Customer Engagement Capability Guide · 2017-11-22 · Customer Engagement Capability Guide . Start Building Better Customer Relationships Now . A Customer Engagement Center is a

Customer Engagement Capability Guide

Start Building Better Customer Relationships Now

A Customer Engagement Center is a complete set of Applications designed to integrate into the larger customer-driven enterprise, in order to productively engage, enable, and empower consumers and employees, resulting in more loyal and profitable customer relationships.

This guide will walk you through the full range of capabilities available today to determine what functionality you believe would be valuable to your organization and help Aspect guide you to the right solutions.

Use the contents page to quickly review the sections that might be of interest and then mark those sections with your detailed responses. The choices are consistent:

☐ Essential

☐ Nice to Have

☐ Would have no value Once you have made your choices use this Link to enter your responses online. https://www.aspect.com/solutions/customer-engagement-center/customer-engagement-capabilities-checklist

https://www.aspect.com/solutions/customer-engagement-center/customer-engagement-capabilities-checklist

2017 Aspect Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited. November 2017 2

Table of Contents

Voice ................................................................................................................................................... 3

Voice Inbound Contact Handling ...................................................................................................................... 3

Outbound Proactive Contact ............................................................................................................................. 4

Omni-channel Contact Management ................................................................................................ 5

Web Interactions ............................................................................................................................................... 5

Text Messaging, SMS and OTT Text Service Management ............................................................................ 6

Email Management ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Self Service Automation.................................................................................................................... 9

Modern Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Advanced features ....................................................................... 9

Modern Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Common Add-on capabilities ..................................................... 10

Interactive Text Response (ITR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) ............................................. 10

Workforce Optimization .................................................................................................................. 13

Workforce Management ................................................................................................................................. 13

Recording, Quality Management .................................................................................................................... 14

Speech Analytics ............................................................................................................................................ 16

Text Analytics .................................................................................................................................................. 16

Performance Management & Coaching ......................................................................................................... 17

CRM & Agent Desktop Environment .............................................................................................. 18

Key Capabilities and Benefits of CRM Integration .......................................................................................... 18

Reporting and Analytics.................................................................................................................. 18

Historical Reporting......................................................................................................................................... 19

Real-time Reporting ........................................................................................................................................ 19


Voice

Voice Inbound Contact Handling While the percentage of voice calls in relation to total contacts has fallen over the past several years, the total volume has been consistent. Other channels have augmented voice as a channel choice for customer service – but it doesn’t change the fact that voice contacts remain the pillar of a customer service strategy and will continue to represent the primary interface for most customer service contacts.

Traditionally the “Automated Call Distributer” (ACD) has been the technology used for handling voice contacts. Convergence of technology now means that the ACD is not a dedicated platform – it is now an application on a converged solution. ACD software distributes incoming phone calls to a specific group of agents based upon customer need, type and/or agent skill set. ACD software is at the core of operational efficiency for contact center call management and is an essential part of the customer experience through the use of announcements, prompting, routing and business information.

Some important components for voice routing include:

Automated Attendant Ability to answer voice calls, play announcements, prompt customers for information, dynamically provide information to customers and identify reason for call. The Auto Attendant may use touch- tone or speech recognition for customer responses when prompted.

☐ Essential ☐ Nice to Have ☐ Would have no value

Queue Optimization / Scheduled Callback Provide option to callers to have system wait in queue for caller and call them back at later time.


Call Routing Group callers into call types and route based upon the information captured or retrieved. Assign calls based on agent skills or proficiency.


Conditional Routing Ability to assign and change routing based upon real-time and changing conditions within a contact center – including service level, estimated wait time, time in queue and other variables. Example: If estimated wait time for one skillset (Gold Customer) is greater than 30 seconds, then queue for multiple skillsets (Gold and Silver customers).


Contact Profiling Leverage database information to change routing parameters. Example: if this customer is a repeat caller, automatically route to the owner of the existing case or previous order taker.


Automated Whisper Announcement Whisper call type or customer information to agent with delivery of call so the agent is aware of the caller details.



Automated Agent Greeting Automatically play an agent greeting to customer upon delivery of call.


Post-call Survey Present option for customer to take survey upon completion of phone call.


