NICE solution overviews

From agent-centric to business-focused performance optimisation

Call centre quality management systems have evolved over the years, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of monitoring and managing agent performance. But most quality management systems today still focus on individual agent performance, neglecting the bigger picture: overall business quality. Now, quality management is advancing. A higher standard infuses the performance improvement process with innovative analytics capabilities, going beyond individual agent performance to optimising quality at the business level. NICE Quality Optimization is the next evolution in quality management.

Traditional call centre quality management involves randomly monitoring a handful of agents' calls every month in order to evaluate and track their performance against quality standards. This agent-centric process helps improve overall agent quality, but it significantly reduces contact centres' ability to link quality evaluation to overall business performance. With a small selection of calls recorded and monitored, the most important issues arising from customer-agent interactions may never even be reviewed.

NICE Quality Optimization helps prepare agents for the Decisive Moments of customer interactions with business-centric call centre quality management. It uses Interaction Analytics to analyse all customer interactions and measure key performance indicators (KPIs) that support the organisation's business objectives. KPIs can be derived from telephony-based metrics such as average handle time, hold time and call transfers, as well as from speech analytics measures such as customer dissatisfaction and first contact resolution.

NICE Quality Optimization provides contact centres proven, closed-loop call centre quality management to:

* Identify problems via customised dashboards that track business KPIs
* Perform root cause analysis to uncover the issues and agents that contribute to low-quality scores
* Take action such as targeted agent training to address knowledge gaps
* Monitor to verify problem resolution and ensure ongoing quality management

First time's the charm

First contact resolution is one of the most important key performance indicators for contact centres. Unresolved issues lead to repeat contacts, which raise costs, slow operations and dissatisfy customers. Call centres use NICE First Contact Resolution to measure the rate at which customer issues are resolved during the first contact and identify why others result in repeat contacts. By analysing this data, you can take real-time action, at the Decisive Moment, to increase first contact resolution, improve operational efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.

As companies implement new channels of communication with customers, such as e-mail and online chat, the concept of first call resolution becomes first contact resolution. For example, customers might use e-mail to report an issue to a service provider and then follow up with a phone call if the matter is not resolved. It is essential to adopt a holistic, cross-channel approach to first contact resolution to benefit from the efficiency and customer satisfaction this key performance indicator promises.

NICE First Contact Resolution leverages real-time speech analytics coupled with cross-channel analytics, text mining and Web interaction analytics to identify repeat contacts and find their root cause. It also locates the original unresolved interactions, identifying the agents and situations that lead to repeat contacts. With these insights, call centre managers can take real-time action to improve first contact resolution by providing agents with real-time, next-best-action at the Decisive Moments, guidance, updating agent scripts or conducting targeted training to address knowledge or skills gaps.

By analysing customer interactions and providing real-time impact tools, NICE First Contact Resolution enables contact centres to accurately measure first call resolution rates, identify the drivers of repeat contacts, and effectively improve the ability to resolve customer issues during the first contact.

* Automatically measure first contact resolution across multiple communication channels
* Reduce repeat contacts
* Improve operational efficiency
* Increase customer satisfaction

NICE First Contact Resolution provides companies effective tools to measure, understand and improve first contact resolution

* Identifies agents who drive repeat calls
* Isolates topics that are associated with repeat contacts
* Identifies individual agent knowledge gaps
* Locates original unresolved contacts
* Generates alerts when first call resolution rates are beyond the desired range
* Provides real-time, next-best-action guidance to agents

Flexible, reliable and secure solutions for your call recording needs

Whether you need to capture every call in your centre for regulatory compliance, or record a random sampling of calls for quality management, NICE delivers on all your call recording needs. Locating and replaying calls is also quick and easy with NICE call centre recording technology. And complementary NICE data security and call archiving features ensure your recorded calls are stored safely for as long as your business requires.

NICE provides comprehensive call recording technology that adapts easily to the unique operational requirements of any call centre. It supports virtually any telephony environment, including traditional TDM and VOIP, enabling a seamless transition during technology migrations, as your call centre grows and evolves.

NICE call centre recording gives you complete control over call recording. Redundancy and high-availability options provide round-the-clock functionality if you need every call captured. Flexible recording rules let you meet specific needs for departments or business groups within the organisation, including branch operations and work-at-home agents. Flexible storage rules determine where recorded calls are archived and for how long.

Your customers expect you to protect their sensitive information. NICE offers powerful data security features, end-to-end media encryption, strong authentication, server hardening and others to enable you to protect stored calls throughout their lifetime, even when they're transferred, reviewed or archived.

Comprehensive multi-site call recording and playback capabilities optimise use of network resources and enable data centre consolidation, while providing transparent and universal access to stored calls, regardless of where and how they were captured.

NICE call centre recording technology enables organisations to:

* Satisfy business and regulatory requirements by automatically recording all of your calls - or as many as you need
* Support unique recording requirements for different business groups
* Centralise and consolidate call recording across all locations, including branch offices and work-at-home agents' sites
* Automatically manage storage and archival functions to satisfy compliance and business requirements, including new requirements arising from the Dodd-Frank Act

Powerful tools to improve interaction-handling

Average handle time is a key performance indicator for contact centres. Optimising the metric means balancing quality and customer experience with the costs associated with agents' time. Companies use NICE Handle Time Optimization to understand what drives high average handle time and then take action in real time at the Decisive Moment of the interaction to mitigate it - all while preserving quality and customer service.

