The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Centre Solutions

Transcription

1 The Inner Circle Guide to Cloud-Based Contact Centre Solutions Written by Sponsored by

2 CONTENTS Introduction: Why is Cloud computing hot?... 4 Drivers for Cloud-based Contact Centre Solutions... 6 Financial... 7 Operational Functionality Strategic Considerations Inhibitors Cloud-based Contact Centre Solutions: Terminology Implementation and Use Deciding on cloud Choosing a vendor Estimating ROI and TCO Implementation Timings Results of Using Cloud-based Solutions Market Landscape Pricing and Contracts Key market sectors Conclusion The Vendor Community Altitude Software Enghouse Interactive Five Gage Networks Interactive Intelligence LiveOps NewVoiceMedia Noble Systems Ultra Communications The Supplier Directory Appendix: Vendor responses to questions About ContactBabel

3 Table of figures Figure 1: Capex and Opex changes in UK & US contact centres, Figure 2: Contact centre operating expenditure in UK & US, Figure 3: What concerns do you have about cloud or hosted solutions? Figure 4: Characteristics of businesses choosing cloud and CPE Figure 5: Have cloud-based solutions made any difference? Figure 6: If you use this functionality, is it delivered through a cloud/hosted solution? Figure 7: Pricing examples

4 INTRODUCTION: WHY IS CLOUD COMPUTING HOT? Having technology provided and managed by a third-party away from a customer's premises is not a new idea, with service bureaux and ASPs (application service providers) being around for many years. PBX functionality through Centrex has been available since the 1960s, with IVR and ACD functionality often being offered through a network provider too. In the past few years, SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solutions such as Salesforce.com offer desktop functionality for the contact centre, and many solution providers now offer convincing, rich-featured applications hosted in the cloud. That cloud-based contact centre solutions are now 'hot' is down to a mixture of factors, including the recession's negative effect on capital investment, the increasing functionality of hosted applications, and the proven success and general acceptance of cloud-based solutions. Additionally, the stranglehold that incumbent CPE telephony providers had on the industry has been loosened by the advent of IP and more open systems, with the net result being a greater choice of solution providers. The maturity of Western contact centre markets, coupled with the high levels of mergers and acquisitions in industries such as utilities, telecoms, insurance and finance mean that many large companies are now in a position where they provide customer contact via multiple sites, often running on disparate technologies. Cloud-based contact centre solutions allow a way out of proprietary systems, lack of interoperability and the expense of maintaining many different systems without gaining from economies of scale. For example, only 28% of multisite UK operations ran as truly virtual contact centres in 2011, although the US equivalent was greater, at 49%. The main reason stated that 51% of US multisite operations stayed non-virtualised was that there were too many different systems at each location to work together: a problem that cloud-based contact centre solutions address. The general lack of investment within the past few years is now showing in many contact centres, yet capital expenditure is still not forthcoming. The avoidance of large capital investments, and reduced start-up costs associated with cloud solutions is of great interest to many organisations, as is the reduced risk of trialling new functionality, and inherent future-proofing that cloud offers through frequent technology upgrades. 4

5 Start Listening Personal and efficient customer service is the lifeblood of any organisation and NewVoiceMedia s ContactWorld and ContactWorld for Salesforce makes every customer s telephone interaction a great experience, at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. Business Benefits of ContactWorld: Always available: Market leading % availability delivered from UK data centres. Greater flexibility: Customise, react, adapt and scale quickly and easily. Simpler management: No requirement for IT specialists and engineers. Increased visibility: Get a real-time window into your entire operation. Cost efficiency: No capital outlay, scalable contact centre that suits your business and budget needs. Multi-tenant infrastructure: Functionality available to all users. Improved support: Dedicated experts available 24/7 to respond to queries. NewVoiceMedia is currently active in 28 countries with over 140 customers. Let your customers do the talking

6 DRIVERS FOR CLOUD-BASED CONTACT CENTRE SOLUTIONS The many potentially-positive factors driving the uptake of cloud-based solutions can be grouped into four areas: Financial, Functional, Operational and Strategic: Financial: how does cloud affect the investment and ongoing expenditure connected with technology and the operations of the contact centre? Functional: what is the effect of cloud-based solutions on the functionality available to the contact centre? Operational: what are the changes in the way in which the contact centre is able to operate? Strategic: how are wider concerns of the business addressed by having contact centre functionality within the cloud? 6

