VoIP changes the game for telework and call centres

Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) is taking over contact centres. As a result IP - whether used for voice, data or in future video - promises to change the way they operate. "I think we hit a milestone this year," says Paul Lutz, global product marketing prime for contact centre 6.0 and 7.0 at Nortel Networks Corp. "We're actually selling more voice over IP (telephones) than we are TDM." When long-established telecom equipment manufacturers like Nortel start doing that, it tells you the technology has arrived. It's still difficult for most organizations to justify VoIP unless their existing phone systems are due for replacement, says Stan Tyo, vice-president of contact centre solutions at Telus Corp. But as the conversions happen, new possibilities open up. "IP is a great breaker of barriers," Tyo says, "and it takes away a lot of the obstacles that were put in place by traditional telephone lines." Toronto-based ThyssenKrupp Elevator Canada wanted to give national customers a uniform experience no matter what branch they dealt with, while maintaining a local feel in every city. The company kept local phone numbers for 27 offices across Canada, but now routes all calls through its national IP network to a single call centre in Toronto, which handles service calls as well as receptionist duties for all offices, says Andrei Moffat, vice-president of IT services. The Avaya IP system can support call-centre agents working at home, but for now at least, ThyssenKrupp doesn't want to do that. The company uses radio dispatch to assign service calls to field personnel. That requires teamwork among operators and isn't easily distributed to home workers, says Moffat. But the ability for agents to log in from anywhere on ThyssenKrupp's network came in handy recently when the company shut down its Toronto call centre for a couple of hours during the night for upgrades. Few agents work at that time of night, but the centre is staffed 24 hours a day for emergency calls, so those few agents were sent across town to take calls from head office. Telus is taking it farther. The telco has about 2,000 call-centre agents on IP, says Tyo, and about 800 work from home. It's much easier for agents to work shorter swing shifts when they don't have to commute, which simplifies scheduling. The challenges aren't about technology. "It's management of the employees that's the interesting thing," says Martin van Nierop, business development manager for contact centres at Cisco Systems Canada Inc. Call centre supervisors need ways to monitor and coach agents, Tyo says. So Telus implemented work force management systems to track who is working, and supervisors can remotely monitor calls and use text chat to communicate with home-based agents. Tyo adds that telework isn't for everyone; companies need to remember this when deciding who's right for the job. At Telus, it's an option only for agents with some experience - and a retention tool. Telus has found turnover among agents working at home is about one twentieth what it was before the company started offering the telework option. Working from home is an attractive alternative to a long commute, Lutz says. Employees on maternity leave may be able to work part time. And employers can hire qualified workers wherever they are, instead of competing for personnel in a few large centres. Lutz says there are three main objections to allowing call-centre agents to work at home using VoIP - cost, concerns about voice quality, and the fear that home workers will be impossible to manage. He maintains cost isn't a real issue today - it's just a matter of a broadband Internet connection. Neither is voice quality any more, he says, though he admits it was at first. "Some people got one taste of VoIP years ago and dubbed it the ‘inebraphone'," he observes. "The quality is so good now that that's almost a non-issue." Almost. Voice quality issues do arise, but can generally be resolved. Moffat, for instance, says that when ThyssenKrupp got up to about six locations, voice quality issues started to appear. The company added quality of service capabilities to ensure voice packets got priority and the problems disappeared, he says. The home Internet connections teleworking agents might rely on are not always fast enough or reliable enough to support voice, and Telus encourages use of dedicated Internet connections. "You don't want to trust your business to the same service that is maybe used by your teenaged kid to download movies or music or God knows what else," Tyo observes. However, Lutz says managing home workers shouldn't be a problem because of technology tools and how contact centres are managed. Contact centres typically measure things like how many calls their employees take, how long they spend on each call, and how much of their time they spend on the phone. All those can easily be measured remotely, Lutz says, so managing home-working call-centre agents shouldn't be difficult. But there is still some resistance to the idea, he admits, and that's largely why most companies are still in the trial stage. Enterprises have also been fairly slow to embrace IP's ability to spread some of the contact centre's function - dealing with customer questions and problems - throughout the organization. Suppose a customer calls with a technical question about a specific product. The call centre agent probably doesn't know the answer. But presence - the ability to see whether a specific employee is at his or her desk and is or is not busy - opens up the possibility that the agent can turn to an expert and get an immediate answer. Knowledgeable agents could transfer calls this way without IP, but IP and presence make it easier, and an IP system will help track the entire customer experience from beginning to end, says Ernie Wallerstein Jr., president of North American operations for contact centre technology firm Zeacom Inc., of Auckland, New Zealand. Armed with a list of subject areas and people with expertise in those specific areas, and knowing who is immediately available, an agent can avoid having to call