Call Center Outsourcing: Evaluating a Providers Customer Support Processes

With a number of companies turning to contact center outsourcing today to cut costs and increase customer satisfaction, there are important criteria decision makers should consider that can make or break success.

Because there are some many providers offering call center outsourcing services they claim are “the best” it can be difficult to narrow down the service that truly meet a company’s needs.

A recent Forrester (News - Alert) report by analyst Elizabeth Herrell, with Simon Yates and Lauren E. Nelson, “Twelve Criteria for Contact Center Outsourcers,” reveals 12 key requirements and considerations to help guide decision makers.

Aside from considering costs, the organizational structure of a provider and identifying the technology in use, it is also essential to examine the outsourcer’s customer support offerings and their internal processes.

A closer look at these elements will help decide if the provider can effectively manage its operations and deliver quality service for customers with every interaction.

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How the Selective Recording Method Helps Contact Centers Cut Costs

Connecticut-based Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI) is a call monitoring software development company established in 1972. Its flagship product, Virtual Observer (VO), is a call recording and quality assurance solution that empowers businesses to improve their contact center performance at a lower cost compared to competitive, name-brand systems.

TMCnet recently interviewed Rich Marcia, marketing director for Coordinated Systems, to review the different call recording methodologies used in contact centers. Specifically, we discussed the selective recording method, which enables businesses to implement a robust quality monitoring and call recording system at a lower cost.

Selective recording delivers a sampling of calls, as opposed to logging every call. Thus, as Marcia explained, it can often be implemented at a much lower price point than call logging. What follows are excerpts from the interview:

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Investment In IP Contact Centers

The time has come to do investment in Internet Protocol (IP) contact center solutions.IP technology has been around for more than 15 years and has been used for corporate network infrastructure for most of that time. But contact center vendors took their time delivering functionally rich and technically advanced IP-based contact center solutions that were competitive with their time division multiplexing (TDM)-based predecessors. The IP contact center is ready for prime time. Today many companies also want vendors to continue involves IP, though to support their legacy TDM-based environments.
The advantage of the IP contact center are as follows.

Save network management fees and carrier costs: IP technology eliminates the need to use a carrier or network management application to efficiently route calls between various contact center sites. This results in major cost savings; even though many companies pay carriers as little as two to three cents per minute, these expenses can add up over time.

Multiple automatic call distributors: IP technology enables enterprises to manage all of their contact centers from one central location. This means that expensive contact center technology management staff is no longer needed for all major locations.

Reduce management burden: IP technology eliminates the need for multiple copies of the same application. In an IP network, the primary site functions as the central "brain" and provides all application functionality. As a result, it is unnecessary to maintain separate copies of various management and supporting contact center applications, such as workforce management, recording, quality assurance, surveying, coaching, performance management, email response management, etc., at each site. This generally alleviates the management burden and also reduces software licensing and maintenance fees.

Cost effective: Provides contact center technology cost-effectively to branch offices, satellite offices, retail locations and remote or at-home agents. IP contact center environments allow agents to be set up anywhere there's an Internet connection. This allows enterprises to provide sophisticated contact center technology in locations where it was previously not practical. Additionally, it facilitates the roll-out of remote, or at-home agents, who are expected to play an increasingly important role in contact centers during the next five years.

Optimizes agent usage: IP technology enables enterprises to route transactions to agents more efficiently by eliminating the need for the network management applications and routing and queuing restrictions that have previously hampered multi-site operating environments.

Routes each transaction: In an IP environment, agents are managed directly from the primary site. Transactions can be routed to the most appropriate agent, regardless of where they are physically located in the network.

Centralization: Provides a single,unified view of contact center operations. Because all contact center transactions and activities are managed from a central site, there is only one set of reports for the entire operation.

Standardization of service quality: Since all agents and systems are tied into the same hub in an IP environment, enterprises can standardize the handling of all transactions. IP technology is exciting because it's agnostic about the types of transactions that it handles and can quickly and easily move all kinds of transactions anywhere within its network.

In terms of technology used in call center is second to none and has successfully launched India’s one and only end to end CISCO based IP network call center by the name Vcare call center based out of a small suburb in the national capital territory region, This center has all the modern facilities a center must have and is situated in a huge campus spanning more than 11000 sq. ft, employing over 400 people and is proudly expanding at an exponential growth rate of 15% quarter over quarter.

Posted by:
Marketing manager, Vcare Call Center Pvt Ltd.
Vcare Call Center India is a CISCO powered company, Its management team has over 30 years of combined call center experience. The company employs more than 400 people and is growing more than 15% quarter per quarter. The center is a 100% IP based network and uses CISCO technology platform.

OKI's IP Contact Center System Chosen for Large Call Center in China

Tangram Customer Interaction Center, a call center outsourcing service company in China, is the operator of s a 400-seat call center in Shanghai.

With competition and market projections for outsourcing in China increasing, more and more companies are looking to outsourced call centers to handle phone sales, conduct surveys or to expand their sales channels and succeed.

