CRM - February 2009 - (Page 32)

Customer Service any company can focus on right way is agent attrition,” says Oscar Alban, principal market consultant for contact center solution provider Verint Systems. He gives the example of a 200-seat contact center having a 30 percent attrition rate, losing five people per month—60 over the course of a year. “The average cost of hiring agents is $8,500 for that center, and for other centers the cost can be even more.” The result? For this particular center, it spends approximately $500,000 per year on restaffing alone. “We need to [proactively] address issues of what’s causing agents to leave, because that’s more money to the bottom line that can be used for other [initiatives],” Alban says. “One of the best things you can do is sit down with groups of agents and explain why the company is making any changes that bring fear to employees.” Oftentimes finding out what is sticking in agents’ craws can cost very little, but reap great benefits. Take Knology, a West Point, Ga.–based telecommunications company. Knology is finalizing an acquisition of Prairie Wave Communications—now branded under the Knology name—first announced in January 2007. “At that time we had a big capital expenditure, and we were putting a lot of work into it,” recalls Troy Martin, project and resource manager for the customer care center at Knology. “The feedback from frontline customer service representatives (CSRs) was [a] concern, and they wanted additional hours to pay for the hiked-up gas prices. The company’s stock price went down 60 percent during this time, and we needed to get ahead of the negativity we saw brewing out on the floor.” The negativity was starting to seep into the customer service the agents were providing, as more consumer complaint calls were being placed to the company’s corporate hotline. In addition to a mandated soft-skills course, the company also added a new program through the workforce management system (WFM) provided by Verint, exemplifying the benefits of working for the telecommunications provider, and disclosing its company direction. “The cost of the course is already invested in the programs we utilize to do it [such as WFM],” Martin says. “Getting ahead of [the trend] with training and courses was important to help reduce our corporate complaint calls.” Since implementing these programs at a low cost, Knology has already seen results. Martin says out of approximately 250 phone agents, the attrition rate has dropped from 12 percent to 8 percent. Customer retention rates have also risen, as the number of “rudes”—as Martin puts it—that found their way to the corporate hotline went from four per week to one. Also, the soft-skills training has enabled Knology to keep 10 percent more of its customer base that called to disconnect—from 15 percent to 25 percent. “We feel that we have a handle on the situation now,” Martin says. HOSTING A SAAS-Y CENTER A recent study from Gartner, the Stamford, Conn.–based information technology research and advisory company, finds an increasing number of contact centers are moving toward software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployments in favor of traditional on-premises implementations. According to the study, “SaaS CRM Reduces Costs and Use of Consultants,” the penetration of customer service applications delivered via SaaS to the contact center will grow by more than 20 percent per year through 2012, by which time they’ll account for 30 percent of all new investments in this space. Touting lower cost and coming from a different line on the balance ledger— on-premises deployments typically come from capital budgets, which are more scrutinized—the SaaS and larger hosted or on-demand market could find itself sitting pretty during a time in which companies are looking to spend less but still innovate. “As capital budgets are tight and enterprises want to remain focused on providing good services, that’s where hosted solutions can fill in and bridge at first blush an uncloseable gap,” says Tom Smith, senior manager of contact center solutions product marketing for Basking Ridge, N.J.–based enterprise solutions provider Verizon Business. “It’s a good way to take what would be a high-cost, high-value solution and turn it into a low upfront cost, high-value [investment].” Citing the economic recession and also the migration from Time-Division Multiplexing to Internet Protocol–based contact centers, hosted solutions are available to help outfits interested in boosting first-call resolution, self-service, and also speech capabilities. “Retaining customers is critical, and hosted solutions do offer a great way for enterprises to continue on with customer-facing projects in the face of constrained budgets,” Smith says. While hosted offerings may have raised many questions in terms of functionality and scalability, Smith believes hard economic times and some early-adopter proof points will help usher along acceptance throughout the contact center. “Many customers over the past few years have gone hosted and been happy,” he recalls. “Once [prospective clients] get over that hump, I think that hosting will play a large role.” 32 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | FEBRUARY 2009 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2009

CRM - February 2009 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Express Service CRM on Twitter Breaking Customer Service Tradition Outsprinted That’s (Not) Entertainment Running on Empty Required Reading Up Against the Downturn The Numbers Tell the Tale Make Marketing Your Megaphone! Hold Onto Your Customers! Spend Your Way Out! Constructing a Virtual Customer Experience Next Customer, Please! It’s Showtime! From A(erospace) to Z(oology) Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2009

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