Organizations that outsource do so in large part because their outsourced partners have processes and structures that enable them to deliver equal if not better quality service for less money and with greater flexibility that they deliver internally.

 

That means the outsourcers themselves must have the processes to do just that for their increasingly demanding clientele. And that’s what and why global business process outsourcing firm TeleTech has decided to improve on by implementing OpenSpan’s OpenSpan (News - Alert) Platform to further enhance its high-quality customer experience solutions.

 

OpenSpan enables TeleTech to simplify user interfaces for internal systems and client applications, automating previously manual tasks, such as repetitive copying and pasting of data between applications. By reducing the time spent navigating between applications, TeleTech associates are more productive and better equipped to more efficiently handle customer inquiries and identify and convert sales opportunities.

 

TeleTech, which handles approximately 3.5 million customer interactions in 17 countries via nearly 40,000 workstations every day, will also resell the OpenSpan Platform to its Global 1000 client base as a Certified OpenSpan Systems Integrator Partner. In addition to selling licenses, TeleTech Professional Services will offer system integrator services to assess, build, host and manage the solution set including OpenSpan on behalf of its clients.

 

The OpenSpan Platform integrates applications, service-enable legacy systems, automate business processes, extend functionality and build new composite applications in order to realize immediate value on their IT investments by imaginatively reusing existing software. It gets at the ‘software DNA’ to evolve and morph solutions to enable them to meet changing environments, helping their firms to survive and grow in them. OpenSpan is now deployed on more than 120,000 enterprise desktops and will support more than one billion customer support calls in 2009, saving organizations more than $100 million.

 

“Our clients select TeleTech because our associates provide a high-quality customer experience that leads to increases in customer satisfaction levels and sales conversion rates,” said Carol Kline, Chief Information Officer of TeleTech. “Adding OpenSpan to our current offerings will further increase the productivity of our associates, enabling them to deliver more value to our clients and their customers. Additionally, TeleTech can deploy its productivity enhancing solutions to boost performance for its clients’ internal contact centers.”

 

“As a leading BPO provider, TeleTech understands the desktop complexity issues that can impact front- and back-office productivity and ultimately customer satisfaction and sales,” said Eric Musser, CEO, OpenSpan. “The partnership with OpenSpan will enable TeleTech to further enhance business processes, both within their own delivery centers and as a reseller to their client organizations as well.”

 

TeleTech and OpenSpan will find more value and interest in the OpenSpan solution as firms look for ways to improve productivity. In a poll of attendees on an OpenSpan webinar held Aug.11 “Streamline Customer On-Boarding Processes with OpenSpan” more than 50 percent of enterprises estimate that it takes one week or more to complete all new customer on-boarding processes. More than 70 percent of enterprises believe that the time required to on-board new customers has remained the same or increased during the past 12 to 18 months.

 

Attendees cited an over-abundance of manual workflows and a general lack of integration between software applications as the biggest factors contributing to customer on-boarding complexity. Additional on-boarding challenges included increased government and corporate compliance mandates.

 

“Manual repetitive tasks related to the on-boarding of new customers can significantly impact business user productivity and introduce a number of new costs,” OpenSpan founder and chief evangelist Francis Carden (News - Alert) explained to attendees. “By automating previously manual workflows that span multiple systems, organizations can speed decision-making, reduce human errors and increase customer satisfaction levels.”

 

The agreement with TeleTech follows a partnership with another global BPO firm, Stream Global Services announced June 30 in which the company joined the OpenSpan BPO Services Partner Program. Stream, which has more than 17,000 agents across 34 call centers in 19 countries, selected OpenSpan technology to automate business process workflows that span disparate systems within its technology infrastructure. By utilizing OpenSpan, Stream is able to optimize agent productivity, improve cross-sell and up-sell performance and thus enhance customer satisfaction and drive brand loyalty for its clients.

 

As an outsourced customer care services provider, Stream works with various external customer systems, each with its own set of applications and business processes, resulting in complex user interfaces and workflows. OpenSpan technology eliminates the need to toggle between applications and manually enter data–thus streamlining the process and providing a better overall consumer experience. 

 

The recently announced OpenSpan Events offering enables Stream to rapidly identify process bottlenecks that span multiple applications. Once process optimization opportunities are identified, Stream will utilize the OpenSpan Platform to automate manually-intensive business process workflows, as well as to create a unified view of customer data. Based on initial testing, Stream will provide enhanced service to customers with reduced average handling times and improved first call resolution rates.

 

“By combining Stream's proven methodologies and best practices with OpenSpan technology, we are able to deliver a higher quality of service to our clients,” said Scott Murray, chairman and CEO, Stream Global Services. “OpenSpan improves the efficiency of agents when interacting with applications and the processes they support. This enables us to differentiate our service offerings by providing more productive agents that are better prepared and equipped to resolve customer inquiries and improve up-selling success rates.”

 

“Contact center agents often navigate between many different types of applications on the desktop, resulting in inefficient business processes and long hold times for customers," said Eric Musser, CEO, OpenSpan. “OpenSpan simplifies the desktop environment for agents by integrating and automating cumbersome workflows–improving the customer's experience and reducing contact center costs.”