Outbound Call Center Featured Article

Avaya on Contact Center Interaction, Routing Trends

There has been a shift in the control of business relationships from the companies to the customers. Fickle only-as-good-as-the-last-product/service/price performance loyalty, parsimony with downturn-limited incomes, the ability to check out and compare offerings via the Web and social media, enabled by broadband and wireless has placed the buyers in charge.

This change has impacted customers’ interactions with firms. TMCnet recently interviewed Jorge R. Blanco, vice president, marketing, Contact Center Solutions for Avaya to find out how.

TMCnet: What trends are you seeing in the channels customers use to interact with companies via the contact centers and what are the drivers?

JB: The primary channels remain voice, e-mail, and chat. Voice – live and self-service – continues to be the predominant channel. With that said the Web-based experiences – fixed, mobile and social – have become core components of the service delivery process. The emerging requirement is the linkage of each of these points of entry into a holistic, context-based, and measurable experience.

TMCnet: What split are you seeing between live agent versus self-service, how has this changed and why?

JB: The split varies greatly based on industry and functional segment (e.g. support versus claims). We serve clients in industries that can drive 75 percent to 80 percent of their transactions through self-service platforms – such as voice and Web. Others can register mixes as low as 20 percent (self-service). Where the adoption of self-service is aggressive, we find consistent deployments of voice and web experiences (where one complements the other) as the key driver for adoption.

TMCnet: Is IVR (including speech recognition) becoming more or less used on the front end of calls to route them, take basic information and why? JB: In Avaya’s (News - Alert) case, the platform that enables self-service applications cannot be classified as an IVR. That would be significantly limiting. Our platform is capable of front-ending incoming sessions, launching proactive campaigns – voice, e-mail, SMS – and delivering multimodal experiences that blend voice, speech and web interfaces. Customers are starting to require the full orchestration of their externally facing services. Platforms like Avaya Voice Portal are rapidly expanding to meet these emerging requirements.

TMCnet: Of the live agent channels which ones are becoming increasingly more popular, less popular and why?

JB: Chat continues to grow in popularity based on its experience commonality driven by the wide adoption of instant messaging (IM). Secondarily, social media is also fast emerging as a popular channel on the heels of the explosion of these types of networks.

TMCnet: Outbound notifications both automated and live agent have become a popular tool and one of the reasons commonly cited is that they obviate inbound contacts. Discuss how much of an impact outbound notification is having and will have on inbound volume?

JB: If the activation of outbound notification has an impact on inbound, it is typically an indication of a poor deployment. Well-deployed outbound applications are capable of activating and blending with inbound contact. However, they do so by maintaining the context of the notification, collecting additional information upon contact, and subsequently linking the information to an inbound channel. Consequently, we have observed that while outbound deployments may decrease inbound contact volumes, they can significantly improve their quality in terms of first contact resolution and customer satisfaction.

TMCnet: More customers are using wireless devices to contact organizations. What effect if any is this having on the channels selected, call/contact length and routing?

JB: The main impact is the expectation of equivalent services as those presented in fixed web experiences (e-mail, chat). Besides that, the explosion of mobile devices has contributed to increases in voice call volumes, as well as the emergence of SMS-based services to complement the experience.

TMCnet: Some contact centers are beginning to communicate with customers via social media. Discuss how this is and will have on routing. JB: Most companies that have activated social media as a service delivery channel do not route these types of interactions to a contact center. Instead, a dedicated group that typically resides outside of the contact center manages the identified interactions. Avaya’s Social Media Manager (ASMM) bridges that gap. It (ASMM) delivers a relevant social media interaction directly to an agent desktop where it can be managed and measured like any other channel – voice, e-mail, chat.

TMCnet: What is happening in skills-based routing? Is it still relevant? Web callbacks and now customer self-selection of contact center agents to improve service may be playing havoc with it. Also, what effects if any are there from UC-enabled presence on routing?

JB: Routing has continued to develop, and will remain relevant at the contact center level. However, new methods for distributing work at the departmental and enterprise levels will emerge over the next twelve months. These methods will be triggered by any interactive point of entry – voice, e-mail, chat, social, back office process, etc. They will take into account contextual attributes like presence, location, and history. And, will not be restricted from access to any resource, such as knowledge workers tapped to deliver expert services.

TMCnet: What are the benefits and the challenges of using the cloud (whether third-party- or OEM solution developer)-hosted compared with premise-licensed products for multichannel routing?

JB: The benefits are mostly financial in nature, especially in the trading of capital for operational expense. The challenges are mostly linked to the integration of all of the elements necessary to deliver a competitively differentiated and holistic experience. Avaya believes that the solution to these challenges relies on the cloud-readiness of its portfolio, and the ability to support hybrid deployments that enable linkage between the cloud and the premise.

TMCnet: What multichannel routing methods and solutions have Avaya developed and will be developing in response to these trends and issues. Outline their benefits.

JB: We have addressed the multimedia and multimodal trends through the introduction of the Avaya Aura Contact Center last July. This product enables unified collaboration sessions between customers, agents, and experts.

We have also addressed the growing relevance of social media as a service delivery channel through the introduction of the Avaya Social Media Manager solution. As mentioned earlier, this solution bridges the gathering, analyzing, and processing of social media interactions with the critical integration with the agent desktop.

We have in addition addressed the growing trend of inbound and outbound blending through the introduction of Avaya Proactive Outreach Manager. This application runs on the Avaya Voice Portal. It leverages the platform (Avaya Voice Portal) and its service creation environment – Avaya Dialog Designer. Campaigns can now be fully blended natively rather than relying on integration.

Both Avaya Voice Portal and Avaya Aura Contact Center have workflow integration capabilities enabling early forms of work assignment. For example, Avaya Voice Portal can host a solution that we call Avaya Intelligent Call Routing (ICR) that enables enterprise-level treatment, queuing, selection, and routing across a diverse set of contact center nodes. Avaya plans to continue to significantly enhance its work assignment capabilities over the next 12 to 18 months.

Brendan B. Read is TMCnet’s Senior Contributing Editor. To read more of Brendan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Carrie Schmelkin