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IR KNOWLEDGE SERIES




Virtual Assistant
Technology and the
Contact Center
Published by IntelliResponse

How Next Generation “Answer” Management
Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize
Cost Advantages



   The Paradox:
   What’s Good for the Organization Can Cripple
   the Contact Center
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                                  2
How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




The modern contact center exists in a paradox.             1. Increasing Efficiency of
While the organization expends efforts to grow,            Contact Center Agents
either via customer/member acquisition efforts
or promotions targeting existing customers, it’s
the contact center that must absorb the ensuing
                                                          “First Call Resolution (FCR) is
increases in contact volume.                               the most important metric for
The more successful the growth efforts, the more           measuring customer service
volume the contact center often must manage.               and cost performance.”
In cases where volume increases are accurately             Mike Desmmarais, World Class Call Center
forecasted, the contact center braces for the
impact. This usually involves “ramping up” by              Any director or executive close to the workings of
adding agents and perhaps additional training to           the modern contact center will likely agree with
meet service demands. This ramping process can             Desmmarais’ statement that first call resolution is
certainly help achieve desired service level and           the lynchpin of contact center efficiency. FCR is
customer experience outcomes, but often at a               widely viewed as the holy grail of contact center
significant financial cost.                                effectiveness.

Unexpected volume spikes, on the other hand,               Factors that typically jeopardize first call resolution
can cause service levels to drop below acceptable          often have their roots in pervasive, but solvable,
standards and can quickly damage the customer              impediments to agent performance. Some of the
experience.                                                more common impeding circumstances we’ve
                                                           observed include:
After some time spent suffering these conditions,
most organizations eventually set off on a quest
to improve costs and performance in the contact               ►   an ever-expanding volume of data for
center. This usually begins a cost-reduction                      reps to navigate and “keep current” on
effort with the focus on achieving new levels of
operational efficiency, and “doing more with less”.           ►   inconsistencies, ambiguity or
                                                                  inaccuracies in supporting
Thankfully, technology can play a big role in allowing            documentation
contact center executives to achieve these desired
results; in particular, organizations can go beyond           ► sluggish or hard-to-navigate
operational efficiency in the contact center by                   documentation database
leveraging virtual assistant/self service technology to
facilitate two major competitive advantages:
                                                           These conditions create a lack of confidence in an
►   Increased Agent Efficiency                             agent’s own ability to find and provide accurate
►   Economies of Scale                                     responses to customer inquiries.
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                                 3
How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




Since agents are essentially “at the mercy” of the            2. Maximizing Cost Advantages
tools they use, performance shortcomings tend to be           with Economies of Scale
pervasive and additional agent training rarely helps.
In these situations, it’s common for widespread               When it comes to maximizing cost advantages
“confidence downturns” to permeate the agent                  in the contact center, there are two parts to
group. When this happens, escalation is often the             the discussion:
result and FCR rate plummets.

Overcoming these issues is a matter of empowering               ► The  first part involves focusing on
agents to be better informed, with supporting                      reducing contact center costs
technologies for contact agents that are proven
superior in terms of consistently returning accurate            ► The  second part involves focusing on
and reliable information required for resolution:                  reducing contact center volumes


Agent Answers from                                            These are different efforts that produce different
IntelliResponse                                               cost reduction outcomes.

is a contact center tool that has proven effective in         An organization that successfully reduces contact
this area, with a track record of reducing first-level call   center costs will achieve a degree of operational
escalations by 20% to 33%. , as well as contributing          efficiency. Upon achieving this new level of efficiency,
to significant improvements to key performance                many organizations are content to stop there. By
measures such as AHT and CSAT scores.                         also focusing on reducing contact center volumes,
                                                              however, further costs savings become available, as
                                                              does an additional cost advantage: economies of scale.

