The Virtual Contact Center: An Essential Guide to Transform Your Customer Experience

The Virtual Contact CenterYour Essential Guide to Selecting, Designing and Implementing a Virtual Contact Center to Transform Your Customer Experience

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1 INTRODUCTION

2 VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER NEEDS ASSESSMENT

3 GAINING PRODUCTIVITY BY IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY

4 LEVERAGING THE STRATEGIC BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER

5 VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER CASE STUDIES

6 CONCLUSION

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What is a Virtual Contact Center? A Virtual Contact Center (VCC) is a cloud-based contact center that delivers call routing, interactive voice response (IVR), and computer telephony integration (CTI) empowering your business to create optimal customer experiences (CX).

Businesses continue to evolve in order

to address emerging communication

channels and adapt to people’s

preferences, technology advancements,

and data needs. To meet the growing

demands for convenient communication

channels, businesses recognize that their

customers are their biggest asset and they

need to listen, respond, and deliver to

keep their customers satisfied. More and

more businesses today are evaluating and

ultimately shifting to the Cloud to deliver

functionality faster to market ahead of

their competitors.

Using a cloud-based VCC has many

compelling business and operational

benefits. For starters, organizations

can quickly deploy a VCC and run it

with minimal IT involvement, no capital

investment and low operating costs. In

addition, organizations large and small

can take advantage of a geographically

distributed workforce, utilizing the

strengths of a cloud infrastructure’s unique

call routing capabilities that can span

multiple locations.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1: INTRODUCTION 2: VCC NEEDS 3: VCC PRODUCTIVITY 4: VCC STRATEGY 5: VCC ROI 6: CONCLUSION







Availability

When customers reach

out, will your service

be available?

Scalability

Can your contact

center scale as your

business grows?

Visibility

Will it give you end-to-end

visibility into the customer

experience?

Affordability

Would no setup fees

or capital investment

make upgrading today

a possibility?

Productivity

Do you believe

improving your analytical

insight, resolution rates,

and intelligent routing

capabilities would

positively affect your

customer’s experience?

Is Your Organization Ready for a VCC? Do you need better...










There are several reasons why you might want to look at your current platform to see if it is handling the blocking and tackling necessary to deliver great customer experiences, or whether a Virtual Contact Center would provide a better game plan to deliver those experiences.

You may already have an on-premises solution yet want to gain the operational benefits of moving to the Cloud. Alternatively, your organization could already have a cloud solution but are looking to make a move to a more robust offering. Perhaps you may not have a solution today but need to think about what will be the best solution for your contact center agents, customers, and business operations in the near short-term. Regardless of the reason, determining the needs of your organization is a critical first step before embarking on the VCC path.

While researching options, you may ask—what does a “virtual” contact center really mean? A Virtual Contact Center

supports geographically dispersed contact center agents instead of requiring all agents to work out of the same physical contact center location, thereby ensuring customer care collaboration anywhere. VCCs are known for having higher agent satisfaction rates and therefore lower agent turnover, leading to better customer service, higher ratio of skills-based agents, and considerable cost-saving operational efficiencies.

Three areas you should consider when determining your VCC needs:

CHAPTER 2: VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER NEEDS ASSESSMENT

Advantage of the Single View2

Tools to Get the Job Done3

Benefits of a Virtual Environment1









Businesses of all sizes are under

pressure to increase operational

efficiencies and deliver more

personalized and seamless interactions

while effectively dealing with capital

expenditure pressure and scrutiny. Not

an easy task but especially critical for

Small to Medium-Sized Businesses

(SMBs). Some questions SMBs

should consider as they assess their

VCC needs: what systems do they

currently use? Do they have integration

with the CRM? And, how robust is

the IVR? Can it deliver important

routing capabilities and personalization

attributes? Does the platform easily

hand off a caller to an agent along with

data and interaction history? What

are the up-front costs associated with

moving to a VCC? And, can the current

system deliver this in a flexible, scalable

solution that offers rapid deployment

and always-on availability?

