Overview and Table of Contents

The technology edition of the benchmarking report on Call Center Best Practices reveals the impact that different technologies are having on call center performance, including cost, customer satisfaction and employee retention. For each technology area, benefits and issues are discussed as well as implementation considerations.

With this benchmarking report:

• Discover the most commonly used technology applications and their benefits and issues.
• Review current data for the following technologies: Email applications, Contact management systems, Voice response systems, Web-enabled call centers, CTI, Knowledge-based applications, Technology improvement initiatives
• The report includes the top technology areas targeted for change in the next 12 to 18 months.

Key findings from the latest report:

• Although there are a number of advanced technologies that are offered for call centers, there are many call centers (especially smaller ones) that do not use the most up-to-date technology.
• As the different forms of technology have become more readily available and more widely used, implementation and development times have decreased.
• Email turnaround times have improved over time, but the reality for email response times is still not matching goals.
• The greatest emphasis for future technology projects lies in Web-enabled call centers and Web-based technology.

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• Study Objective

Call center operations model

Technology overview

Email applications

• Greatest benefits from email
• Telephone calls and email handling
• Email parsing, automated response and routing software
• Benefits and issues with automated email responses
• Email application ratings
• Implementation time for email systems
• Email turnaround time standards and goals
• What participants would do differently next time
• Future changes planned

Voice response systems

• Greatest benefits from voice response systems
• Percentage of total call volume handled to completion by the voice response system
• Voice XML use
• Problems encountered with voice response systems
• Ratings for ease of development, scripting and maintenance of voice response systems
• Voice response system vendor ratings
• Implementation time of voice response systems
• Changes planned for voice response systems
• What participants would do differently

Quality monitoring

• Greatest benefits from using quality monitoring systems
• Increases and decreases in talk time
• Issues encountered with quality monitoring systems

CTI

• Primary goals for implementing CTI
• Greatest benefits from using CTI
• Reduction in talk time
• Other quantitative and qualitative benefits from CTI
• CTI capabilities in use
• Time for development and implementation of CTI
• Issues encountered with implementation
• Resources for CTI implementation
• CTI vendor support ratings
• What participants would do differently next time
• Future changes for CTI

Contact management systems

• The CSR desktop
• Contact management benefits
• Increases and decreases in talk time due to use of contact management systems
• Reasons for changes in talk time
• Issues encountered with contact management tools
• Resources for implementation
• Off-the-shelf application or internally developed system
• Browser-based applications
• Development and implementation time for contact management
• What participants would do differently next time
• Changes planned for the future

Knowledge-base applications

• Knowledge-base benefits
• Increases and decreases in talk time from use of knowledge-base
• Knowledge-base tools
• Issues encountered with knowledge-base tools
• Implementation time for knowledge-base systems
• Knowledge-base application ratings
• Knowledge-base system resources
• In-house or off-the-shelf tools
• What participants would do differently next time
• Future changes planned

Speech recognition

• Reasons for implementing speech recognition
• Greatest benefits from using speech recognition
• Structure of speech recognition technology
• Short-term changes planned for speech recognition

Workforce management tools

• Features of workforce management in use
• Off-the-shelf or internally developed system
• Implementation time for WFM
• Workforce management system ratings
• What participants would do differently next time
• Changes planned for the future

Web-enabled call centers

• Access to call centers through Web sites
• Agent ability to view Web pages
• Agent and customer ability to "push" Web pages
• Issues associated with Web-enablement
• Call center involvement in Web site design
• Future plans for integration of the Web site with the call center

VoIP

• VoIP technology in use today
• Size of VoIP implementation
• Drivers for evaluating and implementing VoIP
• Leaders of the VoIP initiative
• Transitioning to VoIP technology
• Problems or issues experienced
• Vendor knowledge and experience
• Technology rating
• What participants would do differently next time
• Reasons for not implementing VoIP
• Future plans for VoIP

Integrated queues and workflow processes

• Integrated work queues
• Greatest benefits from integrating work queues
• Issues or challenges

Technology improvement initiatives

• Top 10 technology changes made over the past two years
• Changes with the greatest positive impact on customer service
• Changes with greatest impact on call center efficiency
• Average decrease in talk time
• Overall ranking of improvement initiatives

Future plans

• Short-term changes planned
• Long-term technology changes
• Business drivers for change
• Future technology changes with the greatest impact on customer satisfaction
• Future technology with the greatest impact on call center efficiencies
• Desired technology capabilities

World-class call centers