Pipeline Publishing, Volume 3, Issue 5
This Month's Issue: 
Impacting the Customer Experience  
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Collaboration and Customer Service
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responders were often very skilled, sometimes more so that 2nd level specialists tasked with applying specific fix actions, so that many problems were resolved without hand off at all.

The queuing solution was also applied to help desks, but often just to help sort problems into hardware, operating system, or application and route the actions into groups.  So the ticket system in help desks contained its own queue - not of pending calls, but a queue of work actions to be taken to resolve the problem situation.  Often each worker in the action cycle had direct contact with the user in solving their problem.  This technical process evolution was not accidental, but designed to better service internal customers.  Service to internal groups can increase corporate efficiency and cohesion.
The IT help desk evolved separately from the call center.  Starting as a computing initiative in the UK government in the 1980s, it evolved and spread rapidly throughout the 1990s into wide spread industry practices.  It developed its own set of best practices, the ITIL conventions which are now embedded in the ISO/IEC 20000 standard.  However, as telecommunications networks and IT networks began to converge, personnel transfers from NOCs to help desks and vice versa began cross fertilizing these areas.  Engineers in telecom noticed the similarities between IT Service Management and Telecommunications OSS.

Information Technology Service Management (or IT SM) was designed as a single integrated application tool to take requests, classify them, and orchestrate the actions that corrected the problem.  It also became a way of orchestrating the actions to deliver a new service.  Provisioning a new user was simply another choice in the service request screen and initiated the actions required to get hardware, install applications, and coordinate training of a new user.  The similarities between IT SM and telecommunications provisioning and network management became increasingly obvious.
The accelerating convergence of voice and data networks, telecommunications and IT, brought many heated discussions about best practices, tools and processes.  It pitted the enhanced Telecommunications Operations Map (eTOM) of the TeleManagement Forum (tmforum.org) against the ITIL model embraced by the internal IT groups.  Recognizing the similar nature of many of the processes, but the different terms, structure and basic intent of ITIL and eTOM, the two forums began working together – first to map the two structures, and then to align them to service both domains.  One result is that NOCs and the call centers interfacing with them could see the utility of the ITIL help desk model to increase internal corporate cohesion.  It is only a short step to begin applying these models directly to call centers and developing stronger customer cohesion.

Another tool developed in the help desk was the Knowledge System, a way for agents to add to the accumulated set of information and solutions.  Originally an internal tool, it was developed to provide guidelines on responses and techniques that agents could leverage.  Text search algorithms allowed sophisticated auto fetch and grading of likely matches to problems - much like web search engines.  In seeking automated responses, Knowledge Systems were opened up for search by users and in the best systems wizard like interfaces guide a query which produces solutions by expected probability of being applicable.  Knowledge Systems are very similar to IVR self help systems and such crossover is beginning to occur.

 

The 21st Century: Multi-channel, blended Contact Center

Today call centers have become integrated Contact Centers.  They accept calls, emails, and web forms as valid triggers for doing work.  The next expansion is being created by the advent of VoIP, and particularly SIP VoIP.  These are essentially software applications, just as are email and web forms.  The same software programs can route one media as easily as any other, so it is logical to apply the same infrastructure and business rules for all media types.

“The availability of allowing the customer to choose their type of media for the interaction is in itself a real advantage.  The reporting of the data for all interactions is the benefit to the center manager.  By pairing the calls to the interactions a clearer picture of call handling and after call work will be seen, to improve staffing and forecasting.”  (Melody Aires, Call Center Specialist)



The proliferation of SIP is aiding the market acceptance of the “soft ACD” and multi-channel Contact Centers.  As call centers upgrade from older switch-based ACDs to SIP, this will allow expanded introduction of multimedia contact methods. Because the application is software, the business routing and the staff management applications become consistent across all channels and media. In the best applications, the process and policy are externalized from the infrastructure logic.  Today each vendor uses a proprietary way of describing call flow and routing policy; tomorrow these systems could utilize external process logic enforced by business process logic systems and similar standards that are emerging such as Business Process Modeling Language (BPML.) [BPMI.org]

However, just because the system is all software doesn't mean it should stand alone.  Instead, applications can leverage what existing infrastructure does well.  The Contact Center can use an existing email server as the repository of mail and the soft ACD will just switch it among internal mail boxes.  So too, the soft ACD will need to leverage existing VoIP control systems and voice paths to route calls.  LDAP systems or Active Directory can be used as authentication agents and for calls via IVR systems.  In short, the soft ACD is a coordination system leveraging the flow of media and work among a large population of infrastructure systems and workers.  Structurally this is very similar to Trouble Management and Workflow systems.  Look for co-evolution of software between these solution sets.

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