CRM - February 2008 - (Page insert8)

8 February 2008 Sponsored Content finance department. With demographic matching, the customer can be connected with the most appropriate available agent based on a shared demographic profile— taking ‘soft’ issues into account. 6) Ensure a variety of work options: Agents prefer having the option of working on various types of tasks. Real-time integration between the workforce schedule and the distribution engine allows contact centers to schedule shifts so that agents can handle a mix of calls, e-mails or other tasks in ‘chunks’ of time without sacrificing service levels. And because the distribution engine uses the schedule to decide when to send what type of interaction to whom, assignments are matched to agent skills and no additional management effort is required to orchestrate the work flow. 7) Offer home shoring: Home shoring (home-based agents) is a good strategy for increasing agent morale and creating an attractive environment for agents to work. Many agents prefer to perform their work from home and, with the adoption of IP telephony, browser-based desktops and residential broadband Internet connections, the feasibility and cost savings of working from home have increased tremendously. 8) Link the back office to the contact center: Allowing idle agents to handle back office work items, such as forms processing, is an excellent way to increase productivity and overall business efficiency. By ‘pushing’ these work items to agents, not only is any excess agent capacity utilized, but the efficiency of task execution can also be monitored and improved. By integrating your business workflow applications with the contact center universal queue, you are able to improve the effectiveness and reduce the human latency factor of your back office and end-to-end service process, while delivering an improved level of customer service. 9) Optimize agent performance indicators: Making the connection between personal performance and reward is a critical challenge if agents are to feel valued and recognized. While efficiency measures will always be at the foundation of contact center performance, forward-looking organizations are also measuring quality and business metrics such as revenues and contribution to corporate goals. REALIZING THE DYNAMIC CONTACT CENTER automatic adjustments in real time. The Genesys Dynamic Contact Center is designed to transform customer service by automatically optimizing customer traffic, internal resources and business outcomes across cost, quality, and revenue. As contact centers become increasingly important channels, companies can convert themselves to dynamic contact centers to automatically optimize the customer experience, foster cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and increase agent productivity. CONCLUSION Contact center business managers face increasing challenges and seemingly conflicting requirements while trying to balance outcomes across all business and operational goals. While contact centers can manually adjust to changing patterns, an advanced—or ‘dynamic—contact center has the know-how and technology to make Recruiting and training agents is costly. Their value to the business rises with their experience, so agent retention is one of the best ways of reducing operating costs. Many contact center managers, however, have felt that they simply have to live with high agent attrition rates in order to operate efficiently. The strategies presented in this article show that good management practices enabled by appropriate technology allow contact centers to raise agent productivity and increase agent satisfaction at the same time. The outcome is outstanding business results through a winning combination of agent effectiveness and long-term retention. Those companies that recognize their contact center as an integral part of their customer-centric business approach, and strive to manage their agents well, will achieve the greatest cost savings and increased profitability…while enjoying sustainable growth and a competitive advantage. The Genesys Dynamic Contact Center provides key customer service capabilities that are integrated and orchestrated to fulfill key objectives: GENESYS WORLDWIDE Genesys, an Alcatel-Lucent company, is the world’s leading provider of contact center and customer service management software—with more than 4,000 customers in 80 countries. Genesys software directs more than 100 million interactions every day, dynamically connecting customers with the right resources—selfservice or assisted-service—to fulfill customer requests, optimize customer care goals and efficiently use agent resources. Genesys helps organizations drive contact center efficiency, stop customer frustration and accelerate business innovation. For more information: visit us on the Web: www.genesyslab.com, or call +1 888 GENESYS or 1-650-466-1100 http://www.genesyslab.com http://www.genesyslab.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2008

CRM - February 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Loyalty Riddle CRM Drives Down-Market Out of the Gate: Marketers Rate ’08 Traits The Pulse Consultants Adapt to CRM’s Changing Landscape Required Reading Cover Story: CRM Gets Serious Contact Center Solutions Always On Rumble in the Office The Smallest Slice Tying Up Cable’s Loose Ends Burning Up the Paper Trail Sunny Skies for Knology No More Bumps for BlueRoads Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2008

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