mheiden

Michelle Heiden

mheiden@commprod.com

Are Contact Centers Trend Setters?

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Aug11
mheiden

This morning, I decided to see what the latest Google results for “Contact Centers” were. The results were a little overwhelming…Software, IVR, SaaS, Cloud Computing, Predictive Dialing, CRM, Outsourcing, Business Process Automation…just to name a few. I’ve been in the Contact Center world for 15+ years now and have watched and participated in the evolution of the technology that powers them… going from offering simple ACD Processing to now being able to automate business processes, there has been a huge leap in the technology. I personally think that Contact Centers are no longer a “cost” center; but a must have “value” center for end customers. Contact Centers are driving innovation for end customers who are more educated then they have ever been…customers want to do business-how THEY want to do business….on the phone, via email, text, web chat, etc….it’s a trend that is driving the contact center industry.

So are what are some customer impacting trends that you may want to consider?

Implementing a multi media solution to allow your customers to contact in any way they see fit…
For example: I am a “computer” person, I do 90% of my shopping on line and prefer to not speak to anyone, I am always looking for a web option that will allow me to navigate at my leisure and chat with someone if I have questions….on the other hand, my mom prefers to do 90% of her shopping in person and wants to have a person available at her disposal if she needs assistance. Having both available to your audience can allow you to retain and gain customers because you are providing the options that they value…

Allowing Contact Center agents to work from home…
This is a trend that is really starting to pick up momentum. With technology today, you can manage, train, score and assist agents from a remote location. A lot of times companies can get a higher quality worker for lower cost because you are providing them quality of life benefits by working from home. It’s also a great incentive plan to entice employees to provide higher quality of service and be more available to your customers.

Contact Center Consolidation…
This probably doesn’t seem like a trend, but it truly is….with VoIP, software and CRM products available Contact Center Managers are strategic about opening a new center independent of others. Consolidation of agents based on geography, skills, language, time of day etc can all be overcome and save you a lot of money. Don’t be afraid of taking advantage of technology….

Automating Contact Center Processes…
Business Automation is a trend that is continuing to transform Contact Centers. This solution can take a simple manual process and automate them, making them more efficient and ultimately providing more value to your customers. For example: Time Sheets…you can now take a weekly time sheet, fill it out, and process it through payroll without anyone moving or emailing it to multiple people. It’s about building rules and responsibilities in an automated way so processes are not let behind and/or not completed because someone. Not only can this reduce costs but it can improve customer service as well.

Again, in the past, Contact Centers have been “cost” centers and companies didn’t feel they were driving business…Today, that has completely changed. Contact Centers are areas of business that are driving solutions, trends and change….its exciting to be in this world.

Ideas that will Make Your Call Center More Efficient

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Jul14
mheiden

How would you define an idea?…Wikipedia states that in the most narrow sense of the word, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks…in a popular sense, an idea arises in a reflex, spontaneous manner, even without thinking or serious reflection….how can this apply to your business, you ask?

With the economy seeming to be as stagnate as it was in 2009, companies are brainstorming and getting creative about how they communicate with their customers. Companies are trying to keep the customers they already have and ideally bring on new ones when the opportunity arises. Brainstorming ideas on how to make this happen is a great way to stay ahead of the game and grow your business in a highly competitive time. When I ask the question “what are your ideas for retaining your customers or increasing revenue?”; 90% of the time I hear, “I need to do more with less, I cannot add headcount”, “I need to improve customer loyalty and increase revenue?” or “I need to improve our service levels with minimal impact to our call center”… No ideas, just objectives…how do we approach these challenges?…let the ideas flow….

Here are some different ideas that we’ve discussed with our customers to help meet some of the above objectives:

1)      How do I do more with less and I can’t add headcount??

Implement an Agentless Interactive Voice Response (IVR)…this is a great way to improve customer service and sales without adding head count, increase revenue and improve customer service. One example of this method is appointment reminders and/or scheduling appointments without a customer service agent. This has minimal impact on your call center because you don’t have to staff after hours and you can recycle as much as you need too.

2)      Improve service with little to no impact to the Contact Center?

Add an Automatic Customer Callback’s…customer call backs have become a popular way to improve customer service by utilizing the agents you have and lowering abandonment rates….make your agents more productive. A lot of my customers have implemented this method to also lower frustration levels of “being on hold”. The Idea behind Customer Callback is used when a customer is in a holding pattern in an ACD queue and the customer is asked if they would like to wait or leave a callback number to be contacted when an agent becomes available. Not only do they keep their place in queue but this is a great way to enhance the customer experience because you are considerate of their time.

3)       How do I improve customer loyalty and increase revenue?

