The Virtual Contact Center Your Essential Guide to Selecting, Designing and Implementing a Virtual Contact Center to Transform Your Customer Experience
1 INTRODUCTION 2 VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER NEEDS ASSESSMENT 3 GAINING PRODUCTIVITY BY IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY 4 LEVERAGING THE STRATEGIC BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER 5 VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER CASE STUDIES 6 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION What is a Virtual Contact Center? A Virtual Contact Center (VCC) is a cloud-based contact center that delivers call routing, interactive voice response (IVR), and computer telephony integration (CTI) empowering your business to create optimal customer experiences (CX). Businesses continue to evolve in order to address emerging communication channels and adapt to people s preferences, technology advancements, and data needs. To meet the growing demands for convenient communication channels, businesses recognize that their customers are their biggest asset and they need to listen, respond, and deliver to keep their customers satisfied. More and more businesses today are evaluating and ultimately shifting to the Cloud to deliver functionality faster to market ahead of their competitors. Using a cloud-based VCC has many compelling business and operational benefits. For starters, organizations can quickly deploy a VCC and run it with minimal IT involvement, no capital investment and low operating costs. In addition, organizations large and small can take advantage of a geographically distributed workforce, utilizing the strengths of a cloud infrastructure s unique call routing capabilities that can span multiple locations.
Is Your Organization Ready for a VCC? Do you need better... Availability Scalability Visibility Affordability Productivity When customers reach Can your contact Will it give you end-to-end Would no setup fees Do you believe out, will your service center scale as your visibility into the customer or capital investment improving your analytical be available? business grows? experience? make upgrading today insight, resolution rates, a possibility? and intelligent routing capabilities would positively affect your customer s experience?
1: INTRODUCTION 2: VCC NEEDS 3: VCC PRODUCTIVITY 4: VCC STRATEGY 5: VCC ROI 6: CONCLUSION CHAPTER 2: VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER NEEDS ASSESSMENT There are several reasons why you might want to look at your current platform to see if it is handling the blocking and tackling necessary to deliver great customer experiences, or whether a Virtual Contact Center would provide a better game plan to deliver those experiences. supports geographically dispersed contact center agents instead of requiring all agents to work out of the same physical contact center location, thereby ensuring customer care collaboration anywhere. VCCs are known for having higher agent satisfaction rates and therefore lower agent turnover, leading to better customer service, higher ratio of skills-based agents, and considerable cost-saving operational efficiencies. You may already have an on-premises solution yet want to gain the operational benefits of moving to the Cloud. Alternatively, your organization could already have a cloud Three areas you should consider when determining your solution but are looking to make a move to a more robust VCC needs: offering. Perhaps you may not have a solution today but need to think about what will be the best solution for your contact 1 Benefits of a Virtual Environment center agents, customers, and business operations in the near short-term. Regardless of the reason, determining the needs of 2 Advantage of the Single View your organization is a critical first step before embarking on the VCC path. 3 Tools to Get the Job Done While researching options, you may ask what does a virtual contact center really mean? A Virtual Contact Center
1: INTRODUCTION 2: VCC NEEDS 3: VCC PRODUCTIVITY 4: VCC STRATEGY 5: VCC ROI 6: CONCLUSION 1 Benefits of a Virtual Environment Businesses of all sizes are under pressure to increase operational efficiencies and deliver more personalized and seamless interactions while effectively dealing with capital expenditure pressure and scrutiny. Not an easy task but especially critical for Small to Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs). Some questions SMBs should consider as they assess their VCC needs: what systems do they currently use? Do they have integration with the CRM? And, how robust is the IVR? Can it deliver important routing capabilities and personalization attributes? Does the platform easily hand off a caller to an agent along with data and interaction history? What are the up-front costs associated with moving to a VCC? And, can the current system deliver this in a flexible, scalable solution that offers rapid deployment and always-on availability? If a business is not using a VCC today, they should strongly consider its inherent advantages. As organizations look at alternative ways to extract maximum return from their budgets and lower costs, they are finding the on-demand model with low to no setup fees and ability to quickly and costeffectively address usage fluctuations delivers a positive impact on their capital expenditures. In addition, organizations are finding that the gain in flexibility and interoperability moving to a virtual environment is paramount to addressing business concerns and delivering a highly satisfying customer experience. If you are a SMB or mid-sized organization, can you effectively compete with larger enterprises without moving to the Cloud?