If a business is not using a VCC today,

they should strongly consider its

inherent advantages. As organizations

look at alternative ways to extract

maximum return from their budgets

and lower costs, they are finding the

on-demand model with low to no setup

fees and ability to quickly and cost-

effectively address usage fluctuations

delivers a positive impact on their

capital expenditures. In addition,

organizations are finding that the gain

in flexibility and interoperability moving

to a virtual environment is paramount

to addressing business concerns and

delivering a highly satisfying customer

experience.

If you are a SMB or mid-sized

organization, can you effectively

compete with larger enterprises

without moving to the Cloud?

Benefits of a Virtual Environment1









This is where the beauty of a VCC really shines through.

When an organization implements a VCC, they obtain not

only the operational benefits of the Cloud, but access to

these advantages inherent in a complete, single browser-

based view. What makes the single view impressive is

the ability to extract insight from various touchpoints and

channels to deliver a unified customer context directly to

the VCC. Why is a single view so important? It removes

the inefficiencies of multiple applications and customer

frustrations related to a siloed approach that requires

repeated inquiries for information. Consider this the next

time you are speaking to a contact center representative,

and while you are waiting for information to address simple

requests. They may say, “Please hold, I need to look that

up, just give me a minute.” With a VCC, the information

agents need is on-demand, always on, and easily accessible

in a single dashboard.

Are your siloed systems frustrating customers with repeat

questions and lack of customer history?

Advantage of the Single View2









So, what are the tools needed in a typical VCC? An ideal VCC platform should have at least these three attributes: a robust IVR, powerful

call routing functionality, and integrated analytics for ongoing process optimization. Organizations that decide to migrate from an on-premises

solution to a cloud-based VCC instantly have tools at their fingertips to manage all aspects of their global operations for inbound, outbound,

and proactive communications. Integration of call routing functionality and IVR with business rules and embedded analytics is critical as it

delivers immediate visibility of the call center, and a better experience for customers.

Behind the scenes, a robust VCC delivers powerful agent management and supervisor controls through any web browser or device. Agents

have access to an intuitive web-based agent desktop, where they can receive whisper messages that provide context prior to taking the call,

plus customer data presentation and agent disposition codes. This pre-call data is extremely helpful for agents to not only get up to speed

quickly on the call, but it also helps to personalize the caller experience. Supervisors gain immediate flexibility in the contact center with call

monitoring tools that allow agent coaching and barge-in options to intervene on difficult calls, as well as real-time and historical metrics and

reports, designed to support mobile devices and tablets for today’s multi-device world.

Do you have the best tools for your key assets—your customers?

Tools to Get the Job Done3









When considering a VCC, you should look beyond just replacing legacy ACD systems, but consider other technical advancements that can drive productivity. A good VCC utilizes a robust IVR on the front end of calls, having a significant portion of the calls completed within the IVR environment without the need to speak with an agent. When the caller is transferred to an agent, it is the right agent to solve the problem the first time and that agent has the caller’s information in front of them so there is no need to ask customers to repeat themselves. This raises the first call resolution rate, an important metric for contact centers, plus it delivers significant productivity improvement for the business with the added bonus of improved CX.

� Analytics—Aggregate call details to reveal KPIs (i.e. date and time, caller ID, IVR responses, talk time, etc.) plus historical drill down capabilities to determine trends of the customer experience for actionable insight.

� Agent Setup Speed—Setting up agents should be a simple and fast process in order to get them online quickly—especially important for peak call cycles.

� Intelligent Routing—In addition to simply routing incoming calls to the geographically dispersed agent pool, intelligent routing can route calls based on business rules to the optimal agent based on agent proficiency or customer context.

� Intuitive Agent Monitor Design—A simple and easy-to-navigate user interface or monitoring dashboard for contact center agents.

� Live Quality Monitoring—The ability for supervisors to listen in to live calls ensures a high level of customer service as well as the ability for supervisors to coach agents or be conferenced in to assist with escalated calls.

� Multi-channel Capable—Manage consistent cross-channel customer experiences and support customer engagement across communication channels (i.e. voice, email, chat).

CHAPTER 3: GAINING PRODUCTIVITY BY IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY

Productivity Tool Examples:









Speed

Quick-start packages that offer

the ability to be up and running

quickly and easily.

