When heading back to the classroom, one of the most important items on the list is to bring the right textbook. The Interaction Center platform includes a whole library of great “textbooks” that we highly recommend. It is called the IC Documentation Library and is available either on your Interaction Center Server or can be installed on client workstations. If you aren’t sure how to access this wealth of information, ask your system administrator or send us an email..

Here are a few reading recommendations for each level of education:

Elementary School – For your users, be sure to take a look at the Quick Reference Materials. These PDF documents cover all kinds of fundamental topics, including:

– Voicemail quick reference cards
– Interaction Client user guides
– and more

Many of these materials can be ordered from Interactive Intelligence as documentation you can distribute. But, why spend the money when you can print them yourself from your server? That’s a quick “A” on your report card!

Also remember to watch our Interaction Client “Did You Know…” Video Series! Request a free copy here.

High School – Supervisors and system administrators can take advantage of documentation for:

– Interaction Administrator
– Attendant
– Supervisor
– and much more

Get AP credits with your diploma by watching our Interaction Supervisor Video Series! Get Free copy here

College – These are the heavy-duty textbooks of the system. Look through the Technical Reference Documents. Perhaps start with:

– Data Backup Recommendations
– Interaction Center Security Concepts
– and Security Precautions

These will ensure that your system is secure and protected against data loss.

Post-Graduate – Begin your graduate studies with documentation for the System APIs. The IC Documentation Library contains a wealth of information on:

– Client COM
– IceLib
– SOAP
– XML integrations
– and more

There you go…a full curriculum for Back to School. If you need any tutoring, be sure to let us know. Here’s wishing you a successful and productive academic year!

One more thing, ININ is offering a 10% discount on their Online Passport (comprehensive computer based training) Until September 30th.

If you are like me, there is never enough time or money to attend conferences to learn more about the industry. Lori’s summary of the recent ACCE conference (held in June) will give you a run-down of the biggest topics and the latest trends. I encourage you to read Lori’s article and check out NACC’s newsletter. Here’s some great learning without leaving your desk!

I just returned from the ACCE Conference in New Orleans, one of the biggest and best contact center conferences of the year. While more people seem to be finding budget to attend conferences again, perhaps some of you are wishing you could have been there to attend sessions and talk to peers and vendors (and perhaps drink a “Hurricane” or eat some Gumbo!). So here are some tidbits to share.

Heads are in the Clouds
Call it what you want – hosted solutions, Software as a Service (SaaS), Communications as a Service (CaaS), cloud solutions – but regardless, it has arrived for both buyers and sellers. At least half of the vendor exhibits featured cloud-based solutions. Some offer full blown contact center solutions with routing, reporting, IVR, CTI, and performance tools (e.g., WFM, QM). Others were peddling targeted applications such as CRM, proactive outbound contact, web chat translation services, analytics, or voice of the customer surveys. The chance to get something done quickly, with little upfront cost, really seems to resonate with companies constrained by IT resources and budget dollars. In a knowledge exchange session I facilitated on the topic, attendees testified to implementations that maxed out at three months. No one could recall a premise-based implementation of similar technology that came close to that timeframe. Concerns seem to be security, reliability, and negotiating and managing service level agreements – all topics that can be addressed with the proper due diligence in project processes.

You Can Optimize Your Desktop
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a contact center with an “ideal” desktop, but I know a lot of people who long for an improved desktop and applications. People need to capture interaction information and customer profiles (including the increasingly changing and elusive contact information – like cell phones and email addresses), and they want to make it easier for their reps to help customers. Enter today’s CRM solutions and desktop optimization applications. The former can be had for less pain through hosted applications and improved deployment approaches (configured instead of customized, with “easy” integration). The latter bring the metrics to see what is happening on the desktop, integration between applications to avoid the pain of cut and paste and notepads, and the process optimization to smooth interactions delivering shorter handle times and increased first contact resolution (which EVERYONE wants). Both deliver a desktop “portal” that truly transforms the customer and rep experience.