7 FINANCIAL Cloud-based solutions are sometimes thought of as having a pay-as-you-go financial model that allows business of all sizes to move away from high front-end expenditures in favour of a more manageable operational expenditure approach without any overspending. While some solution providers offer this, to varying extents, it is by no means universal. It is perhaps better to consider the financial opportunities of cloud as being related more to shifting expenditure from capital expenditure (Capex) to operational expenditure (Opex) Small and mid-size companies in particular typically do not have the ready access to cash to make the necessary capital expenditures for expensive CPE. As a result, making the shift from Capex to Opex is especially relevant for these firms. Recently, poor economic conditions have affected companies and finances, and some organisations that would have been previously less likely to have considered Opex investments (e.g. public sector, utilities companies) are now doing so, as many large Capex projects have been shelved indefinitely. Cloud offers contact centres a way forwards without relying on capital investment: Businesses can scale down future customer premises equipment (CPE) investment, with a resulting decrease in capital expenditure There is also an opportunity to buy services using a pay-per-use or even pay-as-you-talk pricing model, which helps to keep operating expenses to a minimum Additionally, issues surrounding the total cost of ownership of CPE do not arise with hosted solutions: outright purchase of equipment isn t for everyone, perhaps for reasons of budget or the ability to maintain the systems Low-risk ability to start up or move or expand without risking existing business plans Businesses retain the freedom to downscale change targets and plans to meet demand, rather than commit themselves to long-term arrangements needed to justify the purchase approach of high value CPE. 7

8 Figure 1: Capex and Opex changes in UK & US contact centres, 2011 Capex and Opex changes in 2011 (UK & US) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 3% 6% 3% 1% 7% 8% 11% 10% 11% 20% 27% 24% 17% 25% 30% 49% 47% 12% 12% 6% 18% 16% 8% 13% 2% 2% 6% 6% UK Opex US Opex UK Capex US Capex Increased by 25%+ Increased by 10-25% Increased by <10% No change Decreased by < 10% Decreased by 10-25% Decreased by 25%+ Recent ContactBabel research carried out with more than 400 US and UK contact centre operations shows that investment levels and budgets are still in the doldrums. Almost 1 in 5 US operations had their investment budgets cut by more than 10% in 2011, even though many businesses believe that they have weathered the worst of the economic storm. These figures show that the cut in investment has not led to a loosening of the purse strings where Opex is concerned either, with a rough balance between those increasing and decreasing their ongoing spend. 8

9 Our solution delivers all the benefits of million-dollar systems, but without their hidden costs. Contact centers around the world count on Five9 s cloud-based contact center software to reduce operational cost, improve customer satisfaction, and enable flexible staffing at home, onshore and offshore. To get started with Five9, simply visit our website at to view a demo or start a free trial. You may also call us directly at ,500+ Customers Two Billion Calls Annually 100+ Engineers

10 Looking in more depth at Opex, we can see that it is typical for total salaries to account on average for around 70% of a contact centre's Opex, with much smaller elements spent on IT, telecoms, training etc. Figure 2: Contact centre operating expenditure in UK & US, 2011 Contact centre operating expenditure, US & UK, 2011 Recruitment 2.3% Utilities & local taxes 2.6% Training 3.2% IT maintenance 3.6% Telecoms charges 4.7% Rent 4.8% Other salaries (e.g. management & IT) 13.4% Other 8.5% Agent salaries 57.0% In current circumstances, we can see that for many businesses Capex is tight or non-existent, and Opex budgets are rising very slowly, if at all. The positive financial impact of cloud-based solutions is built on shifting from Capex to Opex, but the question is: if Opex is also closely-controlled, surely a business won't countenance a big jump in spend, even if it is shifted into a monthly operating budget? If this is true, it is worth considering how a movement from CPE to cloud-based solutions could impact on expenditure in each of these Opex categories, thus reducing or substituting existing expenditure within the Opex budget and freeing up budget with which to pay the cloud provider. Agent salaries: At 57% of Opex, any small change in salaries will make a large impact on overall spend. At first glance, shifting technology from CPE to cloud doesn't look like it will impact on agents at all. However, moving to cloud means that companies can be more flexible in their staffing arrangements, either through having agents in lower-cost locations (either onshore or offshore), and by supporting a more volume-driven staffing schedule (e.g. by having homeworkers log on for short shifts when they are needed, rather than the full eight hours). Seasonality is also addressed, through being able to add and shed agents as needed. Cloud offers various ways to reduce or otherwise manage overall salary costs, through contact centre virtualisation in all of its forms. 10

