Computer Telephony Integration
Remaking the Call Center
- by Hugh Ashton -
Call center agents often provide the first direct contact between a company and its customers, whether a call center is fielding incoming calls - such as responses to advertising and customer service requests - or whether it is making outgoing telemarketing calls. For this first contact to be an effective part of the enterprise, the call center needs to be an efficient business unit.
In Japan until very recently, the con-cept of a call center has often meant that company agents were sequestered into dimly lit rabbit hutches with pencil and paper at the ready, waiting interminably for calls to come in. However, this situation has undergone radical change due to the growing convergence of telephone, computer, and communications technology, commonly referred to as computer telephony integration (CTI). Today's ready availability of sophisticated CTI solutions and associated data warehousing technology, such as that provided by NCR Japan - one of the country's leading total call center solution suppliers - has led the renaissance in call center set-up and operation. Traditionally, call center operators all responded to a single company telephone number. But now, call centers may handle sales for a range of products, each product line having its own unique free dial (0120- prefix) number tied to the product and its advertising channel. One company - Oak Lawn Marketing of Nagoya - advertises its products through TV commercials, and depending on the number dialed by the prospective customer, the company's call center CTI software automatically displays the appropriate script - consisting of questions and responses - on-screen for the agent. This is an example of the rapid, on-screen display of information that can be presented to the agents by a CTI system, and the screens are known as "screen pops." These scripts are minor works of art, professionally written by World Class Marketing, an international supplier of such tools, and they are continually monitored by supervisors and managers to be modified as necessary for maximum effectiveness. The CTI software can further forward calls handled on behalf of other sales organizations using the Oak Lawn call center to the appropriate agents. In addition to this product-based call routing, CTI also allows agent-based call routing. Typically, more experienced agents are likely to be more effective. Hence, the administration of a call center almost always incorporates a system to grade agents' performance, and CTI is used to route calls to the more experienced agents when they are available. Determining which agents are good is easy when the PBX is an open system linked to the CTI database. Among other running statistics, a call center manager can review results relating to average length of call, sales revenue per call, and number of calls fielded per hour, and analyze these figures to arrive at individual and overall productivity statistics - without leaving his or her desk. Another example of inbound number routing is employed at Zurich Direct, part of the Zurich Insurance Company Japan. As vice president Jatin Mukhi explained, corporate customers are assigned a special telephone number, calls to which are automatically routed to agents who have dealt with that customer's account in the past. In call center operation, agents are typically divided into teams under a supervisor. The supervisor can monitor the agents' conversations, read their displays remotely, offer private advice (inaudible to the caller), or take over the call completely if the situation escalates beyond the capability of the agent. The on-screen information about the caller electronically follows the call from the agent's screen to the supervisor's screen, meaning that the caller is spared the frustration of having to repeat details (name, address, phone number, reason for call, etc.) to another call center worker. This feature is especially important in Japan, where the spelling of names and addresses over the phone by sounding out the complicated kanji characters is often time-consuming. A visually dramatic feature of many call centers is the "wallboard," a display showing line usage and other up-to-the moment statistics, allowing all supervisors and agents to immediately gauge the level of traffic through the center. This, however, is not as common a feature in Japanese call centers as overseas, according to Brian Stennett, director of telephony at Oak Lawn Marketing. Both Oak Lawn Marketing and Zurich Direct experience dramatic peaks in inbound traffic immediately after TV commercials have been aired. Accordingly, should all agents be engaged with existing calls, their CTI systems can be used to re-route the overflow to other sites, or to provide a push-button voice mail system to allow callbacks. One of the most dramatic applications of CTI is Caller ID, which, in theory at least, can be used to provide the agent with the automated look up of a name and customer history based on the calling number, and allows the operator to greet the caller appropriately before a single word has been spoken by the customer ("Good afternoon, Mrs. Suzuki, and how are you enjoying the products you purchased from us last April?"). In practice, however this feature is not used. The risk of embarrassment is quite high if a mistake is made and it has been found in US experience - the country with the world's largest call center base (Japan has a mere 10% of the world's call centers) - that this kind of "precognition" is unnerving to customers. At Zurich Direct, though, there are plans to use Caller ID to identify the caller's area code and provide the lowest-cost routing of incoming free-dial calls to the Zurich Direct call center nearest to the caller. Customer identification here is done by the customer's ID being provided over the phone, keyed in by the agent, with the appropriate records and scripts displayed on-screen for the agent's information. The computer records displayed include, at the agent's discretion, scanned images of any relevant paperwork, providing a digital representation of the traditional paper-based customer history. Oak Lawn Marketing uses similar systems to provide customer information, and to encourage repeat sales. Another use of CTI in overseas call centers - though this has not yet been implemented in any of the call centers visited for this article - is predictive dialing. This is an automated "smiling and dialing" service, whereby the PBX is programmed to work its way through a list of numbers (which may be demographically selected from a database, e.g. "25 to 35 year-old housewives in Tochigi with children just about to start school"), ignoring busy lines, fax, and answering machines, and route connected calls through to an available agent's desk, complete with prospect information and a sales script. According to Harutoshi Mayuzumi, who planned and implemented Manpower Japan's call center, this can increase productivity by up to several hundred percent at certain times of day. Oak Lawn Marketing intends to implement this kind of application in the future together