The event is hosted every year towards the end of the school year to prepare high school seniors for real life interview scenarios. The sit down interviews including resume critiquing and feedback from local businesses on the students interview results. Also, some students can express interest in positions with local companies. The interview critique included professionalism, dress attire, resume design and functionality as well as overall performance.

After the event was over they brought all of the businesses, government and local school superintendents together for lunch and a meeting to discuss the results and feedback for next year’s event.  We are looking forward to attending again next year. We have already received a few resumes from interested students for internships and jobs. It is truly a great way to help the local community.

A rural telephone company, serving approximately 3,600 DSL subscribers, suffered from a high support volume and incident rate that ran well above what is typically seen for residential ISPs. The Telco did not realize this was occurring and, even if it did, wouldn’t have had the time or tools to identify the problem.

The Solution:

Luckily, the Telco chose SpiceCSM. As part of its regular oversight of client support activity, the Client reviewed their call volume, incident rates, first call resolution and customer satisfaction of all the ISPs that they support. They observed the high trends associated with this ISP’s subscriber base and notified their client immediately. Then, the client poured over report data, looking for clues as to what was driving the higher than expected rates.

Because the Client’s agents are highly trained and use one of the most sophisticated trouble-shooting/guided workflow and ticketing systems in the industry (SpiceCSM™), they were able to finger the culprit—a modem pre-configured in a non-conventional manner. SpiceCSM™ automatically determines the reason for the call and records this information as part of the ticket. An analysis of specific call types in the Spice system allowed the Client’s agents to quickly see a pattern with subscribers using the same modem configuration.

Based on their long experience with ISPs, SpiceCSM recommended other options for the Telco to deploy the modem and then helped the Telco implement those changes. Now, when the Telco’s subscribers call tech support, agents automatically check the subscribers’ modem settings and, if necessary, update the modem to the newer configuration.

The Results:

SpiceCSM and their client identified and solved the incident rate mystery within a few short months. And as a result, call volume dropped by 51%, and the incident rate/call-in rate fell from 31% to 16%. Furthermore, first-contact resolution increased from 62% to 71%, and most importantly, subscriber satisfaction scores improved from 85% to 96%.

1.) Low Costs- Moving to the cloud is really simple when you look at the rate of return. There is usually a very low one time setup fee associated. Simply put, once you are up and running the recurring fees are very low compared to most premise based systems. You only need to educate people on the use. This requires lower IT needs and potentially teams of people to implement and keep these systems updated. Instead of pricy equipment and upgrades this is actually hosted and kept somewhere else. The cloud based providers remove this headache for you.

2.) Scalability- Are you planning on rapid growth? Can your current systems handle this type of movement? Using cloud computing scalability is a thing of the past. Adding users is simply a click of a button. This does not require additional servers and equipment to keep up the speed and additional data storage requirements.

3.) Mobility- Many organizations are looking to decrease brick and mortar locations. This reduction in overhead expenses saves money. Studies show that allowing workers to do their jobs where they are most comfortable increases productivity and job satisfaction. In an article written by Max Chafkin, Telecommuting by Numbers, he states that “$200 billion productivity gains by American companies” if they allowed telecommuting amongst other positives. Many companies that have chosen the cloud now have the flexibility to do this. I often work from home when not required to be in the office, I am much more relaxed and focused in my own atmosphere.

4.) Flexibility – There are many options that cloud computing offers. Instead of creating one gigantic premise based system that does everything requiring hours and hours of IT time, you now have options. Using cloud based APIs you are now able to pick the best of breed applications for your organization. This is done using API language; you can connect to these applications allowing for communication and updates back and forth no matter whom or what is using them. The transmission of data is now connecting silos of information allowing companies to have a full understanding of their customers in all aspects. Talk about information overload! Leading companies are now taking full advantage of these features.

5.) Redundancy- What if a massive earthquake, tornado or a fire were to happen? Would you be able to save Toto, and where is Auntie Em? Having all of your data housed somewhere else dramatically decreases the chances of this happening. Many cloud providers are backed up at several locations. Not only does this save your data but allows your company to pick up and move very quickly no matter what the issue is. When disaster strikes your company can stay ahead, by having the ability to move and become operational immediately. Can your competition do that?

One way of being a valued partner is providing in depth analytics. By showing that your agents are actually gathering data while troubleshooting the issue you are adding value. By taking the extra step and providing them a portal to log in and review reports, listen to calls and look at cases it should be a no brainer. So why do so many call centers hide this data? Is it hiding or lacking the tools to share it with you? A resolution, setup issue typing for your clients by using an in house help desk application to track why people are contacting you, by doing this you can save your clients money by pointing out where their issues are. By taking an even deeper look, you can see who is calling and what products or services are causing all of volume.

