Ideas to reduce your Agent talk time in an Inbound Call Center

In this article, we will discuss on how to improve agent productivity by discussing on various ideas with which Agent's Talk Time can be reduced. Call center software solution should look at reducing the agent talk time as much as possible. The premise for this discussion is that the Agent / Call Center Executive is the costliest resource in the system and every thing else works around them to help and maximize the Agent's efficiency.

Some of these are common sense and most common practices across Contact Centers. Some of them are specific to how the agent talks and walks the script with the customer. We have listed them down all here:

1. Have Cheat sheets -
• Ready made information like phone numbers of branches , Escalation numbers where you need to transfer etc. Some of this information can be stored in your contact center software itself like transfer number lists, conference numbers etc - This feature is part of our product http://cloudagent.in 
• Some data will be specific to your process, like if you are a cab operator you will find that having all the operator numbers listed ( easy to search) will shorten your talk time, or like having all numbers of bus operators will help in case you run a call center for a travel operator
2. Your Contact Center software should be integrated with your CRM ( CTI integration) for giving a POP to the agent with the customer information. It has been observed that POP helps reduce Agent talk time by almost 30% in various processes.

• Here at Cloud Agent , we ensure that all our customers experience this efficiency by integrating their CRM systems. We have integrated almost 30 different CRM systems till date.
3. Incoming Number display - Agents will have ready made reference of the customer number and they need not spend time in asking the number.
4. Script:  Having a script which is related to your process is another way to reduce your agent talk time. The agents can quickly get the problem addressed. Obviously, the script is an evolving phenomena and has to be changed based on feedback received periodically. Script reduces talk time by 10% especially in support contact centers
5. Skill Based Routing:  Diagnosing the customer problem/ needs in the IVR itself by providing options in the IVR is another way to reduce talk time. The moment call lands on the agent screen, your agent is equipped with information on what the customer wants. This works best in tandem with Screen POP and is the most effective feature.

There are lot of ways to reduce talk time or eliminate the need to talk to an agent in the IVR itself. You can refer to our previous blog for this - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/06/5-characteristics-of-good-ivr-system-in.html

Hope to save some bucks for you ...Cheers

Cloud Call Center ACD,Queue management and Service Level Efficiency

Now that you have decided that you need a call center for your business - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/02/does-your-business-need-contact-center.html  and also that you have taken care of the basic estimate of number of agents required etc - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/03/key-data-points-to-consider-while.html, it is time to delve into some core features/necessities of the day to day operations of a call center.

Some common questions we come across is what if all my agents are busy at peak load? What if there is no one to take the calls? What is the Call treatment when a customer calls at such an instance?

All these lead to a discussion on Queue Management with ACD (Automatic Call Distribution - we will go in detail on ACD in our next article) and how it helps your business in increasing customer satisfaction or a direct revenue addition. In this article, we will discuss the following:

• Why is Queue Management required?
• Call Queuing mechanisms
• How many queues can a contact center handle?
• How can the management make use of Queues?

Why is Queue Management required?

To answer this question ,In a recent deployment we did - The customer was using a system which could hunt numbers and connect. It did not have ACD nor queue management system. The effect was the customer thought that they had enough agents to answer the calls. All the extra calls are going to voicemail. Once Ozonetel's Cloud Contact Center - http://cloudagent.in was implemented, there was an immediate turnaround in the answered calls due to queue management as well as 50% increase in customer satisfaction for those who were calling the contact center( Their calls were not disconnected abruptly and they connected faster due to ACD) A graphical representation of this analysis is presented in Figure-1 in a Pie Chart.

The data presented makes it very clear that for any Call Center implemented, Queue management is a must without which you not only make customers unhappy but also lose potential business.

Call Queuing mechanisms

Various call queuing methods can be deployed for your contact center.What should be the call treatment while the customer has gone in queue and is waiting for an agent?. Is he a VIP customer? Is it a payment transaction call waiting in queue ( potential business)?Some advanced implementations include 

• priority queuing of customer calls ( for VIP customers) based on phone numbers
• for a particular transaction type 
• for a particular choice in the IVR 

Though there are various options available in standard contact center implementations, you need to think through the business processes and decide the right methods for maximum impact.

The final step in Queuing is having a limit on the Queue time and size ( Major impact is for Toll Free Numbers - see below). But once you limit the time & size, you need to have the customer call ended in a professional way. This is where Fallback Options come in - Do you want the customer to leave a VoiceMail? Maybe ask him in IVR if he wants a Call Back?Maybe you have free agents in another Skill or another location - Do you want to route the call there?