with a dramatic increase in line capacity, targeting, for example, repeat customers who will need consumable items. Eric Hildum, a senior consultant of the Call Center Solution COE Group of NCR Japan, foresees a bright future for this kind of work, incorporating customer information from different sources, integrating it, and analyzing it in such a way as to present "windows of opportunity" to the call center, enabling agents to make sales within these time windows and to retain and expand their customer base. This takes the concept of a call center one stage further - to what NCR terms a Customer Relationship Management system. The planning and implementation of a call center is obviously not a trivial business. First, a site must be chosen. It is interesting that many of the newest generation of call centers tend to be located outside central Tokyo. Reasons? "We work non-standard hours," explains Zurich Direct's Mukhi, whose call center is located in a residential Tokyo suburb easily accessible by train, "and our agents need to be able to get home easily." The Manpower Japan center is located in Tachikawa, a residential suburb west of Tokyo, and Mayuzumi emphasizes the number of higher-education establishments located nearby, providing a ready supply of intelligent, educated workers. By contrast, Oak Lawn Marketing's call center is located in central Nagoya, but the ready availability of public transportation for the workers outside normal office hours is a prime consideration here, too. As with every business enterprise in urban Japan, the cost of space is also an important factor. In short, suburbs cost less. Staffing the call center is the next headache. It is, of course, easy to find staff, but as Stennett points out, "you're only as good as your worst communicator," and it can be difficult to find high quality staff, train them, and retain them (the burn-out time for outgoing call center agents is typically less than one year). Again, however, CTI can come to the rescue, allowing a dedicated off-line training area away from live customers, where supervisors can monitor their trainee teams, and offer helpful advice and encouragement. Manpower Japan also provides a package known as Skillware, which allows self-paced interactive self- instruction for agents via CD-ROM. Next comes the planning and integration of the call center. Because of the complex nature of such a system, most Japanese companies considering setting up a call center prefer one-stop shopping, explains NCR's Hildum, while companies outside Japan often prefer to purchase call center components from independent vendors and bolt the pieces together themselves. The close ties that NCR has developed with Lucent, major international supplier of PBX (including the Definity series) and call center hardware, have enabled NCR to provide this complete service successfully to customers in Japan since 1995. US call center technology tends to be more open than that provided in Japan, which often comprises black boxes that will work satisfactorily only with other products from the same source. The mix and match approach allows integrators such as NCR to find the right product mix for each client. Integration of the call center's PBX, the back-end databases, the middleware, and the agents' screens - while easier with modern development tools - is still a relatively lengthy process, and demands experience in the development and integration of call center systems. Typically, the solution provided is precisely tailored to the needs of the call center operator. The Manpower Japan call center is an interesting exception. It is an "open-systems" call center for use by corporations who are not yet ready to make the investment in a call center of their own. Although call centers for hire have existed in Japan for some time, Hiroshi Negishi, the manager of the Manpower Japan center, claims that they have tended to be little more than order-taking systems. The Tachikawa call center, by comparison, in addition to providing professionally trained staff, can also provide full CTI service, allowing a client's own customer or prospect database and other data to be integrated within a matter of a few weeks, using Genesys middleware software to link the Lucent PBX, agent stations, and client data. Remembering that the aim of CTI is ultimately to enhance human communication, Manpower Japan provides services allowing professional scripts to be developed, and for the Skillware package to be customized to train Manpower's agents in the client's product offerings. The 75-agent stations in the Manpower Japan center can be reconfigured to meet client requirements, allowing the call center to serve many different clients simultaneously. Arrangements are available where problem calls can be bumped up to the client company from the call center, and the client can even act as a "super-supervisor," monitoring the agents' conversations and screens from their own locations. The future of call centers in Japan looks rosy. Nobuo Nishio of NCR feels that the increased open hours and the convenience of telephone sales, coupled with the lower costs available through the elimination of distribution layers, will lead to increased call center traffic. These factors also apply to corner convenience stores, which are experiencing a boom despite Japan's unending recession. In addition, the increased number of dual-income families means that there are fewer spouses staying at home to do the shopping during traditional store hours. The integration of websites and call centers should provide increased future activities. While an Internet presence can attract and maintain interest in a product, it can be difficult to close the deal through a website, however attractive and well-designed. For that, a human being - a call center agent - is usually required. The reluctance of many people to provide credit card and other personal information over the Internet also promotes the importance of call centers as the appropriate tool to clinch the deal. Since most Japanese households typically have only one phone line, a callback service can be implemented, similar to fax-on- demand, where the prospective customer provides a name, phone number, area of interest, and callback time from their home PC. This information is passed to the PBX, which calls the number at the stated time, connects the call to an agent station, and provides the screen pop giving all the information provided by the prospect. With luck, the agent then makes a successful sale. Every call center manager continually emphasizes the importance of the human factors - "without a good agent, nothing happens," I was told. At the same time, a good agent cannot work without information. The function of CTI in a call center was neatly summarized as "delivering the call to the right person, and providing the right information." If call centers are the front line, CTI is the logistical system that provides ammunition to the troops, helping the call center to be an effective and productive tool. Hugh Ashton writes regularly for Computing Japan. 
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