Spoken Communications

Top 5 Call Center Trend Predictions for 2012

2012 will bring shifts to the cloud, to SIP, to at-home agents and show the big data winners

This year has seen a lot of changes in the call center space. Within an industry that is notoriously slow to change and embrace new technology, 2012 is going to buck that trend and show some major shifts in the industry. My predictions for 2012:

1. Shift from premise-based systems to the cloud. In 2010, experts were predicting a shift to the cloud. And so it has come to pass and will continue to pass in 2011. Forrester is making optimistic forecasts for analytics, cloud computing and smart computing, based on their tracking of 40 Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) vendors. Now that solid reports are available showing operating costs savings averaging 40% over five years, the only holdouts are those who have sunk too much into capital expenditures on newer infrastructure. Even so, many are dipping a toe into the cloud with hosted virtual desktops and other SaaS options.
2. Heightened speed of transition from TDM to SIP. The SBC (Session Border Controller) market grew by 45% in 2010, increasing that market to $271 million. SIP trunking is the primary service provided by these SBC adopters and will continue to be through 2012. Let's face it; IP hardware is more reliable and flexible than old-fashioned TDM ware, and with more call centers requiring data streams to support multi-channel approaches to customer service, TDM is no longer an efficient solution.  SIP is rapidly becoming the standard, and it carries cost savings benefits as well.
3. Technology winners will be providers of big data visualization. Analysts have estimated that 80% of business data is unstructured. Leaders in the trend towards big data will be those that can provide an analyst-in-a-box, with simplified data visualization that reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and provides curated, actionable information streams for the average user. While the specialized eye of a trained analyst can't be boxed, key data points required to make a decision can be. The frontrunners in the call center space will be those that can break and restructure the system of data visualization so that it can be used on a daily basis.
4. Increased adoption of work-from-home model. In a 2010 survey of contact center decision makers, Forrester found that 35% of companies had plans for expanding their home agent program over the next year. And those who had already adopted the remote agent model reported expanded skills recruiting, decreased attrition, higher productivity and lower infrastructure costs. The case has clearly been made for the remote agent model, and 2012 will see an expansion of at-home agents. And why not? Organizations can even make the argument that their at-home workforce is greener and more environmentally friendly than a brick and mortar center.
5. Return of focus to customer service over technology. While each trend listed above is a technology solution, what we will see more of in 2012 is technology enabling a return to customer-centricity. As more organizations adopt cloud and SIP technology, send their workers home to be happier and more productive and use big data to drive decisions, the ultimate result will be counterintuitive: more time to focus on the original value of the call center, which is the opportunity to provide cutting edge customer service that keeps customers loyal.

Welcome, 2012. It's going to be a fun ride.

Teaching customer service to kids: Sitel's new book, Agent D, Can You Help Me?

It's never too early to teach kids to be polite, and it's never too early to show kids the hard and sometime creative work that call center agents do.

That was the premise of Sitel's new children's book, Agent D, Can You Help Me? It's designed to show kids that call center agents can be heroes to the customers who really need their assistance. If you've ever made a call center call in which the agent stayed calm and cheerful and maybe even changed your mood a bit, you might agree that hardworking agents can be a bit heroic.

Sitel called upon some of its agents in its Asheville, North Carolina location to "creatively illustrate life in a Sitel customer contact center in a way that a child could enjoy and understand." The book is geared toward readers ages 2-8 and focuses on how agents help others in their work.

The book was officially unveiled on August 17th at Sitel's employee appreciation award luncheon. Employees leafed through the book and read along with the adventures of Agent D as he tried to help customer Jean discover why her internet was down.

The book has a foreword by Tennessee Governer Bill Haslam, who added “‘Agent D, Can You Help Me?’ is not only a well-written and colorfully illustrated children’s book that parents and children will enjoy reading together, but also a user-friendly resource that will help parents who work in Sitel’s global call centers teach their children about the far reaching merits of their work as customer service agents.”
 
I'll admit that my first reaction to a children's book on call center agents wasn't entirely positive. Would it glamorize a world that is governed by metrics, high turnover and tiny cubicles? Can't we hope for our children to strive for more? But Agent D does bring an age-appropriate view of the heart of the call center to kids: it's an industry devoted to helping people. The successful call center agents are the ones that have that drive at their core, and the successful companies are the ones that richly reward devotion to customer service.

President and COO of Sitel, Bert Quintana, says, “I’m personally so proud of our talented Asheville team who developed a unique way for our employees across the globe to share with their children the great work they do on a daily basis.”

And well Quintana should be. Call center agents are the front line for customer loyalty, and their work often goes unappreciated. Giving kids a lesson in the power and value of customer service early on is a laudable accomplishment.