How many queues can a contact center handle?

Let's get this short and straight - A Call Center can not have unlimited queues. It is limited by the number of E1 lines (PRI lines) if you are running a PSTN contact center or by the bandwidth you have in case you have been able to get VOIP lines from the operator directly. In case some one makes you believe otherwise , Do Not.

So always mix up your queue with a timeout and always have a fallback after a minimal wait time. As discussed above,Potential fall back can be Voicemail, routing to another skill or an IVR option where customer goes through self service or requests a call back.

Also, if you are having Toll Free Number , then queuing does add up to your cost. So be sure about the number of queues ( Queue Sizing) you want to have because every additional customer in queue is adding to your toll free minutes and thus increase your costs. To give an example, one of our customers has intelligently used queue sizing and has put a limit to half the number of agents ( The standard will be 1:1 queuing) and rest of the calls ( after the queue limit) are automatically sent to voicemail.

How can the management make use of Queues? 

Though queuing is not desired by most contact centers either due to stringent SLA norms or due to very good policies on customer user experience management, it is an inevitable event in any contact center. Once you have accepted that, you can utilize the opportunity of wait time by the customers for the following:

1. Play new offers/discounts thus increasing sales
2. Move customers to interact online by playing the relevant messages and reduce your contact center costs subsequently
3. Give the customers right info. on the queue 
4. Prioritize your VIP customers and get higher transaction values for your business
5. Reduce costs on Toll Free by managing Queue size

Summary:

You need to reach the point of Zen, Realize that "You can not avoid queuing" unless you have overloaded the agent roster with more than 250% capacity. There will always be a peak load and being practical, you need to roster agents for the average. You should be ready to accept a certain % of pick rate. If 100% answered rate is required , then be ready to invest in at least 3X of the normal contact center cost in terms of agents and infrastructure.

Using Queues, you can improve your answered rates and also manage the contact center operations with the average number of agents required. So go ahead, prepare your self to have some queues and manage them

About us - Cloud Agent:

Our product – http://cloudagent.in is India’s first of its kind Call Center solution on the cloud. We have taken care of all the above parameters discussed, to ensure that our customers can grow on the same system from a small Contact center to a full blown customer experience management system. To know more, email us at sales@cloudagent.in or contact us on our toll free 1800 200 0820.

Key Data points to consider while setting up a call center in India

This article is intended for all those business users who are intending to set up a Contact Center and want to make objective decisions based on data. The data presented here is based on our experience of serving 150+ customers on our Cloud based Virtual Contact Center in India - http://cloudagent.in 

If you are looking at factors to consider on whether you need a Call Center at all in the first place, you can read our blog - http://blog.cloudagent.in/2013/02/does-your-business-need-contact-center.html

By the time you finish reading this article, you should be able to calculate and decide on the number of agents required or number of PRI lines required or number of calls you can handle using a certain number of agents etc.

Based on our observation we have given averages across verticals ( We are lucky to be serving customers across 20+ verticals, for case studies - http://ozonetel.com/casestudies.php). The key parameters that have been considered are efficiency of handling calls (% answered calls), Pickup times, Total handling time per day of an agent , wrapup times etc.

For an Inbound Contact Center, our observations are as given below: 

Wrap up Time is the time agent spends after the call on writing additional information etc about the call.

Call Handling time is Agents Talk Time + Wrap Up Time .

The conclusions you can draw based on this data is that a business requires its agents to work on its process as well along with taking the calls - hence agent utilization will not be more than 30-40% max. for an inbound contact center. So handling customer calls is only part of the contact center executives job. It is very important that you know what percentage of your agents time will go attending calls and what % is required to work in the process updating customer data - be it orders, deliveries or leads.

Based on this data, you should be able to estimate what are your call center needs. For example, if you need to receive 1500 calls with a success rate of 90% ( answer 90% of 1500 calls -1350), with an average duration of 3 minutes per call, agent utilization rates of 40% and total agent login time of 480 mins ( 8 hours) - You will need 21 agents approximately. With the same data but utilization of only 30%  - you will need 28 agents.  
To ensure that you can calculate your call center needs, we have given here a basic calculator which will tell you the number of agents required or number of calls you can handle for a given set of agents etc. You can access this calculator here - http://ozonetel.com/app/calculator.php

Please do note that this is a basic calculator and does not consider queue times  etc. If you are a real pro, then simply google for a Erlang calculator and use one of the numerous calculators given on the web. In our next article, we will definitely provide our version of an advanced calculator.

Does your business NEED a Contact Center?