Outbound Proactive Contact

Outbound calling campaigns can be run in multiple ways. These are typically as follows:

Predictive Campaigns: Use statistical algorithms to predict when an agent will become available to receive the next call, and the system dials based on these assumptions. Some things the algorithm evaluates are number of agents logged into the service, agent idle time and customer abort rate.

Precision Campaigns: Minimizes the number of calls waiting for an agent by adjusting the actual number of calls dialed to the availability of agents at a given time during the dialing sequence. If no agents are available, or there are customers already waiting for an agent, the current dial is aborted before it reaches the customer. If no calls are waiting for an agent, the dial goes through.

Progressive Campaigns: Simply dial a pre-set number of lines when an agent finishes the previous call. The agent listens for the caller to pick up.

Preview Campaigns: Provide the agent with a populated screen with the customer data to familiarize themselves with the account prior to placing the outbound call. "Timed Preview" allows a set time to preview the record. Once the preview time length is exceeded, the system will dial the number.

Blaster Campaigns: Allows for sending emails out to a large mailing list all at once and especially for notifications such as payment reminders.

Support Multiple Outbound Strategies Dialing and pacing options including: Preview, Precision, Predictive, Automatic, and Blaster. (See above for definitions of methods)


Number Management Do Not Call (DNC) lists, time zones, number portability, dial attempts and state and local calling rules.


Consent Tracking Track and manage mobile numbers and opt in consent.


Compliance Comply with increasingly complex regulatory requirements like TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act), OFCOM (Office of Communication) and other governmental regulatory bodies.



Best Time to Contact Leverage best-time-to-contact capabilities and track contact histories to help design and inform optimal outbound engagement strategies.


Proactive Outreach Provide personalized, proactive outreach via voice, email and SMS to engage customers, like confirming appointments or making a monthly payment.


Omni-channel Contact Management With the increased focus on customer experience, the contact center industry has evolved from multichannel capabilities to omni-channel capabilities. The difference being continuity of experience regardless of channel and the empowerment of the agent with awareness of the complete customer experience up to and including any self-service experience. In an omni-channel environment, as contacts move from channel to channel (or self-service to live service) any accumulated session information is leveraged to ease the continuation of the transaction in the new channel. Additionally, if any interruption occurs in the transaction, the customer can continue the transaction in the same or any other channel without having to “Start over”.

Web Interactions Web sites are a common interface for customers to many companies. They are used for sales, informational and customer support. Due to the vital role web sites play in customer relationships, web extension to live service has become a common requirement due to customer convenience and expectations.

Live service via the web can include:

Web Callback Ability to have a web customer select an option for an agent callback to a telephone number.


Web Chat Ability to initiate a text communication with a live agent via the web site.


Knowledgebase Integration Present agent with common responses to customer chats for “auto-suggest” the response. Auto-response is a less common action.


Spellcheck Automatically check the agent text response prior to sending to the customer.



Monitoring Allow supervisors to monitor the Chat.


Greetings & Standard Messages Contact center managers can configure greetings that will be automatically presented when the customer is routed to an agent or messages sent to the customer on completion of the chat


Attention Retainers Contact center managers can configure attention retainers in the form of text messages or a series of Web pages that can be presented to the customer while they wait to be serviced by the next available agent.


Chat Recording Contact center managers have the ability to record chat sessions, which can be enabled for a single chat session or by a pre-defined interval.


Chat Transfer Agents can transfer a chat to other agents and supervisors to better service the customer.


Survey Present option for customer to take survey upon completion of chat session.


Text Messaging, SMS and OTT Text Service Management Text messaging is the fastest growing media channel and is rapidly extending through the use of Over the Top (OTT) messaging services. Text messaging can be handled through a similar process as web chats – often consolidated with the same process and capabilities as web chats. Therefore, the functionality around handling of text chats is common with the process for web chats (above). Examples of messaging services are Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Messenger, WeChat.

A key component of handling text messaging is the ability to handle the individual services. Short message service (SMS) can require an SMS gateway and often has different requirements for each carrier network and country. Additionally, the individual OTT services require Application Program Interface (API) integration and support.

