere to," says Hargey. "For example, part of an SLA or business objective may be to answer calls in less than 10 seconds. Using historic data and Erlang calculations, the system is always aware of how many agents are required to answer a specific number of calls in the given time limit.
"If agents are unavailable, a real-time reporting tool can notify all relevant parties that too few agents are available, and supervisors can get more agents to log in before the SLA is exceeded. Tellumat`s Navigator product does this, but is also unique in that it can automatically prevent agents from logging out below a minimum SLA level. For example, if 10 agents are required, agents cannot log out below this complement until other agents log in."
Hargey says these tools can be used to automate a myriad of call centre operations usually left to the supervisor. These can include monitoring calls for keywords and then rerouting calls or advising the supervisor to monitor calls based on these words. Swearwords or words indicating anger can be recognised, and the supervisor can be automatically conferenced in, to assess the agent`s performance or take over the call.
"We believe informal and formal call centres are each unique, and that a high level of customisation is necessary for each call centre to operate optimally," he says.
"Our history in telecoms hardware and software gives us a unique ability to analyse, propose and develop unique, customised solutions which interface with Inter-Tel`s PBX. Inter-Tel is a recognised global leader in PBX technology and interfaces directly with the user`s data network over an open architecture interface," says Hargey.
He argues that technology doesn`t guarantee good customer CRM experience. "It does, however, provide the tools for the business to alter the experience and improve it."
Hargey says the main point is the old adage that says: "If you can`t measure it, you can`t manage it." He feels most companies that do not realise they qualify as call centres do not use technology effectively to measure their performance and manage customer experiences accurately. "Real-time reporting tools, in an information context, could best be described as a real-time business dashboard," says Hargey.
"For example, in the automotive industry where dealers are measured on customer satisfaction index (CSI) scores, we can put real-time information on the principal`s desk, relating to those criteria on which the CSI is being measured, like average answering time through the whole business.
"Alarms and thresholds can be flagged, because ideally the manager doesn`t need to know until something is going wrong. Managers are interested in business processes that go beyond the normal or legitimate, like too many calls being abandoned. They can set filters to be notified by alarms or exceptions. This process is best described as `cybernetic management by exception`, and allows managers to measure business performance accurately," says Hargey.
"Essentially, this kind of technology means real benefits for customers and the business itself. Having calls routed to wireless devices or cellphones means employees don`t have to stop working, and makes them contactable wherever they are. Overhead paging is eliminated, and everything can be managed from a single platform, which means these tools are investments rather than purchases," concludes Hargey.
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