In response to the rapidly growing market, Tangram realized it needed to expand and built a new the HuaQiao International Service Business Park in Kunshan City. This new 5,000-seat capacity outsourcing call center will be one of the largest outsourcing call centers in China according to the company. Initially the center will operate 300 seats in April and continuously expand to reach the intended 5,000 seats once the call center park is completed in 2010.

To provide communications support for this new center, the company chose OKI Networks, a subsidiary of OKI (News - Alert) Electric Industry for their IP contact center system based on CTstage Chinese Version (CTstage).

The IP technology offering will help Tangram to improve efficiency at the operations by allowing agents to input customer data while also answering the phones right form their PCs. In addition they will be provided with enhanced reporting capabilities as well as management by customer features and other value-added services.

"We are pleased to offer our CTstage for one of the largest call centers in China. With a track record of having the No. 1 market share in Japan, the system offers easy customization and excellent expandability. We are confident it will help improve business efficiency for Tangram," said Masasuke Kishi, President of OKI Networks.

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Using the Contact Center To Provide Knowledge

The most reliable data in market research is gathered through telephone-based call centers because no other method eliminates the pitfalls of self-selection inherent in online, mail and Internet-based alternatives. The ability to aim for that specific potential respondent is vital in ensuring that survey opinions reflect all views.

Surveys are an indispensable tool for evaluating a host of strategic issues to maximize value and minimize risk. They can be used for brand positioning and segmentation, to enhance customer satisfaction and acquisition and even to increase retention of valuable employees -- the list is nearly endless.

Yet businesses significantly underutilize surveying, typically for two reasons: 1) implementing a survey is thought to be expensive and cumbersome, and 2) developing a survey and translating raw data tables into actionable recommendations that yield positive business outcomes can be daunting challenges. Finding solutions to these issues can enable businesses that use Contact Center resources to assess their brands, products, target markets and internal alignment and identify ways of generating growth from loyal customers, ex-customers who can be "won-back," prospects in new markets, and employees. Managing the Expense

As with many expenses, technology can be leveraged to mitigate the costs of implementing surveying and research -- especially the costs of training and guiding agents on surveying. Contact Centers are already familiar with the technologies and concepts required to develop and implement effective surveys and to do it cost effectively. Speech automated or even DTMF FVRs are the engine for presenting the questions and collecting the answers. Agent productivity and monitoring tools are used to monitor samples, responses, and progress of the survey. Reporting tools can take the raw data and translate it into actionable information and knowledge.
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Contact Centers and the Recession: Emerge as a Leader

How is the current economic news playing out in your contact center? We at Vanguard have been discussing this topic and getting feedback from our clients. My sense is a lot of organizations may just be freezing projects or budgets. Others are trying to juggle ways to reduce costs with increasing sales and maintaining service levels. This might be through operational and process assessments and changes or by looking at existing or new technology applications to increase sales and loyalty. If budgets are frozen, don’t just sit still! Here are some ideas that can help contact centers get through the difficult times and emerge as more nimble and competitive.

Customer Focused

Obviously it is critical to retain customers now, since replacing them is costly. Even if customers aren’t buying during this downturn, you want them to remain loyal. One way is by improving your customer’s experience with your company. Only by stepping into their shoes can you really understand what it’s like to be a customer. So think about mapping the customer experience across channels, think about doing some key “moment of truth” mystery shopping – buying a product, returning an item, questioning a bill, looking for support. This is a critical first step to understanding your customer’s experience with your company. How do you compare to you competitors? Where can you be more customer-focused? How can you effectively segment customers to provide the right service at the right time?

Operations and Process Focused

If you haven’t done any business process or continuous improvement studies to reduce costs and improve efficiency in a while, now is the time. You might look into tuning up the IVR to increase usage — for most call centers, even a 1% gain in use represents substantial dollar savings. Sometimes even partial automation applications can provide a cost savings.

How about contact handling and backend processes? If you are still using the same processes you did 8 or 9 years ago, there is room for improvement. These types of changes can help you manage with what you have during increased call volumes and no funds for additional staff. If, on the other hand your contact center volumes are dropping, how about being proactive? There may be opportunities for outbound notifications or opportunities to tap into your best customers to in-crease wallet share at this time. Have you considered looking beyond your call center to other functional areas of the organization that may be able to leverage your capabilities? You may have opportunities to provide some economies of scale to your peer departments.

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CTI: The Bridge to a More Cost Effective Contact Center

Computer telephony integration (CTI (News - Alert)) technology, which synchronizes and blends telephone and computer interactions, has been around since the 1970s. While CTI offers a business many different benefits, the major users of this technology are contact centers that utilize CTI to reduce costs, decrease call handling time and improve efficiencies. The most common application of CTI is a “screen pop” where the CTI technology provides agents with caller information on their computer monitor as soon as the agent picks up the call. Additionally, CTI has the ability to authenticate and verify callers, route calls to the most appropriate agent through intelligent call routing rules, and allow call centers to fully utilize technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR), automatic number identification (ANI), and voice and video conferences.

