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March 2001
Meeting The Challenges Of Choice With IP
Telephony
BY COSMOCOM
INC.
The pursuits of efficiency, productivity
and cost reduction are driving businesses to an
increasingly self-service mode. Many advances in
technology enable self-service, and the Web revolution
is one of the most powerful and dramatic movements in
this direction. Businesses that succeed in the
self-service era will be those that recognize that
self-service alone is not enough. Sooner or later,
customers need to speak with someone. While customers
want multimedia options that define how they buy from or
interact with an organization, the only service option
customers want is excellence and consistency.
Choice adds challenge, however, since the Internet
multiplies the ways in which customers can communicate
with companies. It's tough for companies to pinpoint and
plan for the exact medium from which the customer will
choose to initiate contact. Multimedia customer service
can be integrated via a variety of technologies --
hardware, software, servers, traditional PBXs and ACDs,
and Web technologies such as chat and e-mail. This makes
accurate capacity planning for a multimedia contact
center challenging and necessitates a flexible
technology platform to accommodate this unpredictable
demand.
Online Support: Improving, But Not There
Yet
Over the next five years, the growing
acceptance of the Internet for doing business will lead
the majority of enterprises to Web-enable their contact
centers. This is a welcome trend, as online customer
care is still a glaring inefficiency in many businesses
-- whether they are pure-play Internet companies or
"click and mortars." Consider the following
statistics:
- Businesses lost $3.2 million in 1999 by failing to
Web-enable their customer service operations
(Datamonitor).
- Only eight percent of the 69,500 call centers in
the U.S. are currently Web-enabled (Datamonitor).
- Less than 1 percent of all e-commerce sites offer
live customer assistance (Datamonitor).
- Only 24 percent of e-commerce sites have instant
messaging and only 28 percent even acknowledge that an
e-mail inquiry was received (GartnerGroup).
Fortunately, the tide is expected to shift.
Datamonitor predicts by 2003, 40 percent of all call
centers in the U.S. will provide multimedia customer
service, with the online customer support market growing
from $150 million in 1998 to $2 billion by 2003. So if
Forrester Research's forecast that online sales will
escalate to $6.8 trillion by the year 2004 materializes,
this growth is well-warranted.
One of the most important catalysts for successfully
handling new requirements in the contact center is
Internet Protocol (IP). IP in the call center is
increasing, thanks to a host of benefits including
cost-efficiency, flexibility and the ease of a common
communications platform to handle both voice and
Internet calls. Deploying IP networks also makes it
possible for new providers to offer communications
services, which was previously the domain of incumbent
telephone companies.
IP can provide a robust, scalable and versatile
platform for multimedia customer service. Voice over IP
(VoIP) promises a simple mechanism for Web/call center
interaction, reduction in voice costs and tighter
integration of voice and data in the call center itself.
IP-based automated call distribution (ACD) is another
enabler experiencing rapid growth; Frost & Sullivan
expects IP-ACD to be a $388 million market by 2006. Some
of the benefits of IP-ACD include allowing customer
contact centers to conduct all customer service
activities (telephone calls, voice and video over the
Internet, keyboard chat, voice mail, e-mail and all
forms of collaboration) through all media (PC, regular
phone, TV and wireless devices) with only an IP or
Internet-based connection to the agents.
Personalized Service: Getting It Done
Smart
businesses seek to make every type of interaction --
whether it's over the phone, in a chat or even via
videoconference -- an opportunity to increase customer
satisfaction and loyalty and boost revenue. Adopting an
individualized, "have it your way" approach to each
customer's challenge is an important criterion for
success. At present, businesses wishing to offer their
customers real-time, personalized service over the Web
have four options.
Text chat. Perhaps the simplest to deploy; the
visitor and an agent type messages to one another in
real-time. Text chat is still popular, probably because
many home-based Web surfers have only one phone line and
no alternative method of communication with an agent
when they are online. As VoIP, which a visitor with only
one phone can use, becomes more dominant, text-based
support is expected to drop off. Still, text chat is
expected to remain popular in help desk settings, where
an agent can "push" relevant documents that aid in
problem solving to the customer.
Web callback. The agent calls the visitor on a
separate phone line. Ovum Research estimates callback is
likely to be the most popular communication method over
the next two years.
Voice over IP. Here, the customer is connected
to the agent using a voice connection from his or her
multimedia PC. Conditions for accepting VoIP -- at least
over some segments in the public Internet -- are close
to being met. IDC projects that IP will grow to 2.7
billion minutes by 2004.
Video. A VoIP connection is made with the
addition of a video image of the agent. Video contact is
still in its nascent state, used primarily in enterprise
Intranets for applications such as booths in bank
branches that provide links to financial services
experts. In these settings, two-way video contact can
serve as a valuable catalyst for enhancing customer
trust. Online, organizations are beginning to use
one-way video over IP to offer a "real person" presence
to customers. It can also allow a CSR to "show and tell"
for more frequent sales of higher values.