11 Other salaries (e.g. management & IT): Businesses can experience a decrease in development costs and attendant IT management salaries, as cloud solution providers will already have solutions up and running. Moving physical hardware off-site also means that maintenance requirements will no longer be an issue for the contact centre. Furthermore, for multisite operations, moving to the cloud will offer greater opportunities for having a singlecross-site management team in place, with call routing and self-service controlled at a single point, reducing management costs as well as improving consistency and increasing the available labour pool. Infrastructure and processes which are held in the cloud can avoid issues which CPE resources can experience, such as unnecessary duplication across multiple sites and a corresponding increase in management costs for configuration, administration and performance checking. Rent, utilities & local taxes: Although businesses are usually tied into contracts for their premises, a cloud approach to technology means that a growing business can look for value elsewhere if a new operation is to open; or a contract break occurs, without the upheaval and downtime associated with moving on-site hardware to another location. Moving equipment to the cloud will reduce energy expenditure. Telecoms charges: Call queuing at the network level also saves money. In multi-site operations - rather than pass a call down to a contact centre which may not have an agent immediately available to take the call it makes sense to queue the call at the network level until an agent is capable and available to take it. The call is then passed once to the agent in the specific contact centre. IT maintenance: Cloud-based solutions can mean that the need for large server farms is reduced or removed, lowering the cost of hardware and maintenance. Software upgrades are carried out at a network-level, reducing cost and upheaval. Training & Recruitment: Cloud does not offer a great deal of opportunity for saving costs on training, although there may be some opportunity for recruitment savings based on having the ability to locate contact centres or homeworkers anywhere, including in lower cost areas. 11

12 Other expenditure: Apart from these instances of reduced Opex, cloud offers other opportunities to cut down on unnecessary expenditure, including: Operations with fluctuating traffic (either on a seasonal or more frequent basis) do not have to buy sufficient software licences and telephone line capacity to cover the peaks, as many cloud providers offer the possibility of adding short-term licences on a pay-as-you-go basis The cloud allows users cost savings associated with not having to own or run their own hardware. Although servers may be a commodity purchase, the energy costs involved in running them can far outweigh the initial purchase and 85% of computing power generally sits idle in any case. 12

