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Posted: 09/2000
Web Rings Up Changes in Call
Centers
By Chris Garifo
Call centers are caught by the ripple effect of the web's impact on
telecommunications billing and sales. As more telecom service providers
seek the efficiencies gained from self-servicing advancements, such as
electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP) and online order
provisioning, the requirements for telco call centers are changing,
calling for new technology and staffing.
"It's already begun," says Esther Pigg, vice president of product
marketing for CheckFree Corp. (http://www.checkfree.com/), an
Atlanta-based provider of e-billing services that include call center
operations. "I definitely wouldn't call it a mature change, but it's
definitely well on its way to invading most if not all call centers
associated with electronic billing and payment."
New Behavior
As more and more customers take advantage of benefits that e-billing
affords them to manage their own accounts online, experts agree the call
center's role will change. How much and how soon are the crucial
questions, they say.
By presenting billing statements online, carriers create an opportunity
to offload routine inquiries by posting answers to frequently asked
questions (FAQs), automating responses to e-mail queries and enabling
customers to upgrade their service features through web-based
provisioning.
Dan Baker, research director of the Technology Research Institute (http://www.technology-research.com/),
agrees the volume of routine questions likely will drop, but he notes they
will never disappear.
"People are unfamiliar with the e-billing interface, and you're going
to get a lot of newbies who are going to call in and say, 'I can't get it
to work.'"
Pam Schaard, director of information services at BTI Telecom Corp. (http://www.btitele.com/), a
facilities-based ICP headquartered in Raleigh, N.C., estimates that less
than 10 percent of BTI customers take advantage of the EBPP portal it
deployed in May, even though 60 percent of its customers have the
capability.
"Customers are just now starting to adapt to the uses of technology,"
Schaard says.
Mike Burns, founder and CEO of Houston-based Tele-Systems Mar-keting
(www.telesystemsmarketing. com), a call center with customers including
Qwest Communications International Inc. (http://www.qwest.com/), South-western
Bell (http://www.swbell.com/) and
Network Plus (http://www.np1.com/),
agrees.
It could be five to eight years before customers become familiar enough
with EBPP and other technologies to see significant reductions in calls,
he says.
Even then, consumers will continue to call about their bills and expect
human contact. "It's tough dealing with a computer on that basis," Burns
says.
Daryl Blair, vice president of billing and OSS solutions developer
United Support Systems Inc. (http://www.ustwo.com/), adds, "There's
always going to be a need [for the customer service representative (CSR)]
because there's a lot of people that basically don't want to be educated.
They want somebody else to handle it for them; they want somebody else to
manage their account. If they have a problem, they just want to pick up a
phone and talk to somebody."
New Technology
EBPP gently is moving customer contacts made principally via
circuit-switched telephones toward a variety of web-based media, such as
e-mail, online chat and IP telephony.
While real-time Internet-based calling is slowly making its way into
carriers' customer service portfolios, e-mail already has an enormous
impact, experts say. A possible reason: E-mail eliminates some of the
aggravations of phone contact, such as being on hold or being passed from
CSR to CSR until the customer reaches someone with the appropriate
knowledge or authority to make an adjustment to an account.
"E-mail is just exploding," Burns says, adding that customers can
expect to receive an increasing number of automated replies. "We think
that 70 percent of these questions can be answered with an automated
response. [But] in the 30 percent that are not ... you've got to respond
to these e-mails quicker."
Burns adds that these e-mail messages need to be replied to in no more
than 24 hours, explaining that studies show that "almost 50 percent are
responded to in five days or over, or never responded to."
Baker agrees that e-mail will attain growing importance in customer
relationship management (CRM). The key will be synchronizing the e-mail
and telephone support so that the CSR is able to get the entire picture of
what has transpired between the customer and the call center, Baker says.
At BTI, for example, a customer calls and gets a CSR who can access the
customer's account and view any e-mail the customer may have transmitted.
