Flatten Your Global Cost of Ownership for Call Monitoring

Back in 2011, we launched the latest version of the Virtual Observer (VO) quality optimization solution, ushering in a new web interface along with a fresh and redesigned layout for the application. As the system has seen fast adoption within our customer base, some of the side benefits have begun to emerge.

VO has always offered businesses the lowest cost of ownership in our space, a crowded space (over 30 competitors at last count!), mainly attributable to agile development, minimized overhead costs, fair pricing and managed expenses.

We've been able to scale VO to enterprises across multiple locations, globally, with hybrid voice system integration and mixed business needs.

The new version completely flattens the global cost of ownership for customers in a variety of ways, making it far more affordable to scale recording to the far reaches of your enterprise.

- VO is now accessible anywhere in the world with a simple web browser. Remote workers or customers can now be authorized, with proper permissions, to play back or score calls without having to install any software.

- Virtualized environments: in most environments, customers can spin up a virtual machine as opposed to having to buy hardware or audio boards. This not only will reduce your carbon footprint but also your bottom-line IT expenses.

- The emergence of active recording methods utilizing API (application programming interface) integration directly within the phone system (Avaya's DMCC integration, Cisco active recording, Nortel DMS, Mitel, ShoreTel, etc.) also removes the need for audio boards.

- Reduced training time is created by the ease of use and familiarity of the browser. Training is now performed more often than not via remote teleconference/webinar methods, reducing travel expenses and out-of-the-office time for your key employees.

- Virtual Observer customers enjoy painless upgrade paths to our latest version of product at zero software dollars. They pay only a nominal professional services fee to have the new system installed. This is in stark contrast to the expensive forced upgrade path our industry is used to.

- Agent development and training can now be accelerated with the introduction of VO's Agent Portal features, which brings the agent into the quality optimization process and actually humanizes the automated elements of quality monitoring.

Related articles

• Inside CSI: 40 years in business part two of three

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• Inside CSI: 40 years in business part three of three

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• Avaya Upgrades Unified Communications, Contact Center Suites (informationweek.com)
• Avaya Announces E911 Select Product Partners (avaya.com)

30+ years later, one of our biggest differentiators is still our people

In trying to stand out from the crowd of call recording vendors, it helps to have a little history on our side. Being around since 1972 gives our management team quite a bit of experience in dealing with an up and down economy, rapidly changing technologies, and adapting to new marketplaces as needed.

Another differentiator is our ability to deliver rapid implementations. We have had customers up and running and recording calls within two days of getting the order. Installation and On-site training included.

What enables rapid implementation is the fact we've always taken pride in hiring only the right people - people with experience and insight into our customers' needs. People who treat each other like customers, and treat customers like partners.

Being able to thrive and constantly evolve over three decades requires a skilled workforce which is willing to adapt to an ever-changing technology landscape, as well as recruiting and training new members to the team, who often bring fresh, game-changing ideas.

Our people come from diverse backgrounds such as call center managers, classroom teachers, and call center technology engineers. This lends itself well to the way we relate so well with our customers. It's why we're able to maintain a 97.5% customer retention in a highly competitive marketplace. It's why our people are still our biggest differentiator.

Harry & David scale up their call quality monitoring for the holidays

In 1910 Samuel Rosenberg traded the luxurious Hotel Sorrento for 240 prime acres of pears in Southern Oregon's Rogue River Valley and named them Bear Creek Orchards after the nearby waterway. His sons Harry and David began one of the nation's premier direct marketing and e-commerce companies (Harry & David).

In order to support the thriving mail order business, Harry & David set up a customer service contact center. The contact center has changed significantly over the years, especially in terms of technology.

“We’ve implemented technology that was able to better utilize our workforce and increase the effectiveness of the interaction with the customer,” said Jason Phillipson, Director of Planning for Customer Operations.

“The biggest advantage new technology has is that it allowed us to hold our labor needs static. Advances in our online stores, sales & service applications, knowledgebase, telemarketing, call monitoring, and training systems have kept pace and often exceeded the demand for additional labor force. In fact, over the last 10 years the call centers’ labor needs have changed relatively little, while the business grew significantly,” he added.

Currently, Harry & David has several systems in use in their contact centers. The various applications include an order taking/customer service system, web/knowledgebase, email management, call recording and monitoring, electronic time card, electronic product information index, scheduling, multiple phone switches for multiple sites, electronic badge production, electronic employee statistics and evaluations, online work queues and more.

The call recording application is the Virtual Observer solution, interfacing with their Avaya phone system, and enabling call recording for quality assurance purposes. Employing about 300 customer service agents year round, the number swells to about 4000 across multiple contact centers during the busy holiday season.

“The scale of our holiday call activity pushes all our infrastructure and systems to their peak capacity. This is coupled with the condensed time frame we have to do it in….we hire and train the majority of the 4,000 in about 2 months time. There is also a lot of role transition. Many of our year-round staff are our leaders, trainers, and support staff during the holiday season.

During our holiday season we handle about 100,000 calls per day but during the off season we can go as low as 5,000. A typical day would be around 6,500 calls. Needless to say, it’s a busy time for us. The Virtual Observer system scales seamlessly during the holidays, whether it’s 300 users or 4000,” Jason stated.

When asked about the other contributing factors in Harry & David’s decision to implement CSI’s Virtual Observer solution, Jason replied with that “the major factors were price and usability. There are systems being sold out there with many more bells and whistles than Virtual Observer but the question, for us, was, would we really use all those extras? In the end we felt that CSI offered a solution that was one we could understand and use. We just couldn’t cost justify all those extra features. Because of the seasonality in our business, it is always a challenge to size a system for our peak and see that our costs and licensing fees reflect our lower usage the rest of the year. CSI accomplished that for us.”

