Contact Center Rou,ng Strategies for Improving Customer Experience

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1 Contact Center Rou,ng Strategies for Improving Customer Experience an ebook from Genesys 1

2 The Contact Center Reality A finite number of available associates A variable volume of contacts A limited amount of 5me Resul5ng in under or overworked associates Increased customer effort and bad customer experiences 2

3 All Contact Center Loca,ons & Teams Loca,ons OKen contact centers are set up in many loca5ons for geographical coverage or to access available resources. Virtualizing across these geographies allows all skilled associates to be available and u5lized. Even home workers can be part of the virtual customer service team. Teams Associates oken move between teams as they learn new skills or there is a business need. Associates don t completely lose their old skills, so being able to u5lize these associates at 5mes of need increases the available resource pool. 3

4 Outsourced Associates Tradi,on The tradi5onal model used to expand the contact center to include outsourcing partners has oken used the idea of fire and forget. Contacts are routed directly to the outsourcing partner from the network or PBX without being controlled and routed by the organiza5on. Alterna,ve Today we are seeing many organisa5ons bringing the outsourced associates into their contact rou5ng and resource planning environments. This is driven by a need to have a greater understanding of associate availability, performance, and quality in order to deliver bever service. 4

5 Back Office, Branches, & Shops Back Office Back office teams also oken have skills that could assist the contact center in 5mes of great demand. This becomes even more powerful when their non- voice work is also visible from the contact rou5ng environment, enabling a truly blended opera5on. Branches For businesses that also have a branch infrastructure, the use of these resources as an extension of the contact center during busy 5mes and vice versa is a great way of providing flexible resourcing, especially if the two opera5ons busy 5mes do not coincide. We have seen this work very well in the banking, insurance, travel and gaming industries. Shops This also is a prac5cal proposi5on for retail outlets where staff with specialist knowledge can be made available to handle customer contacts. 5

6 Contact Volumes Always Vary What can be done about it? BeGer Planning BeVer planning at macro and micro levels. From product strategy and product development through launch and support impact modelling to ensure that the impact on the contact center is minimised and built into the resourcing and planning processes. Offer Call back When call traffic is busy, the ability to offer call back at a 5me that suits both the organisa5on and the customer can defuse the impact and reduce queue 5mes. Self Service The appropriate use of self- service applica5ons for both voice and other channels like web and mobile can again help to reduce traffic. Cross- channel Capability Have a strong integrated cross channel contact management environment that allows a customer to change channel and the organisa5on not to loose context of the interac5on can again reduce customer frustra5on and drive greater opera5onal efficiencies. 6

7 Timing is Everything Manually manipula5ng skills to adjust the contact rou5ng causes problems. Delays if it took 15 minutes to recognise an issue and a further 15 minutes to agree on resource changes and apply them, in an eight- hour day that delay already means that a 16 th of the day s traffic that will not be answered efficiently. By the 5me this change is made, it would be wrong again because the call pavern will have changed again so more changes would be needed. Errors Constantly making changes can lead to errors where associates either do not get calls or they receive ones that they cannot handle. This results in under u5liza5on of associates or in 5me wasted in transfers Customer Experience In both of these scenarios, the customer is the biggest loser as they are likely to have to queue for longer or be transferred around the organiza5on. Neither of which helps to deliver a low- effort, great customer experience. Largest Example 500 associates and 44,000 skill changes in a day Average Example 7500 associates and 3,000 skill changes per day Source: Black Chair Limited 7

8 Flexible Simplicity The Genesys rou5ng approach is based on flexible simplicity: Any contact channel Self- or assisted service Resources can be anywhere Work delivered to the person who has the right skill not to a queue 8

9 Flexible Simplicity Skills People have skills to do their work. These skills are associated with them wherever they are in the broader enterprise. They are not an avribute of a queue, they are an avribute of the associate. Route work to people not queues Each associate will have a number of skills, these could be languages, competencies, channel preferences and many others. To set this up as queues leads to a rapidly growing number of queues that need to be created, maintained and managed. Flexible This approach allows the organisa5on to work within its team structures but s5ll assist others. With carefully designed lending and borrowing rules that protect teams from excessive overflows. Simple Rou5ng should automa5cally balance the traffic. When skills need to be changed they can be through a simple role based user interface. And it does need to be rip and replace, it can be evolved to as the organisa5on changes and matures 4 Skills English Spanish Sales Service This would need 16 queues to have all the combina5ons 9

10 Why is This Important? To Stop Bad Customer Experiences Top Three Dissa,sfies 40% 35% 34% Research in 2011 by Convergys showed the top three reasons for dissa,sfac,on with customer service were: Having to make mul5ple avempts Resolu5on taking to long Mul,ple AGempts to Resolve Resolu,on Took Too Long Had to Repeat Informa,on And having to repeat the same informa5on All of these are impacted by poor rou5ng design Source 2011 Convergys Scorecard Research 10

11 The Financial Impact Customer Experience Recent research by the Temking Group shows that in a service recovery situa5on where a product or service offering has gone wrong, if the service they then receive is poor, 74% of customers decreased spend and only 2% increased spend. But, if the service was very good, only 16% decreased spend and 37% actually increased their spend. This is a direct impact on the bovom line of the business, way beyond the boundaries of the contact center. Cost to Serve In addi5on to the cost benefits from delivering a great, more efficient customer experience, cost savings are found in increased associate u5liza5on, reduc5on in repeat calls, and a reduc5on in calls needing to be transferred. How spending changed ayer the bad experience Decreased spending 74% 63% 60% 45% 2% 3% 1% 2% Increased spending 40% 23% 9% 7% 16% 37% How well did the company respond to the bad experience? 11

12 Conclusion Virtualiza,on with Flexible Simplicity We have: a) A finite number of associates though many more are available virtually than just within the contact center b) Limited skills available but many more available and more quickly through the flexible simplicity approach c) Variable volume of calls but these can be bever balanced through the flexible simplicity approach d) Limited amount of 5me but it can be significantly expanded through bever schedule adherence and bever use of automated rou5ng rules. With rou5ng based on skills, not queues, that automa5cally u5lizes all available resources as quickly as possible wherever they are in the organiza5on, it is possible to increase or flex the capacity and meet the needs of more customers. This will deliver a bever customer experience and also increase opera5onal efficiency at the same 5me. 12

13 Genesys is a leading provider of mul5- channel customer experience and contact center solu5ons. With over 3,500 customers in 80 countries, Genesys orchestrates more than 100 million customer interac5ons every day across the contact center and back office. Genesys helps customers power op5mal customer experiences that deliver consistent, seamless and personalized experiences across all touchpoints, channels and interac5ons. 13