Back in town...

Just back from visits with client contact centers in Amsterdam, England, and Ireland. Delivered our recommendations in Amsterdam and began our assessment for the new client in their centers in England and Ireland. We will still need to visit more locations but it is sure to be interesting.

Blending in the contact center

I have a client who has a golden opportunity to reduce costs and improves service. They are very global, multi  channeled and most of their contacts take place via the phone and email channels. These two channels are staffed separately. One group handles emails, the other handles phone calls. As I sat alongside agents in each group I noticed the pace of the incoming transactions - it was not demanding. Upon further investigation I discovered that these two groups already lend agents between the two channels and I was told the transition in this move between groups is relatively easy. In keeping with my favorite contact center maxim - the more queues you have in place the more agents you will need to staff those queues - I quickly decided that if the technology can handle it, and merger of channel support groups was in the offing. I was glad to discover that their in place technology can handle a Universal Queue of emails and phone calls, as well as other channel contacts, and the agent desktop can be easily modified/updated to further support the agent in their control of their place in that queue. The result, sure to be as we suspected...few agents required after a very non complicated merger of functional agent groups.

The desktop and the ACD integrate by way of a Media Bar (new term for a combined piece of middleware and a softphone). Stay tuned as this project progresses.

Multiple queues or one big queue?

Contact centers are struggling with the need to reduce costs and boost sales effectiveness - "duh" you say?
Its an age old contact center axiom, the more queues you have serving a universe of calls, the more staff you will require to serve that same universe of calls. So your big strategy for 2011 should be to find ways of reducing the number of queues you have in your center(s). Suggestions: utilize skills based routing rather than hard queue delineations for your callers. If you can ID and segment your callers properly at your IVR then this will allow you to minimize groups, reducing agent needs and improving customer experience as you deliver their call to the best skilled and available agent in your center(s).