Text/SMS Prioritization Chat Prioritization enables contact center managers to establish the customer value to the contact center and therefore determine the priority that chat requests should be handled.


Greetings Contact center managers can configure greetings that will be automatically presented when the customer is routed to an agent.



Salutations Similar to greetings, salutations are text messages sent to the customer upon completion of the chat interaction.


Attention Retainers Contact center managers can configure attention retainers in the form of text messages that can be presented to the customer while they wait to be serviced by the next available agent.


Text/SMS Rerouting In the event that the text service is inactive or the customer is attempting to text with the contact center on a holiday, this provides the ability to reroute the request to a service that is active or send a holiday message.


Text/SMS Recording Contact center managers have the ability to record text sessions, which can be enabled for a single texting session or by a pre-defined interval.


Text/SMS Transfer Agents can transfer a text thread to other agents and supervisors to better service the customer.


Survey Present option for customer to take survey upon completion of text interaction.


Email Management Email Management an application that automatically handles e-mail messages and attachments according to user- defined rules through self-service and agent interaction. Email Management allows your agents to address customer email inquiries with a personalized response. The technology provides responses that can be sent directly to the customer via auto-response or delivered as suggested responses to agents for review prior to sending. Your agents can expedite the email creation process and proactively target customers by using additional features, including:

• Auto acknowledgement

• Greetings

• Signatures

• Email templates and attachment capabilities

• Distribution lists and email campaigns

Email Management often offers the following features:

Automated Email Distribution Processing of inbound emails by automatic queuing, prioritizing and routing to agents. Distribution is typically governed by business rules similar to voice, such as agent skills or customer profiles.



Email Blending Allows agent to handle more than one type of media, such as Email and web. The system will deliver the appropriate contacts to the agents across channels based upon business rules.


Multi-Session Allows for an agent to work on several live customer email interactions simultaneously. For example, a single agent may be handling five customer sessions at once – taking advantage of the time between each response from the customer.


Natural Language Processing Natural Language Processing is a complex algorithm used to read and analyze the subject and body of an email and identify matching responses from the Knowledge Base. It improves the efficiency of agents by matching standard questions to scripted responses.


Auto Response Based on the Confidence Level obtained from the Natural Language Processing analysis of the incoming email, the system can send an auto response back to the email originator.


Assisted Response Emails that have a confidence level lower than a set threshold to be delivered as suggested responses to the agent.


Attachments Attaching documents to all outgoing emails, and the ability to receive attachments.


Email Greetings, Signatures, Closing Pre-defining custom headers, footers and signatures for each agent, service or group.


Email Review Allowing for supervisor review of email replies prior to transmission.


Outbound Email Campaigns Emails can be added to a distribution list for an outbound email campaign. This provides a low cost and efficient method of communicating with customers and or prospects.


Auto-Acknowledgement An automatic email acknowledgement can be sent to the originator informing them that the email has been received and will be responded to within a set timeframe. Customers have confirmation that their email was received.



Holiday Acknowledgement An acknowledgement message can be sent to the email originator indicating that the center is currently closed due to a holiday and that the email will be handled once the center reopens.


Survey Present option for customer to take survey via email.


Self-Service Automation Customer preferences and expectations have changed dramatically and self-service is now a way of life – often preferred to live service for initial inquiries. Superior and effective self-service interactions can be the key differentiator in customer experience. At the same time, self-service can add substantially to the contact center operation:

• Customer Service: Enhance reach to customers while maximizing contact center efficiency and improving customer satisfaction.

• Collections: Increase collections while minimizing cost per collected dollar through better list penetration and optimized process.

• Sales: Increase proactive communications to customers while enhancing loyalty and reducing churn.

When delivering self-service applications, voice is just one option. Other channels include text channels and web. They all take full advantage of your information resources by integrating with your enterprise data sources – all while enabling customer’s preferred channel. Contacts can use self-service to retrieve a wide cross-section of information, including personal items such as account balances or the status of open issues.