Five tips for scripting in the call center (besides "don't")

When to script and when to trust your agents

To script or not to script in the call center: it's a deceptively complicated question. Callers don't enjoy trying to connect with robo-agents who can't deviate from a script, but trainers can find scripting certain types of call segments to be beneficial for getting new agents up to speed and for training old agents in new protocols.

As with most questions, the solution lies somewhere in between. Scripts in and of themselves aren't necessarily detrimental to a friendly customer service experience, but used incorrectly, they certainly can be. A few months ago, I posed the question of scripting in my favorite LinkedIn call center group to see what the wisdom of the crowds would bring forth. Four months after posting the query, the discussion is still going strong, with a depth of commentary that does the industry experts in the group credit.

From the lively discussion, five key tips to strategizing scripting in the call center:

1. Use best practices, not scripts. David Jaffe, manager of a call center in Australia, commented, "We find that people need to distinguish between 'scripting' and definition of what we call 'best practice.' Best practices, when we create them, define the best way to handle each call type (and apply equally in face to face, email or admin) but give the agent some latitude in how the language and manner in which they do so." This aligns with the previous general conclusion, which was that a kind of call center "playbook," based on guidelines rather than specific scripts, is the most useful tool and allows for the most agent freedom while respecting their natural talents.
2. Consider appropriateness to the level of support provided. As Sam Smilie noted, "the higher the level of support, the less the usability of the scripts." If you absolutely must script, it may be more appropriate for a Tier 1 call than for a Tier 3 call, for example. As he points out, "As a customer is escalated further up the support track, they get increasingly more knowledgeable, hopefully, agents. The conversations also tend to get more specialized, and it becomes increasingly difficult to write efficient, and meaningful, scripts." If you must script, recognize it will be most useful at the Tier 1 level.
3. Use sparingly for new agent training. For call centers with high turnover rates, having predefined scripts can provide a training shortcut to get new agents up and running faster. Used sparingly and as limited training tools to give guidance for the first few weeks, scripts can set new agents at ease. However, the best agent training is that which empowers agents to express their personality and use their own native intelligence to solve customer issues.
4. Use technology instead. Richard Snow points out that several vendors have "smart desktop" technology that can advise agents on what to do next; Spoken Communications has "whisper" technology that can whisper in the ear of the agent and give guidance. In some cases, technology can supplant the need for scripting.
5. Hire good agents, and you won't need scripts. Nick Kossovan hit it out of the park with a no-nonsense conclusion: if you hire good agents and good managers and provide them with good training tools, you won't need a script; you'll only need to stay out of their way. His wry assertion: "If you feel your agents need to follow a script, chances are you have the wrong agents populating your call center." Can I get an "amen"? If you hire intelligent and trustworthy agents and train them properly, it is unlikely you would even consider a standardized script for most situations. Focus on hiring quality agents and train for interpersonal skills rather than rote learning, and the need for scripting will be very low.

The Next Wave in Customer Service Technology

This morning, Spoken's CEO Howard Lee spoke on the Next Wave in Customer Service Technology at the Support and Service Management Breakfast. If you missed it, below are his key insights into call center and customer service trends and how call centers should react to both.

The challenges faced in customer experience are different today from even just a year ago. Customer expectations are lower than ever, but the satisfaction threshold is higher than ever. And with interactions spreading out over multiple modalities, including voice, chat, email Twitter and Facebook, customer service teams are becoming more fragmented. Howard Lee presents a technical exploration of how to keep pace with the trends in call center technology.

The Next Wave in Customer Service Technology

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Howard Lee is a customer service industry expert with 25 years of experience focused on call center technology and profitability. Lee is the CEO of Spoken Communications a speech recognition technology company providing virtual call center solutions. Formerly the CEO of PhotoWorks, a NASDAQ traded company and Senior VP of Disney Direct, Lee has been responsible for profit and loss, call center technology operations and marketing of several large call center operations.

Call Center Week in Review 1-24-11

This week in the world of customer service and call centers, trending topics were remote workforce and problem consumers:

• Why at-home workforce? InContact tackles the common objections to work-from-home agents and makes the case for a lean, at-home workforce
• More arguments in favor of the work-from-home model. Greg Levin interviews Veterinary Pet Insurance about their move to the at-home agent model. Among the positive repercussions of the change: "Agent turnover in the contact center has gone from the 50%+ range annually to about 12% today in 2010."
• With the flashy headline Nuance takes on the human race, SpeechTek news reported on Nuance's new Vocalizer text to speech platform. A fun study, but it might have been more conclusive if they had used more common words, as opposed to the excessively hard to pronounce.
• Three call center mistakes that could kill your business Carmit DeAndrea writing in Customer Relationship Metrics shares some very important notes as to why first call resolution could mean your customers are deserting, not leaving satisfied.
• And Customer Management IQ poses a very interesting question: are we teaching kids to be problem consumers? Are our kids the disgruntled customers of the future?