2 Advantage of the Single View This is where the beauty of a VCC really shines through. When an organization implements a VCC, they obtain not only the operational benefits of the Cloud, but access to these advantages inherent in a complete, single browserbased view. What makes the single view impressive is the ability to extract insight from various touchpoints and channels to deliver a unified customer context directly to the VCC. Why is a single view so important? It removes the inefficiencies of multiple applications and customer frustrations related to a siloed approach that requires repeated inquiries for information. Consider this the next time you are speaking to a contact center representative, and while you are waiting for information to address simple requests. They may say, Please hold, I need to look that up, just give me a minute. With a VCC, the information agents need is on-demand, always on, and easily accessible in a single dashboard. Are your siloed systems frustrating customers with repeat questions and lack of customer history?
3 Tools to Get the Job Done So, what are the tools needed in a typical VCC? An ideal VCC platform should have at least these three attributes: a robust IVR, powerful call routing functionality, and integrated analytics for ongoing process optimization. Organizations that decide to migrate from an on-premises solution to a cloud-based VCC instantly have tools at their fingertips to manage all aspects of their global operations for inbound, outbound, and proactive communications. Integration of call routing functionality and IVR with business rules and embedded analytics is critical as it delivers immediate visibility of the call center, and a better experience for customers. Behind the scenes, a robust VCC delivers powerful agent management and supervisor controls through any web browser or device. Agents have access to an intuitive web-based agent desktop, where they can receive whisper messages that provide context prior to taking the call, plus customer data presentation and agent disposition codes. This pre-call data is extremely helpful for agents to not only get up to speed quickly on the call, but it also helps to personalize the caller experience. Supervisors gain immediate flexibility in the contact center with call monitoring tools that allow agent coaching and barge-in options to intervene on difficult calls, as well as real-time and historical metrics and reports, designed to support mobile devices and tablets for today s multi-device world. Do you have the best tools for your key assets your customers?
CHAPTER 3: GAINING PRODUCTIVITY BY IMPLEMENTING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY When considering a VCC, you should look beyond just replacing legacy ACD systems, but consider other technical advancements that can drive productivity. A good VCC utilizes a robust IVR on the front end of calls, having a significant portion of the calls completed within the IVR environment without the need to speak with an agent. When the caller is transferred to an agent, it is the right agent to solve the problem the first time and that agent has the caller s information in front of them so there is no need to ask customers to repeat themselves. This raises the first call resolution rate, an important metric for contact centers, plus it delivers significant productivity improvement for the business with the added bonus of improved CX. Productivity Tool Examples: Analytics Aggregate call details to reveal KPIs (i.e. date and time, caller ID, IVR responses, talk time, etc.) plus historical drill down capabilities to determine trends of the customer experience for actionable insight. Agent Setup Speed Setting up agents should be a simple and fast process in order to get them online quickly especially important for peak call cycles. Intelligent Routing In addition to simply routing incoming calls to the geographically dispersed agent pool, intelligent routing can route calls based on business rules to the optimal agent based on agent proficiency or customer context. Intuitive Agent Monitor Design A simple and easy-to-navigate user interface or monitoring dashboard for contact center agents. Live Quality Monitoring The ability for supervisors to listen in to live calls ensures a high level of customer service as well as the ability for supervisors to coach agents or be conferenced in to assist with escalated calls. Multi-channel Capable Manage consistent cross-channel customer experiences and support customer engagement across communication channels (i.e. voice, email, chat).