                                                              This brings up an important truth which is
                                                              sometimes misunderstood, and therefore worth
                                                              explaining clearly:



                                                              Achieving operational
                                                              efficiencies does not
                                                              automatically achieve
                                                              economies of scale.
                                                              While one might assume that substantial costs
                                                              reductions automatically bring with them
                                                              scalability, this is actually a misnomer. The
                                                              following scenario helps illustrate this.
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                            4
How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




  Operational Efficiency
  vs Economies of Scale
  Assume the contact rate of an organization’s          reduce the contact rate. This means that, after the
  customer or membership base is 14%.                   operational efficiencies were achieved, the customer
                                                        contact rate remained unchanged at 14%.
  Also assume the organization undergoes
  substantial cost-cutting efforts and achieves         In this scenario, the contact center can only enjoy
  significant operational efficiencies, which reduces   the financial benefits of the newfound operational
  contact center costs by a substantial amount.         efficiencies as long as the organization does
                                                        not grow their customer base. The moment the
  So far, there’s nothing wrong with this scenario      customers or membership begins to grow, costs
  per se. However, consider this ripple:                increase, as the chart illustrates.

  While great efforts were made to reduce contact
  costs, assume no substantial effort was made to
                                                                                      Cost
                                                                                      Customers




                                                                           Costs Grow with
                                                                           Customer Base




                                                                         Customer
                                                                         Base Grows




       2010
                                               2011

                                                                                       2012




This above scenario illustrates that operational efficiencies in the contact center do not automatically
produce economies of scale.
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                         5
How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




Achieving operational
efficiencies does not
automatically achieve                                    ASIDE:           Spikes Hurt
economies of scale.
(Continued)                                              Even for companies that are not
                                                         pursuing aggressive growth, it’s
Operational costs can be reduced, but if the contact     important to note that growth of the
rate is not reduced, the operating cost per customer     customer base is not the only factor
stays the same. (i.e. It remains at 14% in the above     impacting volumes to the contact
example.) In other words, as the customer base           center. Spikes in call volume and email
grows, operating costs also grow in proportion.          volume have essentially the same
                                                         impact as total customer base growth.
Economies of scale are achieved when the                 Contact volumes can be hard to predict
operating cost per member decreases as customer          at the best of times, therefore, it pays to
base (or membership) grows.                              exert efforts to reduce call volumes on
                                                         the whole.
Therefore, achieving operational efficiencies,
while critical, is merely one part of what should be     Effective web self-service tools that
a two-part discussion when setting out to maximize       deflect contact volume by resolving
cost advantages in your contact center.                  customer issues online make the
                                                         contact center less susceptible to
Focusing on efficiency alone does not                    cost increases and service level
achieve the complete cost advantages that are            shortcomings due to spikes.
attainable with scalability.




  To achieve scalability, one must invest              Reducing Contact Volumes for
  in a sustainable way to reduce contact               Cost Savings and True Scalability
  volume. This will reduce contact rate,
  which effectively reduces cost per                   Reducing contact volumes begins by looking
  customer as the customer base grows.                 outside the contact center, to see where customer
                                                       inquiries originate, and exploring options
                                                       to deflect inquiries at that point. For most
                                                       organizations today, the first point of contact
                                                       originates online.

                                                       According to Forrester Research, 72% of US online
                                                       consumers prefer to use a company’s web site to
                                                       get answers to their questions rather than contact
                                                       companies via telephone or email. However, studies
                                                       show that consumers are generally dissatisfied with
                                                       the ability of company web sites to effectively answer
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                             6
      How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
      Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




      their questions. This inability to get a first contact   Next generation web self-service technology like
      resolution results in more customers escalating          the IntelliResponse Answer Suite has a track record
      their inquiries to more expensive customer service       of reducing (“deflecting”) call volume by 15-30%.
      channels like phone and email.
                                                               Such a reduction often equates to significant dollars
      Many organizations have turned to effective web-         in annual savings from call deflection alone. By
      self service tools that provide a superior online        deflecting calls, a contact center’s cost per customer
      experience for the customer. These tools increase        decreases, achieving true economies of scale in the
      first contact resolutions right at the point of origin   contact center, and enabling cost-effective growth.
      – on the Web – and as a result, reduce phone and
      email volume in the contact center.                      Reducing call volumes in this manner provides these
                                                               bottom line benefits for the contact center:



                                                                 ► Total call growth can occur (through
                                                                    membership growth or spikes) without
                                                                    having to increase staff

                                                                 ► The  call center can typically more than
                                                                    offset the costs of web self-service
                                                                    technology by avoiding additional
                                                                    headcount requirement in the contact
                                                                    center.


