ACDs—Specialized Equipment to Handle Large Volumes of Calls
Automatic call distributors (ACDs) are used to manage call traffic and create call center reports. Their most important functions are to save money on call centers' largest expense, agents, and to provide management reports on call volume and agent performance. Departments that use ACDs typically have more calls than people to handle them. Having a machine rather than an operator transfer calls saves about 20 seconds per call. Another saving with ACDs is the consolidation of multiple small groups of agents into fewer large groups as indicated in Figure 2.10.
Figure 2.10. An Automatic Call Distributor with three groups of agents. If one group of agents is busy, the ACD can send calls to the second and third groups.
One large group of agents can handle more calls than the same number of agents scattered throughout small groups. This is analogous to the U.S. Post Office using one long line for postal clerks rather than an individual line for each “agent.” With one line for all postal workers, a clerk will free up more quickly from the “pool” and more people will be helped within a given amount of time.
Automatic call distributors (ACDs) perform the following functions:
Route incoming calls to the agent that has been idle the longest.
Route incoming calls to the appropriate agent group based on the telephone number dialed or by the customer's telephone number.
If all agents are busy, either hold the call in a queue, route the call to an alternative group of agents or give the caller the option to leave a voice mail message.
Enable organizations to locate call centers in any country or part of the world. Cities in India and midwestern parts of the United States are commonly used because of the availability of agents capable of taking phone calls.
Callers to ACDs can recognize when they reach an ACD if they hear a message such as:
“All of our agents are busy. Please hold and the next available agent will take your call.”
ACD systems are sold as standalone systems and as add-on software and hardware for PBXs and key systems. The main vendor of standalone systems is Aspect Communications. These systems are aimed at large call centers such as those in the airline and financial services industries. Nortel Networks and Avaya Communications have the largest installed base of PBX-based systems. Most of the larger key systems now offer ACD functionality.
Network-Based ACD Functions
ACD call-routing functionality is available from network service providers as well as with on-site equipment. Network-based services generally are adjuncts to customer premise systems. Network-based call routing enhances functionality without requiring end users to purchase hardware or software for intersite routing. They offer a way to seamlessly route and transfer calls between sites. Network-based services route calls based on:
Options callers select from a “menu” of selections (“press 1 for sales,” etc.)
Amount of traffic already sent to each location
Parameters such as time of day or day of the week
Availability of agents and trunks at each center
Selections from a Menu in Carriers' Networks
The carrier sends the three- or four-dialed number identification service (DNIS) digits associated with menu selections to the on-site ACD identifying the caller's selection. The on-site equipment uses the DNIS digits to route callers to the selected group of agents. For example, DNIS digits 6611 are associated with customer service and DNIS digits 6622 are associated with sales. Network providers generally charge callers a combination of a fixed fee to store menus and a usage fee for every menu selection accessed per month. Toll-free usage charges apply in addition to network routing fees.
LAN/PBX/ACD Connectivity to Enhance Productivity
New ACDs have connections to peripheral devices, the Internet and LANs. They also have links to corporate local area networks for distributing call center reports to managers.
Downloading ACD Statistics to PCs
Reports on real-time status of calls are the lifeblood of an ACD. Downloading ACD statistics is commonly done from PCs connected to local area networks (LANs). Once the information is downloaded, it can be put into a spreadsheet program for manipulation, long-term storage and analysis. Computer- and LAN-to-ACD/PBX connectivity is used to:
Provide real-time status of incoming and outgoing ACD calls and agents on ACD supervisors' PC screens
Indicate usage on individual trunks so that managers will know if they have the correct number of lines and that all of the lines are working
Determine the number of abandoned calls; a high number of abandoned calls is an indication that the call center needs to add staff
Alert supervisors to unusually high or low call volumes so staffing can be adjusted accordingly
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Call Centers
Customer relationship management (CRM) is the ability to offer support to customers over whichever media they use to contact the center. These media include the Internet, telephone and facsimile. According to the MultiMedia Telecommunications Association, as reported in the December 2000 issue of Business Communications Review, more than half of all call centers are starting to integrate Web access into their centers.
Call centers need to find ways to:
Answer callers' questions about products
Confirm Internet-originated orders and repair reports
Perform customer service (e.g., returns, credits, exchanges) for Internet inquiries
Use document sharing to guide customers through Web pages and filling out online forms
Conduct text-based chats with online customers in real time
Many of the CRM systems provide one integrated queue for email, voice calls and fax messages. Figure 2.11 illustrates this configuration. Specialized software installed on organizations' servers also can recognize email messages by topic and automatically respond to the email. Firewalls screen messages for viruses before they reach LAN-based servers. According to Forrester Research and Giga Information Group, Web self-service generally costs $1 per customer contact. Email contacts range from $3 to $10 and an 800-number telephone contact costs from $10 to $33. Moreover, real-time and historical reports monitor and track calling, response time and, if integrated with back-office systems, revenue per transaction.
Figure 2.11. Connections between the Internet and call centers.
