Introduction
Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is a set of solutions that allows deep integration between enterprise telephony systems with core business systems. Nowadays contact channels have expanded from simple telephone contact to include fax, web, email, and direct mail, aggregating all contact channels and allow them to interact with each other becomes essential to improve productivity and maintain manageability of critical business data. DigiCentury provides wide variety of Computer Telephony Integration solutions customized to business systems of any size and need.
Challenges
Typical contact centers are faced with a wide variety of productivity and service-quality challenges, including:
- Reducing customer hold time
- Matching customer needs with proper agent skills
- Reducing time spent locating customer information in the core system
- Identifying lead source when generating new leads
- Improving ongoing customer contact management process
While ongoing training and call center process redesign may provide some level of improvement, the greatest leap in efficiency requires new levels of integration between contact center telephony system and core business applications. DigiCentury provides customized CTI middleware solution that resides between your existing Avaya telephony hardware and your core business applications, instantly improves your contact center capabilities and efficiencies with virtually no impact to your existing systems.
Solutions
Screen Population Technology (“Screen Pop”)
Screen Population is the most fundamental component of any CTI solution. DigiCentury CTI solution aggregates all client-side functionalities into a light-weight desktop application called “CTIApp”. CTIApp connects with CTI server and listens to telephony events via the server. When the agent receives a call, base on call type, caller’s telephone number, and other additional information provided by customers in advance, the CTIApp automatically triggers the proper application screen as well as populating all relevant fields with known information. This reduces the amount of time agents spend navigating business applications, improves data entry accuracy, and thus upgrade the overall customer experience.
Business scenario:
NextStudent is a financial services company specializes in educational lending. NextStudent advertises in many channels, including direct mail, online search engine placement, print advertisements, and special event promotions. In order to correctly track the effectiveness of advertisement channels, NextStudent, in its call center script, asks its customers how they come to learn about the company. The agent then selects the correct “lead source” into the customer intake form when generating a new lead. This business process, proved to be cumbersome and ineffective because customer generally do not enjoy answering the additional question and sometimes agents simply skips the question altogether and randomly selects a lead source. This created a huge problem for the Marketing department of NextStudent because the data accuracy became questionable.
To resolve the issue, DigiCentury implemented a CTI screen pop solution. First, individual 800 numbers are created and assigned to different lead sources so the company is able to track the referring advertisement channel simply by looking at which 800 number the customer is calling from. When agent gets a call from a customer, the CTI server immediately captures the caller’s telephone number and the 800 number the caller called. The CTI server performs a database lookup of the client’s telephone number against the client’s sales database. If a match is found, the customer(s) information is immediately presented to the agent when he picks up the phone. If the system determines the caller is a new customer, then a new customer intake form is presented with customer’s telephone number and the lead source automatically pre-populated.
The screen pop solution greatly improves the accuracy and efficiency of NextStudent’s call center operation with virtually no impact to its call center process or system.
Outbound Auto Dialing
There are two components to the auto dialing solution; both aimed at eliminating the need for contact center agents to reach for the telephone keypad and punch in the number manually. Click-n-Dial is an AJAX plugin that integrates with client’s contact center software. The application creates a small telephone icon next to any fields with valid telephone numbers. When a contact center agent clicks on the icon, it automatically initiates the call on agent’s phone.
The second component for auto dialing is the Autodialer. The system automatically dials a pre-defined list of customers one by one. Once the call is initiated the customer’s information is automatically presented on screen along with a list of disposition buttons. Base on the result of the call (can be pre-defined base on needs) the agent enters the corresponding disposition button. The autodialer is designed to be used for cold calling, customer follow up, and status updates.
Utilizing the Auto Dialing solutions allows contact agents to initiate calls directly base on numbers stores in the system, therefore reducing the possibility of error and at the same time greatly improves contact center efficiencies.
Business Scenario:
NextStudent’s internal business software Kennel manages all borrowers’ customer information and loan applications. During the course of loan applications agent must initiate contact with customers multiple times, either to chase certain loan documents or to require additional information. Since every customer is assigned to a specific agent, they are each responsible for getting in touch with the customers in the entire sales cycle. As such, a contact agent not only takes a log of inbound calls, he also initiates a huge number of outbound calls.
To facilitate ease of contact, all customers that needed to be contacted by a specific agent are organized into a work tracker. The tracker status tells the agent the reason for initiating contact with a specific customer, and all he has to do is go down the tracker and initiate contact with every customer on the list. Traditionally, manual dialing is time-consuming and error-prone, therefore DigiCentury implemented a click-n-dial system that allows agents to directly click on the phone number to initiate a follow-up call. Using this system, agents’ eyes and hands no longer have to leave the workstation, thereby greatly improving contact efficiency.
NextStudent’s business software also organizes all generated-leads within its database. Sometimes these leads are recycled if they failed to produce a sale in the initial round. From time-to-time, these leads are organized into a huge contact list and agents called “fronters” are in charged to contact these customers and inquire whether they are still interested at products the company has to offer. Traditionally this contact list is organized into a tracker and fronters dial the numbers one-by-one. Base on the customer’s response the fronters either note the call deposition in the customer’s contact history field (no sale), or transfer the call to the sales agent (hot lead). The entire process is of manual nature and it’s time-consuming and cumbersome.
By combining the CTI technology, DigiCentury created an Autodialer that greatly improved the outbound dialing process. The contact list is now loaded into an autodialing database, and agents who logs in as a fronter will now have their workstation phone dialing numbers from the database automatically. As the phone dials a new customer, his information is displayed instantaneously on screen with a list of disposition options. Base on the result of the call, the agent can simply choose one of the many disposition options (busy, customer not home, no answer, language barrier, not interested, do not call…), or transfer the call to sales agent-in-charge if the customer is interested.
When a call is disposed, its disposition scenario is automatically recorded in the customer’s contact history. When a call is transferred to a sales agent, all fronter has to do is press the “transfer” button and the system automatically transfers the call to the appropriate sales agent. When the sales agent picks up the phone, the customer information is automatically displayed on his screen. Autodialer is a powerful outbound calling campaign tool that can greatly improve contact center efficiency.
What We Can Do For You
Utilizing our expertise with Avaya’s Enterprise Telecommunication Solutions and Avaya’s Application Enable Service, DigiCentury can develop customized integration solution for your internal business system with your Avaya telecommunication equipment. Thus, greatly increase your contact center productivity and efficiency.