                                                               And so, while the modern contact center may always
About IntelliResponse
IntelliResponse enhances the multi-channel sales and           be forced to deal with the paradox of growth and
customer service capabilities of hundreds of enterprise        service volume, next generation virtual assistant and
businesses and educational institutions. The company’s         self service technology can help ease this burden
Answer Suite technology is an industry leading On
                                                               by enhancing agent efficiency and creating sought
Demand software platform that allows customers and
service agents to ask questions in natural language, and get   after economies of scale. Managers and executives
one right answer - regardless of the hundreds of ways the      are encouraged to look for solutions that provide a
question may be asked. With more than 350 live customer-       consistent message across all major interaction points,
facing implementations answering 70 million+ questions
with One Right Answer, IntelliResponse is the gold             including the agent desktop, web-site and social
standard in first line customer experience management.         media channels, as well as technology that can deliver
                                                               concise, accurate “answers” to the most commonly
Some of the world’s most recognized corporate
                                                               asked questions, rather than a series of search results.
brands and higher education institutions trust their
customer experience management needs to Intelli-
Response - including ING Direct, CitiBank, Charter
Communications, Computer Associates, Union Gas,
Penn State University, The Ohio State University
and Harvard University Extension School. For more
information, visit www.intelliresponse.com , visit us
on Twitter, Facebook, or via our new Blog.
Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center                                                                             7
How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase
Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages




                                                       For More Information
                                                       For more information on cost effective ways to enhance
                                                       the customer experience at your organization contact:
                                                       Mike Hennessy
                                                       IntelliResponse
                                                       mike.hennessy@intelliresponse.com



                                                       About IntelliResponse
                                                       IntelliResponse enhances the multi-channel sales and customer service
                                                       capabilities of hundreds of enterprise businesses and educational
                                                       institutions. The company’s Answer Suite technology is an industry
                                                       leading On Demand software platform that allows customers and service
                                                       agents to ask questions in natural language, and get one right answer -
                                                       regardless of the hundreds of ways the question may be asked. With more
                                                       than 350 live customer-facing implementations answering 70 million+
                                                       questions with One Right Answer, IntelliResponse is the gold standard in
                                                       first line customer experience management.

                                                       Some of the world’s most recognized corporate brands and higher educa-
                                                       tion institutions trust their customer experience management needs to
                                                       IntelliResponse - including ING Direct, CitiBank, Charter Communica-
                                                       tions, Computer Associates, Union Gas, Penn State University, The Ohio
                                                       State University and Harvard University Extension School. For more
                                                       information, visit www.intelliresponse.com , visit us on Twitter, Facebook,
                                                       or via our new Blog.

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White Paper: Virtual Assistant Technology And The Contact Center