Email management in these systems can:
Route email to a representative trained on the topic in the subject line of the email message
Create reports based on the number of messages received, by message subject
Track the number of email messages replied to by each agent
All of the major ACD companies plus Cisco and various software companies offer some type of Web and fax integration.
Connecting specialized packages to ACDs on proprietary PBXs such as those sold by Avaya is costly. Specialized hardware and software is required. The software translates messages between the PBX and the CRM software. These are computer telephony integration (CTI) links described later. In the future, as more customers acquire standards-based, IP telephone systems, the cost of linking specialized CRM solutions to ACDs will be significantly lower.
Integrated Voice Response Units—Using the Telephone as a Computer Terminal
Voice response units respond to DTMF tones (touch-tone) or spoken commands to obtain information from computers. For example, people call their bank or credit card company to find their balance or to learn if a payment has been received. They enter their account number and personal identification number when prompted by an electronic voice. The voice response unit “speaks” back the requested information such as users' bank balances.
Large financial institutions also offer account information retrieval through speech recognition in their integrated voice response (IVR) systems. Companies justify the expense of speech recognition because it means fewer people need to speak with live agents. (The terms integrated voice response and voice response are used interchangeably.)
Voice response units (see Figure 2.12) enable organizations to provide round-the-clock information to callers without having to pay overtime wages. Manufacturers of voice response systems are: Edify, InterVoice-Brite, Phillips through its purchase of Voice Control Systems, Syntellect and Periphonics, which is owned by Nortel Networks. The following are examples of short, simple transactions where voice response technology is used:
Cable television, to select pay-per-view movies
Newspapers, to enable subscribers to stop and start papers for vacations and report nondelivery of newspapers
Mutual fund companies, for trades and account balances
At airlines (with speech recognition capability) for callers to hear flight information
Within organizations, so that employees can learn about health and pension benefits
Universities, for registration and grade reporting
Figure 2.12. A voice response unit connected to an ACD or PBX.
Integrated Voice Response units for voice portals and Web browsing
Speech recognition software installed on integrated voice response (IVR) platforms are used by HeyAnita, Yahoo!, AOL, Tellme, Quack.com (owned by AOL) and BeVocal for voice portals geared toward consumers. Voice portals (also known as speech portals) enable people to retrieve information such as weather reports, sports scores and email from Web sites using spoken commands. Some voice portals earn money from advertising played to callers and from cellular carriers who use the service for their own customers.
Informio, Inc. offers a voice portal aimed at business customers. The service lets staff access corporate intranet–located information using audio commands. Informio calls its system a Unified Media Browser™. For example, someone with a wireless Palm pilot can download his or her email by using speech commands. Informio's browsers are located in carrier, large customer and application service provider networks. They translate speech commands to computer commands that they send to servers containing information requested by callers.
Some services such as the AOL voice portal have natural language capability. Natural language systems understand full sentences. For example, AOL says, “Welcome to AOL. What do you want to do today?” AOL uses speech recognition from SpeechWorks International installed on IVR systems. Voice portal IVR systems have connections to computers containing the information callers request. See Figure 2.13. (For more information on speech recognition and VoiceXML, see Chapter 1.)
Figure 2.13. Speech portal connected to Web servers. Courtesy of SpeechWorks.
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)—Routing Callers More Intelligently
Computer telephony integration (CTI), originally available in the late 1980s, is software and hardware that translates signals between telephone systems and computers so that they can coordinate routing calls and account information to agents. For example, the following can be done:
Route calls to agents based on the caller's telephone number.
Notify the organization's computers to send the customer's record to the agent handling the call.
Transfer the customer's record and information on the agent's screen along with calls transferred between representatives.
The motivation for installing these usually expensive systems is to save agent time. Having the account information on the screen, a “screen pop,” when the telephone call arrives saves 10 to 20 seconds per call.
The telephone number of the caller can be delivered to an ACD in two different ways:
Directly from the telephone carrier when the call is received on trunks that capture callers' phone numbers. This functionality is called automatic number identification (ANI).
From voice response systems where callers are asked to enter, for example, their account number.
The computer system matches the telephone number or account number with the caller's records. The computer sends account information to the agent's PC who receives the call. All of the communications between the network and the computer, and the computer and the telephone system are translated by the CTI links. Both the ACD and the computer are connected to the LAN. (See Figure 2.14.) Software in the CTI application is called an Application Programming Interface (API). APIs are an interface or “middleware” between unlike devices.
Figure 2.14. Linking ACDs and PBXs to computers.
For the most part, because of high costs, only large organizations have implemented CTI applications. Many organizations have purchased computer telephony packages and have not implemented them or have only used them for short periods of time due to the difficulty and expense of implementation.
CRM applications reviewed in the previous section are based on CTI software. They present cookies and IP addresses to computer databases so they can send agents the customer record as well as the message from the Web such as a repair or sales request. (Cookies are small text files that sites attach to users' browsers that identify the person's PC.)