A Practical Guide to Call Center Technology

PREFACE 1(6) The chief customer officer 2(1) The influence of the internet 3(1) Serving the customer 4(1) The evolution 5(1) Winning and keeping customers 6(1) INTRODUCTION 7(344) Why use a customer contact center 8(1) A seismic shift in call center ``plumbing'' technology 9(5) The cost of a contact 14(3) The equipment 17(2) Response center 19(1) A bit of history 20(1) Broad process reengineering 21(2) The traditional Call Center 23(12) Winning or protecting revenue 24(3) Cutting an organization's costs 27(4) Good service assures future sales 31(4) The role of the customer contact center 35(12) Adequate facilities 40(5) Death of the Automatic Telephone Call Distributor? 45(2) The Parts and principles of the typical customer contact center 47(20) A bird's eye view 47(4) System elements and responsibility 51(1) The telephone circuits and services 52(5) Telephone instruments 57(1) Management tools 57(1) Staff and workstations 58(1) The internet 58(1) The fulfillment interface 58(1) Customer contact center sizes 59(2) Planning a customer contact center 61(1) Ordinary & extraordinary customer call centers growth issues 62(2) Computer telephony integration 64(3) Connection to the outside world 67(24) The network hierarchy 68(17) The players 85(1) Voice telephone traffic 86(1) Forecasting caller behavior 87(2) Incoming customer call center traffic Engineering 89(2) Staffing issues 91(16) Maintaining Economy of scale with a decentralized staff 94(1) Hyper-drive to automate 95(1) Staffing to caller demand: demand forecasting 96(3) Customer demand forecasting and staff scheduling systems 99(6) Incentive and at risk compensation components 105(1) Staffing challenge for the customer contact center 105(1) Customer experience mapping and management 105(2) The budget: building a business case 107(20) Putting costs into perspective 108(1) Customer contact center costs 109(7) Capital investments versus operating costs 116(1) Mission critical versus technical and administrative roles 117(1) Strategic buying 118(3) Automatic call sequencers 121(1) The Universal customer contact center platform 122(1) Finding ACD bargains - secondary market alternatives 122(5) Managing telephony workflow 127(10) Inbound customer call flow 129(2) The uniform call distribution (UCD) system 131(1) The ACD 132(5) The typical switching system 137(24) The internal switching network of the system 140(2) Ports into and resources attached to the system 142(15) Backplane and signal distribution subsystem 157(4) The advantages of a purpose built ACD system 161(20) Architecture and capacities 162(9) System reliability and failure resistance 171(6) High visibility into the system 177(1) Ease of use 177(1) Interface with other customer contact center resources 178(1) A lesson to be learned 179(2) ACD Basics 181(24) Customer contact center size 181(5) The ACD - features and definitions 186(3) Strategic considerations 189(3) Analog or digital 192(2) Call answering process 194(7) Workflow 201(1) Special call processing treatments 202(3) The ACD as a customer workflow manager 205(14) Call processing - the basic steps 208(6) Other call processing steps 214(3) VoIP ACD feature maturity 217(2) Bullet-proofing the customer contact center 219(10) Disaster recovery and business resumption plans 220(1) A business continuity strategy 220(9) Telephone terminals and workstations 229(28) Plain old telephone or 2500 set 229(2) The proprietary PBX instrument 231(1) ACD instruments 232(1) Terminal displays 233(2) The PC telephone connection 235(1) The PC revolution 236(2) The integrated desktop 238(2) The ACD Agent instrument 240(17) Data gathering and reporting 257(28) Management goals 259(2) ACD systems 261(6) The human resource and legal implications 267(1) Reporting capability 268(2) Report development and presentation 270(2) The call center reports 272(11) In summary 283(2) Customer Experience: mapping and management 285(28) Second generation logging and recording technologies 288(2) It's all in the name 290(1) Recording and monitoring goals 291(1) Regulatory background 292(1) Call recording 293(2) The Process: service observation becomes quality monitoring 295(9) Limitations within the second generation architectures 304(1) Tactical applications for call recording 305(2) Customer experience Management: the next stage in the contact recording evolution? 307(4) In summary 311(2) CRM within the customer contact center environment 313(12) Call sourcing 314(3) Interactive voice response 317(2) Databases and systems integration 319(3) Intelligent networking 322(3) Integrating the internet into a traditional call center 325(10) Call analysis 326(1) Relative transaction costs 326(2) Self-service 328(2) Universal service 330(2) Video 332(3) The technology acquisition process 335(8) Strategic buying 335(1) The politics of purchase 336(3) There are two sides to every story 339(2) Winning concepts 341(1) Justifying a business specific solution 341(2) The trends 343(8) Evolution of the customer service industry 343(1) Customer-facing 344(4) Market drivers 348(1) The challenges 349(2) EPILOGUE 351(4) ``Move a register, forget history'' 351(1) The customer is king 352(1) Costs of sales continue to rise 353(2) Appendix I: Request for Information: Computer Telephony 355(66) Appendix II: Request for Proposal: ACD System 421(28) Appendix III: RFP: Recording and Analysis Solution 449(18) Glossary 467