  • 1. IR KNOWLEDGE SERIES Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center Published by IntelliResponse How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages The Paradox: What’s Good for the Organization Can Cripple the Contact Center
  • 2. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 2 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages The modern contact center exists in a paradox. 1. Increasing Efficiency of While the organization expends efforts to grow, Contact Center Agents either via customer/member acquisition efforts or promotions targeting existing customers, it’s the contact center that must absorb the ensuing “First Call Resolution (FCR) is increases in contact volume. the most important metric for The more successful the growth efforts, the more measuring customer service volume the contact center often must manage. and cost performance.” In cases where volume increases are accurately Mike Desmmarais, World Class Call Center forecasted, the contact center braces for the impact. This usually involves “ramping up” by Any director or executive close to the workings of adding agents and perhaps additional training to the modern contact center will likely agree with meet service demands. This ramping process can Desmmarais’ statement that first call resolution is certainly help achieve desired service level and the lynchpin of contact center efficiency. FCR is customer experience outcomes, but often at a widely viewed as the holy grail of contact center significant financial cost. effectiveness. Unexpected volume spikes, on the other hand, Factors that typically jeopardize first call resolution can cause service levels to drop below acceptable often have their roots in pervasive, but solvable, standards and can quickly damage the customer impediments to agent performance. Some of the experience. more common impeding circumstances we’ve observed include: After some time spent suffering these conditions, most organizations eventually set off on a quest to improve costs and performance in the contact ► an ever-expanding volume of data for center. This usually begins a cost-reduction reps to navigate and “keep current” on effort with the focus on achieving new levels of operational efficiency, and “doing more with less”. ► inconsistencies, ambiguity or inaccuracies in supporting Thankfully, technology can play a big role in allowing documentation contact center executives to achieve these desired results; in particular, organizations can go beyond ► sluggish or hard-to-navigate operational efficiency in the contact center by documentation database leveraging virtual assistant/self service technology to facilitate two major competitive advantages: These conditions create a lack of confidence in an ► Increased Agent Efficiency agent’s own ability to find and provide accurate ► Economies of Scale responses to customer inquiries.
  • 3. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 3 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages Since agents are essentially “at the mercy” of the 2. Maximizing Cost Advantages tools they use, performance shortcomings tend to be with Economies of Scale pervasive and additional agent training rarely helps. In these situations, it’s common for widespread When it comes to maximizing cost advantages “confidence downturns” to permeate the agent in the contact center, there are two parts to group. When this happens, escalation is often the the discussion: result and FCR rate plummets. Overcoming these issues is a matter of empowering ► The first part involves focusing on agents to be better informed, with supporting reducing contact center costs technologies for contact agents that are proven superior in terms of consistently returning accurate ► The second part involves focusing on and reliable information required for resolution: reducing contact center volumes Agent Answers from These are different efforts that produce different IntelliResponse cost reduction outcomes. is a contact center tool that has proven effective in An organization that successfully reduces contact this area, with a track record of reducing first-level call center costs will achieve a degree of operational escalations by 20% to 33%. , as well as contributing efficiency. Upon achieving this new level of efficiency, to significant improvements to key performance many organizations are content to stop there. By measures such as AHT and CSAT scores. also focusing on reducing contact center volumes, however, further costs savings become available, as does an additional cost advantage: economies of scale. This brings up an important truth which is sometimes misunderstood, and therefore worth explaining clearly: Achieving operational efficiencies does not automatically achieve economies of scale. While one might assume that substantial costs reductions automatically bring with them scalability, this is actually a misnomer. The following scenario helps illustrate this.
  • 4. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 4 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages Operational Efficiency vs Economies of Scale Assume the contact rate of an organization’s reduce the contact rate. This means that, after the customer or membership base is 14%. operational efficiencies were achieved, the customer contact rate remained unchanged at 14%. Also assume the organization undergoes substantial cost-cutting efforts and achieves In this scenario, the contact center can only enjoy significant operational efficiencies, which reduces the financial benefits of the newfound operational contact center costs by a substantial amount. efficiencies as long as the organization does not grow their customer base. The moment the So far, there’s nothing wrong with this scenario customers or membership begins to grow, costs per se. However, consider this ripple: increase, as the chart illustrates. While great efforts were made to reduce contact costs, assume no substantial effort was made to Cost Customers Costs Grow with Customer Base Customer Base Grows 2010 2011 2012 This above scenario illustrates that operational efficiencies in the contact center do not automatically produce economies of scale.