Simplicity

Integrated IVR and call routing

(ACD) functionality in one

intuitive and seamless interface.

Reliability

Scalability and reliability to

support your vital customer

facing operations and always

on availability.

Personalization

Enterprise-class routing that

can deliver calls based on

context and agent skills, and

personalized IVR interactions

tailored to fit your specific

customer needs.

A cloud-based Virtual Contact Center offers consistent, seamless, personalized experiences that span self-service and human-assisted interactions and provides many compelling business benefits. It gives your business a complete 360-degree view for managing the touchpoints along the customer journey.

When your team begins exploring VCC options, you should look for solutions that deliver:

CHAPTER 4: LEVERAGING THE STRATEGIC BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER

With a Virtual Contact Center, you can leverage the benefits of a highly available, highly scalable service that meets your current needs, but also

gives you the business intelligence insights to help you plan and support your future needs. In addition, by building a strong customer experience,

your organization will gain strategic benefits to set you apart from the competition.








One of the major drivers to consider when contemplating making a move from a traditional, on-premises contact center is the Return On Investment (ROI) associated with moving to a cloud-based VCC. The investment for a hosted platform can be recouped quickly and run with minimal IT involvement, no capital investment and low operating costs.

Best-in-class VCCs allow organizations to scale operations quickly and handle growing demand or traffic spikes without failure or the need for additional capital investments—helping realize immediate ROI. Besides the minimal upfront investment and ongoing maintenance costs, they see real improvements in their contact center metrics—measureable improvements in case-related call completions, increases in uptime and live answer rates as well as decreases in call hold times and abandon rates. This all leads to stronger customer loyalty and a better overall customer experience.

The following case studies illustrate just a few examples of major companies and organizations that have seen the operational and cost-saving benefits of moving to a cloud-based VCC.


CHAPTER 5: VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER CASE STUDIES








Genesys Case Study: Marketo Marketo is a leading cloud-based provider of a marketing software platform. The platform delivers marketing automation and sales effectiveness software designed to help organizations streamline marketing processes, deliver more campaigns, generate more win-ready leads, and improve sales performance. Marketo helps over 2,500 customers in 36 countries turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver.


ChallengeMarketo wanted a quick and easy-to-deploy a VCC to leverage skills-based routing.

SolutionThe Marketo support team was able to rapidly implement the Genesys Premier Edition

VCC call routing (ACD) to route inbound calls from customers. Marketo added Genesys

Salesforce CTI cloud-based integration into its support application to further streamline

customer service calls.

OutcomeCaller ID authentication and “priority one” entitlement bypass which transfers customers

more quickly to a customer service representative improved the Marketo customer

experience. Also, with this integration, the support team was able to handle all call center

features within the Salesforce.com working environment.

KEY BENEFITS

� Personalized caller interactions

� Improved customer experience

� 22% improvement in case deflection

� 28% decrease in case-related calls per customer

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Genesys Case Study: ZoomSystems

ChallengeWith a distributed network of field personnel servicing over 1,500 locations, ZoomSystems

felt the pressure on their contact center telephony platform. They sought to reduce call hold

times, efficiently support on-site technicians, and increase the kiosks uptime averages.

SolutionWhen ZoomSystems evaluated all their needs, the Genesys Premier Edition – Virtual

Contact Center (VCC) came out on top. They were attracted to the benefits of a cloud

contact center solution and implemented contact center software enhancements for

reliability, customer support, feature richness and cost.

OutcomeBy modernizing their contact center software with the Genesys Premier Edition - VCC,

ZoomSystems delivers a positive customer experience that greatly improves their operations

and keep their brands and customers coming back.

KEY BENEFITS

� Uptime increased to their goal of 99%, a 2% improvement

� Expected hold time decrease of approximately 4 minutes

� Live answer rate increased from 30 to 75%

� Call abandon rate decreased from 25 to 7%

ZoomSystems, based in San Francisco, provides automated retail solutions for leading retailers and brands worldwide. Their end-to-end automated retail solutions include integrated hardware, software, and managed services in the Cloud.