That capability can be crucial when the customer is a business with
several employees who have e-mailed the carrier.
"That's the sort of thing that challenges technology," says Schaard.
"Those multiple e-mails that come in from the company and then bringing
those back to the main customer account level; having one place where all
the information about that customer is stored."
Staff Changes
The evolution toward the multimedia call center as well as increasing
complexity of telecom services sold requires a new breed of CSR. The
historical model of the typical call center CSR has been an employee who
is underskilled, undereducated, works part time and earns little more than
minimum wage. In today's world, those kinds of employees have gone the way
of the rotary phone. Today, CSR positions need to be filled by people who
are more computer and Internet savvy, have better communication skills and
are far more knowledgeable of a telecom provider's product line.
While on-the-job training has to improve, call centers also will have
to recruit employees who are more capable and better educated.
"What you'll actually need is a higher skill level of the people
helping out because you need people who are comfortable with e-mail and
comfortable with the web," says Debbie Newell, a product manager for
YourAccounts.Com (http://www.youraccounts.com/),
which develops EBPP software.
"[Call center CSRs] are not entry-level folks," Blair adds. CheckFree's
Pigg says regular surveys of her company's call center workers show an
increasing number have college degrees.
To attract and keep better-educated, more technologically proficient
staffs, call centers also will have to pay better, provide more and better
benefits, and offer better training. While that undoubtedly will result in
higher payroll costs, one benefit could be reduced staff turnover at call
centers, which historically have been plagued by that problem.
However, Bob Jurik, vice president of marketing for CosmoCom Inc. (http://www.cosmocom.com/), which
develops communications solutions for call centers, says carriers and
other telecommunications companies have had difficulty finding qualified
CSRs in any one specific geographic area. As a result, systems are being
developed and put into place that are "breaking down the brick walls" of
the traditional call center and moving to an "e-care contact center"
approach.
Jurik says CSRs are working out of their homes, using an
Internet-connected PC to connect to their company's network. Network
software will determine the needs of any one caller, then find the proper
CSR who has the knowledge or level of authority to adequately help that
customer.
"The call center of the future ... still will have buildings with
people in it, but a lot of [the CSRs] are not going to be working with the
brick and mortar walls of corporations," Jurik predicts. "Once the network
is in position, it's just a matter of getting hooked up, finding out what
[the CSRs'] skills are and when they want to be on- or offline. ... And
that change is inevitable."
Jurik says such a system offers telcos a deeper pool of potential
employees while drastically reducing the overhead associated with
traditional call centers.
In-house vs. Outsourcing
As the capabilities and responsibilities of call centers and their
staffs expand, one question that telcos will face is whether to outsource
their call center or keep the operation in-house.
According to a 1999 Technology Research Institute report, in-house call
center agents outnumber outsourced reps 10-to-1. That ratio "is expected
to hold for the future."
David Rutberg, senior vice president of product development at Teltrust
Inc. (http://www.teltrust.com/), a
Salt Lake City-based company that operates a number of call centers,
predicts that telcos will move increasingly toward outsourcing their call
center operations.