Implement a Find me function…having your sales folks, service folks and administration folks always available to sell product and service as well as help your customer base is priceless. This method is one of the most cost effective ways to improve your overall business communications and service to your customers. Companies have found that by being completely accessible to their prospects and customers, improves relationships, loyalty and revenue; it’s an easy win!!

Disruptive Changes that are Happening in the Legal field… Right Now.

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Jun15
mheiden

A modern-day case study of disruptive change is happening in the legal field and it’s happening right now. And, the rest of the business world should be watching to see how the strong firms survive.

A few major changes have had a major impact on their profitability:

Competition and the Economy: When the economy started slowing and law firm clients began tightening their purse strings, then the laws of supply and demand started kicking in. We haven’t even mentioned the increase in competition. The combination of less clients and more competition has had a dramatic affect on the industry leading to some interesting pricing tactics and a growing importance on efficiency.

The Billable Hour: A quick Google search on the term will bring up phrases such as “Billable Hour Under attack,” “Kill the Billable Hour,” well, you get the idea. The key point is that law firms utilize highly educated resources and used to completely bill them out at an hourly rate. The billable hour type of system didn’t promote collaboration or efficiency because the clients where happy to flip the bill for that inefficiency.  Not any more… the world is changing.

My prediction on what is likely to happen is that commodity type legal services that are easy to standardize and turn into repeatable processes are going to become more of, well, a commodity (reminds me of the fate of travel agents). However, firms that offer highly specialized services and are known for their execution of those services will be able to stave off the competitive forces for a while longer (there are still highly profitable, specialized travel agents in business). Going forward, it will be important to understand the financial impact that even a small percentage of flat rate services will have on law firm profitability.

Efficiency: If your firm offers more of the commodity type legal services, applying lean manufacturing principles and utilizing technology to facilitate collaboration and automate processes is a no brainer. But, if you are in a highly specialized field, you may be asking yourself if you need to go down the efficiency road… This is why I believe so. After the commodity type firms figure out how to squeeze their costs out of their legal services, they will be looking for growth opportunities, (which could be in your field) especially if you bill at a high rate.

We are working on some exciting projects with a few firms helping them squeeze more efficiency and insights out of there communications systems. An example of a few of these projects would be automatically logging time spent on customer calls by integrating phone communication information with all of the back office billing, accounting, and CRM systems. Not only does this help keep track of all of the billable hours spent with clients, but it also gives greater insights into the cost behavior of delivering those services. With those insights, it can help firms determine how to start delivering flat rate services… profitably.

How to Leverage your CRM investment….

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Apr28
mheiden

“Where do your employees spend most of their time?”…the response I hear most is on the phone or in email…CRM is usually not in the top 2….so how are companies making the most of their investment when they purchase a  CRM product?

It has taken me time; however, our CRM software is slowly becoming my best friend….why do I say that…I have slowly but surely realized CRM is a necessary tool for me to stay on top of my activities related to my customers and prospects. BUT…my company has made it very easy for me to use…the key is Integration, Integration, Integration.

When I meet with companies that are building their business by using CRM software to manage activity, maintain a customer base and produce new leads for sales people…this all equates to RETENTION and REVENUE:-) something we all can’t live without….So I started thinking about how can companies leverage this investment to encourage their users to live in CRM. Here are a couple of things to think about when making the case to integrate your products….

1) Screen Pops….Companies spend a lot of time and money on CRM products–so making them as productive as possible is always a goal and screen pops with customer information is always at the top of the list. For Example…when a call comes in from a customer and we automatically push that customers information to the call handler, this encourages the call handler to add notes, add activities and update information while they are on the call verses them having to go back to the account and add later. This helps the call handler to be more efficient and accurate with their information.

2) Make Calls directly from CRM-Having the ability to make a call from CRM helps build relationships because all of my information about my customer is available…notes, past activities, contact information. This will also increase productivity because I am encouraged to start my call process within CRM vs the phone. For Example, I find a contact I want to call and then click on their phone number and make the call. This process allows me to save call records of the duration of the call, add notes about the call, add activities, record the call etc…starting in CRM to initiate calls will increase activity in CRM will equate to good customer service and revenue.

3) Embed Call Control into CRM….this is a little deeper than above; however, you can embed call control, presence management, etc into CRM applications that keep the call handler within the CRM product.

4) Automated Outbound Dialing…I have had many customers use there CRM products for billing, collections, and follow up with ease by implementing a dialer application that is integrated into the CRM Client. Customer Service can search a customer or propect and with at click of a button, make a call, add notes, add follow up activities etc…this can easily be an automated process.

These are just a few of many ideas I discuss with my customers and prospects and have had great success helping to improve efficiencies. The easier the process, ideally the better the result.

Is Your Company’s Technology Personality an Apple or an Orange?

