1. Call Center Technology 101:
A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Common Call Center Technologies
Presented by:

2. Penny Reynolds is a Founding Partner of The Call Center School where she heads up curriculum development. She develops and teaches courses on a wide variety of call center topics, including workforce management, performance measurement, and call center technologies. Penny is a popular speaker at industry conferences and association meetings and a frequent contributor to industry trade publications. Her articles have appeared in print publications such as Customer Interface, Customer Interaction Solutions, and Customer Support Management, and on-line sources such as ICCM Weekly, New Frontiers, SourceCRM, and Workforce Weekly. She has recently published a book entitled Call Center Staffing: The Complete, Practical Guide to Workforce Management and has also co-authored the five textbooks for University of Phoenix’s call center certification program. An honors graduate of Vanderbilt University, Penny was one of the first recipients of Call Center Magazine’s prestigious Call Center Pioneer award.

3. Session Overview In this session, you will learn to:
Describe the following call delivery technologies:
ACD
CTI
IVR
Desktop Tools
Automated Dialer
Describe the following performance management tools:
Workforce Management
Quality Monitoring
Contact Management
Management
Identify the technology components of a CRM strategy.

4. Making the Customer Connection
Call Delivery Technologies

5. Automatic Call Distributor (ACD)
The Core Call Center Technology:
Connectivity between network and agent
Specialized routing with basic functions of a PBX
Complex or simple routing among agent groups
Recorded announcements and menus
Management reports

6. ACD Vendors Traditional Vendors Nortel Avaya Siemens Rockwell Aspect
Non-Traditional Suppliers
Interactive Intelligence
Cisco
Genesys
eON
Many others emerging
Ericsson
Alcatel
NEC
Mitel

7. Which ACD is used in your call center?
Audience Composition
Polling Question
Which ACD is used in your call center?
Avaya
Nortel
Aspect
Siemens
Non-traditional supplier

8. ACD Critical Issues Capacity for connections and traffic
Reliability & redundancy
Reporting capabilities & flexibility
Compatibility with existing components
Upgradability
Vendor focus on new developments

9. Integrating the Telephone and the Computer
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
Integrating the Telephone and the Computer

10. Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)
Connects phone system to another computer
Allows transfer of network and IVR data to host
Controls call routing with added intelligence
Provides appropriate screens to agent with call
Routes customer data with the telephone call
Uses:
ANI - the number from which they're calling
DNIS - the number the customer dialed

11. CTI Vendors
CTI requires components from multiple vendors:
ACD supplies a connection and software to support communication to and from it.
CTI Server provides the connectivity application (API) that translates telephony and computer commands.
Host computer supplies connectivity and data look- up functions to support screen pop and/or other commands.

12. The Voice Processing Family
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
The Voice Processing Family

13. Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
Capabilities:
Provides interaction between caller and computer using touch-tone telephone signals
Reads caller input as directions and/or account specific information
Requires DTMF signaling or voice activation
Replaces need to live agent for routine transactions

14. IVR Vendors Apex Communications Apropos Intervoice Periphonics Octel
Speechworks
Various PBX/ACD vendors

15. As a customer, what are some of your pet peeves when using IVR?
IVR Design Issues
As a customer, what are some of your pet peeves when using IVR?

16. IVR Critical Issues Placement Front-end Back end Scripting
Common sense order
Specific instructions
Escape route
Consistency

17. What happens at the agent desktop?
Desktop Tools
What happens at the agent desktop?

18. Desktop Tools
Provide a consistent way to assimilate information from multiple applications
Combine everything the agent needs on one computer screen
Point and click Graphical User Interface (GUI)
“May haves”
Intuitive telephone controller
Caller ID display
On-line phone book
Ability to populate billing and customer information automatically into s and faxes

19. Desktop Tools Knowledge base Customer contacts Directory services
Types of Applications:
Knowledge base
Customer contacts
Directory services
Automated fax
Real-time voice and video

20. Audience Composition Polling Question
To what degree are your frontline staff allowed to customize the agent desktop?
Not at all
To a small degree
To a large degree
Completely under their control

21. Automated Dialer
Outbound Calling

22. Automated Dialer Looks up number in database or list Dials call
Capabilities:
Looks up number in database or list
Dials call
Detects live answer versus busy/no answer
Matches call to available agent
Doubles or triples productivity over manual dial

23. Dialer Vendors Amcat Castel Cilix Concerto Data-Tel DigiSoft
MarTel Int’l
Noble Systems
Predictive Software
SER Solutions
Stratasoft
Touchstar
US Infotel $$

24. How do you accomplish outbound dialing today?
Audience Composition
Polling Question
How do you accomplish outbound dialing today?
We don’t make outbound calls.
We manually dial.
We use an automated dialer.