Modern Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Advanced features IVR systems remain an efficient tool for routine inbound inquiries, as well as common outbound notifications like appointment reminders. You can also use an IVR system to collect customer responses and facilitate two-way dialogues. IVR solutions can be used to create highly customized applications around specific business cases. The result of automating these everyday customer interactions is quick and easy customer access to the right information at the right time. Some common IVR functions include:

Context Continuity Context is preserved across channels (e.g., from website to IVR or from IVR to agent) so customers do not have to repeat information


Caller Intent Prediction IVR ability to predict intent of caller based on recent transactions (e.g., orders, tickets opened, reservations, outages in caller’s area) and to provide the answer right away before presenting full menu options

☐ Essential

☐ Nice to Have ☐ Would have no value

Personalized Interactions Personalized interactions: Ability to modify the IVR flow based on customer segment (e.g., new user vs experienced caller or loyalty status – silver, gold, platinum, etc.)



Visual IVR Allows extension of voice IVR to web-based devices – especially useful with mobile devices. The application can simultaneously render on a web page, allowing contacts to touch their way through the IVR, enter information or choose options. Visual IVRs are useful for long or deep IVR menus and when the consumer is in noisy environments or in meetings)


Text2IVR Ability to allow caller to send information to the IVR and receive information from the IVR through an SMS to complete tasks needing complex alphanumeric inputs or outputs (e.g., full name, alphanumeric order or ticket codes etc.), The caller does not disconnect from the IVR and the IVR flow continues based on the input received


Modern Interactive Voice Response (IVR): Common Add-on capabilities IVR systems remain an efficient tool for routine inbound inquiries, as well as common outbound notifications like appointment reminders. You can also use an IVR system to collect customer responses and facilitate two-way dialogues. IVR solutions can be used to create highly customized applications around specific business cases. The result of automating these everyday customer interactions is quick and easy customer access to the right information at the right time. Some common IVR functions include:

Touch Tone Allow for input of information to the IVR by pushing the numbers on a touch-tone telephone.


Advanced Speech Recognition Speech technologies eliminate constraints dictated by standard touch-tone IVR applications and deliver a better experience, while increasing customer adoption of voice self-service. ASR solutions are available in most languages along with voice biometrics voice authentication. • Basic: Speech inputs are restricted to zero through nine and yes or no. • Directed Dialogue: Menu structure instructs the contact to respond with

specific responses. This is typically restricted by a vocabulary size. • Open Dialogue: Contact is able to respond in an unstructured way and is

not restricted in vocabulary.


Text to Speech (TTS) Speech synthesis that can read back text into spoken voice. IVR applications can typically read back numbers and letters as part of the base application but need TTS software to read back unstructured information.


Visual IVR Allows extension of voice IVR to web-based devices – especially useful with mobile devices. The application can simultaneously render on a web page, allowing contacts to touch their way through the IVR, enter information or choose options.


Interactive Text Response (ITR) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Text messaging and text-based services are perfect for delivering notifications like order confirmations and appointment reminders to mobile phones. For many customers, the convenient nature of interactions on text


channels better fits their busy, multi-tasking lifestyle than a long phone call to an IVR or agent. Interactive text response (ITR) enables text channels like SMS and Twitter to be transformed from one-way notification to two-way conversation, empowering customers to do much more.

Enhance text self-service channels with Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to deliver automated self-service interactions with interactive, intuitive dialogues that are conversational and convenient. NLU transforms text-based self-service into natural, two-way, powerful interactions. While simple automated interactions may be linear, NLU complements ITR omni-channel self-service and improves the understanding of customer intent and ability to answer open-ended questions, improving success rates for more sophisticated tasks. NLU let’s your customer open an account, book a hotel room, order items, change appointments, and more – all using their own words, rather than rigid syntax.

Uses for ITR and NLU customer service dialogues include:

Answering FAQs without Involving Agents: Most companies have FAQs on their website but a large number of calls and chats handled by agents are still about FAQs. Chatbots on webchat as well as messaging channels like SMS or Facebook Messenger can answer FAQs without incurring agent time. For example, if a customer initiates a chat on a retailer’s website with a question about “What’s your return policy?”, a chatbot can respond within the chat channel with the returns policy as well as a link that explains the policy in detail. By doing this the customer is also made aware of the FAQ section on the site potentially deflecting future questions that are already answered there


