Web-based call centres are giving customers access to a diverse
range of services that are increasingly personalised. Mark Vernon
talks to the companies reaping the benefit
The Internet is making its presence felt in the call centre
space as much as any other. Indeed, it has given birth to a new
creature, the Web-based call centre.
The feature of Web technologies that is being exploited here is
the delivery of information about individual customers that is
personalised to a far greater degree than has been practically
possible before. Via a browser, call centres are suddenly able to
communicate regardless of the hurdles of disparate databases,
multiple data types, or geographical separation. The nut that
suppliers and early users are now trying to crack is the
exploitation of this capability, imaginatively and skillfully to
deliver a level of customer service that beats the competitor.
The most visible manifestation of Web-based deployment to date
is the "call back button" on a Web page.
Imagine you are the customer. Having keyed in a user name and
password, the supplier's Web site recognises you, and customises.
Your preferences based on past behaviour are in place, and all the
cross-selling and upselling opportunities from the CRM database are
in action. After a browse you are ready to purchase, but you have a
few questions that the searchable knowledge base has not covered to
your satisfaction. You need to talk to someone. On the Web page is
a "call me button". This links you straight to the call centre and
a human being.
Human contact
The contact centre software has checked who last talked to you
in the call centre and sends you a message asking would you like to
talk to the same person again. If that operator is busy you are
offered another option. The new operator not only knows who you
are, your purchasing history, and your credit scoring, but they
also have an audit trail posted on their screen showing exactly
what you have just spent the last half hour on their Web site
doing.
However, the influence of the Web-based call centre is not only
being felt by the end-user. Outsourced services are coming online
that exploit the technology in different ways. Sitel is one company
that offers outsourced customer service and sales solutions to help
companies get on top of their customer relationships. State
-of-the-art call centre technology is vital, and the firm has
invested in Avaya Call Centre Solutions across Europe.
"The Avaya system has a strong standardised back plane,"
explains Danny Mylle, IT director of Sitel. "This makes it possible
to build components and features into it that maybe were not yet
developed five years ago, but are available now." In other words,
clients are able to take advantage of new technology fast, such as
Voice-over-IP (VoIP).
Another interesting development made possible by recent advances
is the concept of price-per-switch per time unit. Mylle sees this
method of purchasing customer contact centre capacity as a new way
of doing business. "With this model, you buy the voice services,
e-mail services and fax services per port. One day you need 500
ports but the next day 700. You would just pay for what you use,"
he says.
Web-based call centres are only beginning to appear on the
market. "Web-enabled call centres have great potential but real
activity is thin on the ground," says David Bradshaw, a consultant
with research firm Ovum.
However, according to Frost & Sullivan's recent prognosis,
the number of Web-enabled call centres is set to leap from its
current level of 115 to 22,688 in 2006, with the increasing
significance attributed to customer care and service, as well as
the complexity of larger call centres' requirements, driving
growth.
Reduced costs
According to Frost & Sullivan, the implementation of the
software helps call centres reduce the costs of customer service,
the execution of sales campaigns, fielding enquiries and conducting
other expensive and time-consuming call centre-based interactions.
"Call back and text chat, presently the two most common methods of
communication between consumer and call centre agents, will
gradually be displaced by call through and eventually by video over
IP as the technology matures and a greater number of consumers own
multimedia PCs," says Ian Rowlands, Research Analyst at Frost &
Sullivan. He believes that the most important technology that will
affect the European market for Web-based call centres will be the
adoption of VoIP, followed by the anticipated explosion of video
over IP onto the scene.
The research indicates that the financial services sector
currently dominates sales, followed by the telecommunications
sector. However, by the end of 2006, both sectors are expected to
slip behind the retail market, forging ahead to claim the largest
share of the overall market. The main catalyst for growth behind
the retail market's giant leap is the growth in
consumer-to-business spending on the Internet.
But Bradshaw points out that there is more to a Web-based call
centre strategy than merely implementing new technology. He argues
that a strategy will dictate which customers and/or transactions
are given the highest level of personalisation, which receive lower
levels, and how the service levels offered can be differentiated on
the different channels. "Send low importance into low-cost
channels," he says. "Give high importance more
personalisation."
As they get use to new levels of service, customers are likely
to make demands too. They will want 24-hour service, lower prices
for goods, faster service, more control, anonymity and privacy, no
loss of face if credit authorisation is denied and lower charges,
among many others, Bradshaw says. Web-based call centres that fail
to deliver on these business process issues could cause unwary
companies to stumble on the customer service they had hoped to
enhance.