Performance Tools Cross Barriers and Channels
With the proliferation of analytics tools, customer satisfaction surveys, and eLearning and coaching capabilities, vendors are vying for the attention of call center leaders who want to take their staff and center performance to new heights. As centers mature, they yearn for these tools to meet the high demands corporate leaders place on them to improve customer service, cut costs, and drive revenue. Speech analytics has been the “hot” topic in the past few years, and seems to be settling in to the realities of where and how to use it – including the commitment of appropriate analyst resources to drive value from this powerful technology. And now with text analytics and cross channel analytics, companies can apply similar analysis to their email and web chat. Scorecards and dashboards were of great interest, as was desktop analytics coming from both the performance suite vendors and from those with desktop optimization solutions. The sessions the attendees flocked to (popular topic!) and vendors present (many choices for VoC) reinforce that there is no reason not to do voice of the customer surveys anymore to complement quality monitoring and other internal performance perspectives.

Still Room for Niche Vendors
While some of the big vendors anchored the event, it was also clear there is still plenty of room for niche players that help companies solve the specific challenges. Want to improve your reps’ keyboarding skills? There’s an app for that! Need to add proactive outbound contacts to your customer interaction strategy? Recover idle time to use for knowledge building with your agents? Improve your forecasting ability? You guessed it; there are apps for those too. Whether your needs are wide-ranging or targeted, whether you have a “suite” approach to technology or seek best of breed solutions, there are good options to consider.

Social Media Hype Continues and Takes a Reality Check
We heard and talked about “tweets” and “followers,” social media strategies and the role of marketing and the contact center in responding to these important interactions. From keynotes to sessions to vendor booths, social media hype flowed. But at the same time, the table and hallway conversations were flavored with some healthy skepticism on the fit of social media for various companies and their customers. Perhaps we’ve reached a point in the maturing of these new interactions where people will take a careful look at the role they play today and tomorrow. In a time where companies must make careful choices about priorities for their precious investment of time, money, and resources, the reality check is a healthy thing.

Lori Bocklund, President – Strategic Contact
lori@strategiccontact.com

Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Center® (CIC) 2.4 and Enterprise Interaction Center® (EIC) 2.4 products were scheduled to reach end of life (EOL) on June 26, 2011. Interactive Intelligence has extended the EOL date to December 31, 2011. ‘End of life’ status occurs three years after the last ship date of a product version.

As we’ve discussed in other blog posts, Interactive has announced CIC “Four.0”. There are some very exciting features coming. Here’s a link to some videos to give you a more detailed introduction to these features – including speech analytics, server virtualization, and many more. Some of you may be wondering, “Should we skip 3.0 and go straight to Four.0?” Great question – we can make a case both ways depending on your specific situation.

Let’s say you are a customer running CIC 2.4. Here are some things to consider:

•   Waiting for Four.0 will give you access to the latest features and most powerful functionality

•   We don’t yet have a firm release date for Four.0 and the initial release may not include all of the features your organization leverages (such as Interaction Recorder, Dialer, etc.). Those may come in the early service updates to Four.0. You need to take this into account in planning your schedule for your upgrade.

•   CIC 3.0 is currently a very stable platform. If you are running CIC 2.4, we highly recommend 3.0.

If you have any questions about your release or upgrade, please give us a call.

Interactive Intelligence released SU12 for its CIC 3.0 platform on Friday. We wanted to get a quick blog post out to let you know what you will find in SU12. Here are some highlights:

For Interaction Process Automation (IPA)

The product has been enhanced to support multi-page work items. This functionality allows multiple work item forms to be routed to a user via a single work-item interaction, without having to pickup each page of that work item.

For Interaction Feedback

1) Feature has been added allowing the score for a question to be ignored

2) Survey questions can now be weighted to be between 0 and 1. This means a question can be weighted to the right of a decimal point (i.e. 0.5) as is possible in Interaction Recorder.

For Interaction Optimizer

The scheduling engine’s algorithm has been changed to give agent schedule preferences higher precedence.

For Interaction Recorder

1) Interactive Intelligence has added enhancements to better support work-at-home agents. The bandwidth usage for uploading screen recordings has been reduced. There is a parameter that will allow system administrators to modify the amount of bandwidth used for uploading screen recordings.