Completing Transactions Once a phone number, Twitter ID or Facebook Messenger identifier has been linked to a customer within your CRM, ITR transaction dialogues can be enabled, ranging from simple to complex. Typically the 2-3 of the Top 5 reasons consumers call customer service for can be easily handled by chatbots/ITR increasing self-service containment rates and reducing AHTs for some interactions that are still handled by agents. For example: • Retail: “Where’s my order” OR “I want to cancel my order” • Financial services: “I want to pay my bill” or “What’s my balance?” • Healthcare: “I want to make an appointment” OR “Refill my prescription” • Hospitality/Travel: “I want to make a reservation” • Utilities: “I want to pay my bill” OR “ • Automotive: “Where’s the jack?” • Cable: “I want to add a premium channel” or • Telecom: “Pay my bill” OR “Am I eligible for an upgrade?” For example, for a car rental application: simply text or Tweet a location, dates and class of car in natural language, and the system will send back availability on that same channel. Once the customer confirms, the reservation is booked. Similar dialogues might be used to order from a pizza or sub shop, renew a prescription, or transfer funds between two accounts.


Changing Appointments SMS appointment reminders are useful, but what if a patient or customer needs to make a last-minute change? ITR can support cancellations, requests for an agent to call and reschedule, or fully text-based rescheduling without needing an agent. Appointment rescheduling often requires up to 5 call attempts and AHTs of more than 5 minutes. Similarly, between 10-20% of appointments are no-



shows because of customers find calling customer service cumbersome and each no-show costs $150 on average.

Payment Reminders and Collections ITR/chatbots on Messaging channels provide a non-intrusive, high awareness channel to send payment reminders and collections notices to consumers and an easy way for consumers to respond on whether they want to talk an agent OR receive a secure https link that takes them to the secure payment website to complete the payment. The non-intrusive nature and pervasive adoption of the messaging means consumers are more likely to sign up for proactive payment reminders.


Satisfaction Surveys The flexible nature of text-based channels makes it easier for busy customers to respond to survey questions at their own pace, and easily supports personalization of subsequent questions, as well as scheduling any needed follow-up.


Capabilities of an Interactive Text Response or Chatbot Solution:

Two-way conversational text Ability to receive questions like “Where’s my order?” from consumers on text-based channels like SMS or Facebook Messenger and provide automated answers to them on the same channel (e.g., “You order is on its way and expected to arrive on Jan 5th. Here’s the tracking link…”). This is different from the more common ability to send one-way text notifications to consumers while telling them not to respond to the SMS.

☐ Essential


Natural Language Understanding Ability of the chatbot to understand incoming messages from consumers, extract intent from their message and select and send the appropriate response without requiring to use specific command words (e.g., Allowing consumers to say “What’s my balance” or “Account balance” instead of forcing them to text #BAL for getting account balance)

☐ Essential


Disposable Mobile Web Apps Ability to design and include mobile web app-like interactions in chatbots for delivering answers to questions that need rich media capabilities. E.g., If a customer texts “Where’s the store nearest to me?”, the chatbot would respond with a link to a google map with the stores closest to the customer’s current location. This capability means that companies can deliver instant app-like interactions to even those consumers who haven’t downloaded their mobile apps using a single platform that also allows them to design chatbots.

☐ Essential


Personalized Interactions The flexible nature of text-based channels makes it easier for busy customers to ask any question at their own pace, and easily supports personalization of subsequent answers based on known information and history, as well as scheduling any needed follow-up.



Omni-channel deployment: Build Once Deploy Anywhere Omni-channel deployment: Build Once Deploy Anywhere. Ability to deploy chatbots onto new channels without redoing all the coding. So a chatbot deployed on the SMS channel can then be deployed on additional channels like Facebook Messenger, Twitter Direct Message, or web chat within days versus weeks and months. Similarly, the code for an IVR interaction can be modified to deploy as a chatbot on a text channel relatively easily. Useful when a company wants to interact with consumers over multiple messaging channels OR when a new channel becomes popular with a key consumer demographic.


Escalation to Agent with Context Ability to deploy quickly route a chatbot/ITR interaction to a live agent when the consumer requests it and to pass on the text of all the recent chatbot interactions to the agent so that the consumer does not have to repeat any of their information.