A CTI application offers businesses the ability to increase profits by not only lowering expenses, but also, and perhaps more importantly, through brand differentiation and increased customer loyalty. Implementing CTI has numerous benefits to the enterprise and the caller. It is able to dramatically improve customer satisfaction while simultaneously reducing call center costs. It also is able to improve security by eliminating a potential breach point.

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Call centre woes may cost businesses dearly

SOME consumers in the Asia-Pacific will be voting with their feet in the coming year because they are dissatisfied with the level of service of their contact centre, according to a survey commissioned by contact centre solutions vendor Avaya.

In this annual survey conducted by Sydney-based research firm callcentres.net, around 38 per cent of respondents from five Asia-Pacific countries said that they plan to switch business to a competitor in the next 12 months because of poor contact centre service levels.

And 10 per cent of respondents replied that they have already switched in the past year over the same issue.

In this survey, respondents were asked to nominate a company that they had contacted by phone recently and then answer questions based on that experience. The five Asia-Pacific countries covered were Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.

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Study: Indian Enterprises at Risk from Poor Call Center Service

The Asia Pacific region holds tremendous potential for the growth of the contact center industry. More and more companies are realizing the criticality of contact centers in providing best in class customer service.
New research has highlighted the importance of contact center service for retaining customers in the Asia Pacific.

An annual research report, generated by call centers.net and commissioned by communications systems provider Avaya, has found that that Asian businesses are at risk of losing more than a third of their customers due to sub-standard contact center service.

Ten per cent of consumers polled in five Asia Pacific countries have switched to a competitor over the past year, and, overall, 37.6 percent intend to do so in the next 12 months, because of poor contact center service.

A staggering 63.3 per cent of Indian respondents, and 46.8 percent of Singapore respondents, said they would likely move their business to another company in 2009. Consumers are, however, likely to remain with the same business and refer friends and family to that business if it meets their expected level of contact center service.

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Study Finds U.K. Agents Suffering in Contact Centers

It really should not be any surprise to learn that for some individuals working in the contact center industry, their chosen profession can be a detriment to their health. Whether they have a hard time handling the stress of the job or their environment is not designed around ergonomics, the reality is that the job can be tasking for some – even to the point of causing long term problems.

Research carried out by Coleman Parkes on behalf of NB Data, a U.K. telecoms distributor, has found that nearly half of all U.K. businesses – contact centers included – are risking the long-term health of their employees by using unsuitable equipment in the office.

Employees in the U.K. are suffering from ‘phone-neck’, which is a form of repetitive strain injury. Of those respondents who use either fixed-line headsets or a traditional handset in their day-to-day role, 42 percent had experienced neck pain during the past year.

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Multi-Tasking Ability Essential for Contact Center Agents

There is a common belief that women are multi-taskers, while men tend to focus on one task at a time. While this ability could be gender based, it is more likely to vary by the individual. In the contact center industry, the ability to multi-task is essential to agent performance and ultimately success. In fact, it can even help to reduce turnover and improve job performance.

Without the ability to multi-task, new hires to the position of contact center agent can quickly find their jobs to be overwhelming. It can cause struggles in training and performance, leading to frustration and possibly even agent churn. The contact center’s ability to measure whether or not a job candidate can effectively multi-task can help to drive efficiency, reduce turnover and improve hew hire job performance.

Multi-tasking in the contact center is the ability of the agent to process information quickly and manage several tasks simultaneously. Such ability is important in the contact center as agents work on a number of tasks at the same time and face a greater frequency of task switching. Complex CRM systems also require multi-tasking in order to effectively manage customer information during and after the interaction.

Multi-tasking is directly related to the contact center’s performance as it directly influences first call resolution, sales performance and call control metrics. It is considered a foundation competency as it influences the ability of the front line representative to incorporate other critical abilities and behaviors during a call.

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Tips on Choosing Contact-Center Systems for SMBs

The good news is that nearly every sexy technology that has been available to large companies in years past -- speech recognition, IP contact center solutions, call recording, analytics, customer self-help solutions and CRM -- is now available to smaller companies. In fact, SMBs went from a lack of choice to too many choices today.

It's no secret that catering to the needs of small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) is a growth area for providers of contact center solutions and services. Though these smaller companies' end goals are the same as those of large companies (multichannel integration, effective CRM, the most efficient call routing, first-call resolution, customer self-help), their unique needs are different, as are the ways in which it makes sense for them to purchase, implement and run these solutions.

One mistake smaller companies need to avoid is bogging themselves down -- confusing their employees in the process and lessening the likelihood the solutions will be used -- with features they don't need. Many smaller companies, unsure from the get-go what their actual requirements are, become distracted by "cool" features, only to realize later they've paid for extras that nobody wanted and no one actually uses, despite expensive and time-wasting training on these features.

IP telephony and software-as-a-service solutions have been the greatest two factors in equalizing the playing field between large enterprises and smaller companies. Before these factors, SMBs were completely shut out from technologies from which they could gain a lot of benefits but just didn't have the capital to lay out to purchase and maintain the solutions.

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