2) Interaction Center Business Manager (ICBM) Interaction Recorder users can now see scorecards scored by users other than themselves. Up to now, users were only allowed to see questionnaire scorecards that they were in the process of scoring or had completed. Administrators will have the ability in SU12 to set a parameter giving permission to view other scorecards. This will allow, for example, a supervisor to view a quality analyst’s scorecard.

All of these enhancements are in addition to things added in SU 11 – like support for 64 bit faxing. There are more technical improvements in SU12 as well – but that’s a topic for a blog post from one of our engineers!

As always, please let us know if you have questions.

There are people in your organization running a race every day. They are racing to provide your customers with the best possible experience. It’s hard work for them…you put them through training in preparation for the work. But…do you provide them with a medal? What have you done lately to motivate those folks? I have three quick ideas to help keep your staff running.

1. Send them a handwritten note. Who achieved the highest QA score of the week? Who had perfect attendance this month? Who just finished their college degree at night, or announced their engagement? Send them a note…not an email…a genuine I-really-took-the-time-to-do-this handwritten note! I worked with an organization that had a president who was passionate about notes. He counted on his leadership team to let him know what was going on with the 500+ employees in their organization. He sent handwritten notes all the time. You could walk through their contact center and see these notes proudly displayed in cubicles. It’s a “medal” that keeps people running because they know you care about them.

2. Surprise people with something silly. One year, during an especially busy stretch, we walked up and down the aisles of our call center carrying a tray. On it were small paper cups filled with M&M’s and Jelly Bellies. We labeled one set of cups “Zoloft” and one set of cups “Prozac.” It was a bit of comic relief in an otherwise crazy day. Dress up in a crazy costume, hang balloons from the ceiling, give away little stress balls…it’s all about keeping your runners smiling through their race.

3. Present them with a medal! Check this out: http://bit.ly/eOoH7h I love buying fun stuff from these folks. It’s very affordable and they’re a good Hoosier company. I’ve presented medals for all kinds of celebrations big and small (the same kinds of reasons I’d write a handwritten note). People hang these on the walls of their cubicles as well. It’s another fun way to recognize your staff’s hard work.

Taking care of our customers is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep your runners motivated for the long haul…give them a medal!

I’ve been doing some research on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty and was surprised to learn that “loyal” is much more important than “satisfied” for a customer. I’ve got a story to illustrate.

Several months ago, a friend convinced me to start a walking/jogging program with her. I agreed and visited Blue Mile, a local walking/running supply store, to buy the right shoes.

These people are experts and they are passionate about running/walking/fitness. They didn’t talk down to me or laugh when I asked basic questions. In fact, they got excited about my new adventure. They answered my questions and urged me to come back if I needed anything else.

Needless to say, I’ve been back for purchases large and small. I stopped in the day I finished my first 5K – just to tell them what I did – not to buy one thing! It didn’t matter – they greeted me with the same enthusiasm…they offered advice…they encouraged me.

Last Saturday, after my morning walk, I had to throw away my socks. They were worn out. I bought them a long time ago at the “megamart” in town. Where did I go for my new socks? That’s right – to Blue Mile. The person waiting on me had me try on two different kinds of socks to be sure I got the right type!

So, what’s my point? I was satisfied with the socks from the “megamart.” The purchase transaction was handled just fine. The socks lasted a very reasonable amount of time, so there wasn’t a quality issue. The price was competitive (cheaper, actually). But, I didn’t go back to purchase more.

Instead, I went to the business that earned my loyalty. The staff at Blue Mile connected with me as a person. They know me and what’s important to me. They share knowledge for free and they make it easy to do business with them.

You can be satisfied, but never buy from a business again…just like me and my socks. Loyal customers are created when your people connect with those customers. In fact, the research shows three important things about loyal customers:

o They spend more
o They stay with you longer
o They more easily forgive your mistakes.

Here are a couple of questions for you today: are your customers satisfied or loyal? What would it mean for your business if more customers were loyal? What is one thing your contact center agents could do today to connect and create – not just satisfied, but – loyal customers?

