Top 15 Tips for Workforce Optimization at your Contact Center

For a call center to function properly, you will require trained and competent professionals, the best call center software and implementation of proper protocols and workflows. Now, finding the best software is easy.

#WFO tips for your contact center

CSI Extends Advantage of Virtual Observer Call Recording and WFO to Support Avaya IP Office 10 Platform for Contact Centers

Our new recording method has been developed with customer value in mind, providing an affordable licensing model and an extremely robust WFO feature set which has never previously been available for IP Office customers CSI extends advantage of Virtual Observer call recording and WFO to suppor
Call recording and WFO for Avaya IP Office 10

Say you want a resolution (FCR, you know)?

A multi-thousand seat Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) in the east has seen an increase in repeat calls for similar issues. After doing some research and analysis, it was discovered agents were not properly trained in handling specific types of customer interactions and this was leading to repeat calls.

First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a common Key Performance Indicator (KPI) in contact centers. 

Resolving customer issues on first interaction is paramount to quality customer service, reduced costs and ultimately an improved bottom line. 

However, FCR is not easily measured. It's a common KPI but what defines a repeat call is not a static data element. 

Every contact center is different. Every customer is different. Every interaction is different. 

How then can FCR be measured?

The BPO's customer service department uses a workforce optimization solution (WFO) which gathers Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) statistics from their Unified Communications (UC) platform. Among the stats gathered include Agent State Changes and Computer Telephony Integrated (CTI) metadata for enhanced data points. 

Armed with all this data, the system is capable of detecting repeat interactions, and ultimately, FCR.

The organization implemented the FCR Service and created business rules and alarms to detect and notify supervisors of customer interactions that could be classified as repeat contacts. 

Since no two contact centers are the same, management mapped out data elements in their enterprise that signified repeat contacts. 

For them, this was easily defined by their ticket number. The Interactive Voice Response (IVR) unit requires all customers to enter their ticket number prior to being routed to an agent. The WFO system reads this ticket number through CTI and attaches it to each recorded interaction. 

The FCR Service monitors recorded interactions and ticket numbers and links interactions together. Multiple interactions with similar ticket numbers are flagged as repeat contacts.

The distributor has a strong leadership team and is capable of mapping their technologies together end to end. Not all contact centers are capable of capturing IVR information, such as ticket number, and mapping it to CTI data harnessed by other technologies, such as their recording system.

Their properly enacted data sharing plan allows them to simply use ticket number to determine FCR. However, for most contact centers, the task of measuring FCR is not so simple. 

With the power of WFO and the FCR Service, this task is handled effortlessly. The FCR Service allows for contact center managers to program it using any piece of data captured from the environment. This can be via claim number, case number, ticket number, customer number, account number, process id, or even un-mapped basic telephony information such as caller id, extension, agent or even date and time. 

At its most basic level FCR can be measured by caller id, date and time. 

Has this phone number called in within a recent period of time? If so, it’s a repeat contact. At its most advanced levels, FCR can be measured using mapped telephony data.

Once the BPO had configured the FCR Services to capture and flag repeat interactions, it was simply a matter of reviewing and evaluating those interactions to determine root cause. The Evaluation Assignment Services were configured to automatically assign all interactions flagged for FCR to the next available evaluator. Evaluations were performed on those repeat interactions and the system automatically pushed the proper learning materials to the agents.

The WFO system uncovered a lack of core competency by agents in a key portion of the BPO's processes. By revising their learning materials, the BPO improved agent knowledge and noticed a considerable drop in repeat interactions over the next 60 days. This reduced their overall call volume and ultimately improved their bottom line.

However, it doesn’t stop there. One workforce optimization solution, Virtual Observer, has extended FCR through to the Speech Analytics feature set to harness the power of the spoken word to uncover repeat interactions. 

Virtual Observer's "FCR Services" look for any number of configurable words and phrases to determine repeat contacts, such as, “I’ve called before”, “I’m calling back”, “This is the nth time I’ve called”, and many more.

Utilizing Social Media Marketing within the Workforce Optimization process accelerates customer experience gains

This customer profile features a Fortune 500 clothing retailer, which includes a chain of popular women’s wear outlets and has multiple contact center locations in the eastern United States. They've been experiencing rapid growth and have added 5 new locations in the last 6 months. 

As their business grows the executive leadership team is most concerned with the quality of their brand that customers have come to love and expect. “Growth is great but maintaining that close personal touch with quality fare is our number one concern”, said the Director of Quality.

The retailer uses a state of the art Contact Center which accepts orders online and then customers can drop in and pick-up their merchandise at the nearest location. “The e-commerce store is what drives our business now to the brick and mortar. Customers expect their orders delivered quickly and accurately”, he added.