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Mar24
mheiden

Today’s technology has advanced to the degree that solutions you may be researching can provide a flavor of the same functionality…for example…Avaya, Siemens, Cisco, Interactive Intelligence, Hosted Products, can all provide…*IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Center Applications (ACD, IVR, Recording)…. so the difference isn’t in the apples to apples functionality…the goal should be to find your orange?

Here are a couple of things to think about:

1) Do you want your voice solution to integrate into your back office applications, i.e. CRM, ERP, Billing Systems, Contact Center etc? If this is important or not important to your long-term plan, it will help you quickly qualify/disqualify products that can not provide integration points. Understanding the depth of integration into your business can help you drive what technologies make the most sense for your unique company.

2) Whiteboard, whiteboard, whiteboard… how will the solution physically fit into your environment? Architecture of the solutions is significant… some take a hardware approach/multi point and others take a software approach/single point solution… on a spreadsheet they might look the same but white boarding the solution can give you many further insights.

3) How will the solution grow and change with your business? …not only from a product development prospective but were is their company going? Is it growing or expanding?  Were will be in 10 years….

Technology can be a very powerful tool that can deliver a significant competitive advantage. Spend the time up-front uncovering what is important to the unique needs of your business… Are you an orange?

Mother Nature and Technology…how to work together…

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Mar2
mheiden

This past February we’ve had record snow fall in the Midwest and with the recent news about the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, conversations regarding disaster recovery have been on the rise. Will we likely see an 8.XX earthquake….hopefully not…but many of you might remember the “Hurricane” that blasted through the Midwest last spring.  That event actually put businesses, out of business, for hours-even days…so nature i.e. wind, rain and snow can have a critical impact on your business if you’re not prepared.

Preparing for natural events, takes time…time to learn, time to discuss and time to define a strategy that best fits the needs of your business and business objectives…..here are some steps I am working through with my customers and prospects that are allowing us to define the right strategies for them…

** The first step is to start discussing your definition of disaster and what impact that could potentially have on your business? Depending on your locations, disaster can mean a lot of different things…..Detail your locations if you have multiple locations and the types of events that can or have taken place….

**Second-start discussing scenarios and how you would like to handle those scenarios….for example, if you live in Ohio and people could not get to work due to the snow, how can you handle snow days and how would you like to handle snow days…what are “work at home” options that could make sense for your business? A lot of organizations have “work at home” options for any revenue generating departments…i.e. customer departments and sales departments.

**Third-list out the minimum solution to the maximum solution for your business…this will give you a good understanding of what the cost could be surrounding your expectations and what best meets your needs. Some organizations prefer fully redundant solutions that will keep their environment in full production while others are looking for phone call and voice mails to be available…it depends on what you need to help your customers when the situation occurs.

Today, businesses don’t have to be caught in the storm…there is technology that can provide remote worker options, fully redundant applications and disaster recovery.  So, don’t let Mother Nature have a negative impact on your business… take the time to prepare and build a strategy that fits your business, you’ll be glad you did.

4 Reasons NOT to be afraid of the little guy….

Posted by Michelle Heiden
Feb18
mheiden

Being in sales allows me to do 2 things I love…1) meet new people from all different industries and 2) learn about their business and how it effects an industry.  Plus, it’s always interesting to hear their perceptions on my industry…Technology…and the technology players they see impacting their business…i.e. Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft etc… but wait-what about Interactive Intelligence?

I recently hosted a product demo/meeting at one of our partner’s (Interactive Intelligence) demo facilities, and I have to say they may not be the biggest but they are definitely one of the most nimble, compelling and innovative companies to engage. Not only do they have one of the top VoIP/software products on the market; they are easy to access and paving the way for application driven solutions….

That being said, when you are looking at solutions that can truly transform your business, service your customers at a top level and allow you to integrate your business with technology, “Don’t be afraid of the little guy”… and here are 4 reasons why:

  1. Easy access to the manufacturer…I have had Don Brown, CEO of ININ, meet with my customers many times to deliver his thoughts on the industry, answer questions and tell us his plans for the his company. Keep in mind ININ is an international organization…. www.inin.com
  2. Local User Group meetings…. this allows customer-not resellers- to meet and greet each other and discuss/brainstorm on their solutions, challenges and ideas…a great way to get new ideas on how to use technology.
  3. Customers are key to changing the product…because ININ is nimble and open, customers are very valuable in driving new product ideas…they truly listen to what you need vs what they want to sell….
  4. Forward Thinking-No Dead weight….because ININ has a software based solution there is truly no equipment, proprietary  weight, or old technology to carry forward, this allows them to develop new products and put your ideas to test…They are a development company so it’s very easy for them to change with changing industry and think outside of the box…because there is “no box” to limit them:)

It never hurts to learn about your options so keeping the little guy in mind… may be the best solution for your business.