You are at the inflection point in your business,where your product or service offering is a hit with customers and now there is a regular funnel of customers signing up for it. Things are great.

Moving ahead as your customer base increases, your support requests increase too. So far, you have published your personal number, but as you scale, that’s not enough. Good customer support is what will retain your customer, and we all know cost of customer acquisition is much higher than customer retention & ‘happy customers will also become your brand ambassadors’

One of the most common questions we come across the company’s is

Is it time to start a dedicated contact center?

Different flavours of the same question are –

How do we qualify the business needs and decide whether a dedicated setup has to be created for your Customer Support? Or

When is an integrated business and operational support system needed for your business?

To make it easier for you to answer this very important question, we have created a checklist below. Please spend some time thinking about these questions and fill up the checklist. This will give you an idea about your need to set up a contact centre.

To understand whether your business needs a contact centre, Please check on the following:

Customer Experience when they call your business:

1.     Have your customers started complaining that they are not able to get through the number published for support (Its busy most of the time or no one picks up)?

2.   Do your customers have to try your number multiple times to get connected to support team?

3.   Are your customers asking to talk to the same person who spoke with them last time?

4.  Does your customer have to wait while PBX keeps ringing different phones and finally connects to the reception who again transfers to a phone that never picks up?

5.    Does your Customer have no confidence that there would never be a proper response when he calls up. He feels lucky if he is connected to right person?

6. Have you decided to hire dedicated staff just to take customer calls.

Your expectation from the system handling customer calls:

1.   Do you expect all your customers to be greeted and let them know that they reached the right number,  when they call you?

2.    Do you want your customer to have predictable experience every time, with high level of confidence that whenever they call, they would receive proper treatment.

3.    Do you want your customer to be greeted with their name when an agent answers the  call?

4.  Do you want to have faster ROI, with better Agent efficiency & Productivity?

5.  Would you like to help your agent to handle more calls without being stressed out?

6.  Do you want to know if the support team is performing as per your expectation and is not over or under staffed?

7.  As management, is there a sales conversion from these calls – do you want to track it?

8.  Do you need audio recordings for quality check, future reference, for support ticket closures?

If the answers to 50% or more of these questions is Yes , then definitely you need to setup a contact center.

Contact Center system:

In simple word contact center system is a set of multiple systems that work together to provide predictable customer experience. Where customer knows what to expect next and how he will be able to get the right response for his query.

Technically,Contact Center system monitors the resources such as agent, phone lines etc. and distributes the calls efficiently and to the right agents. It provides real-time feedback to the caller to keep in updated of his call status (such as queue location or expected wait time). Allows caller to make a choice e.g. Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support etc.

For customer perspective he is in control and drives the conversation, this could be by choosing the right IVR option, knowing the wait time in queue and selecting the option to call back dropping out of the queue and much more.

From agent perspective it makes sure that all agents are loaded equally by making intelligent distribution of the call. It provides tools and controls that help agents to respond to the calls efficiently such as customer information screen pop, control bar that let agent control the call using keyboard instead of shuffling between the keyboard and phone keypad and many such features.

For management they get the absolute control over the process and performance. They can design the business rules based on various parameters (such as platinum, gold or silver customer) and make sure that customer gets the treatment they deserve. Monitor that the service level and quality goals are met. Take informed decision on, if the current contact center setup( in terms of infrastructure and manpower) is enough or redundant for his current requirement.

Contact Center System –High Level Perspective 

Once you have right setup in place, you have built a strong base to transform your Support center into an industry standard Customer Contact Center.

Phases of Transitioning to a Customer Centric Organization

  

Now that you know when to go for a Contact Center Solution, do ensure that the same system can Scale with flexibility for meeting your ultimate objective of a Customer Centric Organization.

But when does your contact center system transforms into a Customer Experience Management System? What is the difference?

Next week, we will look at how we can upgrade our contact center solution to a Customer Experience Management System.

About us - Cloud Agent:

Our product – http://cloudagent.in is India’s first of its kind Contact Center solution on the cloud. We have taken care of all the above parameters discussed, to ensure that our customers can grow on the same system from a small Contact center to a full blown customer experience management system. To know more, email us at sales@cloudagent.in or contact us on our toll free 1800 200 0820.

Introducing Cloud Based Contact Center

Contact Center earlier use to be an option for any business providing customer services, but now with customers more aware and used to such services it has become mandatory. Domestic businesses with lower margin and higher volume, investing into setting up contact center is big overhead. Beside keeping up pace with changing technology and meeting customer expectation can be exhausting.  Cloud Contact Center services  precisely addresses all such business requirements, without hurting the business margins.