The contact center is built on leading communications technology and monitoring tools where orders are entered into the CRM (customer relationship management) software, from either the website or handled through the telephone, and immediately routed to the proper store location and designated for pickup as though customers ordered right off the rack.

Not only does the team of quality experts look to ensure order accuracy but they are also responsible for measuring the quality of the contact center interaction. Using a workforce optimization suite, the team plays back recorded events from phone calls, emails, web chats, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, SMS as well as any other active channels. The team of supervisors will then evaluate and score the events to ensure proper dialogue and resolution. The goal is to have their agents cultivate the ultimate customer experience.

The contact center supervisors also use social media monitoring tools to monitor their brand on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and respond when they can. The tools also provide metadata which can be used to improve performance and responsiveness.

For example, if a customer had a bad shopping experience at a local store, they might be inclined to make their next purchase online. 

However, in a worst-case but likely scenario the customer took to Twitter to express their dissatisfaction. 

The contact center’s social media monitoring tools detected the Twitter activity and issued a reply via Twitter from an available agent. The agent expressed an understanding of the customer’s issue, and told them normally there would not have been an issue. 

They assured the customer that the next time they entered the store, they would have a more satisfactory experience, and a 30% off coupon may help them get what they are looking for at a fantastic discount. They told the customer to keep them in the loop on any future experiences. 

The Twitter chat was then escalated to a supervisor, who authorized the coupon and scored the agent’s response a decent 90 points out of 100. The only improvement suggested was the agent not addressing the customer’s Twitter handle in the response. The supervisor then scheduled a re-training of the Twitter Response procedures to be delivered to the agent via the WFO suite's E-learning features within an agent portal.

This is atypical of standard features found in Workforce Optimization Suites, but "social media monitoring" is available in the Virtual Observer suite.

Connect the dots with Workforce Optimization and Zendesk

On the heels of yesterday's announcement of the integration between Virtual Observer and Zendesk, as well as Tuesday's blog post by Zendesk, it is important that we examine all the various data points which can be connected with this pairing.

• Social Media Interactions > Zendesk Support Tickets
• Zendesk Support Tickets > CRM Customer Records
• Zendesk Support Tickets > Virtual Observer Recorded Events
• Zendesk Zopim Chats > Virtual Observer Recorded Events
• Zendesk Voice Recording > Virtual Observer Recorded Events
• Virtual Observer Event Playback > Zendesk UI

I am sure there are many more data points connected which can and will be cross pollinated. This is an extremely powerful integration which extends the capabilities of all the support centers and contact centers who use this amazing Zendesk tool.

Just as the Clarity Connect integration allows Virtual Observer to be the WFO system of choice for Microsoft Skype for Business environments, our collaboration with Zendesk allows us to connect the dots for customers who are using Zendesk for support and CRM integration.

New Alliance Brings Powerful WFO Capabilities to Skype for Business Contact Center Space

CSI is excited to announce details of an integration of the Virtual Observer Workforce Optimization suite with Clarity Connect, the leading Contact Center suite for Microsoft Skype for Business.

Clarity Connect is a full featured web-based contact center native to Skype for Business. This means Clarity Connect adds the missing functionality without duplicating or complicating the infrastructure or call control. Clarity Connect steps in and adds intelligence to the conversations needed regardless of modality to deliver the best customer experience on the market. Intelligent IVR, Skills Based Routing, Real-Time metrics, historical reports and more go into this first of its kind approach to a contact center for a true collaboration platform.

Virtual Observer enables contact centers with a wide range of features to improve employee performance and acquire a true Voice of the Customer. Together, the integrated offering will allow both Clarity Connect and CSI to deliver a complete and robust overall contact center solution to new and existing customers with full WFO functionality

Read more about this powerful end-to-end suite for Skype for Business

An Agent Portal can be a tremendous supervisor asset

CSI's workforce optimization solution offers a differentiating feature suite called the Agent Portal.

The Virtual Observer Agent Portal allows an agent to access their own recordings and evaluations at the tip of their fingers.  The feature's benefits are not exclusive to the Agent, however, as utilizing the portal in a contact center environment is also very beneficial to the supervisors as well. 

Typically, supervisors will find that they spend lengthy periods of time meeting with agents to review calls and performance.

Agent Portal helps make this task much easier, as it allows the supervisor to post an agent review that will automatically be sent to the portal.

Read the full blog post to find out why supervisors are enjoying the benefits of our Agent Portal.