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Genesys Case Study: Total Wine & More

ChallengeThe Total Wine and More legacy ACD was rudimentary and unable to handle the demand. In

addition, they did not have a reporting system robust enough to handle their needs and resorted

to manual manipulation of data. They needed to change this in order to successfully expand,

understand its growing customer base, and deliver a higher overall level of customer care.

SolutionTotal Wine & More launched their new contact center solution built on Genesys Premier Cloud in

time for Black Friday 2014. Genesys enables Total Wine & More to provide customers with priority

queues and skill-based routing for connected journeys across multiple channels. And, they are now

able to customize messages, get more information out to customers, and gain more visibility into

data resulting in workforce optimization and other operational efficiencies.

OutcomeTotal Wine & More built a custom IVR on the Genesys platform that was tied to an 800 number

published on direct mail materials. With Genesys, they were able to figure out their marketing lift

and better understand what customers were calling about, thereby improving staffing levels and

forecasting. They are currently using email and voice services from Genesys, which will be followed

by the strategic deployment of chat functionality by mid-summer 2015. The overall result is quality

service in the customer’s channel of choice.

KEY BENEFITS

� Implemented contact center voice and email services within 5 weeks

� Delivered improved customer support, creating better relationships with 100+ retail stores

� Increased sales with improved customer service

� Cut overall order completion time in half

� Improved workforce optimization

Total Wine & More is the largest independent retailer of fine wine in U.S. Founded in 1991, the company now has more than 100 stores in 16 states, and is growing rapidly. In response to demand for new sales channels beyond physical stores, they began overhauling their website in 2011. With that came the need to extend customer service to new virtual channels.


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Customers want a consistent and personalized experience and the Genesys Premier Edition−VCC delivers what you and your customers need. For business environments up to 250 agents, using the Premier Edition cloud-based Virtual Call Center helps you deploy the solution quickly, running it with minimal IT involvement, no capital investment and low operating costs.

The VCC is an important element of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform, bringing a proven, global set of capabilities to a contact center, making it the right choice now and in the years to come. Additional capabilities include: pre-built IVR applications for major verticals, call recording with encryption, speech analytics, voice biometrics, ASR and

TTS in over 40 languages available, plus natural language processing technology.

We hope the Virtual Contact Center Playbook has been an informative guide and will help you provide excellent customer experiences. This playbook offers a view of a virtual contact center, its strategic benefits, and examples of companies who have made the move to a VCC and reaped the benefits. As discussed, the scalable solution supports your business growth through a cloud deployment, easy-to-use interfaces, intelligent call routing, integrated analytics and performance optimization. This robust set of capabilities offers a seamless experience for customers and delivers an optimal customer experience.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

� Geared toward the SMB market up to 50 agents

� Rapid cloud-based deployment

� Proven, global cloud contact center platform

� Easy, point-and-click interface and setup

� IVR self-service platform

� Superior reliability and 99.999% service availability

� Bundled telecommunications services

� Intuitive and visual solution configuration

� Out-of-box integration with Salesforce.com and other cloud-based CRM services such as Zendesk, Netsuite and others.

Key Capabilities










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Is Your Contact Center Scoring Points and Exceeding Your Customer Experience Goals?Be sure you are running the right plays and your customers are getting the

pro-level service they expect with Genesys!

Moving to a Virtual Contact Center elevates your business and opens new doors for your customers. Communicating with your customers in a way that produces better interactions, offers more insight, and gives your agents and supervises better tools will deliver superior business results. To really score and deliver on your goals, the Premier Edition−Virtual Contact Center delivers everything

that small to mid-size contact centers need to provide exceptional customer experiences.

Let Genesys help you beat your competition, while modernizing your contact center and achieving your customer experience goals!







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Genesys is the market leader in omnichannel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions in the cloud and on-premises. We help brands of all sizes make great CX great business. The Genesys Customer Experience Platform powers optimal customer journeys consistently across all touchpoints, channels and interactions to turn customers into brand advocates. Genesys is trusted by over 4,500 customers in 80 countries to orchestrate more than 100 million digital and voice interactions each day.

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The Virtual Contact Center: An Essential Guide to Transform Your Customer Experience