Making Contact

I recently heard a somewhat disturbing story about a woman who applied for a call center job in Connecticut - she had all the proper qualifications including past experience and the proper skill sets - but she was turned down because of her bad credit score. This wasn't a job at a financial services company or bank, either - actually it was at an ecommerce company.

In fact, I've heard quite a few stories lately about people being turned down for jobs because their credit is less than stellar. It seems employers are increasingly doing credit checks as part of their background checks on employees. I can see doing it for sales reps at an insurance company, bank or financial services firm - but for a $10-an-hour call center agent position at an ecommerce company? Wow.

There was another article today in the New York Times about a man who had worked hard and overcome great odds to get through law school and earn his law degree -- he even passed the bar exam -- only to be declined for a job due to the amount of student loan debt he had. Talk about irony.

I think this is reaching the point of utter ridiculousness: If people can't get decent jobs because of their credit reports, then how will they ever get out of debt, and how will we ever get this economy turned around? A few years ago, when companies were starting to do these credit checks more frequently, it seemed like only high paying jobs with lots of responsibility were the ones where your credit score was a factor the hiring process. Now that the unemployment has skyrocketed, it appears that even low paying jobs -- at big box stores, supermarkets, restaurants, gas stations, etc. -- are requiring background checks that include a peak at the applicant's credit picture as well. Considering that, in general, Americans' credit scores are currently getting worse, as opposed to getting better, it seems this is a topic that might warrant some attention - maybe even some revisions in the laws that apply to such background checks.

I suppose there are legitimate reasons why employers don't want to hire people with credit problems - it's an issue of trust, and I do believe that the way you handle money is a reflection of how responsible you are. But then again, this is basically a new form of discrimination that's entirely legal, and I'm not sure I agree with it.

 

Today is an exciting day for contact center software vendor Interactive Intelligence, as it has announced that it is developing a new Business Process Automation (BPA) product dubbed Interaction Process Automation (IPA).

 

The upcoming offering -- a module that plugs into Interactive Intelligence's existing platform -- facilitates what might is best described as communications-based process automation (CBPA). Basically it enables companies to use the unified communications capabilities of the platform as a framework for carrying out routine, daily business processes. More specifically, the call routing and presence capabilities of the UC platform are used to carry out business processes. This includes support for documents in all formats, in addition to the multimedia contacts (phone, email, IM, conferencing, etc.) the platform supports currently.

 

So, much the same way a contact center agent can route a call or other contact to any designated end-point throughout an organization, based on pre-defined rules, any worker (or automated system) in any department can use IPA to route documents to any other pre-defined end point on the network. And the same re-routing and failover mechanisms apply: If a worker is unavailable to handle a task, at any given time, and for any given reason, the system will automatically route that work onto the next available employee who is qualified to handle it.

As such, the software gives managers the ability to create and implement customized, "communications-based" workflows based on specific business rules, as well as on employee skills sets. Perhaps most importantly, the solution helps drive increased productivity, as workflows become more efficient and streamlined. In addition, managers and employees gain better visibility into business processes, with the ability to get detailed status on any project, in real-time, as well as detailed reports that will enable managers to track the productivity of all employees - not too unlike how a call center manager tracks the productivity of agents.

Facilitating the document management piece is the software Interactive Intelligence acquired when it bought Maryland-based software company AcroSoft in April. According to company officials, AcroSoft's document management software, which was originally created for the insurance industry, will be integrated into the IPA product, which is due out at the end of the year, and this is what will enable document sharing.

 

This marks a fairly radical change in direction for Interactive - not only in terms of the software it offers, but in terms of the customer base it serves. With this new offering -- schedule to be released in 4Q -- Interactive could end up serving a much broader customer base - and, providing IPA is successful, the company could become known for more than just contact center and enterprise phone systems it currently sells. What's more this means Interactive could find itself going up against the likes of Oracle, SAP, Savvion the other major business software vendors - something which it certainly can do, since it has already been selling contact center and telephony systems into the enterprise space for more than a decade now, and has a very established and loyal customer base.

As I see it there are two main advantages for Interactive in rolling out this new offering: First, it will present great value to existing customers, as the software can be readily and affordably added to the existing platform - there's no need to buy a whole new platform and additional hardware in order to gain the benefits of business process automation. The company estimates that IPA will cost about $400 to $500 per user, on average. Furthermore any software that helps streamline processes, boost productivity, reduce headcount, and thus deliver fast ROI, is getting serious attention from companies of all types and sizes, due to the current economic conditions. If IPA lives up to its promise, it could give the larger, more expensive custom installations from SAP, Oracle and the like a very serious challenge...

I'll be writing more about this new offering from Interactive Intelligence later today -- and later this week -- so for more information keep it tuned to TMCnet.com.


 

TMC's Brendan Read has an article today about how four more call centers in Ontario, Canada are either shutting down or are laying off staff. Although this is a bummer for that region -- which has been a hotbed for call centers for many years now -- it's not all that surprising, as companies have been cutting back their contact center operations in Canada for more than a year now, and the Canadian government hasn't been able to do much about it.