Workforce Optimization Workforce Optimization provides essential workforce management, recording, quality assurance and performance management capabilities that help improve business results. Ideally, workforce optimization enables synchronization across all critical performance optimization capabilities, including performance and workforce planning as well as interaction effectiveness. These combined capabilities provide complementary benefits that help to mitigate risk facilitate employee self-development and improve efficiency. Some key features include:

Workforce Management Workforce Management enables users to accurately plan, efficiently manage and optimize the performance of their multi-skilled, multichannel, multi-site and outsourced staffing resources. The core component provides essential forecasting, scheduling and tracking functionality for single-skill, multi-skill, and multichannel contact center environments. Workforce Management makes sure that a user has the right number of agents with the right skills across all locations, so the contact center runs like clockwork.

Some key Workforce Management capabilities include:

Strategic Planning Provides flexible “What-If” Analysis to strategically plan and determine staff and resources necessary for consistent, optimal customer service. This allows you to experiment between various staffing, scheduling and intra-day scenarios for evaluating multiple staffing options and resource deployment for your unique business needs.


Forecasting Forecasts contact volumes and handle times for all contact media (voice, web, email, fax, etc.) and business processes, including Collections, Sales & Telemarketing and Customer Service.


Employee Scheduling Schedules staff and resources for all communication channels and contact center sites, based on business requirements, employee skills, agent/supervisor preferences, work equity rules, etc.



Adherence Tracking Monitor and adjust organizational resources and personnel based upon dynamic conditions, performance and other changes.


Employee Portal Employee should have access to schedules, performance information and self-service tools for schedule updates (such as vacation).


Recording, Quality Management As part of the workforce optimization cycle, recording and quality management applications provide essential capabilities to help customers improve business processes. Recording and quality management applications enable synchronization across all critical performance optimization capabilities including performance management, workforce management and interaction optimization. The combined capabilities of these products provide complimentary benefits, enabling customers to mitigate risk, self-development of employees and improve efficiency.

Some common capabilities include:

Voice Recording The voice interaction between the agent and customer can be digitally recorded and stored. The voice recordings can either be triggered on demand by agents and supervisors or automatically initiated on a full-time basis. Voice Recording gives contact center managers the ability to resolve or dispute a customer interaction, evaluate and train agents and confirm agreements, protect against errors and provide compliance auditing.


Screen Recording Screen recording (capture) records the screens being shown on the agent desktop. The supervisor can initiate screen recording on demand or the system can automatically capture the screen. The screen recording is then available for playback.


Rules-based Recording Provides ability to build business rules in terms of when a contact center manager wants contacts to be recorded. Examples of rules may include interaction types, customer information, percentage requirements or other variables.


Recording On Demand Recording can be initiated by an agent.


Quality Scoring Create custom scoring templates to evaluate each recording. You can define multiple scoring templates to meet the varying needs of a contact center business unit. Templates can have multiple sections, each with separately calculated scores, and several question types exist as part of the template creation wizard.



Calibration Multiple Mentors grade the same interaction, calibrating measurements so that users grade all resources and teams fairly and objectively. Calibration allows the view of all mentor responses on a scorecard in the same window for comparison on a question-by-question and section-by-section basis.


Search and Access Recording Searching enables a user to set up filters to search a database to find a specific call recording. The user must first create a filter and then the system will return back those records that meet the filter specifications. The filter narrows down the number of records searched.


Automatic Archiving Archive recordings on a configured schedule and a configured storage location. You can search for archived recordings in archive database.


Surveys Customer surveys provide the ability to use voice, Email, SMS and web-based surveys to obtain customer feedback on the interaction. Solutions often use invitations to customers after specific call interactions, then allow the customer to complete the survey. Then, managers can link the customer’s quality assessment with their own assessment in one view, for more effective management of the truest measure of customer quality satisfaction.


PCI Compliance Capabilities Recording and quality management applications commonly provide functionality that enables customers to meet their defined set of standards as it pertains to avoiding recording & storing certain sensitive payment card information as well as encrypting this type of data when recording and storing is necessary. • Encryption: Desired files can be encrypted for network transmission and

storage to provide added security and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.