Slideshare: The mobile game-changer: how mobile affects your call center

Bill Meisel of TMA Associates is the guest speaker revealing how the mobile phone speech interface has grown and changed the call center and IVR game as well as growth potential for change in the call center.

Bill Meisel, PhD, is publisher and editor of Speech Strategy News, co-organizer of the Mobile Voice Conference, Executive Director of the non-profit Applied Voice Input Output Society and a consultant on speech recognition technology markets.

The full screen capture will be posted shortly. In the meantime, enjoy the audio and slide deck:

 

Audio: The mobile game-changer

The Mobile Game-Changer: How Mobile Affects Your Call Center

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Call center scripting funny

And now, on a lighter note, a quick comic on call center scripting--working hard to turn humans into robots:

 
Originally posted at Call Center Comics.

Are offshoring and outsourcing over?

Wage inflation in China and India are making offshoring and outsourcing less economical--is this the end of offshoring?

 

Webinar: The mobile game-changer: how mobile affects your call center

Is your call center technology up to date with expectations of mobile customers?

Free webinar: Wednesday, December 8, 11:00 AM Pacific

Speaker: Bill Meisel, President, TMAA Associates

The importance of the smartphone in expanding the utility of mobile devices is matched by the adoption of speech recognition as part of the user interface in these devices. Two key aspects of this trend are:

(1) consumers are seeing speech as a “friendly” interface in a context where they don’t expect to speak with a person (as they do in customer service); and

(2) the style typical of smartphone speech interactions is quite different than that typical of automated customer service. Call centers can take advantage of these trends to automate more services, but in a way compatible with the expectations created by mobile devices.

Attendees will learn:

• How mobile phone speech interface has grown and changed the game
• How familiarity with the mobile phone interface changes customer expectations of speech interactions in call centers
• Three things call centers must change to meet these expectations
• Growth potential for changing with the mobile game

Join Spoken Communications and Bill Meisel of TMAA Associates for this informative webinar as Bill Meisel addresses the game-changing trends in mobile and how the call center must adapt.

Bill Meisel is publisher and editor of Speech Strategy News, co-organizer of the Mobile Voice Conference, Executive Director of the non-profit Applied Voice Input Output Society and a consultant on speech recognition technology markets.

The softer side of IVR: a warmer voice cuts costs

Moving from "cold" to "homey" IVR voice improved customer satisfaction 7%

What's in a voice? Quite a bit, according to a recent article on the Wall Street Journal. While many customers rail against IVRs, time and again, studies show is that in the end what customers want is for their issues to be solved quickly, efficiently and competently. And if the IVR voice is annoying, callers will opt out and wait even longer in the call queue, increasing frustration and descreasing satisfaction.

So what is the key to IVR efficiency? At least part of it is the nature of the IVR voice, as Aflac recently discovered. With respect to the voice on Aflac's IVR, Virgil Miller, Aflac VP of Client Services, reported, "Company officials think that led some callers to opt to go straight to a customer service rep. Our brand is warm and conversational, but the voice was cold and inconsistent."

Aflac worked with GM Voices, Inc. to audition dozens of voice actors before settling on one with a warm Midwestern accent. The goal was to provide a voice that conveyed calm and reassurance, two things callers to an insurance line would want.

The results speak for themselves:

Aflac is expecting to take 11.5 million calls this year, up from 11 million last year, but this year it has 3% fewer customer-service reps. Mr. Miller says the company believes that's partly because the better voice means fewer customers are opting to speak with a live agent.

In addition to the cost savings, callers reported increased satisfaction with their experiences as well:

The company surveyed about 200 callers in April, before the change, and in August. It found that overall customer satisfaction had risen about 7% with the new voice. In total, the project cost more than $8,000, said Mr. Miller.

It comes down to this, again and again: forget the not-so-wise common wisdom that callers hate IVRs. It's just not true. Some callers hate some IVRs. And we all hate badly designed IVRs that don't keep the customer experience at top of mind. Reaching a real human being isn't the pot of gold if the human being isn't well trained or doesn't have the caller information that the IVR might have easily collected. Couple that with recent Forrester studies that have shown that callers actually prefer IVR interactions for routine tasks, and there is no getting around it: if callers are complaining about your IVR, the culprit is your IVR's design, not IVRs in general.

Keep up to date with IVR best practices and design an interaction with the customer experience in mind, and your callers will report a positive experience. As TMCNet's Tracey Schelmetic concluded, "The truth of the matter is, studies have shown that most people don't mind dealing with an IVR, as long as it's well designed and ultimately helps them answer their question, complete their task or solve their problem, which many nowadays do."

IVR interactions cost from five to seven cents, versus three to nine dollars for a human interaction. However, as Aflac has shown, it's possible to provide the best of both worlds: IVR for efficiency and human agents when necessary.