Innovations for the Avaya Contact Center Space

The Virtual Observer Workforce Optimization Solution offers many unique and affordable benefits for the Avaya Contact Center space.  Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI), is excited to announce the release of several Avaya-specific innovations which enhance the capabilities of the integrated Virtual Observer Workforce Optimization Solution. 

From Avaya-specific surveying to real-time Avaya CMS ACD statistics available in a dashboard view, to a SalesForce connector, Virtual Observer now offers a wide range of included and add-on features to enhance the workforce optimization experience.

CSI has also taken several steps forward to create a robust cloud-based solution which operates as a service and is integrated with Avaya-enabled cloud platforms. Workforce Optimization (WFO) as a service is also available for cloud providers and pure cloud contact centers.

CSI offers a range of methods to record Avaya platforms, including Concurrent DMCC recording.

Read more about the available enhancements on our website

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Technology firms team up to offer WFO for Microsoft Lync customers

The Via Group and Coordinated Systems, Inc. (CSI) have signed a strategic partnership deal which combines the best-of-breed unified communications services and applications of The Via Group and CSI. Together, this partnership will allow both The Via Group and CSI to deliver a more complete and robust overall solution for contact centers using Microsoft Lync.

The Via Group is known in the Unified Communications industry for providing Unified Communications and Voice (TDM and VoIP) solutions. “We are very excited to work with CSI,” said Kevin Carswell, CEO of The Via Group. “Having a partnership with CSI allows us to deliver a powerful and affordable enterprise-level workforce optimization (WFO) solution for our customers.”

“We are truly excited about entering into this partnership and becoming a vital part of the Via Group’s UC offerings to their Microsoft customers,” said Rich Marcia, Marketing Director for CSI. “We’ll also be able to serve the needs of The Via Group in terms of call recording, quality assurance and training tools, etc., as well as a robust, integrated workforce optimization (quality monitoring, speech analytics, workforce management) suite which fits nicely across their entire array of UC platforms and services.”

Read more in our coverage on Virtual-Strategy magazine:
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2014/06/24/partnership-present-clear-contact-center-advantages-microsoft-lync-customers

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Are your customer initiatives also boosted by the "Voice of the Agent"?

You've invested in a sweet new technology platform which records all of your calls.

Great start. Now what are you doing with them?

Many contact centers have deployed quality monitoring tools for evaluating and scoring calls. Sometimes this leads to live coaching of the agents and other times it leads to scheduled training based on topics where the agents did not fare too well.

Other contact centers have invested in full workforce optimization suites (typically consisting of the aforementioned call recording and quality monitoring, plus workforce management, speech analytics and surveying). These are great and extremely effective, except they lack the "Voice of the Agent".

Empowering your agents with the ability to use a workforce optimization system will do wonders for their self-improvement and personal development. There are several key areas where they can contribute to the quality monitoring process and calibrate with your "Voice of the Customer" (VoC) intiatives:

* Allow your agents to play back their own calls and view their recorded screens"
* Share evaluations with them and let them respond, dispute or accept their scores
* Provide them with targeted e-learning material based on where their scores show they need improvement
* Allow them to collaborate with approved peers, supervisors, groups, etc.
* Enable shift trading, bidding, etc. with integrated Workforce Management technology

Agents should buy into the whole quality-monitoring process and by giving them access to a WFO toolset, they are less likely to take on a "Big Brother" view of your technology investments and more apt to take ownership of their own developments.

Other WFO features such as CSI's "VO Live" exist to provide management with the ability to zero in on agent behaviors which might be inefficient, counter-productive or where supervisors can intercede in real time to help an agent solve a customer issue. Agents who are introduced into the WFO process in an enthusiastic manner will also buy into the concept of pushing themselves even harder to be the best they can possibly be.

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Keeping an eye on first call resolution

In both workforce optimization (WFO) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), "First Call Resolution" (FCR) is defined as meeting the customer's need the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call. 

Average Talk Time (ATT) is another common call center statistic which is used to measure the average time an agent spends on each call. 

Typically, Call Center Managers look for lower ATTs, but if lower ATTs are combined with poor first call resolution trends, it's a danger sign indicating that customers may be receiving unsatisfactory answers when they call.

It's important for Call center managers to monitor the FCR rates as well as ATT as one way to gauge performance.

Follow-up calls will create an increase in call volume and require more agents on the floor (hello, workforce management!).

In the call monitoring and workforce optimization world, we know FCR to be a focal point for contact center managers, so we've added a new component to our dashboard analytics features which offer a dynamic glimpse into this metric, as well as ATT and "Calls Answered".