Many e-commerce companies are faced with trying to achieve Visa payment card industry (PCI) compliance. Harry & David has implemented Virtual Observer’s Media Encryption technology to encrypt all interactions. Besides PCI compliance, this also helps to protect valuable customer information. “This did help us achieve PCI compliance, which is very important to us as we accept customers’ credit cards orders over the phone,” Jason added.

Asked about what type of impact Virtual Observer has had, Jason replied with “One of the immediate benefits was our ability to monitor that large influx of new associates we have at our season. Being able to give them feedback on their performance quickly and correct areas where they are having trouble has lower our attrition, during that critical period, and saved us money.”
“We highly recommend Virtual Observer for other e-commerce contact centers. The features, cost, and ease of use along with the good customer service provided by CSI makes this system an excellent choice.”

Harry & David provides consumers with gourmet-quality fruit and gift assortments year-round from their mail order catalogs, online store, or retail stores nationwide. Their headquarters is in Medford, Oregon, and they also have a campus in Hebron, Ohio. Harry & David operates a seasonal call center in Eugene, Oregon.

What's the most frequent use for call recording: quality assurance or liability / verification?

We asked this question to a diverse group of call center professionals. Among the responses:

"My company does not use call recording software; however, we often find the need to partner with entities that do supply such capabilities for our customer base. We sell solutions that provide E911 support for Enterprise customers. Being that a 911 call more then likely is some sort of emergency, most customers have strict requirements for call recording. In these cases, I would assume the need will be much more for liability protection, though I could also see need to review 911 calls from a training perspective." - e911 solution provider

"Most catalog companies I’ve spoken to are heavily into sales and customer service, so training seems to be the most important issue." - Call Recording Sales Executive

"Some are recording sales confirmations for high ticket items but for the most part they capture unique identifiers as a means of certifying the purchase." - Call Center Consultant

"I’ve found that most catalog centers I’ve reached out to have expressed a need for employee development vs. legal/liability recording," - Regional Sales Manager, Call Center Recording Solutions

"Depends on the industry, of course. For catalog companies, it's definitely QA" - Call Center Software Programmer

"It would seem to me that certain e-commerce industries, such as catalog companies, would definitely start out call recording to help meet their quality initiatives, but I could see more and more of them starting to record all calls for liability reasons and dispute resolution. They definitely need to encrypt calls if they are accepting credit card orders over the phone." - Marketing Executive

New Call Center Industry Search Engine

We've helped to create the world's first search engine designed to specifically feature relevant call center results. Several call center vendor websites are already indexed by the engine and specialized keywords have been associated with those sites. Try some searches, either on the sidebar of this blog, or go directly to the search engine here:

Call Center Industry Search Engine

Results Companies Inc. selects Virtual Observer to rapidly create better trained customer service agents

Results Companies, Inc. is a global firm providing outsourced call center services. They started out 18 years ago as a privately held company with a predictive dialer product. As they ended up working more and more with telemarketing agents on an outbound basis, they eventually grew to offer both inbound and outbound call center services. Results Companies now has a “best of breed” product used by front line managers of call centers, helping them produce better trained agents.

In the call center solutions market, finding the right vendor can be a daunting process when your investment will eventually integrate with your existing solutions. This is exactly the scenario which faced Results Companies, Inc. last fall when they set out to select a call recording and quality assurance vendor. They needed a solid solution with robust features which would not only scale with their aggressive growth plans, but also would compliment their outsourced call center offerings.

Results Companies, Inc. also planned to use the features of the call recording and quality monitoring system as a marketing differentiator. Using the quality assurance tools of the new system would enable them to not only handle customers’ inbound and outbound phone traffic, but it would allow them to evaluate the performance of each interaction and provide targeted training back to the agents.

Results Companies looked at a few different call recording systems and eventually chose Virtual Observer (VO) by Coordinated Systems, Inc (CSI).

“We were looking for a call recording and quality monitoring solution that our team would be comfortable with,” said Alec Brecker, Chief Operations Office at Results Companies. “Virtual Observer offered everything we wanted to do at an attractive economic value. We wanted something that would be easy to use, so as we scaled up, it would be something that wouldn’t hinder our growth.” Click here to read more...

Creating a network of call center industry blogs

We're looking to find other company blogs to include in our new "blogroll" (a "blogroll" is a list of like-minded blogs) that we'll be debuting soon.

Virtually any company in the call center solutions market (who has an active blog) is encouraged to submit a link.

We'll review the quality of the blog and let you know if you've been included. We'll then ask for a link back and we'll make the entire blogroll available to include on your blog.

This will have positive effects on your blog traffic.

Segments of the call center industry we're seeking initially:

- CRM software companies
- IVR software companies
- VoIP systems companies
- Speech Analytics systems companies
- Call Center outsourcers
- Phone Systems integrators
- Call Center trade journals and news sites

If you are interested, please comment below.

Glossary defines CTI and SMDR, among other things...

We've added a new glossary of technical call center terms to the site. This includes many of the frequently used acronyms you've grown to hear and love, such as:

TDM
ANI/DNIS
SMDR
CTI
VoIP

Please click here to browse the call center glossary

How smaller call centers can attain world class status

This case study was recently published on Contact Center World and tells the tale of a convenience store chain that was able to leverage emerging call center technologies and become a world class call center.

An interesting side note is that on the first day of using their new call recording system, Maverik, Inc. was able to use the recordings to help the police nab suspects who had perpetrated credit card fraud.

Click here to read this case study (requires registration on ContactCenterWorld)