Change thought for the day: “Home agents – if you’re not doing it, do it. If you are doing it, it’s time to expand it. All of the excuses to not do it are gone.”

Customer service thought for the day: How many of you encourage customers to call your center? Don’t we generally look for ways to direct people to our IVR, website…some form of self-service? We want to avoid the more expensive phone call, right? Zappos puts their 800 number on every page of their website because they WANT you to call them. They say that every phone call is 3-5 minutes of uninterrupted time with their customer. How’s that for a paradigm shift for you?

How do you turn talent into successful performance? That is a challenge for the leader of any organization. I know we all certainly deal with it in our contact centers. According to Garrison Wynn, our staff members need to know they’ve been genuinely listened to and heard. That connection – taking the time to genuinely listen, forms the foundation of your influence as a leader. The act of listening to your staff builds trust for you. That trust then enables you to lead your group through change and other challenges. Don’t you think that sometimes we look for a fancier or more difficult solution? It’s not any more complicated that this – listen to your people. By the way here is one quote I especially liked from Mr. Wynn’s talk: “If you criticize other’s ideas too much, they’ll never use your ideas, no matter how good they are.”

If you’d like to see more of what’s happening at the conference, go to www.contactcenter2011.com/live.

First, there has been LOTS of talk about social media and what we should be doing with it in our contact centers. Over and over though, I keep hearing one theme – Customers are saying, “give me consistent answers across all channels.” Your phone calls, emails, facebook posts and tweets need to all support the same message. That’s easier said than done given that the channels don’t always belong to the same part of an organization. I don’t have the secret key to this challenge. I’m hearing that it’s something we’ve all got to be aware of and work to figure out for our organizations.

Second, we all have agents in our organizations. Most of us have some type of quality program to help measure the work those agents do. I heard something today that really made me think – “QA is really brand management.” Think about that for a minute. Your QA staff listens to what your company (i.e. your agents) says to your customers hundreds of times a month. How would you change your QA form if you wanted to measure how well your contact center is supporting your company’s brand? That was a paradigm shift for me!

Finally, on the technology front, it’s always interesting to talk about new tools folks are using to improve their contact centers. Here was a bullet that really jumped off a slide at me today: “Proactive outbound calling is the hot new differentiator.” Hmmm…do you offer this to your customers?

If you’d like to see more of what’s happening at the conference, check out the website www.contactcenter2011.com and click on the “Live” box.

I arrived at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, Tennessee to attend the Contact Center Association 2011 conference. I came in one day early so I could visit with friends and family. Unfortunately, I had a terrible cold and a very bad case of laryngitis. I could not talk above a whisper. My sister and I were having dinner at one of Opryland’s restaurants. Our waitress, Paula, could not help but notice my plight – she had to lean over to hear me order dinner! After she took our order, she returned to the table with a mug filled with warm water, honey and lemon. She said, “I thought this might help your throat.” I was blown away that someone would care enough to do such a kind thing (and it did help my throat!!). But, Paula wasn’t finished. As we were finishing up our meal, Paula came back with a “to-go” cup and lid. Inside, she had put more honey and lemon. She said I could use the coffee maker in my room to add hot water to the cup to drink before I went to sleep. I was truly astonished. What an amazing thing to do. As I’ve reflecting on the experience, I’ve identified three things that made it happen:

First, Paula took time to see me as a person. Now, someone with laryngitis so bad they can’t talk above a whisper might stand out a bit to a waitress, but she could have just gone on with her night. Her “job” was to get food to my table. She went beyond her job…to Paula, this was a relationship, not a transaction. She went much deeper than the business at hand (getting food to my table) and met a much greater need for me.

Second, she took time to take the extra step. Paula didn’t stop with one mug of medicine for my throat – she made me two! It didn’t take her long, but it was clearly “above and beyond.” She was motivated to do a little bit more to make a difference for her customer.

Third, she works for an organization that approves of extra effort. Clearly, Paula is a caring person. But just as clearly, Paula works in a culture that rewards taking the extra step. We can probably all think of an organization where a manager would have yelled at Paula for giving away the honey and lemon. Instead, for the price of the honey and lemon, the organization made a huge statement. They mean it when they say, “we are committed to meeting your desires and exceeding your expectations.” They allow people like Paula to succeed.

