Hype vs reality

So you would think that Unified Communications (UC), which streamlines the use of those channels, would be embraced by the customer service industry? According to IDC telecommunications program manager David Cannon, while the basic use of UC is widespread, centres that operate advanced applications are rare.

“There are not a lot of contact centres these days that don’t use some, or at least comply to UC as per the definition (see sidebar on page 37). Where it gets tricky is when we start to talk about the level of US usage in term of actual complexity,” he says.

“If you’ve got the ability to accept and disconnect calls from the screen, then you do comply with the UC definition. But there are levels of UC – basic and advanced.”

Advanced UC

Video communications which enable business processes fall under Cannon’s definition of advanced UC. Another might be what he calls “event associated communication management”, for example when an airline’s system automatically searches for people who are booked on a flight and sends them an SMS message notifying them if there is a delay in taking off.

Cannon estimates only a small percentage of organisations would be advanced UC users – both in New Zealand and overseas.

“In order to actually facilitate all that type of stuff, it’s not just a matter of getting a new iPBX; it’s a matter of having bigger data pipes and greater VPN capability,” he says.

“You’ve got to have greater intelligence application aware network capabilities so that you can ensure you actually deliver a level of customer service. You have to train all the back end to ensure that they are capable of dealing with all these communication media and then the organisation needs to be able to track that and report on that.

“It’s not something that’s easy to do. From a system integration perspective it’s still a costly thing to achieve and the reality is that most end users – about 90% – are not going to interface with the organisation, they’re going to pick up the phone and call.”

Fully blended centre

Tina Hilliam, customer services manager at Massey University, has managed a fully blended UC operation in her 27-seat centre for around two years. Using IP-based contact centre automation software from Amtel Communications, Hilliam says agents are trained to handle 90 interactions every day – from voice calls, through to SMS.

Agents work from templates for ‘written’ correspondence, such as email, and Hilliam says they employ staff with a high skill set in order to cope with the various channels of communication. She says in some centres agents are expected to handle multiple enquiries – she knows of one where they can be engaged in 10 different webchat conversations – but at Massey, agents handle one query at a time.

Whereas many centres implement the technology and then take care of the HR issues, Hilliam took the opposite approach. When she first arrived at Massey five years ago, agents were trained to handle only one or two types of interactions. That is, some were dedicated to voice calls and others handled email. She set about reorganising the centre, so that all agents were capable of handling all channels, and only then did she work with Massey CIO Gerritt Balhman to implement the technological solution.

Despite the centre’s ability to effectively handle all channels, Hilliam estimates that just a quarter of inquiries are via webchat, email or SMS and the rest are over the phone.

“We haven’t seen it drive down voice.”

Separate channels

A blended queue where an agent handles a voice call, an email and then a text message is not for every centre. Auckland City Council group customer services manager Nigel King says the centre has been forced by the sheer number of emails to create separate teams.

Every year the 24/7 contact centre handles four million web inquiries and one million calls, but it’s the 35,000 emails which are causing the headaches.

“We are being crippled by email,” says King.

In the 60-seat centre, there are seven agents dedicated to answering email and King says they are continually upgrading the council’s website to ensure clients can easily get answers to their queries online – thereby reducing the need for email or webchat.

Voice remains the quickest way to resolve queries – for the council and for its customers. The centre maintains the industry standard for voice – 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds – while emails must be answered in 48 hours and letters in five days.

UC study into councils

King’s experience is not necessarily typical of all councils. Palmerston North City Council, for example, has embraced UC. Customer services manager Mike Manson says the centre has installed unified messaging, outlook calendar integration, webchat and email queuing, and is looking at introducing an SMS channel. While the council adheres to the 80/20 standard for answering voice calls and webchat, it has yet to develop a metric for the other channels.

“With the webchat we have established agents to be able to take at least two webchat sessions while on a voice call, so [they are] truly multi-tasking,” he says. 

The council also provides an after-hours contact centre service for 20 other councils and Manson says there are varying degrees of UC uptake.

 A comprehensive study in UC adoption among councils was undertaken by the Association of Local Government Information Management (ALGIM) in association with Zeacom in October last year. Of the 85 councils that were sent an online survey, 33 responded and their organisational size varied from 40 to 2300 employees.

Among the conclusions drawn from the study were that the average investment in UC is around $125,000 and the most commonly used UC features are VoIP, Voice Queuing and iPBXs.

Of those who had implemented UC, 43% reported improved customer service levels, improved communication between different divisions and faster internal communication. However, where UC failed in expectation, for many, was in return on investment.  As stated in the summary document:

“Although many respondents thought UC would reduce operational costs (45%), few achieved reductions after implementation (12%). This supports the efficacy of basing business cases for UC implementation on ‘soft’ ROIs such as increased efficiencies or productivity gains, rather than ‘hard’ ROIs such as cost savings.”

This is likely to be a major hurdle for UC adoption, particularly as the majority – 58% – of respondents reported that the main barrier to implementation was obtaining budget approval.

Another interesting finding among the survey was that 76% of IS/IT managers were involved in UC implementation decisions, but only 24% of customer service managers – effectively the end user – took part in deciding what communications to deploy. 

Vendors’ roadmap

But regardless of the patchy uptake in advanced UC, Cannon reports there is no uncertainly among vendors, who appear to be very clear about their UC roadmap.

“In terms of a timeline in actual real life deployment, that’s a different thing story. But in terms of the next best thing that’s coming up from vendor – it’s all video.”