Big business benefits from CTI and Avaya Interaction Center

One of our newest customers, a large wireless provider scores big business benefits by integrating Virtual Observer and Avaya Interaction Center.

An award-winning wireless carrier that has operated in the Southeastern United States since 1999 and in parts of the Caribbean since 2004, they have more than 1,900 people and five business offices. The wireless company lives and breathes “customers come first”, with a committent to provide the highest quality network, simple and straight-forward service plans that deliver real value, and the best products available on the market. Customer care associates are available 24 hours a day, everyday to quickly and politely assist customers with their questions and concerns.

The wireless carrier’s contact center handles an average of 35,000 calls per day. They wanted to implement a call recording system to maximize the performance of their agents within the center. After reviewing several options, they chose Coordinated Systems, Inc.’s (CSI) Virtual Observer solution, based on the value, price and quality the solution offered. With 114 supervisors managing the agents, it would be extremely important for the supervisors to quickly get on board with the system. Clearly, the software seems to have earned some fans, as one supervisor was quoted to say “Virtual Observer is extremely easy to use, easy to learn and the ability to coach associates based on the screen shots. It also has a much higher accuracy rate for recordings compared with our previous recording software. An integrated evaluation form reduces the need to have a 3rd party monitor form solution.” He added “CSI’s customer service has been superb. They are always available for assistance and return calls/emails very quickly.”

The wireless provider runs an Avaya phone system with Avaya Interaction Center (AIC). It was vital for the winning call recording vendor to offer a tight integration with AIC. An IT engineer at the wireless company stated “Virtual Observer works extremely well within our IC environment. It allows VO to capture recordings based off of CTI Triggers to reduce the length of unnecessary recordings and speed up the quality monitoring process. It also allows us to see the account that the associate has on their screen.” Additional business benefits include reduced recording size and reduced storage space needed, improved performance by QA associates. “Custom CTI Triggers by CSI allowed us to record based on call type,” he added.

Capturing screens in a Citrix environment

Recent Virtual Observer implementation at a utility provider in Cleveland, Ohio:

This customer purchased Virtual Observer Logger for their Avaya phone system in multiple locations. What made this particular installation unique was the fact that all of the agents were on a Citrix environment instead of Windows computers. The customer needed to be up and running ASAP and our professional implementation team did not dissapoint. Two weeks from purchase order to fully implemented and trained. We trained a brand new QA manager, a former Witness user, who was very impressed with the quality and ease VO brings to his staff.

In this particular instance we replaced a Dictaphone call recording system that gave them difficulty in finding specific calls. This was a basic business need which was easy using Virtual Observer.

Notes: The utility contacted 27 companies regarding Screen Capture in a Citrix environment and we were the only company that was able to accomplish this.

Recent call center keyword searches that drove traffic to this blog

Right on target with our content:
"pci compliance for call centers"
"Top 10 ways of monitoring individual and team performance"
"why do you want to be a call center agent"
"agent scheduler smdr"
"call centre chat"
"call center stories"
"is being a call center agent is easy?"
"Performance criteria in call center environment"
"are you a great call centre agent"
"cisco call recording - why record all calls instead of randomly recording?"
"call center tips"
"call center e-learning modules"
"definition of call center industry"
"call center agents quotes"
"businesses looking for call centers"
"quotes for call centers"
"call length Call center"
"call center observations"
"customer call examples"
"calls received at call centres"
"tutorial short term goals help desk call center"
"call center thank you"
"call center motivational quotes"
"call centers answering promptly"
"Motivational Quotes about consumer insight"
"inspirational quotes for call centers"
"B2B Call Centre Industry Analysis"
"Six Sigma with DNIS"
"call center analysis basics"
"motivation tips in a call center- share success"
"new openings for new call centers"
"customer service call center stories"
"call center customer service tips"

Somewhat Interesting:
"motivational quotes + medical sales"
"what is the ultimate goal of your company"
"observations and feedback"
"clients for my new call center?"
"call center manager list"

Who knows?:
"virtual csi"
"story blog website"
"a play set in a call centre"
"skype master"
"call center food service software screens"
"blog work at home call center agent"
"my life as a call center agent"
"call center home blog"

Pretty darn specific:
"dell call center mcgregor tx address"
"verizon call center huntsville AL phone number"
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"size of comcast call centers"
"NEW PROJECT IN ETELECARE IN ARIZONA"
"connecticare call center"
"coudersport, pa call center"

Company related:
"virtual observer web player"
"call center csi marketing"
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"csi virtual observer licensing"

Generic:
"virtual call center blog"
"call center blog"
"call centre blogs"
"call centre stories"
"call centre blog"
"contact center blog"
"call center"
"call center blogs"

Recent call center expansions

DiaTri Opens Its Second national Call Center
DiaTri, the leader in national diagnostic network and scheduling services is pleased to announce the opening of its second national call center. This second call center will be located in the Tampa, FL area and will provide a very nice complement to DiaTri’s home office and call center based in the southern suburbs of Chicago, IL.

