If anybody missed the April Fools column on CRMXchange on April 1, its seems that someone conceived a scenario where zero privacy, ubiquitous Unified Communications (UC), and telepathy conspire to deliver paradise on Earth (in contact center terms) and upset the global apple cart. We may be some way off from that reality, but ubiquitous cell phones sometimes seem like telepathy, and UC seems to promise that we may never have to place a call wondering if we will successfully connect with the person we want to reach.
In the CRMXchange Great Debate in March of 2008 (Unified Communications in the Contact Center: Is it Taking Off?), the particular notion of non-agents talking to customer was raised repeatedly as a “bad” thing. Contact Center training and discipline were not reasonable expectations for typical knowledge workers or subject matter experts one listener implied. No amount of feedback could enable control of inherently uncontrollable resources it was argued. Siemens research suggests that 25% of a contact center’s most critical or urgent interactions require support from an expert resource, while others have suggested that anywhere from 3% to more than 10% of ALL contact center transactions are escalated. Since it is a reality today, the benefits of streamlining collaboration with those individuals should be readily apparent.
Contact Centers have become models of efficiency, with clear rules for routing transactions based requirements to virtual agents who may or may not be working at home. Feedback ensures that service levels are met, alerts allow management to take corrective on the fly, and CRM integration can ensure agents are fully engaged in the business process. What’s missing is leveraging this capability into enterprises that are increasingly focused on customer service as a differentiator and organizing all operations around customer needs.
Enter Unified Communications as a lever that extends the capabilities of the contact center into the Enterprise, regardless of resistance, in order to ensure first contact resolution (FCR) as frequently as possible. Unified Communications presence and collaboration techniques directly impact FCR by exposing the realtime presence of subject matter experts to agents. Collaboration tools connect these experts into the process with a single mouse click. This results in more satisfied customers and employees, and reduced time and effort for all parties to the interaction. Benefits include:
• Personal Productivity: Through Contact Handling, Productivity and Cost Control enabling FCR for a greater percentage of contacts reduces the number of calls to be handled can be reduced.
• Team/Mobile Effectiveness: Customer Satisfaction and Retention are improved by relying on the best possible resource regardless of location to ensure customer requirements are met.
• Process Aligned Communications: Customer Value and Revenue Optimization is achieved by implementing rules to engage resources that can recognize and seize opportunities.
• Process Embedded Communications: Process Embedded CRM Integration leads to a seamless experience encouraging use of tools and techniques that deliver business process simplification enabling issue resolution “now” versus later, increasingly valuable to customers operating in the a real-time world.
Unified Communications has the potential to realize the customer-engaged enterprise and help organizations move beyond the contact center island. Of course any extension of contact handling into the enterprise must be balanced with the need to preserve the workflow process efficiencies implemented outside of the contact center, but there is little doubt that users across the enterprise can help address customer issues and opportunities. Forward looking companies are investing now to move rapidly ahead of their competitors by leveraging all the knowledge within their enterprises and even beyond into partner organizations.
Let’s keep those agents for now and give them access to people and tools to drive FCR, increase their own satisfaction and make their companies wildly successful.