• Start/Stop Recording: When sensitive data is being communicated between the agent and the customer, this provides the ability to pause recording and then resume it again after the sensitive data (e.g. credit card number) has been entered privately. It can also occur by allowing the agent to manually pause/resume the recording at the appropriate times if desired.

• Screen Masking: Ability to block out any sensitive information on a desktop recording.



Speech Analytics Speech Analytics automatically evaluates recordings to analyze and report on the content, context, purpose and outcome of every recorded conversation. This will automatically highlight significant trends and/or variations that can impact customer satisfaction, agent quality, sales performance and marketing effectiveness. It also is useful for gaining insight about customer and business intelligence that enables companies to immediately act to improve performance.

Some common functions of speech analytics:

Automated Scoring Pre-score call, allowing you to focus on the calls that have already been identified for you as important. This feature can make your quality scoring process far more effective than previously possible, making sure the most important calls are reviewed and acted upon.


Content Analysis Allows calls to be categorized based on whether the various target actions on each call occur which can be a key indicator for problems occurring in the contact center.


Keyword Spotting Maintain a list of keywords and support notification when the words are used.


Emotion Detection (Sentiment Analysis) Ability to identify and track emotion/sentiment of the caller and agent.


Dashboards Dashboards can provide a view into customer interactions, delivering insight into customer intent. These dashboards enable users to perform detailed analysis of key data such as call volume, talk time and non-talk time, spot emerging and historical trends, and discover previously unknown relationships between call topics.


Text Analytics Similar to speech analytics, but evaluates text sources such as email, chat, and surveys. Text analytics synthesizes unstructured, multi-channel interactions into information needed to guide business transformation. Typical sources include web chats, blogs, email, web surveys, and social forums. Aspect simplifies analytics implementation by providing automated intelligence from contact center data.

Extraction of Relevant Phrases and Topics Monitor interactions for key identified phrases to trigger call-specific guidance or automated knowledgebase search results or up/cross sell recommendations as well as ensure adherence to compliance mandates.


Search of relevant phrases against the assets to be analyzed i.e., computation of matches for each document (chat, e-mail, etc.) and phrase and topic, etc.



Analysis of Results and Generation of Reports In the form of word-clouds for topics and trends and interactive graphs for related phrases and topics.


Performance Management & Coaching Performance Management enables a structured process through which a company manages and improves its overall performance against certain key metrics. The ultimate goal is to align everyone in the organization towards the same set of objectives so that the company has a much greater likelihood of success.

Performance Management measures and communicates results to continuously improve business processes by providing scorecards and analysis that can automatically initiate alerts and actions on the fly. This helps ensure your contact center employees are focused on the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will drive performance improvements across your sales, collections, and customer service processes to realize cross-functional alignment with strategic goals.

Performance Management includes:

Customer Definable Dashboards Dashboards and reports may be created by both technical and non- technical personnel and shared across the contact center in a secure manner.


Goal Setting Assign departmental or organizational goals to Key Performance Indicators and track attainment to those goals.


Analytics Analysts may interact with the data across unlimited dimensions to determine the root cause of problems.


Dashboards Dashboards consolidate information in a single view that is relevant to a specific user. An agent dashboard for example could contain key agent KPIs like number of each type of contact handled, average handle time, hold time, as well as business KPIs like close rate, sales numbers in a sales group, or cases closed in a customer service group. A supervisor dashboard would typically roll up those KPIs across the supervisor’s team. Dashboards can be more easily customizable through the use of widgets (reusable pieces of web code designed to display data elements).


Coaching The coaching module will automatically initiate coaching sessions between supervisors and agents when certain pre-defined metrics fall below threshold. The system will then recommend corrective action. For example, the system might recommend that an agent take an eLearning course on customer empathy to correct a poor quality score. Finally, the coaching module will track the entire coaching process as part of the permanent record.



Gamification More engaged agents make for happier customers -- gamification can be used as a means to get contact center employees more passionately involved through contests and awards based on competitive achievement of KPI’s.


CRM & Agent Desktop Environment Computer Telephony Integration (CTI): a term used to describe any technology that allows communication between an interaction management system and a computer system. Allows for the merging of information, automation and enablement of agent activities.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): a strategy in which current and future customer relationships, loyalty and brand value are built through business process. The term often refers to tools used in managing customer relationships (organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service and technical support).