VoIP: Catalyst For Cost Savings And Talent
Retention In The Contact Center
Investments in
real estate and technology are often the two biggest
capital expenditures for a contact center. A recent
report by Datamonitor examined the reasons to distribute
CSRs to remote locations, and the contact center
solutions available today that support such an
alternative. The report stated, "the next logical step
in a remote CSR implementation would be to combine the
voice and data link to the headquarters infrastructure
via a single connection and the utilization of VoIP
packet-switching technology...a physical phone would not
even be needed at the remote site as both voice and data
would travel over the ISP or virtual private network IP
connection." With the inroads of IP, the need to
aggregate CSRs in one physical location becomes greatly
diminished, if not eliminated.
Customer support, whether in a business or consumer
environment, is a highly stressful occupation and
historically has a high rate of employee turnover. With
the cost of agents' labor typically hovering around 30
percent of call center expenses, giving CSRs the
flexibility to work from home may prove to be a valuable
tool for retention. In addition, these organizations can
also tap talent across the globe, increasing the pool of
available workers and creating a truly global customer
service outfit. Looking ahead, IP-based, networked
contact center environments will no longer be anomalies:
Ovum Research predicts that by 2005, nearly 35 percent
of call center seats will be network-based.
Here is an example. A franchise travel company
currently supports 1,400 travel agents across 350
different sites with a single toll-free number and Web
site. With IP-based automatic call distribution, the
company's CRM software unites consumers, travel agents
and employees, fusing online and offline business
processes via its Web site, customer care center and
network of traditional travel agencies located
throughout North America. Customer leads are routed to
the appropriate agent based on various criteria,
including the franchise's geographic territory, product
expertise, store hours and language skills.
Calls can come over on the PSTN, or over the Internet
via chat, VoIP, e-mail and collaboration channels.
Switching is accomplished via the managed IP backbone.
The agents do not need or use telephones. They interface
exclusively with their multimedia PCs, which are
equipped with headsets. All calls are answered or
originated from the agent PCs.
Supervisors, also located anywhere, can coach,
monitor calls and interrupt when necessary. They can
draw real-time reports and gain access to histograms,
analysis and an abundance of decision-support
information for effectively managing their globally
located CSRs.
Business benefits to the travel agency include more
qualified leads, accurate targeting, improved sales
close ratios and superior customer loyalty, resulting in
an estimated 20 percent increase in revenues annually.
Finally, one deployment serves all 1,400 agents. Agents
can work at home or be located in offices throughout the
world, which makes it easier to support a 24-hour
customer service environment.
Wait...What About Wireless?
Just when
businesses are starting to get comfortable with the idea
of Web-enabling the call center, along comes the
m-commerce revolution. With 700,000 new mobile users
added each day, wireless phones will soon surpass
wireline phones in usage worldwide. GartnerGroup
predicts 78 percent of mobile users will access online
data in 2001 -- whether through phones or PDAs and
pocket PCs outfitted with wireless modems. Extending its
projections, GartnerGroup says that the worldwide value
of consumer transactions initiated from a consumer's
personal mobile device could reach $1.8 trillion by
2005.
The wireless point of contact is emerging as a
critical piece in the overall communication cycle for
customer sales and support. As the acceptance of the
wireless Internet grows, businesses will need to employ
the same live help technologies to capture critical
customer information. Customers require the same
attention regardless of how and when they choose to
contact you. Customer service to mobile customers
(m-care) is more than enabling a Web site with wireless
applications protocol (WAP). Customers need
caller-specific, live assistance.
Presently, customer support communications options in
the wireless environment include self-service (through
menu-based prompts), live help (through callback,
inbound voice calls and e-mail call prompts) and e-mail
messaging.
As wireless Web usage goes mainstream, companies that
provide enhanced services via the wireless communication
channel will realize great competitive advantages and
better, more durable relationships with their customers.
Value-added services enabled through wireless PDA or
browser-based phones will be a key differentiator for
companies in maintaining customer loyalty and
influencing future purchases. It gives customers the
ability to interact in any way they want, taking full
advantage of the bandwidth opportunities that will come
with third-generation wireless markets.
People still buy from people and still need live
interaction with others. The real challenge for
enterprises today is to find efficient, productive and
cost-effective ways of providing multimedia live
customer care -- ways that integrate and harmoniously
blend self-service technology with the timeless value of
live personal interaction.
CosmoCom (http://www.cosmocom.com/),
headquartered in Melville, New York, provides IP-based
unified contact center solutions for both e-business and
traditional brick-and-mortar enterprises.
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