Interaction Management
Blending Customer Interactions Across Communication Channels
To make the most of each customer interaction, corporate call centers have had to integrate broad areas of capability: voice and data communications, computerized telephony functions, and coordinated desktop and mainframe applications, as well as the addition of new media channels. By utilizing technology that shares a common architecture, regardless of media channel, call centers can make the leap to contact centers, at their own pace, more effectively taking advantage of every customer contact. With the appropriate platform, agents are capable of handling customer contacts across a number of communication channels, via a blended queue of work, based on company defined business rules and workloads.
Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI)
Sophisticated business rules routing, based on computer telephony integration, increase the efficiency and effectiveness of your contact center. Intelligent routing directs telephone calls to the best resource, improving service and more efficiently utilizing your resources. Computer-telephony integration enables instant access to customer and enterprise information. Information tracking records every detail of every voice interaction which can be used to improve routing, update customer information, and generate additional sales.
An open CTI architecture enables seamless systems integration and workflow management across various platforms and operating systems. A core set of functionality provides voice and data collection, mapping, event monitoring and alarming; and directory services.
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) to applications seamlessly links callers, ACD, IVR, agents, and data to:
- Qualify calls intelligently, using ANI or information collected in the ACD or IVR to identify the caller, and search the customer database to determine the service level and agent skill set that the caller requires.
- Queue and route to the best resource, presenting contextual and historical information.
- Automatically present agents with a screen pop of caller's data from the desktop application being used. These include web-based, off the shelf, homegrown or other CRM Information Systems.
- Present caller’s contact history (across multiple media, if applicable).
- Provide softphone controls for login/logout, conference, transfer, hold, wrap-up, etc. These functions allow agent to devote full attention to the screen.
Email/Fax Management
An automated E-mail Management system provides intelligent e-mail routing and automated response capabilities, helping companies effectively manage increasing volumes of customer e-mail. With this capability, e-mail messages are queued based on agent skills and availability. The emails are then routed to agents in a predetermined order based on the contact center and agent current load and availability.
- E-mail management systems possess full real-time monitoring, tracking, routing and reporting capabilities. They also include knowledgebase resources and auto acknowledge/response capabilities.
- Agent interface presents controls to allow easy response to e-mails. Prepackaged scripts are available to insert into a reply with the click of a mouse, increasing the speed of response to common questions.
- E-mail can be classified and routed based upon the sender, subject, keyword(s) or other definable criteria.
Web Interaction/Self Service
As a first line of assistance, customers can be greeted with intuitive self-help tools that provide browsing, and targeted knowledgebase searches that preemptively address customer questions. However, some customers, unable or unwilling to find answers via self-help, prefer online assistance via live help.
The web agent interface presents controls that allow for easy and efficient response to chats. Prepackaged scripts can be inserted into replies with the click of a mouse. These tools dramatically increase the speed of response to common questions, allowing agents to handle multiple chat sessions at once. This capability allows increased contact center capacity without adding agents.
A full complement of live service options helps you keep commitments and customers. Collaborative browsing allows the agent to “push” Web pages to guide the customer to the information they need. Also, web collaboration enables agents and customers to jointly fill out forms or navigate through pages of the website. A history of customer activity from the Live Help session is then captured for analysis and future service improvements.
Customer Information Repository
An effective Interaction Management platform monitors, manages, and records every aspect of the customer interaction, from the moment of arrival until the moment of completion. This is completed through the use of a Customer Information Repository—a data container that collects identification information, data from multiple enterprise systems, customer profile information, routing data, and transaction history. All data collected is shared by the entire suite and is available to agents, supervisors, and other business users who may need to interact with a transaction. Each transaction incorporates customer data from the different media types, locations, and agents.
This data repository provides a complete view of every transaction, allowing contact center managers to determine proper resource allocation. The repository also enables more in-depth customer reporting based on interactions that consolidates data from telephony systems, e-commerce systems, and desktop applications.
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