Teleservices Firms Serving the Telecom
Industry |
|
APAC Customer Services Inc. |
Deerfield, Ill. |
http://www.apacteleservices.com/ |
|
Business Response Inc. |
St. Louis, Mo. |
http://www.businessresponse.com/ |
|
Convergys Corp. |
Cincinnati |
http://www.convergys.com/ |
|
Echo Communications |
Santa Barbara, Calif. |
http://www.echocomm.com/ |
|
Etinuum |
Denver |
http://www.intekinfo.com/ |
|
FutureCall Telemarketing West Inc. |
Colorado Springs, Colo. |
http://www.futurecallinc.com/ |
|
ICT Group Inc. |
Langhorne, Pa |
http://www.ictgroup.com/ |
|
Interactive Teleservices |
Lincoln, Neb. |
http://www.intertel.org/ |
|
King Teleservices |
New York City |
http://www.king-teleservices.com/ |
|
LiveBridge Inc. |
Portland, Ore. |
http://www.telemark-inc.com/ |
|
RMH Teleservices Inc. |
Bryn Mawr, Pa. |
http://www.rmhteleservices.com/ |
|
Sprint TELECENTERS Inc. |
Maitland, Fla. |
http://www.sprint-telecenters.com/ |
|
Technion Communications Corp. |
Hollywood, Fla. |
http://www.technion.com/ |
|
Teleperformance USA |
Salt Lake City |
http://www.tpusa.net/ |
|
TeleQuest Teleservices |
Arlington, Texas |
http://www.telequest.com/ |
|
TeleSpectrum Worldwide Inc. |
King of Prussia, Pa. |
http://www.telespectrum.com/ |
|
TeleSystems Marketing Inc. |
Houston |
http://www.telesystemsmarketing.com/ |
|
TELUS Marketing Services |
Calgary, AB, Canada |
http://www.telus.com/ |
|
The Faneuil Group |
Boston |
http://www.faneuil.com/ |
|
Transcom USA Inc. |
Carmel, Ind. |
http://www.transcomusa.com/ |
|
West TeleServices Corp. |
Omaha |
http://www.west.com/ |
|
Source: Technology Research Institute (http://www.technology-research.com/) |
"We're seeing that already, first with your independent, smaller phone
companies," Rutberg says. "Even the largest will be using outsourced
services for directory assistance, operator services and customer
support."
Among the advantages to outsourcing is that it's more cost-effective,
easier to manage and has fewer upward or downward spikes in volume,
Rutberg says.
However, CheckFree's Pigg notes that telcos traditionally have
preferred keeping CRM operations in-house and will continue to do so with
e-billing.
"What we're hearing from all of the telcos that we've talked to is that
they want to keep it in-house because they now have an even greater
opportunity to solidify the relationship that they have with their
customers."
Those telcos that choose to outsource their call center services can
expect a change in the fee structure as a result of the shift from
phone-based to multimedia customer contacts.
"What we're doing is we're charging for every transaction, in addition
to a fee for that person being there," Burns says. "So, every e-mail has a
charge, every chat has a charge, every fax, every voice call has a charge.
They [the clients] have to pay for that service, so it is going to go up."
Pigg agrees that various service tiers likely will develop--for
instance "800" calls being the premium type of service, e-mail being less
expensive and web chat falling somewhere in between. She also says the
time spent resolving a customer call--by phone, e-mail or VoIP--will be
the principal cost factor.
"If it's a complex issue, you may be able to get a quicker resolution
with a phone call than you could with e-mail because e-mail may take a
number of back-and-forth ping-pongs before you can get a resolution and,
therefore, the elapsed time would be longer," Pigg explains. "I think it
will be a factor of both--the channel of communications as well as
complexity of calls and how long it takes to reach a resolution."
Adding a new wrinkle to the in-house vs. outsourcing debate are new
solutions and services that allow for a sort of "hybrid" call center that
provides in-house and outsourced.
Such a service, OneVoice Solutions' Certainty!, was launched in July by
OneVoice Solutions, an operating unit of Teltrust. By leveraging
Certainty!, carriers using an outsourced call center can seamlessly
escalate an inquiry from one of its CSRs to the carrier's own internal
support staff. Likewise, inhouse call center operations can be augmented
by outsourced agents during high-volume or low-staffing periods (such as
weekends).
Rutberg, one of the system's developers, says it offers flexibility
across several dimensions in that it can handle a cross-section of a
carrier's customer-service traffic (overflow, weekend, night, etc.) while
utilizing a variety of media, such as phone, Internet chat, e-mail and
VoIP.
Rutberg adds that the seamlessness by which the customer can be shifted
from one tier of service to another is critical because being shuttled
around an organization and being asked the same questions or providing the
same information repeatedly is so frustrating.
Chris Garifo is operations systems editor for PHONE+ magazine.
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