UC Bringing The Enterprise Closer To The Contact Center

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Posted by Michael Barbagallo, on September 16, 2009

Unified communications (UC) in the contact center has been said to be part of the process of drawing the contact center closer into the enterprise.  However, that process can be viewed in reverse, as the process of bringing the enterprise closer to the contact center.  This may seem like semantics but the picture is important when you consider the implication of greater and more open collaboration between contact center agents and subject matter experts. 

The most effective use of UC in the contact center is to deal with escalations.  When a contact center agent received an interaction that he or she cannot resolve, the interaction is passed or escalated to another person (a supervisor, lead agent, subject matter expert, etc.).  Without UC, escalations typically involve placing the caller on hold and searching for help or arranging a call back.  If the incident requires a call back from an expert, the contact center manager looses control of the interaction, which is something the manager does not want to give up.  Used properly, UC does away with placing the customer on hold and searching for assistance.  It also enables the contact center manager to retain a good measure of control of the interaction. 

In the pre-UC days, there was a large gap between the contact center and the subject matter experts within the enterprise.  Business unit managers used that gap to create a buffer between the contact center and business unit.  It enabled them to control the escalation process by scheduling responses and managing workloads.  With today’s UC capabilities the gap between the enterprise and the contact center is closing, drawing the business units closer to the contact center.  But as the gap closes, it raises significant issues in the relationship between the contact center and its needed experts in the enterprise.

The possibility of uncontrolled interruptions and incursions by agents across the gap is disquieting to business unit managers and to protect his or her employees, the manager may erect new barriers and buffers.  So, while UC is bringing increased collaboration between agents and experts, increasing customer satisfaction, it also can potentially decrease collaboration and customer satisfaction due to increased tensions between the contact center and business units.  UC is a disruptive technology and has the potential of fundamentally changing how companies do business.  But, as with other the introduction of other disruptive technologies (the assembly line and replaceable parts, the PC, UPC codes, etc.) businesses need to change more than just the technology, they change fundamentally. 

For UC to work in the contact center, the business units need to work more like contact centers.  The fundamental principle of contact center operations is the blind transfer from customer to agent.  In the vast majority of contact centers, customers cannot select a specific agent and are passed to the first available agent.  On the flip side, agent are not given (or strongly discouraged) the ability to cherry pick interactions.  The same principals should be applied to escalations.  Request for assistance should be blindly routed to experts using the same concepts as customer interactions.  The agents should not have the ability to select the experts and the experts should not have the ability to pick and choose which agents get help.  Replacing the “pick and choose” method of escalation used in many contact centers will help to prevent unwanted interruption and undesired incursion by the contact center agents and should ensure contact center agents are helped in a timely fashion.  Both results can only help the customer.  Finally, much like agents being rewarded for exceeding their assigned goals, experts need to be properly "incentivised" to make helping agents a priority.

To draw the enterprise close to the contact center in an efficient manner, the role of the workforce manager and quality assurance experts should be expanded to include, analyzing escalation volume, scheduling experts effective handle the expected volume, and monitor interaction between experts and agents.  Like in contact centers, escalation distribution should be relatively equitable and the workforce manager and QA professionals should look closely at who is escalating interactions and why.  Experts should be held to the same time standards as agents, meaning if they are schedule to be available at 9:00 then should be available at 9:00.

UC can be a very disruptive technology and it has the potential to greatly impact customer satisfaction, both positively and negatively.  As with many other disruptive technologies in the past, proper use includes more than just installing the technology and saying “have at it”.  Unified communications needs to be installed carefully, taking into consideration the needs of not only the employees but also the customers.

 


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2 Comments

  • avatar
    Rick Chin 9/30/2009 1:42:06 PM

    Tying the enterprise and contact center together has tremendous potential and I’m surprised more people haven’t pursued it earlier. The ability to view the goals and resources of the entire enterprise, including the contact center, and plan accordingly offers more value than many realize.
    At Interactive Intelligence, we’ve always offered this ability and seen great results for increased collaboration opportunities. When you give customers a valuable tool, they will discover ways to use it that you never imagined.
    It’s only now as people begin deploying Microsoft OCS that many are beginning to see what collaboration could do for them. Fortunately, we integrate with OCS to make those interactions simpler, but many people are struggling with connecting disparate software and hardware together to generate a smooth experience.
    Contact centers have always struggled with the problem of not having an adequate scripted or ready answer to satisfy an unexpected question. (How many times have you hung up the phone with an agent knowing they fumbled for an answer and calling back to speak to someone else?) Making it quick and easy for the contact center to reach out to their experts in their enterprise helps minimize those occurrences.
    In addition, most organizations incorrectly think of the contact center as “that group of people over there on the phones.” In reality, the entire organization has contact center needs. Maybe it is for accounts payable clerks or human resources generalists to share the load of incoming calls, email, faxes, resumes, or check requests. Maybe departmental experts need to alternate days when they help the rest of the organization. I’m sure you can think of countless other opportunities. And that’s the point. We have contact center needs in the enterprise and some specialists in the contact center. Bringing them together just makes sense. They have similar needs, just in different amounts.
    Rick Chin
    Solutions Marketing Manager
    Interactive Intelligence

  • avatar
    Art Rosenberg 9/23/2009 7:50:29 AM

    Michael,
    While I agree with your views on including "experts" in workflow management reporting for business processes, we have to include the "customer" in the process as well. Accordingly, UC will be disruptive for customers too, since they will be increasingly "escalating" self-service applications (online, IVR) from multi-modal devices (desktops, smartphones). That means it may be their choice to contextually "click-to-call," "click-to-chat," or, if if there is no real rush, "click-to-message" (text, voice) from their multi-modal endpoint devices.
    That means the new, UC-based "contact center" must move away from the metric of First Call Resolution to First Contact Resolution and apply it to both "customer" and "agent" escalation procedures. In many cases, the need for assistance and escalation requires further informational research or approval authorization, so ther is no point in keeping a caller connected to wait for such resolution. Furthermore, with consumers becoming increasingly accessible and available because of personal Mobile UC, keeping them on a voice connection or transferring them unnecessarily becomes questionable. With mobility and UC, we can always get back to them easily and quickly!
    Which brings us to the next point of what I call "Customer UC," pro-active process-to-person contacts using CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processes). With UC, we don't need to always have people deliver real-time information to people. Automated business process applications can now do that using Mobile UC tools for media flexibility and notification/delivery, coupled with "click-for-assistance" if necessary. That will take labor costs, as well as the "human latency," out of many business processes.
    Needless to say, Mobile UC won't happen overnight and won't always be available to customers, so the old call center "agent

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