Ozonetel CloudAgent is an in-house developed platform, built for cloud contact center solution. It offers best of the breed technology and increased up time for your contact center at a very efficient pay as you use price.

CloudAgent Offers

1. Inbound contact center with its Multi-tenant, Multi-location Intelligent routing capable ACD.
2. Outboud Dialers (Preview and Progressive)
3. Dynamic IVR,  any complex IVR can be implemented using any web application technology with simple Kookoo API's (www.kookoo.in)
4. Integrated SMS Gateway using Kookoo API
5. Integrated Fax -  send and receive using Kookoo API
6. Integrated Payment Gateway IVR for credit card payment collection
7. CloudAgent API that provides beyond CTI capabilities to the platform for any third party system integration (CRM, Business application etc)
8. Interaction Analyst, integrated web enabled contact center analytic tools that offer 360' view of your contact center process. It offer various online dashboards, more than 200 graphical and tabular reports and integrated voice logger. 
9. Real-time dashboards provides the real time view of your contact center. All critical information such as queue status, abandoned call, agent availability and current performance, and much more is available online.

Key Advantage "Its built for Cloud"

No Servers to be installed,No wiring to be done, No weeks of purchase and provisioning , No Huge setup cost's...All of this and much more.


With Cloud Model in, provisioning PRIs, setting up ACD/IVR, setting up call loggers, installing phoneset are all things of past. Just sign up for CloudAgent and your contact center is up and running.


With Cloud Agent we have enabled customer call center's within 30 minutes inclusive of integration to their CRM, providing seamless experience to the customer.

Why Cloud Contact Center?

Factors	Traditional Brick & Mortar Call center	Virtual Call Center
Cost of running a call center	CAPEX + AMC + Monthly rentals	Monthly rentals with zero CAPEX
Minimum Agents	10 to 15	1
Risk of Capital	Very High as CAPEX once spent is gone	Very Low
System Upgrades	Have to be customized and done locally	Centrally adminstered system
Change Management	No instant upgrades for new features- Takes time	Instant upgrades to all customers
Scale As you like & Pay as you scale	NO OPTION LIKE THIS	Scale and shrink as per your business requirement
Instant Activation	No- Activation time ranges from a week to 3 months	Activation within 30 minutes

• Cost of running a call center:  There is a huge difference in the way you spend. A cloud based call center just needs a fixed rental to be paid where as the archaic variety require a CAPEX,AMC and sometimes monthly rentals as well. The positive cash flows which are triggered by the cloud model is a perfect fit for a small and medium businesses that always have priority of investing available cash flows in core business.
• Low Risk of Capital: The risk of capital in a traditional model is huge since you are investing large amounts of money into a system and if it does not fit your business, the entire investment goes bad. In the cloud model you can choose your vendor wisely but still with a minimal ( almost zero) risk to your capital. What you lose if you do not like the system or want to change is maximum a month's rental. 
• System Upgrades & Change Mangement: Change is one of the core components of any organization. The systems they use have to be agile and flexible to change. the change can be in processes,technology or also in location. The cloud model is agnostic to such changes and works the same in such an agile environment. 
• USE CASE:A typical use case we came across was when one of our customers in a city had a power outage for 8 hours and their entire business was at risk. But since they were on our cloud based contact center, the calls were still routed to their executives at different   locations, on whatever available phones leading to zero downtime and business impact even in such a dire situation.
• Scale as you like and Pay as you scale: Unlike the traditional model of spending a fortune to enable extra capacity ( which is required only for a temporary period) The cloud based contact center provides you the freedom to Scale as per your requirement and pay us only when you scale.
• Instant Activation: No brick and mortar call center can be activated in a day where as on the cloud we will activate a call center for you on a hosted model in 30 minutes flat.  

So the way we see it, shifting to a cloud based contact center is not just a need but also a must for every business to improve their ROI, NRR and also to keep the constant focus on their core business, instead of spending resources and money in managing the contact center infrastructure.

Our First Post

 In this blog we will discuss  about our virtual cloud contact center
and how its helping various businesses - be it startups, e-commerce
websites, SME's or large players to quickly provide rich interaction
experience to their customer. Enabling agent sitting across multiple locations,
working as a single team, providing localized specific services with
regional flavour.

The focus of this blog will primarily be to talk about telecom in
general, Cloud Contact Centre technologies, best practices, and the new
innovative contact centre solutions that takes the customer experience
to new level.

Cloud agent is a new approach towards the next generation contact
centre solution, we will share with you how we are solving some key
challenges in the industry and explain new trends that  our product
has lead the way for …..


Keep reading.....