the customer back. One option is to conference in an engineer or specialist who knows the answers the customer needs, Lutz says. Another is for the agent to conduct a text chat with the expert while talking to the customer. "The customer doesn't even know that you've tapped into that resource." The idea is attractive, says Lutz, because some businesses believe their customers feel isolated from internal resources. That's one reason why companies are putting more information on Web sites for customers to refer to. Van Neirop says technology is coming that could use customer information to infer what callers want and route calls accordingly. But the flip side is that many managers see the contact centre's function as "blocking and tackling," Lutz admits. "Keep those pesky customers out of the hair of core employees, because they've got to get something done." It may be a legitimate concern. If key engineers spend too much time helping contact centre agents answer customer questions, they're not working on new products. But Lutz says businesses need to use this capability to provide better customer service while also monitoring and analyzing agents' use of internal experts. If specialists in a particular area get a lot of calls to help with customer questions, he says, it may indicate an area where contact centre employees need more training. An extension of this idea is making employees into casual call centre agents. Suppose a technician returns from a service call and is sitting in the office, Lutz suggests. Presence technology could detect the person is available and calls - perhaps specifically related to that technician's expertise - could be routed to him or her. Lutz admits that there is a spectre of technology making people busier. Some businesses may go overboard with this at first, he says, but those that succeed will do so by finding the right balance. Thanks to IP, Resolve Corp., a Toronto-headquartered call-centre outsourcer, can set up short-term call centres to address clients' needs. "Unlike some of the other platforms, we can provision a call centre in about two weeks," says Steve Gesner, executive vice-president and chief information officer. The operations can use space in one of Resolve's five call centres, or other company office space. IP also makes it easy for Resolve to shift agents from job to job depending on client needs, Gesner says. "Being able to ramp up and down really quickly is valuable," says Tony Olvet, vice-president of communications, segments and channels research at International Data Corp. (Canada) Ltd. (IDC) in Toronto. IP is not just for voice, and some of its promise lies in creating multimedia experiences. Contact centres already deal with customers through media other than phone calls - that after all is why the term ‘contact centre' is gradually supplanting the more specific ‘call centre.' Lutz says many businesses are interested in the idea of offering ‘talk' buttons on their Web sites, so that visitors can set up chat sessions or request phone calls from agents to help with their questions. As a result, by using a combination of voice and other communications channels, agents can help customers more effectively. "The traditional technologies don't allow you to have the multi-channel capability to interact with your customer," says Gesner. The Cisco IP technology Resolve uses makes it possible, but Resolve hasn't started doing it. That's typical. "Most customers want that," Tyo says, "but haven't got it turned on fully yet, and it's because they don't yet know how they want to deal with it." Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) makes much of this easier by helping to tie different types of traffic together in a single session. SIP can also help give call-centre agents instant access to a customer's records when he or she calls, notes Amir Hameed, director of applications sales at Avaya Canada. Computer-telephony integration (CTI) technology has been doing this kind of thing for years, but Hameed says SIP makes it easier and cheaper, thus more accessible to smaller businesses. Video too is in its infancy in the contact centre, Lutz says, but its use will grow with changes in technology and demographics. One use of video is simply allowing two parties in a conversation to see each other. Lutz believes older adults today don't see a lot of value in this, being accustomed to telephones, but younger people expect more contact and have grown up with multimedia, so they're more likely to expect such capabilities. Olvet says video could help create closer relationships with customers, and will probably catch on first in "high-end segments where there is a lot of profit in the customer." Financial services firms might offer it to their most valued clients, for instance. Probably more compelling than just seeing the person you're talking to is being able to show him or her something rather than trying to put it across in words. Imagine for instance a help-desk agent being able to show a puzzled customer how to connect a device, rather than describing it. Or, suggests Hameed, imagine that rather than hunting for a product or serial number to identify a device, a customer could simply point a webcam at it and show the support technician what model it is. One of the key issues is whether the customer is equipped to use video, says Hameed. It works best for businesses that know, because of the type of product or service they offer, that their customers are so equipped. Cellphone companies are a good example. But another way to use video is kiosks located in stores or other public locations so remote agents can answer customer questions. Some automated teller machines in the US already have video monitors and cameras so customers can get help from live agents, Tyo says, though these generally don't rely on IP today. Today, the potential that IP offers contact centres outstrips most organizations' ability to take advantage of it. Getting a handle on it could lead to significant transformation.

VoIP changes the game for telework and call centres

News | 05/28/2008 3:12 pm EDT

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