13 End-user question: "Where do the biggest cost savings come from?" (Utilities company) Cost savings are slightly different from business to business: outsourcers primarily save cost by having a fully flexible pay-per-usage fee when production volumes are high, and more revenue is normally generated, the cost for the technical platform is higher, whilst the cost is lower when production volumes are low, and less revenue is generated. To be able to cut back, without having a fixed cost for the technical platform equates to major savings as well as much less risk to manage for an outsourcer. For the enterprise user, that tends to have a much more stable volume, the major savings come from being able to downsize or even eliminate internal IT costs. With no need for keeping and maintaining skills and resources in-house, and user interfaces optimised for operational staff the cost savings are very significant. Other very important savings come from turning Capex into Opex. Timescales In a traditional contact centre project you can be looking at least a year cycle from requirements, procurement to delivery. Cloud allows you to react quickly to changes in the market and not think about the size of contact centre but rather strategy, which gives cost savings in line with your bottom line strategy. Property / resource a public cloud environment eliminates in-house hardware investment, as well as related IT infrastructure, maintenance and upgrade expenses, driving savings. In the same way within the private cloud you can log on from any environment so you are not tied to a place, you can expand into new markets easily within extended scalability. Functionality Having a unified cloud contact centre platform it gives the access to all contact centre elements, which can be access from anywhere. The cost is reduced without having to purchase individual boxes and interconnect. While ROI and TCO varies by company and industry, the biggest cost savings from cloud-based contact centre software are typically in: 1. Reduced long-term (3-5 year) license fees due to flexible monthly billing (pay only for what you need) 2. Significantly reduced one-time deployment and implementation costs, since there is little or no hardware 3. Lower IT operational costs, since IT resources can focus on enhancing business operations rather than administering hardware and software architecture 4. Improved agent productivity, particularly when the superior integration capabilities of cloud-based solutions are utilised to unify contact centre and CRM systems. Based on a utility pricing model Cloud delivery realises real cost savings with no significant capital expenditure, no set up fees and no need for a dedicated IT team to maintain the system. This simple pay per seat pricing structure provides a flexible and cost effective service helping businesses eliminate wastage by only paying for what they use. A fully managed secure global solution for video and voice, brings Telephony, Contact Centre and Video Conferencing together under a single invoice, supplier and point of contact. With only endpoints at each customer site you don't need to worry about ISDN lines, number ranges, service providers, capacity, servers or PBXs. A Cloud Communications solution allows global companies, on average, to consolidate eight suppliers into one single supplier, one bill and one point of contact, saving an estimated 25 hours per month on supplier management alone. 13

14 End-user question: "Where do the biggest cost savings come from?" (Utilities company) Cost savings really depend on your existing environment and planned approach. We encourage companies to compare financial impacts of both cloud and premise models, in order to round out the view across a given period. The answer is always in the details. Human capital is expensive and cloud solutions require fewer resources to operate, in general. However, what s interesting is that most companies we speak to don t end up reducing headcount when moving to the cloud, but will re-focus resources to address strategic imperatives or initiatives that have been under-resourced previously. The drivers for the cloud have gone well beyond financial benefits: companies are looking to leverage the cloud to increase flexibility (e.g., dynamically and economically scale up and down to address seasonality and growth), speed up deployment times, and free-up IT staff for other work. The biggest cost savings will come from converting a capital expenditure to an operating expenditure. Additionally, companies can reduce the number of in-house resources required to operate and maintain these systems. On average the majority of savings realized in the first year are elimination of maintenance costs. Most organizations are able to achieve a roughly 30-40% decrease in TCO. Finally, most companies can be up and running in the cloud in days rather than months, another significant savings. Multi-tenancy and IP ownership offer the biggest cost advantage. The ability of the provider to deliver greater utilisation of hardware and operational costs through true cloud and multi-tenancy ensures a lower per customer cost. The cost for an individual company to build and maintain an infrastructure that delivers equivalent functionality is significantly more, not to mention the costs of redundancy, security and performance, which are all included in the Cloud providers pricing. True Cloud is also significant; True cloud providers build and maintain their own code base. This is important as there are no licence fees to pay to the software providers, allowing Cloud vendors to amortise development costs over their entire user base; in addition owning the software allows true cloud vendors to make continual feature improvements to their service, with updates as often as every 2 weeks. Companies who use a mixture from different vendors of on premise Contact Centre technologies will be paying (both time and cost) to keep software levels compatible between products, however using a single cloud provider this is a problem and cost that does not exist. Other cost savings come from administration, hardware and software maintenance, infrastructure costs (power, cooling, etc) and management (patches, upgrades, testing, etc), redundancy and security. Noble's clients have indicated that the top cost savings from using our hosted solution come from removal of multiple service providers, less expensive network solutions and reduced IT demands. Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) vendors normally charge 15-20% of original licence costs simply to maintain their solutions - and support is typically a reactive service triggered by the occurrence of problem events, with inherent delays in analysis and correction of faults. Support models provided by pay-as-you-use Cloud vendors such as Ultra are very different. Rather than charge an annual maintenance fee, support charges are frequently based on productive usage of Cloud services and the number of people concurrently using services. With revenues based on clients productive use of services, support personnel are highly motivated to address support issues well within the timescales published in Service Level Agreements. This can lead to huge cost savings. 14