CHAPTER 4: LEVERAGING THE STRATEGIC BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER A cloud-based Virtual Contact Center offers consistent, seamless, personalized experiences that span self-service and humanassisted interactions and provides many compelling business benefits. It gives your business a complete 360-degree view for managing the touchpoints along the customer journey. When your team begins exploring VCC options, you should look for solutions that deliver: Speed Simplicity Reliability Personalization Quick-start packages that offer Integrated IVR and call routing Scalability and reliability to Enterprise-class routing that the ability to be up and running (ACD) functionality in one support your vital customer can deliver calls based on quickly and easily. intuitive and seamless interface. facing operations and always context and agent skills, and on availability. personalized IVR interactions tailored to fit your specific customer needs. With a Virtual Contact Center, you can leverage the benefits of a highly available, highly scalable service that meets your current needs, but also gives you the business intelligence insights to help you plan and support your future needs. In addition, by building a strong customer experience, your organization will gain strategic benefits to set you apart from the competition.
CHAPTER 5: VIRTUAL CONTACT CENTER CASE STUDIES One of the major drivers to consider when contemplating making a move from a traditional, on-premises contact center is the Return On Investment (ROI) associated with moving to a cloud-based VCC. The investment for a hosted platform can be recouped quickly and run with minimal IT involvement, no capital investment and low operating costs. Best-in-class VCCs allow organizations to scale operations quickly and handle growing demand or traffic spikes without failure or the need for additional capital investments helping realize immediate ROI. Besides the minimal upfront investment and ongoing maintenance costs, they see real improvements in their contact center metrics measureable improvements in case-related call completions, increases in uptime and live answer rates as well as decreases in call hold times and abandon rates. This all leads to stronger customer loyalty and a better overall customer experience. The following case studies illustrate just a few examples of major companies and organizations that have seen the operational and cost-saving benefits of moving to a cloud-based VCC.
Genesys Case Study: Marketo Marketo is a leading cloud-based provider of a marketing software platform. The platform delivers marketing automation and sales effectiveness software designed to help organizations streamline marketing processes, deliver more campaigns, generate more win-ready leads, and improve sales performance. Marketo helps over 2,500 customers in 36 countries turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver. Challenge Marketo wanted a quick and easy-to-deploy a VCC to leverage skills-based routing. Solution The Marketo support team was able to rapidly implement the Genesys Premier Edition VCC call routing (ACD) to route inbound calls from customers. Marketo added Genesys Salesforce CTI cloud-based integration into its support application to further streamline customer service calls. Outcome Caller ID authentication and priority one entitlement bypass which transfers customers more quickly to a customer service representative improved the Marketo customer experience. Also, with this integration, the support team was able to handle all call center features within the Salesforce.com working environment. KEY BENEFITS Personalized caller interactions Improved customer experience 22% improvement in case deflection 28% decrease in case-related calls per customer Read the Complete Story
Genesys Case Study: ZoomSystems ZoomSystems, based in San Francisco, provides automated retail solutions for leading retailers and brands worldwide. Their end-to-end automated retail solutions include integrated hardware, software, and managed services in the Cloud. Challenge With a distributed network of field personnel servicing over 1,500 locations, ZoomSystems felt the pressure on their contact center telephony platform. They sought to reduce call hold times, efficiently support on-site technicians, and increase the kiosks uptime averages. Solution When ZoomSystems evaluated all their needs, the Genesys Premier Edition Virtual Contact Center (VCC) came out on top. They were attracted to the benefits of a cloud contact center solution and implemented contact center software enhancements for reliability, customer support, feature richness and cost. Outcome By modernizing their contact center software with the Genesys Premier Edition - VCC, ZoomSystems delivers a positive customer experience that greatly improves their operations and keep their brands and customers coming back. KEY BENEFITS Uptime increased to their goal of 99%, a 2% improvement Expected hold time decrease of approximately 4 minutes Live answer rate increased from 30 to 75% Call abandon rate decreased from 25 to 7% Read the Complete Story