Barclays
Understanding the customer
Barclays' direct financial services division, b2, has taken more
than 1.5 million calls at its multimedia customer service centre in
Stratford, East London, since it was founded in 1998. Many
originate from the "call me" button on its Web site, www.b2.com,
which allows customers to talk with an agent about the options
available to them.
"The b2 brand is all about understanding the customer and
providing simple straightforward ways to invest, so it was crucial
that the call centre empowered our operators to demonstrate their
financial knowledge, enthusiasm for our product range and, of
course, our customers," says Neil Sandy, head of b2's customer
service centre.
A Web-based call centre was clearly the right solution, but the
task of building it was compounded by tight deadlines and the need
for a supplier who could also manage the project and integrate
legacy data and systems. The solution was built by Siemens
Communications' ProCenter team and is now used by 300 management
and administration staff as well as up to 100 call centre
operators.
"A recent b2 customer satisfaction survey found that 45% of
customers were positively influenced by the customer service centre
when it came to finding out about b2's ISAs and making a decision
that is the right one for them," says Sandy. He believes the
investment in a Web-based call centre was right.
3Com
Strong channel presence
3Com's strong channel presence enables customers to gain access
to its solutions through the supplier of their choice. But, in
order to support this route to market, the company has invested
heavily in a strategic support infrastructure, in the shape of a
Web-based call centre. The challenge was to access disparate
databases from existing call centres around the world. Furthermore,
crucial information pertaining to problem resolution was not being
shared, resulting in the same problems being reported and solved
time after time.
Primus was the solution provider chosen, with its ability to
capture, share and manage customer knowledge on a worldwide basis
and provide the workflow required for distribution to multiple call
centres. "Before 3Com Knowledgebase went live in Europe, our
non-technical call centre agents simply logged the calls and
dispatched them to our technical support group. It could take
considerable time to respond with a solution, resulting in 400-500
cases outstanding at any one time," says Primus manager Manoj
Seth.
"Today, the newly created helpdesk team that deals with all
network interface card problems in the call centre are able to
solve 70% of calls, simply by using the solution-centred
Knowledgebase, which now contains over 7,000 solutions. Not only
does this significantly improve customer response efficiency, but
our European technical support groups are now able to focus on more
complex problems rather than responding to repetitive problems,"
Seth adds.
MM Group
Multimedia contact point
MM Group is a coupon-handling and direct-mail-fulfilment
business. From a small operation in an office above a shoe shop in
1950, the company has grown to a full-service communications
company with more than 800 employees.
An essential part of the growth has been the utilisation of IT,
including, most recently, the Aspect Customer Relationship Portal,
which enables the company to handle telephone, e-mail, Internet and
fax communications through a single point of contact.
"We were handling 1.5 million e-mail messages a year and
thousands of faxes every day in addition to telephone calls," says
Stephanie Rouse, MM Group's operations director. "What we wanted
was a solution that could bring all this together and turn our
communications centre into a multimedia contact point where one
workstation could handle customer contacts from many different
channels."
Apart from achieving this goal, the solution has brought
additional business benefits. "Our clients pay us for every minute
we are on the telephone on their behalf," says Rouse. "If you lose
calls, you lose income." The portal, however, has increased
call-handling capacity by 20%, with an equivalent increase in
revenues.
"Our clients are happy with what we are doing," says Rouse. "Our
scores are going up month by month for everything we do and it is
all directly related to the point at which we brought in the Aspect
technologies."
Wine Corporation
Next day deliveries
Formed in 1998, the Northamptonshire-based Wine Corporation
offers next day deliveries and personalised wine brokering
services. But in order to offer the service customers expected, as
well as deal with bursts in business activity, the firm realised it
needed more flexible tools to help it relate to its customers. A
Web-based call centre built on Rockwell technology from contact
centre specialist Annodata has provided the answer.
The new contact centre will have 100 agents in place by the end
of 2000, handling over 6,000 calls a day. Skills-based routing
capabilities enable agent supervisors to route calls with greater
efficiency, minimise call waiting and ensure the most effective use
of available staff at all times. Other tools are also included to
measure and proactively plan customer service levels.
"We can now handle any type of response from any number of
campaigns simultaneously, routing to multi-skilled groups of agents
or routing calls selectively," says Stuart Fox, Wine Corporation's
contact centre manager. "We can also employ home workers to provide
cost-effective, short-term cover for peak periods such as Christmas
with no reduction in customer service levels or impact on company
image."