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16 OPERATIONAL On a day-to-day basis, cloud-based contact centre solutions can theoretically offer a better service level and a simpler environment for businesses to operate in. Reduced need for IT support and implementation: Having hardware and software based in the cloud means that ongoing system maintenance is significantly reduced, as it is the duty of the cloud provider to handle such matters. This is also the case in terms of implementing new systems, with users generally stated to be up and running in days, although of course the level of customisation is often far less than that in a CPE environment with dedicated IT and business resource available. Larger pool of agents to choose from: Treating multiple contact centres as a virtual contact centre allows great efficiencies to be made through economies of scale. This is especially true where businesses are using skills-based routing. All agent competencies are displayed to the scheduler regardless of agent location - who can be more flexible, simply because the available resource pool is so much more deep. Short-term scalability: The cloud offers great flexibility in adding or shedding agents and user licences, of particular relevance to businesses which have substantial changes in call volumes over a year (such as the seasonality experienced by retailers and travel agents) or which have to react quickly to handle event-driven call spikes (e.g. an emergency weather-drive situation affecting utilities companies). Scalability is key: many contact centres want to be able to gear up and down to suit business demands and cope with peaks and troughs without unnecessary expenditure, and with cloud-based solutions they can do this on a daily basis if necessary, instead of spending on capacity that they may not use for months. Centralised management: In a multi-site, cloud-based environment, self-service and call routing scripts can be held centrally to increase the speed to alter these as required, and also to maintain consistency across sites. Infrastructure and processes which are held in the cloud can avoid issues which CPE resources can experience, such as unnecessary duplication across multiple sites and a corresponding increase in management costs for configuration, administration and performance checking. 16

17 Case Study SHL Shows a Talent for Customer Care using NewVoiceMedia Cloud Contact Centre Solution SHL provides behavioral and ability assessment tools and services in 30 languages. The company s mission is to demonstrably improve the effectiveness of organisations through objective measurement, and with operations in more than 50 countries and across more than 30 languages, SHL supports people decisions in more languages and more countries than any other talent management provider. Headquartered in the U.K., SHL was founded in 1977 and serves up to 10,000 customers globally each year. Historically, SHL supported its customers via service desks in more than 20 offices worldwide. This not only proved expensive to operate, it also made it very difficult to deliver a consistently compelling and rewarding service experience, and there was no analytical reporting mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of the global operation. Provide consistency of support and optimise efficiency Challenged to restructure costs and revaluate service standards, SHL decided to bring its service desk offering in-house in a bid to provide consistency of support and optimise efficiency. Many of the offices had as few as two call handlers, and it was not commercially viable to sustain this modus operandi. To this end, SHL took the strategic decision to consolidate its service desks from the multiple, fragmented environments to just three: one in Stockholm (to service the Nordics customer base), one in the U.K. to support European, Middle east, and Asia Pacific customers and one in the U.S. dedicated to the North and South America market. A South African hub followed later and was brought on line in less than 48 hours. All would use uniform standards and processes. SHL also wanted a system which would process calls seamlessly round the clock from more than 20 countries into the U.K. hub; agents also needed the flexibility to recognise where the call was coming from prior to the customer engagement. However, according to Jag Tucker, Global Front Office Operations Manager, SHL, one of the most demanding requirements was time to market. To ensure we delivered a consistently rewarding service experience, we wanted the solution to be deployed within an eight weeks timeframe from design to implementation, he says. It also had to meet robust budget targets and disaster recovery objectives. SHL selected the ContactWorld platform, an enterprise class contact centre, delivered via a true cloud model, by NewVoiceMedia. The solution seamlessly integrates telephony to Salesforce CRM the bedrock of SHL s customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Unlike a traditional contact centre, where the hardware can be expensive and takes months to implement, SHL s hosted contact centre implementation uses a remote cloud-based telephony system to provide the links and call plan intelligence between the caller and agent. SHL didn t need to pay out any additional capital expenditure; it was able to only pay for what it uses on-demand. There are also no hidden costs for maintenance as NewVoiceMedia takes full responsibility for the infrastructure. NewVoiceMedia s cloud computing approach made all the difference, says Jag. They could number source globally and port or redirect any of the existing SHL numbers to any one of their platforms. The company was willing to meet our time frame of eight weeks from design to implementation, and their costs were considerably less than traditional on-premise providers. Increased efficiency and improved caller experience Inbound calls are announced to the agent with a link to the caller s details; and customer data held in Salesforce is used to intelligently route calls to the most appropriate agent or team. This dramatically increases SHL s efficiency and improves the caller experience. The SHL UK agents collectively speak more than 30 languages; ContactWorld for Salesforce identifies the region a call is coming from and directs it to the appropriate agent which speaks that language. This allows SHL to provide a world class call centre to support their business. ContactWorld for Salesforce gives SHL agents a single, easy to use interface to manage calls and customer contact information, Jag explains. Value-based routing functionality gets the right agent talking to the caller the first time; returning callers can be prioritised in any queue; and the SHL agents can schedule tasks to make outbound calls. Moreover, individual caller treatments make the caller feel special and increase up-selling/cross-selling opportunities. Significant benefits from using ContactWorld By standardising on the NewVoiceMedia cloud-based contact centre solution, SHL has been rewarded with a raft of other benefits: Increased agent satisfaction: SHL has experienced only four percent staff turnover since introducing ContactWorld for Salesforce More than 90% of calls answered within 20 seconds globally Led to average 1.3 percent call abandon rate Reduced average call waiting time to only 14 seconds globally Achieved 95 percent first time resolution Led to speedier calls and informed greeting to a known customer before they have given any contact details All intelligent voice recognition (IVR) voice prompts have been transformed to a new streamlined approach with professional recording artists Reliable service delivery: calls can be redirected seamlessly anywhere in the world in a few clicks

