Nex-Tech implements Virtual Observer for automating customer service initiatives

We are pleased to announce that Nex-Tech, a telephone service provider headquartered in Hays, Kansas, has selected CSI’s Virtual Observer Professional for call logging, screen capture and quality monitoring. Nex-Tech will be using Virtual Observer to enhance customer service initiatives.

Amy Normandin, Nex-Tech's internet help desk supervisor, said "We chose Virtual Observer based on the features it offered, the fact that it would be easy to use & implement, and the price for the overall package".

About Nex-Tech:
Nex-Tech is a subsidiary of Rural Telephone, a leader in the telecommunications industry since 1951. The goal of Nex-Tech is to provide the highest quality service possible to our customers at affordable prices. Rural Telephone and Nex-Tech have provided services for 50 years.

These are the rules of business...in call logging terms, that is.

With the rise of a number of regulations and security standards, including PCI and HIPAA compliance, more and more companies are seeing the requirement to record every call and keep them archived for X years, but also to keep them encrypted.

From the SMB up to the Enterprise, there seems to be no escape from compliance. This has created a tremendous demand for highly-reliable, highly-accessible, tightly-secure call logging systems.

Ok...so now your company has every call made in and out of your operation.

The contact center team wants to play back calls for quality monitoring purposes.

You have a gazillion calls per day mounting -- how does your quality supervisor find the ones which he should evaluate?

With Virtual Observer, we apply business rules which determine which calls show up in which supervisors' queue. Business rules can be defined as calls with recorded screens, calls from customer X, calls which are X minutes or longer, calls handled by agent A, calls passed from agent A to agent B, etc.

The complexity of your business rules depends on the different ways you are capturing data with the call. You may have CTI, or simply an SMDR feed. You may have agent tagging, which allows for the agents to tag calls with special notes or codes.

Applying business rules to your call logging solution can turn a mountain back into a molehill, which your supervisors will appreciate.

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SRA Associates chooses Virtual Observer for call logging and quality monitoring

We are pleased to announce that SRA Associates, Inc., located in Hi-Nella, New Jersey, has selected CSI’s Virtual Observer for call logging and quality monitoring.

SRA Associates has a Samsung phone system and will be using the Virtual Observer Professional Logging Edition to capture all calls and to also automate their contact center's quality initiatives.

"From a standpoint of price and options that worked with our current phone environment, Virtual Observer made the most sense for our company."
- John Ciara, President, SRA Associates

SRA Associates is a nationally licensed and bonded receivables management services organization located in Southern New Jersey. Founded in 1994, SRA Associates quickly established a reputation for delivering superior debt liquidation results while also providing unmatched customer service.

SRA Associates has developed into one of the most dependable results-oriented service providers in the recoverables industry, offering a cost-effective extension to customers' in-house recovery efforts.

How does Virtual Observer manage storage of recorded media?

In a call logging environment, where every call is captured, online storage can be managed where calls can be automatically be purged based on a storage threshold or based on date. Selected calls, however, can be retained and removed from the purging process.

Virtual Observer offers an Auto-Archiving module to completely automate the storage process. With Auto Archiving enabled, the system supports both “online” and “archived” storage where Virtual Observer will automatically write to removable media (DVD-RAM, SAN or NAS) at the time the event is recorded. This methodology allows customers to store as much as their storage location will hold, and an infinite amount of archived media.

Featured Customer: ConnectiCare

ConnectiCare recently implemented the latest version of Virtual Observer Logger. What pleased the personnel at ConnectiCare most about the upgrade was the fact that “we see some of our own suggestions come into play and become a usable feature in the system, such as additional detailed reporting.”

One of the ways Virtual Observer has made an impact on call center agent performance is by allowing supervisors to provide better training and coaching to the call center staff. Supervisors would also facilitate “peer audit” meetings, which were voluntary, yet encouraged. During the peer audit meetings agents could hear each other’s calls and audit each other using the form that the supervisors use. They were actually harder on themselves than expected.

Virtual Observer has also been used as a training mechanism for the management team at ConnectiCare. On a monthly basis the managers meet together and play a call and individually score the call. A group discussion follows exchanging ideas on how and why things may have been scored differently. This calibration helps achieve consistency.

When asked if ConnectiCare would recommend Virtual Observer to other healthcare organizations, Lyndee replied “Absolutely. Helping us comply with call recording requirements makes Virtual Observer a natural selection.”

Back in 1981, ConnectiCare launched with the mission of establishing a health plan that would truly care about improving the health of its members. ConnectiCare still lives by that same mission, serving more than 240,000 individuals in Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, and New York. In 2006, ConnectiCare was ranked #6 on the U.S. News and World Report/NCQA list of America’s Best Health Plans.

ConnectiCare maintains a local presence with 500 employees based in Farmington, Connecticut. Being able to personally provide superior customer service to local residents is a big part of their success, and some of the same logic went into their choice of Coordinated Systems, Inc.’s (CSI) Virtual Observer for call recording and quality monitoring. ConnectiCare takes great pride in delivering high-quality health insurance with exceptional customer service. One of the ways they are able to deliver world class customer service is through the performance of their call center.

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.

5 critical reasons for implementing a call logger in a small business

These are in no particular order...

* Verification purposes - capturing every call means you'll be able to go back and play calls where customers placed orders or made billing adjustments.

* Dispute resolution - call logging maintains peace of mind as "he said, she said" conflicts are easily investigated and resolved.

* Training purposes - even if you only have 3 agents, and it's not a "real" call center, capturing every call and being able to go back and evaluate process mistakes can improve the bottom line over time, as your agents begin to increase upsells and prevent cancellations.

* History - you can build a nice repository of customer communications from which you can go back in time and investigate why a customer left - or, for training purposes (positive mindset!), you can see why the customer upgraded.

* Storage Space is cheap! - storing all your calls is less of a space issue than it was even a few years ago.