Outsourcing should be a way of saving your clients money and allowing them to focus on their products or services. Contact Centers should realistically be good at this and do it efficiently. Deploy good applications. Cloud Based Contact Center Solutions can allow you to provide the best price and product while maintaining the efficiency to stay in business. Increase your efficiency by delivering consistent support and tracking your agent’s daily tasks. Monitoring case and call activities can allow you to cut down the effects of those “rogue” agents.

Many contact centers are manually doing tasks that are costing money and wasting valuable time. Why not automate these processes, use one application for all. Let’s face it; in the outsourced world no two clients are alike. That is why keeping the data flowing and accurate can allow you to bend and conform to your clients, actually adding value to your relationship.

The number five thing that they need to improve on was “Escalation Coaching”. He explains that “agents simply need to understand when to escalate situations to the next level of support”. I agree that agents do not always know when to do this. That is why contact center should deploy programs that can clearly define the end of the process and allow the system to automate the next steps. This can be done via a warm transfer of the caller or simply sending the case to the proper Tier 2 agent. By using the guided process many Tier 1 agents can handle a common Tier 2 problem with confidence and ease.

Erik explained the number 4 issue as being “Appropriate Staffing”. He states that you can “develop a flexible operation…through outsourcing or using virtual contact center technology”. There are many solutions for “seasonal hiring”. In many cases having an application contain all of the necessary steps in an organized fashion call allow larger contact centers with dedicated agents to essentially shift their help from contract to contract. They would be ultimately using the same application however, only the information for that “brand” would be presented to them. This allows the larger contact centers to pull their help to adjust staffing based upon the seasonality of their business. This would dramatically reduce training time and keep your agents and customers happy.

“Agent Location” was the number 3 thing to focus on. Erik states that “Callers from the U.S., for instance, would prefer to speak to someone in Madison, Wisc. or Detroit, rather than someone overseas”. Being in the “cloud” is a great way to make this happen. Many helpdesk / ACD Telephony platforms are in the “cloud”. This allows you to have your operations anywhere. Having agents work from home can lower your overhead and keep them more satisfied with their jobs. With lower overhead costs and increased efficiency there is really no need to send your support overseas.

Issue 2, “Proper IVR Design” is especially important. Erik states “The first choice in every IVR system should be: Do you want to speak to an agent, or would you like to use our enhanced automated self-help system?” With proper IVR design you are getting the information that you need before it hits the agent or frustrates the caller. How many times have you called for support and your option is not listed however, you can’t get to an agent either? This can be very frustrating, click here to read more about the IVR options. Cost and time savings shouldn’t frustrate your customers.

Finally the number 1 wish list item, “Continuity within customer service organizations” and Erik hits the nail on the head. He sums it up with how many times in a call you are asked to repeat your information over and over again and how frustrating this is for the caller. There are easy fixes for that using virtual contact center software. Applications can allow you to gather this information once and present it to the agent as needed. These applications can do wonders for your business but as Erik states, “ technology is only as good as the people using it”.

Unify Service Process, Improve Customer Experience and Lower Cost of Service Delivery

SpiceCSM is a powerful solution that unifies the agent desktop, creates a streamlined customer experience, and guides agents through the problem resolution process. Proven in parent company Fused Solutions’ contact center, SpiceCSM is used in a variety of industries to improve the customer experience and lower the cost of service delivery.

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Opportunities for Profit and Improved Customer Care

Agents and customers alike hate the time it takes to toggle between multiple programs to find answers. Moving from program to program increases handle time and can sometimes lead to overlooked information, not to mention frustration and higher cost per call. SpiceCSM was developed to create a single view of multiple applications in the contact center, while guiding agents through a decision process to improve consistency of care and identify opportunities.

“Our goal is to give agents the knowledge they need right at their fingertips to lower support costs and offer self-service features and functionality,” said Jessica Zuhlsdorf, SpiceCSM Business Development Manager. “We apply the company’s best practices against their goals and build them into a logical process that guides the agent through the call. It empowers the agent with the information they need to best resolve each call, and ensures that company procedures and policies are always met.”

For example, if a company offers multiple products, such as cable and internet, and a customer called who only used cable, the logic built into SpiceCSM might alert the agent to offer a new package to upsell the customer to buy internet as well.

“Instead of leaving the agent with only knowledgebase articles to determine their own plan for a customer, Spice CSM proactively leads them to the best solution based on the criteria in the system. It puts knowledge into action,” continued Zuhlsdorf.