FCR may be viewed differently from company to company, based on preferred interpretations of a basic "Repeat Call for the Same Issue" measurement. 

In order to deliver FCR for Virtual Observer customers we needed to build business rule(s) which considers how each company defines a repeat call. 

For instance, one company might consider a call to be a "repeat call" if the same ANI has called within the last 30 days. 

Another company might say a call is a repeat if the Account Number has called within the last 10 days. 

In summary, FCR is an important metric which is available in Virtual Observer for customers seeking to improve performance.

In both workforce optimization (WFO) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), "First Call Resolution" (FCR) is defined as meeting the customer's need the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call. 

Average Talk Time (ATT) is another common call center statistic which is used to measure the average time an agent spends on each call. 

Typically, Call Center Managers look for lower ATTs, but if lower ATTs are combined with poor first call resolution trends, it's a danger sign indicating that customers may be receiving unsatisfactory answers when they call.

It's important for Call center managers to monitor the FCR rates as well as ATT as one way to gauge performance.

Follow-up calls will create an increase in call volume and require more agents on the floor (hello, workforce management!).

In the call monitoring and workforce optimization world, we know FCR to be a focal point for contact center managers, so we've added a new component to our dashboard analytics features which offer a dynamic glimpse into this metric, as well as ATT and "Calls Answered".

FCR may be viewed differently from company to company, based on preferred interpretations of a basic "Repeat Call for the Same Issue" measurement. 

In order to deliver FCR for Virtual Observer customers we needed to build business rule(s) which considers how each company defines a repeat call. 

For instance, one company might consider a call to be a "repeat call" if the same ANI has called within the last 30 days. 

Another company might say a call is a repeat if the Account Number has called within the last 10 days. 

In summary, FCR is an important metric which is available in Virtual Observer for customers seeking to improve performance.

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Speech Analytics Helps Drive Customer Experience

CSI customer Cigars International (CI) is known for its' wide variety of cigars and their unflappable customer service.

One of the reasons they originally invested in Virtual Observer was because they found an affordable technology which could effectively assist them in achieving their lofty goals for the customer experience.

 With the quality monitoring process on track and continuously improving, CI decided to invest in a more aggressive technology, phonetic-based speech analytics feature of the Virtual Observer suite, to help take the quality assurance process to the next level.

 The return on investment which would come from speech analytics was a great positive change in CI's training model.

 A manager in customer service, speaking for CI, mentioned "We suffered from the 'whisper down the lane' syndrome - even though we were providing comprehensive training materials with talking points, even though we delivered those materials several different ways (classroom, desk side, email), we still found that shortly after training the talking points took on a life of their own and became something else. Often times wrong information would evolve. It would have been days or weeks before we would have uncovered this, however, with Virtual Observer Call Insight speech analytics, it was in one afternoon."

 Read more about how Cigars International surpassed their ambitions for the customer experience.

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Marketing/Teleservices firm improves quality as call center grows

The team at Trident Marketing have been in business for over 20 years, building upon a simple mantra of “envision, achieve and enjoy” to create a high-growth direct

response sales company. 

Now staffed with 400 people and counting, Trident is recognized as a national direct marketing powerhouse, while staying locally focused in Moore County, North Carolina.

With a surging call volume and a multi-skill Cisco telephony environment, it was critical to improve the toolset used for training and quality assurance. Never afraid to invest in technology which offers tremendous value and low cost of ownership, the Trident team looked high and low for the perfect workforce optimization fit in terms of feature set and budget.

Trident eventually discovered Virtual Observer, an emerging call recording and quality monitoring solution which “was a right-sized solution for us. We use VO to prove that we provided (or in some cases did not) the necessary information for the customer to make an informed decision. In addition, we monitor all points of a call from beginning to end, customer service and quality control to make sure the RFT (required follow-throughs) have been completed,” said Trident's CIO.

Read the full Cisco customer success story

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Automating PCI Compliance with Desktop Analytics

We're pleased to introduces Virtual Observer Desktop Analytics to help customers automate PCI compliance.

This new functionality reduces task complexity and frees up IT resources for other needs.

This works by using the Desktop Analytics feature to capture a customer's processes where they input credit card information (in a CRM, or an order entry system, for example).

Once this process is logged, the system will be able to trigger Virtual Observer to be able to stop recording once the process is initiated, and to resume recording once the agent ends that particular task.

Virtual Observer Desktop Analytics works with the LightsOut! API to achieve this process.

Desktop Analytics is a technology which connects, captures and automates desktop activities and tasks. The feature is gaining acceptance as a critical component in most workforce optimization suites, providing insight into customer interactions throughout the enterprise.