  • 5. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 5 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages Achieving operational efficiencies does not automatically achieve ASIDE: Spikes Hurt economies of scale. (Continued) Even for companies that are not pursuing aggressive growth, it’s Operational costs can be reduced, but if the contact important to note that growth of the rate is not reduced, the operating cost per customer customer base is not the only factor stays the same. (i.e. It remains at 14% in the above impacting volumes to the contact example.) In other words, as the customer base center. Spikes in call volume and email grows, operating costs also grow in proportion. volume have essentially the same impact as total customer base growth. Economies of scale are achieved when the Contact volumes can be hard to predict operating cost per member decreases as customer at the best of times, therefore, it pays to base (or membership) grows. exert efforts to reduce call volumes on the whole. Therefore, achieving operational efficiencies, while critical, is merely one part of what should be Effective web self-service tools that a two-part discussion when setting out to maximize deflect contact volume by resolving cost advantages in your contact center. customer issues online make the contact center less susceptible to Focusing on efficiency alone does not cost increases and service level achieve the complete cost advantages that are shortcomings due to spikes. attainable with scalability. To achieve scalability, one must invest Reducing Contact Volumes for in a sustainable way to reduce contact Cost Savings and True Scalability volume. This will reduce contact rate, which effectively reduces cost per Reducing contact volumes begins by looking customer as the customer base grows. outside the contact center, to see where customer inquiries originate, and exploring options to deflect inquiries at that point. For most organizations today, the first point of contact originates online. According to Forrester Research, 72% of US online consumers prefer to use a company’s web site to get answers to their questions rather than contact companies via telephone or email. However, studies show that consumers are generally dissatisfied with the ability of company web sites to effectively answer
  • 6. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 6 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages their questions. This inability to get a first contact Next generation web self-service technology like resolution results in more customers escalating the IntelliResponse Answer Suite has a track record their inquiries to more expensive customer service of reducing (“deflecting”) call volume by 15-30%. channels like phone and email. Such a reduction often equates to significant dollars Many organizations have turned to effective web- in annual savings from call deflection alone. By self service tools that provide a superior online deflecting calls, a contact center’s cost per customer experience for the customer. These tools increase decreases, achieving true economies of scale in the first contact resolutions right at the point of origin contact center, and enabling cost-effective growth. – on the Web – and as a result, reduce phone and email volume in the contact center. Reducing call volumes in this manner provides these bottom line benefits for the contact center: ► Total call growth can occur (through membership growth or spikes) without having to increase staff ► The call center can typically more than offset the costs of web self-service technology by avoiding additional headcount requirement in the contact center. And so, while the modern contact center may always About IntelliResponse IntelliResponse enhances the multi-channel sales and be forced to deal with the paradox of growth and customer service capabilities of hundreds of enterprise service volume, next generation virtual assistant and businesses and educational institutions. The company’s self service technology can help ease this burden Answer Suite technology is an industry leading On by enhancing agent efficiency and creating sought Demand software platform that allows customers and service agents to ask questions in natural language, and get after economies of scale. Managers and executives one right answer - regardless of the hundreds of ways the are encouraged to look for solutions that provide a question may be asked. With more than 350 live customer- consistent message across all major interaction points, facing implementations answering 70 million+ questions with One Right Answer, IntelliResponse is the gold including the agent desktop, web-site and social standard in first line customer experience management. media channels, as well as technology that can deliver concise, accurate “answers” to the most commonly Some of the world’s most recognized corporate asked questions, rather than a series of search results. brands and higher education institutions trust their customer experience management needs to Intelli- Response - including ING Direct, CitiBank, Charter Communications, Computer Associates, Union Gas, Penn State University, The Ohio State University and Harvard University Extension School. For more information, visit www.intelliresponse.com , visit us on Twitter, Facebook, or via our new Blog.
  • 7. Virtual Assistant Technology and the Contact Center 7 How Next Generation “Answer” Management Can Increase Agent Performance and Maximize Cost Advantages For More Information For more information on cost effective ways to enhance the customer experience at your organization contact: Mike Hennessy IntelliResponse mike.hennessy@intelliresponse.com About IntelliResponse IntelliResponse enhances the multi-channel sales and customer service capabilities of hundreds of enterprise businesses and educational institutions. The company’s Answer Suite technology is an industry leading On Demand software platform that allows customers and service agents to ask questions in natural language, and get one right answer - regardless of the hundreds of ways the question may be asked. With more than 350 live customer-facing implementations answering 70 million+ questions with One Right Answer, IntelliResponse is the gold standard in first line customer experience management. Some of the world’s most recognized corporate brands and higher educa- tion institutions trust their customer experience management needs to IntelliResponse - including ING Direct, CitiBank, Charter Communica- tions, Computer Associates, Union Gas, Penn State University, The Ohio State University and Harvard University Extension School. For more information, visit www.intelliresponse.com , visit us on Twitter, Facebook, or via our new Blog.