18 End-user question: "Does cloud make it any easier to implement virtual contact centres or multichannel/ social media? If so, how?" (Retailer) Yes. In our cloud solution, deploying a virtual contact centre is very similar to any other deployment. As soon as the site or even an individual user is securely connected to the platform there is no difference between a single- and multiple-site operation. Multimedia channels including social media are available in Altitude uci, which is the platform for our cloud offering. Yes, a number of our customers use cloud to try new media channel and/ or integration with social media With full visibility and reporting across and entire operations and channels, with everything measured so allowing future informed decisions on channel strategy. Cloud-based contact centre software is clearly an enabling technology for virtual contact centres. Since there's no hardware or software to install and maintain, users can be located anywhere in the world all they need is a workstation, USB headset, and high-speed internet connection. Since all users are served via the cloud, daily operations for a virtual contact centre are usually dramatically easier e.g., supervisors can view their team or all agents regardless of location. A Cloud Contact Centre is ideal for providing a true unified and global contact centre because the functionality is located centrally, away from one particular site. This enables advanced features to be deployed elegantly without complex and potentially unreliable call flows whilst minimising single points of failure, including queuing in the cloud to look for agent status across multiple locations before routing a call, Follow-the-sun routing capability, intelligent routing plans such as skills based routing which prioritises agents based on training whatever their location - and rich management information available real-time and historically from anywhere in the world. It certainly can as the cloud makes it easy to turn-up these types of services. Technology is no longer the gating factor it s a question of how ready your business is from an organisational and process perspective. Certain cloud providers have industry leading consultants available to help you answer those questions and put best practices in place to ensure a successful deployment. The cloud contact centre IS the virtual contact centre so for these purposes they are one in the same. Both Social Media and multimedia are seamlessly integrated in the cloud via open API s. LiveOps recently released our new Social Application, which is fully integrated with Facebook and Twitter, providing real time social feeds into the agent s dashboard for immediate review and response. 18