Harte-Hanks adding 500 permanent call center jobs
Texarkana will soon be home to a new call center that could employ as many as 500 permanent and up to 250 seasonal employees. Harte-Hanks is an international direct and targeted marketing company. Company officials say the facility was a strong factor, along with the community's enthusiasm for what is expected to be a boon to the local economy. Hiring has not yet begun for the new call center they hope to begin that process in the near future. They're expected to up and running sometime early next year.

Sovereign Bank to add more jobs to call center
Sovereign Bank today announced the expansion of its call center in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The bank will increase the call center’s second shift, which operates in the evening hours until 11 p.m. EST, adding more than 30 additional call center positions, an increase of 30% over the positions created last year.

AT&T opens new call center
The new Joplin AT&T call center opened Wednesday with nearly half of the construction completed and 180 of the estimated 600 employees the site ultimately needs at work.
When complete, the building will have 572 customer service workstations, 39 manager workstations and 26 back offices.

New call center to hire 100 more people in next 2 months
Results Bellingham handles inbound calls for two major clients in the health-care and energy industries, answering questions from those clients’ customers. About the jobs: Call Human Resources Manager Shawna Monroe at 671-0467, ext. 102. It has started training 30 new employees. to bring its work force to about 65. The company plans to add more than 100 people during the next two months to bring the work force to approximately 175. Results-Tel is a CSI customer and uses Virtual Observer for call recording and quality monitoring.

More than just a logger, but as a logger, it's very, very good

In the marketing department here at Coordinated Systems, Inc., we get a ton of leads and inquiries for call recording. Half of the leads that come in fall into our sweet spot, which is call recording for quality assurance. The best leads are from contact centers looking to record agent interactions in order to train them and improve their performance.

Occasionally we'll receive leads from companies who are simply looking to record all their calls, typically for legal/liability or dispute resolution reasons. More and more companies also need to log calls for standards compliance. Virtual Observer can certainly work as a standalone logger. Of course, the real value does exist in the quality assurance functionality, but as a logger, it's still a great tool.

Most pure loggers simply record the calls and store them in a network drive and allow you to play them back if need be. Virtual Observer gives you a visual playback mechanism which shows the entire call's audio wave, along with a synchronized view of the agent's screen activity. With the agent tagging module, agents can categorize the call and identify the customer. Of course, with CTI integration, such data will automatically be associated with the call. If you need to locate a call, you can either browse and sort by any or all available data fields, or you can search via our easy-to-use query wizard, again with the ability to search on any available data fields. Data such as time of day call started, length of call, agent, ANI, DNIS, customer name, customer industry, etc., should be available, depending on what level of integration you've configured.

Notes and News on distributed call centers, infomercials, Skype and MS Office online

According to a news story on Earthtimes, "4 out of 5" of the top infomercials are outsourcing their call centers to LiveOps.com. Speaking of infomercials, I wonder if Giuseppe Franco (if you've ever watched a Yankees game on Yes, you know who I'm talking about!) answers the incoming phone order lines for his hair products?

LiveOps is a "distributed" contact center, meaning its' agents are dispersed virtually across states and countries. LiveOps offers customers real-time Reporting, on-demand scalability, superior quality home agents and results-based routing.

Maynard Webb, CEO, formerly of Ebay, stated "We are thrilled to be working with these very successful shows. It's clearly a testament to our technology as well as the quality of our virtual community of home agents. Because of this unique combination, no other contact centers can handle the call volatility that goes along with this industry."

In related news, Ebay posted a loss on Skype, which many are now declaring a failure. You can read more about in this blog rant.

Speaking of a distributed call center, wouldn't it make sense for telecommuters to use an online office suite vs. having them use an installed client version of Microsoft Office? With the new online version of Office or with the Google Apps suite, there are no installation issues, missing files, or availability issues. Have you tried the online apps? The Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations apps are pretty simple to use and it's convenient for sharing docs with family members or between work and home PCs. Software as a service is becoming a reality. You only need to see Microsoft jumping on the concept for proof positive.

Featured Call Center News Source: CallCentreHelper.com

When we ran our story on new call center news sources, we spotlighted a few which we wanted to check out. Shortly after, I received a form submission detailing another resource: CallCentreHelper out of the UK.

Site description from their submission: "Call Centre Helper is the most popular online call centre magazine in the UK. Over 300 current jobs along with the latest news and a selection of articles on management, technology and call centre life."

The site features categories such as "call center management", "call center technologies", "call center life", "call center news", and "call center jobs". The "jobs" section actually lists 30+ job openings and offers a regionally searchable database.

The management area seems to key on several help topics for managers:

"Top Tips for Induction Programmes"
"How do I - handle stress in my team?"
"New Year, new motivation strategy"
"Getting the most out of staff satisfaction surveys"
"A tried and tested technique to improve customer service satisfaction".