Enhanced Visibility for More Effective Operations

The integration between SpiceCSM and the inContact cloud platform provides significant visibility into call center operations by combining call metrics and case metrics. Management can run intelligent reports that identify both areas for improvement and operational strong points that can be used for best practices modeling.

“With our powerful business rules, we can alert call center management automatically so that they can easily track changes in the process to make real time improvements,” said Mike Ryan, SpiceCSM CEO. “For example, if we find that any key metrics are out of alignment with goals, such as utilization, call handle time, IVR abandonment, etc., we send an email alert automatically to call out the issue. That enables each customer, regardless of size, to have the same level of support that huge organizations have”.

After implementing changes driven by SpiceCSM visibility metrics, many of their customers have reported loweringcosts by as much as 40-60%, while significantly improving customer satisfaction.

Mutual Benefit

SpiceCSM is a long-standing partner with inContact,with a powerful and value-added integration between the two systems.

inContact is the action engine behind SpiceCSM, providing call handling and outbound dialing solutions and call center metrics. For example, with an inbound call, inContact pushes the information into the SpiceCSM system and the agent is popped the appropriate script. In an outbound scenario, a list is uploaded to the inContact progressive dialer, and the agent is proactively alerted to the script they should follow for each call.

Spice CSM provides an additional layer of visibility into the call status by integrating data from a variety of the other applications, such as CRM and knowledgebases. Using the SpiceCSM dashboard, supervisors can view the state of all the calls in their center and can even cherry pick calls to push to specific agents as needed.

“There is a lot of synergy between inContact and SpiceCSM,” said Ryan. “One of the things that makes it easy is that SpiceCSM can interface with a lot of contact center back-end systems. For example, a customer might be using a popular CRM, a proprietary knowledgebase and a billing system. With inContact and SpiceCSM, we combine all this information with the contact data, drive business rules based on it and present it to the agent at the appropriate time in the call.”

Business

SpiceCSM takes a new approach to service delivery by guiding customers and service agents through the problem resolution process to help lower service costs and increase customer and agent satisfaction.The SpiceCSM Guided Service application shifts problem resolution from highly trained or subject matter experts, empowering customers and service agents with minimal knowledge and expertise. www.spicecsm.com

Click here to view and print the PDF

866.965.SaaS (7227) | inContact.com

]]> http://www.spicecsm.com/spicecsm-included-in-incontact-technology-partner-program-partner-spotlight/feed/ 0 http://www.spicecsm.com/holiday-hiring-costing-you/ http://www.spicecsm.com/holiday-hiring-costing-you/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:16:37 +0000 jessicaz@spicecsm.com http://www.spicecsm.com/?p=1965 Many companies have to ramp up staff to handle holiday spikes in customer care temporarily. Along with this comes lack of experience, higher training costs, and stress on your permanent employees. There are solutions to this common problem. A guided approach to handling all of your most common and frequent issues, will not only reduce training time and cost but can actually lead to increased customer satisfaction.

Let’s say one of your customers calls in with a pretty basic question for a temporary agent this agent has no idea the answer so they begin poking around the knowledge base. They can’t find anything so then they ask their neighbor who may or may not know. Now you have a frustrated agent, neighbor and an unnecessarily long call. This can be exceedingly expensive.

Using the “guided process” the agent can select from a list of potential issues and be guided through to the answer with images and directions. Now, not only have you cut your call time, classroom time and the neighbor’s frustration you have given the customer on the end of the phone line an excellent customer experience. They will then tweet, facebook, blog and tell all of their friends. You have saved time, money and the potential loss of a customer. Holiday hiring should not be expensive at all with the quick orientation to the application, a desk, and a phone you will be headed towards the New Year in no time.

Helping our local community has been a tradition for many years. This year SpiceCSM donated to the Potsdam Holiday Fund. This money goes into a fund that provides needy families in our area gifts and food for Christmas. There is much excitement surrounded by this time of the year and many people in Northern New York are struggling to provide the basic necessities. This fund each year allows for many people to enjoy this otherwise stressful holiday. We look forward to helping for many years to follow.

Program Overview Provided by the Holiday Fund

The Potsdam Holiday Fund, Inc. provides new toys, clothing, boots and food to families and senior citizens in need in the Potsdam area. The Potsdam Holiday Fund, Inc. is a 501 ( c ) 3 organization; thus contributions to the fund are tax deductible as allowed by the IRS.

Who Benefits:
Last year we served over 296 needy families with more than 450 children as well as 100 senior citizens in the Potsdam area.

Communities We Serve:
Generally we serve families in these communities: Potsdam, Madrid, Hopkinton, Nicholville, Brasher Falls, Chase Mills, Fort Jackson, West Stockholm and Winthrop.