19 End-user question: "Does cloud make it any easier to implement virtual contact centres or multichannel/ social media? If so, how?" (Retailer) The answer is a 100% yes. Typically a cloud based contact centre is the central location where all calls, s etc are delivered to. Therefore distribution of calls to any sites can be achieved simply by knowing the phone number or browser where the agent is located. Once it has been established what skill is required for the call or other media type then it doesn't matter where the agent is located as long as a phone and network path exists to send the contact. One of the advantages of the cloud is the increased ease for implementing virtual contact centres. Clients can add remote agents or additional contact centres in just days or weeks depending on their planning and execution. In the cloud, rather than waiting to install new hardware, clients simply purchase additional lines and/or agents, which can be quickly turned on, and the agent can be set up, trained and off and running. Social Media is a rapidly growing communications channel for consumers. Forums and communities offer a quick and accessible way for customers to share their opinions and experiences, including their complaints or displeasure. Managing this new resource for customer contacts is increasingly important in today s on-demand culture. Noble Social Media enables you to integrate social networking into your overall customer communications strategies, allowing you to create a responsive program within your contact centre and to expand the reach of your customer service programs. This implementation of social media within the contact centre would be the same on a hosted or premise based solution. The distributed nature of Cloud technology with servers typically replicated in multiple telecom buildings and connected to multiple Telcos and Internet Service Providers means it s as easy to support advisors working from a remote office as it is those working in a traditional contact centre. The distributed nature of Cloud technology also more readily enables one number contactability services where users state where they are working from on a particular day and the Cloud service will find them. Another advantage of Cloud services is that connectivity is very simple. In the case of Ultra, advisors require only a standard telephone (DDI, landline or mobile), an Internet connection and an ActiveX component to log into Ultra s Cloud platform. 19

20 Case Study SNAP- ON TOOLS: LIVEOPS GENERATES NEW REVENUE AND THOUSANDS OF NEW ORDERS AT SNAP- ON TOOLS As one of the world s largest suppliers of professional tools and equipment, Snap- on Tools success hinges largely on its ability to engage and sell- in to franchisee agents. This task was complicated by the fact that the 400+ agents are independent, on the move and span the UK, Ireland and Holland. In the past, sales teams would mention offers in their calls or the marketing department would send s, requiring the franchisees to call the contact center to place an order. The process was ineffective franchisees didn t always read the s; and it was costly - calls to place orders required a full contact center and manual order taking. The company turned to LiveOps to consider alternative ways to engage franchisees. LiveOps implemented LiveOps Social, a solution which allows Snap- on to easily send out SMS messages with special offers. Franchisees receive the messages in a timely fashion and can make immediate orders via SMS. The entire process is managed by one person and it takes only minutes to send out the promotion and seconds to receive orders. The solution has enhanced communications with franchisees and in the first five months has generated nearly 3,600 orders worth more than 230,000 all by SMS and without the need for sales or contact center agents. Snap- on Tools faced several business challenges:» Costly and ineffective communi-cations with franchisees. Special offers were promoted as part of sales calls or via s requiring a call to place an order. It was impossible to reach all the 400+ franchisees and sales were poor.» Inefficient ordering processes. Franchisees didn t always receive the promotions and then were required to phone the contact center to place orders; agents manually processed orders, taking days and increasing errors. LiveOps Solution Snap- on Tools implemented the LiveOps Social for:» Two- way SMS communication. SMS broadcasts to franchise dealers; and SMS Ordering by franchisees The solution allowed franchisees to easily view promotions and place orders by SMS; at the contact center, the process is now managed by one person, with orders auto-matically consolidated and processed for dispatch and billing. Business Benefits Snap- on Tools experienced immedi-ate ROI and benefits from LiveOps Social:» Enhanced franchisee communi-cations. Special offers sent via LiveOps Social are immediately received and only require a reply SMS to place an order.» Increased sales. Special offers and promotions are received while agents are in the field. Agents immediately respond and place their orders by SMS.» Reduced costs. Automating the order system has saved hundreds of hours. ROI Generated nearly 3,600 orders and more than 230,000 in new sales in the first five months all by SMS and without sales or contact center agents. LiveOps, Inc., 5425 Stevens Creek Blvd., Santa Clara, CA Tel: Tel: Fax: Copyright 2012 LiveOps, Inc. All rights reserved. LiveOps, LiveOps Applications, LiveOps Authoring, LiveOps Chat & , LiveOps Insight, LiveOps Offers, LiveOps Platform, LiveOps Recording, LiveOps Social, LiveOps Voice, LiveRevenue, LiveTransfer and LiveWeb are either registered trademarks or trademarks of LiveOps, Inc. All other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.