Many factors can drive your contact centre's average handle time: agent knowledge gaps, ineffective processes, needless transfers. NICE Handle Time Optimization helps your contact centre managers identify these drivers and take action to mitigate them. By improving call handling, your contact centre's quality and customer experience improve, too.

Real-time speech analytics

Cutting-edge Real-time Speech Analytics technology analyses spoken interactions as they occur, powering real-time agent guidance to help agents take the next-best-action and quickly address the customer issues.

Call-topic analysis

NICE Handle Time Optimization analyses customer calls and categorises them into call topics. It then breaks down agent handle time by topic. Agents struggling with knowledge gaps can receive real-time guidance as well as the targeted offline training they need.

Call-part analysis

The NICE solution identifies the discrete parts of calls and calculates average handle time for each. Call-part analysis can reveal agent knowledge gaps related to standard parts of customer calls such as up-selling. Here, too, real-time next-best-action recommendations and targeted training can help.

Desktop analytics

Drawing on NICE's Desktop Analytics, NICE Handle Time Optimization enables contact centre managers to analyse agent desktop application usage during customer interactions and offline wrap-up time. The solution calculates handle time for agent applications such as CRM, billing and knowledge bases, and reports time spent on specific screens within these applications. With this information, managers can automate and simplify complex processes that slow average handle time.

Web interaction analytics

The solution captures and analyses Web interactions, and automatically compiles the information with other customer-specific data gathered by NICE's cross-channel analytics.

Call flow analytics

Using Call Flow Analytics, the solution also enables managers to identify and eliminate unnecessary transfers, reducing handle time and customer frustration.

NICE Handle Time Optimization provides powerful insights and real-time impact tools to:

* Reduce operational costs by lowering average handle time
* Increase customer satisfaction by quickly resolving issues
* Automate and optimise agent desktop processes
* Identify agent training opportunities and deliver next-best-action recommendations in real time
* Identify inefficient organisational processes

NICE Handle Time Optimization helps contact centres understand what drives up average handle time. Specifically, the solution identifies high average handle time related to:

* Individual agents
* Collective agent knowledge gaps
* Call topics
* Parts of calls
* Agent desktop applicationsX

head = Compliance call recording

Reliable, flexible call recording for regulatory compliance and risk mitigation

A growing number of businesses are subject to governmental oversight and regulation. SEC 17a-4, HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, FSA and MIPPA are a small sample of the regulatory acronym soup that can impact daily operations. Many companies are implementing call recording, a cornerstone of regulatory compliance, and finding its uses go beyond satisfying regulations.

Call recordings, including mobile call recording, can be used as evidence when disputes arise, and can ensure that agents and traders follow procedures. And, when used in combination with interaction analytics and call centre quality monitoring tools, call recording can provide insight into service levels, processes and customer attitudes. NICE's compliance call recording does all this and more.

Every day, thousands of organisations rely on NICE for call recording. This turnkey technology capably captures interaction content to satisfy your compliance needs and positively impacts business results.

Operational flexibility

NICE call recording easily adapts to unique operational requirements, enabling seamless transition during technology migrations, supporting virtually any telephony vendor, network environment and organisational structure, including multiple sites, branch offices and employees who work at home. Flexible recording rules let you meet specific needs within the organisation.

Low total cost of ownership

NICE minimises the cost of owning a call recording system. It enables centralised call recording, storage and reporting; can record calls over low-cost voice over IP (VOIP); features open architecture; and supports server and client virtualisation solutions.

Information security

Regulations require you to safely store recorded calls. NICE call recording features powerful security capabilities including end-to-end media encryption, strong authentication and server hardening. Thus, you can protect stored interactions throughout their lifetime, even when they're transferred, reviewed or archived.

Business insight

Call recordings can be leveraged to generate valuable business insight. By applying interaction analytics and quality management tools, organisations can use the contents of customer calls to help churn reduction, improve service-to-sales and provide targeted agent-coaching.

Small and mid-size organizations

NICE call recording isn't just for large enterprises. NICE Recording eXpress is an easy-to-deploy, all-in-one, low-cost call recording product for small and mid-size call centres or branch offices.

Call recording is a core component of the NICE Interaction Management. It enables companies to capture every interaction, securely store them and have them readily available for replay when needed.

With call recording from NICE, you can:

* Satisfy business and regulatory requirements by capturing all interactions - or as many as you need
* Reduce call recording costs with centralised capabilities, open architecture, VOIP call recording, virtualisation, and multi-site management
* Automatically and securely manage storage and call archiving to satisfy regulatory compliance and business requirements
* Increase customer satisfaction by meeting customer needs 24/7 thanks to mobile call recording and potentially increase the number of transactions your firm handles
* Apply interaction analytics capabilities to all recorded interaction types to effectively manage investigations and disputes, facilitate efficient e-discovery, derive meaningful insights across all communication channels, improve first contact resolution, churn reduction, quality management, and more.

NICE call recording features:

* Call recording over VOIP, time division multiplexer (TDM) or hybrid environments
* Flexible recording and call archiving enabling transparent access to recordings from any location
* Scalable, multi-tier architecture for growing call recording capacity needs
* Support for server and client virtualisation solutions
* Comprehensive redundancy to ensure business continuity
* End-to-end media encryption, strong authentication and server hardening for state-of-the-art data security
* Mobile call recording based on an open architecture that can interface directly with the trader's handset