Hopefully, the crazy early-spring weather hasn’t given you a cold and laryngitis. However, the next time you see honey and lemon, ask yourself, “Am I building a culture that would allow the ‘Paulas’ of my organization to astonish our customers?”

What other things do you think contribute to creating astonishing experiences?

Seriously, I’m letting you know about something that needs to be on your calendar. The Interactive Intelligence “Interactions ’11 Global User Forum” will be held May 24-26, 2011 at the Marriott in downtown Indianapolis. I really want to encourage you to make plans to attend. This event is always very well done, the sessions are excellent and you will learn lots. When I was a customer, I always found this to be a very valuable 3 day investment. This one deserves a place on your calendar…be sure to save the date!

Call recording and quality assurance/monitoring programs are integral parts of contact centers.  Interaction Recorder provides centers the ability to capture recordings of both the voice portion and system screens accessed by an agent engaged in an interaction with a customer.   It’s a critical tool to help you measure and develop your staff.

There are some great enhancements now available for Interaction Recorder.

1)    First, the recorder client is now available as a .Net application.  It runs as part of Interaction Center Business Manager.  That gives you an easier-to-use interface and improved query performance.  This release also fills a need I’ve heard from our customers because it allows you to open multiple playback windows at the same time.

2)    A second enhancement is in the questionnaire builder.  In my opinion, it will now be easier to build questionnaires to use for reviewing calls.  You can categorize the importance of a call using a drop-down menu.  You can check a box to allow comments on any question or a “not-applicable” answer.  You still have the same capabilities to create different groups of questions and build your own ranking/score range.  If you’ve been waiting to move to SU9/SU10, and you’re a recorder user, the improved questionnaire builder is reason enough to make the jump.

3)    Finally, if you are a “power recorder,” you may be interested in Interactive Recorder Extreme Query.  This enhanced version of recorder allows you to search very high numbers of recordings much more quickly.  This was built for the contact center managing tens of thousands to millions of recordings.

And, of course – all of Interaction Recorder is integrated in the same platform as CIC.  Which gives you…

-       One set of agent records to administer

-       One software interface to learn

-       One place for your agents to see their schedules

Every call center needs some sort of workforce management tool.  When I managed a small center of 19 agents, I had a well sharpened pencil and a spreadsheet.  When I managed a center of 150 agents, I had a full-time staff person using software to schedule our staff.  Interaction Optimizer is a fully-integrated tool that takes your call data from CIC and helps call center managers produce schedules for their agents.  The development team has been hard at work and I saw some great enhancements at the conference.

There are three new features that were released earlier this year:

1) Intraday monitor re-forecasting
Intraday monitor re-forecasting allows you to reforecast your work load through the day as specific events change your call volumes.   You can enter your own assumptions for volume or handle time and do an ad-hoc “what if” reforecast anytime during a day.

2) Schedule administration re-forecasting
In addition to re-forecasting the “work” your contact center is experiencing, you can now go one step further and apply the reforecast to updating schedules for your agents.   You can adjust breaks and lunches to account for more work, or agents out due to illness.  Also, the schedule provides agents with activity reminders built right in their client where they’re handling interactions.  It makes for a very convenient interface for your staff.

3) Allow Agents to Provide Schedule Preferences
Finally, you can now allow agents to provide schedule preferences to you within the software.  Then, as you generate schedules, you can decide how much weight to give those preferences.  (For example, you can tell the system to build schedules with an equal balance between considering agent preferences and call coverage needed.)

Interaction Optimizer continues to mature and there are more enhancements to come.  For now, the great news is that all of this functionality is available today and you don’t have to live with the pain of trying to integrate a third-party software package.  It all runs on your CIC platform

If you’re still using a well-sharpened pencil and spreadsheet, I’d strongly encourage you to take a look.  I think you’ll like it.  I sure did!