25. Dialer Critical Issues
Speed of Dialing
Efficiency versus phantom calls
Staffing
Best use of resources
Occupancy concerns
Call Blending
The productivity myth

26. Call Delivery Checklist
ACD
CTI
IVR
Desktop Tools
Automated Dialer

27. Forecasting and Scheduling
Workforce Management
Forecasting and Scheduling

28. Workforce Management Forecast calls and workload
Basic Capabilities:
Forecast calls and workload
Determine staff requirements
Create optimal staff schedules
Track performance within the day

29. Advanced WFM Capabilities
Performance reporting
Real-time adherence monitoring
Vacation administration
Non-phone work forecasting and scheduling
Multi-site scheduling and tracking
Multi-skill scheduling (skill-based routing)
Simulation of complex routing environments

30. Workforce Management Vendors
Aspect Communications (TCS)
Blue Pumpkin
Envision Telephony
Genesys
GMT Corporation
IEX Corporation
Odysoft
Pipkins

31. Critical Questions More than 50 staff?
Mix of full-time/part-time staff?
Extended hours of operation?
Multi-media contact handling?
Multiple sites?
Complex work rules and scheduling rules?

32. How do you accomplish forecasting and scheduling today?
Audience Composition
Polling Question
How do you accomplish forecasting and scheduling today?
Manually
Spreadsheets or homegrown tools
Commercial workforce management package

33. How well are agents doing at responding to customer needs?
Quality Monitoring
How well are agents doing at responding to customer needs?

34. Quality Monitoring Random look at customer transactions
Control over quality
Observation and/or recording:
Silent monitoring: recorded or observed
Voice logging: recorded
Screen/voice logging: recorded

35. How Quality Monitoring Works
Conversations can be recorded or observed.
Based on programming, it records transactions by agent, by time-of-day, or type of call.
Recording can be automatically scheduled by linking to workforce management system.
Data screens can also be captured from the monitored call.

36. Quality Monitoring Vendors
Astound Inc. (
Envision Telephony (
etalk Corporation (
Eyretel Inc. ( - part of Witness
Nice Systems (
Verint (
Witness Systems (

37. How do you manage the quality of your customer interactions today?
Audience Composition
Polling Question
How do you manage the quality of your customer interactions today?
Side-by-side review only
Tape recorders
Silent monitoring
Quality monitoring/recording system

38. Sales and/or Contact Tracking
Contact Management
Sales and/or Contact Tracking

39. Contact Management Tracks and measures customer interactions
Provides cradle-to-grave reporting systems
Reduces problem with insistent customers
Correlates all interactions
Helps determine worth of each customer, cost of each call, and service cost

40. How Contact Management Works
Tracks calls, problem management, and problem resolution
Displays information related to system status, trouble tickets, known product defects
Captures information about a company’s IT and telecommunications infrastructure
Customer access can enable user to:
Review service level agreements
Research equipment and site configurations
Resolve simple problems
Submit service requests

41. Contact Management Vendors
AmDocs Limited ( formerly Clarify
Astea International (
CreekPointe ( formerly Goldmine
eGain Communications (
Epicor Software Corp (
Magic Software Ent. (
PeopleSoft ( formerly Vantive
Siebel (

42. E-mail Management Systems
Receives s into work queue
May send immediate acknowledgement
Maintains queue rules and reporting on status of all s
May be integrated with voice queue and/or workforce management system

43. Audience Composition Polling Question
How fast can your customers expect a full turnaround on an request?
Within the hour
Same business day
Within 48 hours
Longer than 2 days

44. E-mail Issues Compatibility with existing systems
Reporting capabilities
Potential for immediate acknowledgement
Potential for knowledge-based processing of most likely answers to query
System reliability and backup
Vendor viability

45. Performance Management Tools
Workforce Management
Quality Monitoring
Contact Management
Management

46. Customer Relationship Management
A Final “Technology”
Customer Relationship Management
Process or Technology?

47. Customer Relationship Management
Tools for enhancing customer interactions:
Databases of information about customers
Knowledge bases of data and problem solving tools
Contact management
Analysis tools for sorting and studying data
Centralized repositories available to all customer interaction channels
Any of these can be considered a CRM technology!

48. Some Thoughts on CRM Tools are only the beginning.
Attitudes, processes & procedures must support change of focus.
Existing data must be converted for storage in the central databases – departmental systems must be transitioned to corporate-wide one.
Access to the data must be available for all customer-facing personnel.
Personnel must be trained on what changes to make in their behavior based on data they see.

49. CRM Critical Issues Proven capability to do what you want to do
Compatibility with existing components
Capacity to grow dramatically
A clear understanding of how data will be fed into the system from existing databases
Financial stability of the vendor
Ability to put together the whole package, not just point solutions
Processes, procedures, and corporate support needed to make it a success

50. Thank you for your participation today.
Good luck making the most of your call center technologies!

51. For More Information