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platforms: Tools to enable the Customer Relationship Management strategy. CRM software manages, stores and disseminates customer information with many built-in tools that can be applied to information pertaining to a customer or any given category of customer.

Many contact center solutions deliver packaged, certified integration to leading CRM business applications. This integration allows contact centers to efficiently manage all types of customer interactions while improving customer service. The examples below refer to Salesforce.Com (SFDC)

Key Capabilities and Benefits of CRM Integration

Click to Dial The ability to click on any phone number field in the CRM system and initiate an outbound call.


Screen Pops Using the phone number or chat form data to retrieve a contact or lead record and present the person’s information on the screen as the inbound interaction is accepted.


Insert new lead, contact or case ticket If no existing record exists, then create a new sales lead or case ticket


Create an activity record. At the end of a call or chat disposition, create a historical record of the activity with notes.


Reporting and Analytics Reporting and Analytics in modern contact centers are critical to have the proper insights into contact center performance. Information is typically collected throughout the contact period and made available on a real-time,


near real-time and historical basis. The information is typically structured into “Contact Detail Records” (CDRs), which are made up of data elements – often several hundred data element per CDR. Data elements include information such as connect time, agent activity, contact data variables, hold time, etc.

Historical Reporting Historical reporting is a strategic business tool for contact centers. Ideally, any end-user across the contact center can access pertinent information on an on-demand basis. Additionally, they should be able to create, modify and view the information based on their user permission(s). Supervisors can run agent performance reports that can help identify training needs. Managers within the contact center and across the enterprise are able to make use of data generated as it keeps track of the routing and steering of contacts. It provides contact center management the tools to focus on critical information through exception reporting and report customization.

Reporting should measure performance in a few key areas:

Contact Volume Used to measure volume of contacts through certain applications or contact routes. These reports are useful for trending information and overall usage of different services by the customer. Data sources can include ACD, outbound dialers, IVRs and other channels such as web and email.


Customer Experience Reporting A state of the art reporting solution needs to have a complete view of the customer experience across all channels and self-service. The means the solution should allow continuity and tracking of contacts as they transverse the system from channel to channel, or self-service to live service and include customer metadata collected in self-service as appropriate. Additionally, how the customer views the experience is valuable for reporting the complete picture.


Agent Experience/Performance Reporting The solution should include the ability to measure agent performance in a number of key metrics or KPIs.


In addition to having access to data that measures the area’s above, the data needs to be organized in a way that allows analytical analysis of the data. Reporting Databases should be organized in data cubes to allow drilling down and cross correlating data elements. This structure support Analytical reporting tools to be used. Knowing for example that your average handle time is 230 seconds is useful, but gives you no visibility into what the goal should be. Knowing that at 200 seconds your sales close rates are at the highest is far more useful.

The last component to consider in a reporting solution is usability and user interface. The client software used to create and run reports should allow for easy customization of reports and automated distribution. Often, web based report distribution is desired.

Real-time Reporting Real-time status screens are used to monitor activity in the contact center in real-time and make changes to routing or staffing as needed. Having the ability to customize the status screens and add additional data sources is critical to creating intuitive views that allow for quick and relevant action.

Key real-time reporting capabilities include:


Consolidate and Analyze Data from Multiple Sites, Channels and Platforms Keep track of the entire customer journey across voice, digital and web channels.


Integrate Data from Existing Corporate Data Sources. Unite contact center interaction data with other customer data sources to ensure a 360 view of customers’ behaviors, preferences and transactions.


View Contact Center Operations at an Enterprise Level in Real Time. Get the immediate big picture across all contact center operations/locations.


Deliver a Personalized Customer Experience informed by insights gained from comprehensive views of customer interactions.


Gain Visibility into Self-Service and Live Agent Contact through customizable real-time canvases.


Real-time reporting operates as a collection point for both contact center data and data from other sources, such as sales, workforce management and quality monitoring. Essentially, it serves as an enabling platform for both production reporting and performance management applications.

Documents

Customer Engagement Capability Guide · 2017-11-22 · Customer Engagement Capability Guide . Start Building Better Customer Relationships Now . A Customer Engagement Center is a