Genesys Case Study: Total Wine & More Total Wine & More is the largest independent retailer of fine wine in U.S. Founded in 1991, the company now has more than 100 stores in 16 states, and is growing rapidly. In response to demand for new sales channels beyond physical stores, they began overhauling their website in 2011. With that came the need to extend customer service to new virtual channels. Challenge The Total Wine and More legacy ACD was rudimentary and unable to handle the demand. In addition, they did not have a reporting system robust enough to handle their needs and resorted to manual manipulation of data. They needed to change this in order to successfully expand, understand its growing customer base, and deliver a higher overall level of customer care. Solution Total Wine & More launched their new contact center solution built on Genesys Premier Cloud in time for Black Friday 2014. Genesys enables Total Wine & More to provide customers with priority queues and skill-based routing for connected journeys across multiple channels. And, they are now able to customize messages, get more information out to customers, and gain more visibility into data resulting in workforce optimization and other operational efficiencies. Outcome Total Wine & More built a custom IVR on the Genesys platform that was tied to an 800 number published on direct mail materials. With Genesys, they were able to figure out their marketing lift and better understand what customers were calling about, thereby improving staffing levels and forecasting. They are currently using email and voice services from Genesys, which will be followed by the strategic deployment of chat functionality by mid-summer 2015. The overall result is quality service in the customer s channel of choice. KEY BENEFITS Implemented contact center voice and email services within 5 weeks Delivered improved customer support, creating better relationships with 100+ retail stores Increased sales with improved customer service Cut overall order completion time in half Improved workforce optimization Watch the On-Demand Webinar
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION Customers want a consistent and personalized experience and the Genesys Premier Edition VCC delivers what you and your customers need. For business environments up to 250 agents, using the Premier Edition cloud-based Virtual Call Center helps you deploy the solution quickly, running it with minimal IT involvement, no capital investment and low operating costs. The VCC is an important element of the Genesys Customer Experience Platform, bringing a proven, global set of capabilities to a contact center, making it the right choice now and in the years to come. Additional capabilities include: prebuilt IVR applications for major verticals, call recording with encryption, speech analytics, voice biometrics, ASR and TTS in over 40 languages available, plus natural language processing technology. We hope the Virtual Contact Center Playbook has been an informative guide and will help you provide excellent customer experiences. This playbook offers a view of a virtual contact center, its strategic benefits, and examples of companies who have made the move to a VCC and reaped the benefits. As discussed, the scalable solution supports your business growth through a cloud deployment, easy-to-use interfaces, intelligent call routing, integrated analytics and performance optimization. This robust set of capabilities offers a seamless experience for customers and delivers an optimal customer experience. Key Capabilities Geared toward the SMB market up to 50 agents Rapid cloud-based deployment Proven, global cloud contact center platform Easy, point-and-click interface and setup IVR self-service platform Superior reliability and 99.999% service availability Bundled telecommunications services Intuitive and visual solution configuration Out-of-box integration with Salesforce.com and other cloud-based CRM services such as Zendesk, Netsuite and others.
Is Your Contact Center Scoring Points and Exceeding Your Customer Experience Goals? Be sure you are running the right plays and your customers are getting the pro-level service they expect with Genesys! Moving to a Virtual Contact Center elevates your business and opens new doors for your customers. Communicating with your customers in a way that produces better interactions, offers more insight, and gives your agents and supervises better tools will deliver superior business results. To really score and deliver on your goals, the Premier Edition Virtual Contact Center delivers everything that small to mid-size contact centers need to provide exceptional customer experiences. Let Genesys help you beat your competition, while modernizing your contact center and achieving your customer experience goals! Learn More Request a Demo Try It Free
Website: Contact Us: 1-888-GENESYS Genesys is the market leader in omnichannel customer experience (CX) and contact center solutions in the cloud and on-premises. We help brands of all sizes make great CX great business. The Genesys Customer Experience Platform powers optimal customer journeys consistently across all touchpoints, channels and interactions to turn customers into brand advocates. Genesys is trusted by over 4,500 customers in 80 countries to orchestrate more than 100 million digital and voice interactions each day. Copyright 2015 Genesys. 2001 Junipero Serra Blvd., Daly City, CA 94014 All Rights reserved. Genesys and the Genesys logo are registered trademarks of Genesys. All other company names and logos may be registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective companies.