CRM - August 2008 - (Page 44)

Smith says. But rather than be intimidated by the scope of the project, Knoa went at it with relish.“We were faced with an opportunity to engage with a very sophisticated IT organization, delivering a business-critical platform implemented entirely by Knoa,” Wizdo says. “We had been looking to deploy a response-time monitoring tool, when we evaluated Knoa EPM, which monitors the complete user experience,” Smith says. “Once we put Knoa out there, within a few weeks we started to see benefits. Trends of failures and slowdowns became visible, and we were able to deliver tech fixes or training as needed.” The benefits BT realized are literally too many and varied to list in this space—but there are highlights, including improvement in contact center agent productivity. By comparing user behavior at one high-performing contact center to another, BT was able to identify specific end-user behaviors that improved productivity for hundreds of advisors by 25 percent, amounting to approximately $3 million. BT saved an estimated further $2 million by eliminating bottlenecks caused by obsolete desktops. BT also successfully doubled—and then tripled—its number of agents without adding tech staff. By eliminating a number of maintenance calls and identifying which problems don’t need investigation, the IT department is free to concentrate on real problems, and can resolve them an average of 4 hours sooner than before. Handling time for customers has improved by a minimum of 45 percent, and as much as 120 percent in some cases. You could say BT made the right call. —Marshall Lager Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement France’s Groupe b2s boosts productivity with Altitude Software A the payoff BY USING KNOA TO MANAGE ITS DEPLOYMENTS OF ORACLE’S SIEBEL, BRITISH TELECOM: $ improved agent productivity by more than $5 million; eventually tripled its end-user population with no increase in its IT support team; saves 80 hours a month by not investigating “non-problems”; saves four hours per service incident; avoids 30 site visits per year for maintenance; and improved response time for key transactions by as much as 120 percent. common misperception Altitude’s French deployments are hanholds that successful com- dled by Easyphone France, a company it panies don’t need to change owns—and Didier says he knew right any aspect of operations be- away that he’d made the correct decision. cause—well, everything’s going wonder- “We had the right level of help from fully. When that mindset seeps into the [Easyphone France] to help us move from heads of upper management, it can lead what we had to Altitude technology, which was very important for us,” he says. to stagnation—and operational disaster. Didier says the implementation took This malaise could have easily crept into Groupe b2s, the No. 2 contact center six months—and two months after that, and customer relationship services com- results started coming in. Agent productivity in outbound campaigns pany in France. With 3,000 workmade significant gains, as the ers acoss seven sites in France and Productivity agent-occupation rate—the three in Morocco, b2s supports in outbound amount of time spent making more than 200 active customers. calls—rose from 40 minutes Maxime Didier, the chief executive campaigns per hour to 50 minutes, and list officer who founded b2s 11 years made some penetration—being able to utiago, says that, while business was serious gains. lize the client-provided contact booming, problems lay beneath the surface. Starting in 2003, various information for outbound calls—has inacquisitions brought b2s more opportu- creased more than 25 percent. The softnities for revenue; the moves also brought ware that b2s agents use is also now more stable than ever, with a 99.9 percent sysbaggage: different systems. “We had various types of technology tems-availability rate since the Altitude that different businesses we acquired were implementation—which directly imusing [beforehand],” Didier explains, in- pacts their wallets. “When the tool is cluding Internet Protocol (IP) telephony down, [agents] can’t get their incentive software from its acquisition of a French bonuses, so they’re happy now that the bank. “This technology was running very software is running well,” Didier says. Now that b2s has found a vendor it smoothly without any problems,” he begins. “On the other hand, we had several can trust, Didier says Altitude will be inconcerns about the service maintenance.” tegrated into the rest of b2s’ business, in Service maintenance has been a stick- addition to outbound calling. That trust, ing point as b2s sought an outbound- Didier says, is crucial. “The important calling solution, including, as Didier says, thing to focus on is the great job and “at least three different technologies, and great team [Easyphone France] provided each time it had been a nightmare.” So b2s for our support as we had been missing sought unified software with high-quality this a lot from the previous providers we support.“We wanted a strong, very stable had,” he insists. “That is something technology as well as a good level of main- that’s very noticeable. We are a happy tenance from the provider,” Didier adds. customer.” —Christopher Musico After testing the market, Didier says b2s went with an IP-based solution from Altitude Software, a contact center vendor WITH ALTITUDE SOFTWARE, GROUPE B2S WAS ABLE TO: with offices in Portugal. This included increase talk time per agent from both the Altitude uCI multichannel con40 minutes per hour to 50 minutes; tact center management suite and the Alincrease list penetration by 25 percent; and titude vBox IP communications platform. improve system availability to 99.9 percent. the payoff $ 44 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | AUGUST 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

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

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.