How We “Find” These Needy Families:
We advertise in the local media and on the campuses that applications for assistance are available. (College students with children are eligible to apply.) Families are required to fill out an application for the program to show that they are in need, in order to avoid abuse of the program. We use the income guidelines established by the Potsdam Neighborhood Center. We ask for children’s social security numbers, or some ID, to keep track of who’s living where.

How We Get Funding:
Nearly all of our money is raised through a direct-mail solicitation mailed to Potsdam residents in October. We are also the primary beneficiary of the Hobble Gobble Prediction Run-Walk, coordinated by Derry Loucks and held in November each year. In 2010 the Potsdam Holiday Fund raised a total of about $46,000. Also, local businesses such as the Big M sell “Holiday Happiness” tags for $1 that are personalized by the donor and displayed at the business. Our cost to raise a dollar is about five cents.

How We Spend It:

1. Usually we spend about $15,000 on food basket items that we purchase. Also in their food basket is a voucher (gift certificate) to be used to buy food at a local grocery store, the amount depending on the size of the family ($25-$35). Senior citizens also receive food/fruit baskets. The Potsdam Rotary Club coordinates the food basket program.
2. 2. We give out vouchers for a local department store. In 2010, the vouchers were redeemable at Walmart in Potsdam. Parents can spend up to $40 per child on warm winter clothing.
3. 3. We sometimes buy new toys and other gifts as needed.

NOTE: The Holiday Fund is ran entirely by Volunteers! The only “Administrative Cost” we have is the cost of our maillings.

Other Gifts for the Children:
About 48 local businesses (many restaurants) set up Giving Trees with tags labeled for boys and girls ages 1 to 17. People pick off tags, buy a gift, wrap it and put it back under the tree. Each year we collect about 1,000 gifts from Giving Trees. The Potsdam Kiwanis Club coordinates the Giving Tree program. In addition, we receive many toys from the Toys for Tots program in St. Lawrence County, coordinated by Ray Cutway of Ogdensburg.

How We Distribute the Toys and Food:

• Toys: Once we decide who is eligible to participate, we set up appointments for the parents to come to the church to pick out their children’s gifts.  We call this “Santa’s Workshop.” All of the gifts are set on tables in the basement of the Methodist Church in Potsdam, and volunteer “elves” help parents find the right gifts.  We also give them vouchers if they still need boots or jackets.
• Food: Families and senior citizens may pick up their baskets in Potsdam, or we have volunteers who deliver to homes that day if the family can’t make it into town.

Upon making the switch I had initiated an online chat to inquire about services in my area. This was somewhat educational. I was instructed to begin the ordering process online and the representative assisted me with this process. Order completed service scheduled… good right? A few hours after my setup I realized that I was missing some of the programming that I had originally purchased, so I then initiated another chat to add the additional services to my channel lineup, 10 minutes after initiating the chat I was directed to another online order form. This order form was useless as it did not have the options to add the services. I was at that point very frustrated. The agent on the chat (after 15 minutes now) recommended I call customer support. Really? So my next move was to call customer support. Finally! After 30 minutes on chat and 12 on the phone my issue was resolved, all for an additional $3.99 / month.  So let me ask… by initially providing me with the correct steps, providing the agents with the correct documentation, and educating me on my new service could have saved the company ~ $33.60, wouldn’t this make sense? (Assumptions based upon a $.80/ minute charge) so essentially ½ of my first month was free.

Having knowledgeable agents is very important especially when dealing with customer care, technical support and sales. Why not allow all of your agents to do all of these tasks? There are programs that allow this type of information to be presented at the time of the call. When I dialed that number or initiated that chat the agent could have easily had access to whatever question I asked. Second question why not include this information in your welcome package? The costs are apparent the steps to add additional service are easy. Why not?

Customer service is one of the leading reasons people leave a company to seek services from the competitor. Many corporations need to be mindful of the fine line. Hiring people with soft skills and lowered technical ability is scary for companies. Why should it be? There are many applications that allow the basic technical information to be presented just as the agent needs it. Also, allows them to interact with the customer effectively using their soft skills to your benefit. Canned responses are another situation of increased efficiency to allow your agents to simply “pick” from a drop down or have the system auto populate a response. This can also be damaging if the agents are under stress to reduce average handle time without being mindful of what the customer is actually saying.

The fine line in the sand is being mindful of the customer interaction. While you can reduce costs and increase efficiency companies need to be mindful of these decisions and how they will affect the customer’s feelings about the company’s service. Ultimately balancing cost and efficiency to better the customer experience should be the goal for any service providing company.