Yesterday, I attended the Colt’s first preseason game for the 2010-2011 season.  There were 66,000 people in attendance.  People cheered when the team was introduced.  They screamed and applauded when Peyton Manning was presented the trophy for winning last year’s MVP award before the game.  Next, they cheered for the opening kickoff….but it wasn’t the same.  The atmosphere was much quieter, calmer, even sedate at times.  I saw a guy a couple of rows down from me reading the paper during the second quarter!  The stadium screen flashed a message that said “Make some NOISE” and nothing happened.  It was a totally different experience.

About half-way through the first quarter, I leaned over to my husband and commented on the difference in the “feeling in the air.”  He said, “Of course.  This one doesn’t count.”  I thought about that for the next few minutes as Peyton and company left the field after a scoring drive.  They didn’t return to the game…because it didn’t count.  I started thinking about what this means for us as leaders (like I said, it was a different kind of game to attend!).

It’s my job as a leader to let my people know that their work counts.  It’s my job as a leader to show them that they count…that they’re important…that their effort has meaning for our customers and our business.  It’s my job to create the electricity in the air, to be enthusiastic, to scream and clap when they score a touchdown (by satisfying a customer need the first time!).  Here’s three quick things you can do as the coach to help your call center agents know they count:

1. Call Center Agents count when they see a vision and know how their work contributes to the scoring drive.  Clearly define a vision for your organization – make sure everyone knows what it is – and make sure you live it in everything you do.
2. Call Center Agents count when they know you appreciate their work.  Reward them when you catch them doing something good.  Say great things about them to leaders in other departments.  Make sure their work gets featured in your company newsletter.  Put their picture on your department scoreboard (or on the outside of your cube!).  People love to have fans – be your agent’s greatest fan.
3. Call Center Agents count when you create a clear path for them to grow. No one can play football forever.  When players retire, they go into broadcasting…or coaching…or business.  There a variety of paths for them to follow.  In the same way, no one can take calls in a call center forever.  Agents are looking for a path to follow.  Provide a clear one.  Be open about the fact that they’re going to want to move on at some point.  That kind of honesty helps create the “feeling in the air” that says “this game counts!”

Closing question:  what can you do today as a leader to help your agents know that they count?

I read something recently that amazed me – did you know that a pencil, on average, can produce 50,000 English words?  50,000 words!  That’s the equivalent of a 200-page novel.  There’s an incredible amount of potential in a little pencil.

That got me thinking about the potential in our call center staff.  I see some parallels to our pencils.  Pencils come in all shapes, colors and sizes – so do our people.  However, there are some things that are consistent for all of them.

Here are three that stand out to me:

First – they must be sharpened. A pencil’s 50,000 word potential can’t be unlocked until it’s sharpened.  It’s worthless before that.  Your people are the same way – then need to be sharpened…challenged…developed into something more than they were when they came to you.  Do you train them on new things regularly?   Do you give them regular feedback so they can sharpen their skills as excellent service providers?  You hold the key to unlocking their potential by offering to sharpen them regularly.

Second – sometimes you need to erase. My 9-year old son has a tendency to write his spelling words so fast that you can’t read all of the letters.  He has to erase and make it right.  I don’t yell at him for that – I encourage him to do the right thing with his homework.  In the same way, sometimes our call center agents do something that needs to be erased.  I believe we unlock lots more potential in our staff by creating an environment where admitting and correcting a mistake is an erasable – rather than unforgiveable – event.  People don’t come to work each day thinking about how to mess things up – but they do sometimes because they’re human.  Help them fix it and move on.  They’ll work hard to do it right for you the next time.

Finally, pencils wear out. Although there’s a lot of potential in a pencil, eventually, it wears out.  Great call center agents, eventually, want a new challenge.   Do you offer a clear career-path to your agents?  Can they progress into other areas of your company easily?  I always encouraged my agents to apply for jobs in other areas of our company (after spending awhile with us in the call center of course!).  I told them they were our ambassadors to other departments – letting others know about the challenges of being in the call center and serving our customers.  They carried our philosophy of being great service providers throughout the organization – and that benefitted everyone.

So, here’s my challenge for you: go find a pencil – or a call center agent – and unlock some potential today!