The trend really began in late 2007, when the U.S. dollar began to weaken, and the exchange rate began to shift in favor of keeping centers here in the U.S., or alternatively sending them overseas. Since then, the world economy has basically tanked -- and consumers and businesses alike simply aren't purchasing in the volumes they did in the past. What's more, the Internet and automated self-serve systems are increasingly meeting consumers' transactional and informational needs, thus there is diminished demand/need for live agent interactions. From recent employment figures I've seen, it appears the overall number of agents employed in the industry has been shrinking, not growing - and most companies have already downscaled their call center operations considerably.

Overall I would say it's a pretty bleak time for the industry. But I'm certain we'll see it rebound when the economy begins to improve. Consumers still want to talk to live agents more than they want to use self-serve systems - and those companies which pride themselves on providing excellent customer service will no doubt continue to use live agents in the years to come, no matter how advanced today's IVR systems and Web technologies become.

 

Aspect Software yesterday announced its new strategy to bring unified communications capabilities to its contact center solutions. Specifically, the company announced that it will soon be introducing enhanced versions of Aspect Unified IP and PerformanceEdge which are fully interoperable with existing unified communications solutions.

This, of course, could have been expected – I mean, after all Aspect is one of the largest providers of contact center solutions, and the adoption of unified communications is starting to pick up steam. Considering that so many enterprises already use their contact center telephony systems for communications across most, if not all of the organization (linking together different divisions, departments, remote offices, etc., that are geographically dispersed), it makes perfect sense for contact center platform makers such as Aspect to endow their products with UC capabilities (and many have already done so – for example, TouchStar just recently introduced its new “Unify” product, a browser-based product that facilitates true seamless UC across the enterprise). With these advanced, all-IP solutions and their amazing call routing capabilities, an enterprise can make its contact center system the “communications center” for the entire organization.

 

The advantage of bringing UC to the contact center is that it ushers in the next iteration of the “informal contact center,” where the walls, or barriers if you will, that separate the contact center from the rest of the organization are dissolved, and other “knowledge workers” within the organization can be used as resources for handling customer complaints and a wide range of other issues. To deliver superior customer service, agents need the ability to quickly and effortlessly “escalate” calls and put the customer in contact with someone else in the organization who has the exact skills or expertise to help that customer quickly. With UC in the contact center, agents have multiple means for reaching out to these knowledge workers – via IM, via email, via Web chat -- even video chat. Furthermore, with UC in the contact center, managers, supervisors and executives have the ability to reach personnel in the center (and view their “presence”) and get the information they need – quickly, effortlessly, and in the mode they prefer. With UC, not only can processes be seamlessly extended beyond the traditional boundaries of the contact center, with the ability to reach knowledge workers or “subject matter experts” in the organization, all collaboration across the organization is streamlined and enhanced.

 

“It is important for organizations to include the contact center as part of their broader unified communications strategy because customers can be a key beneficiary of the value that unified communications brings,” explained Bern Elliot, research vice president at Gartner, in yesterday’s news release from Aspect. “To succeed, enterprises should leverage contact center technology broadly into their enterprise, and similarly contact centers should understand how to leverage enterprise UC technology into their operations.”

 

For now Aspect is basing its unified communications for the contact center strategy on its current versions of Aspect Unified IP, a comprehensive session initiation protocol (SIP)-based VoIP unified contact center solution, and PerformanceEdge, its workforce optimization suite. The company reportedly plans to release new versions of these products which will be interoperable with other unified communications software.

 

The company claims that future releases of Aspect Unified IP “will enable organizations to route interactions to enterprise experts based on presence and willingness, generate enterprise-level reports of these interactions, and utilize workforce management to forecast expert demand.”

 

For more information about Aspect’s new UC strategy, check out Tracey Schelmetic’s article and Rich Tehrani’s blog entry from yesterday.

Government officials in the various provinces of Canada which are highly reliant on the call center industry to keep the economy afloat are no doubt scrambling to try to come up with additional incentives and new strategies to keep U.S. companies from pulling their centers out.

A recent report from Datamonitor shows that many U.S. firms are now starting to pack up and relocate their Canada-based call center operations due to the increasing value of the U.S. dollar and the increasingly unfavorable exchange rate. Even call center outsourcing behemoth Convergys recently announced that it will be closing some of its facilities in Canada in the coming months. This is bad news for New Brunswick, which relies heavily on the call center industry for jobs and economic growth and is in the process of trying to become independent.

In an article written today by TMCnet’s Susan Campbell, independent economic consultant David Campbell “argues that the area should put more emphasis on attracting financial services and hedge fund centers, which tend to pay higher salaries.” So one approach the this problem will be to continue to emphasize the fact that New Brunswick offers a well educated and highly skilled workforce and therefore is better suited to providing high value, high touch call center services. As Susan explains, “New Brunswick has a goal of becoming self-sufficient by 2026. Campbell warns that this goal will never be realized if the region continues to offer incentives to call centers that pay employees no more than $10 to $12 per hour.”

“Those jobs filled a need, but now that we have low unemployment, we need to look for jobs that will contribute taxes that will pay for government services,” Campbell said in a statement. “Essentially, we were attracting jobs that did not generate enough taxes to pay for the government services covering the worker.”

“Much like other locations, New Brunswick has found that more sophisticated contact centers tend to remain, especially those in IT and financial services. Call centers that live from contract to contract and whose basic operations include calling out to sell everything from phone services to car insurance, have proven to be transient.”

My take? Canada is going to be greatly challenged to keep its call center industry from shrinking unless it starts offering additional economic incentives to U.S. companies. Some regions are going to have a hard time attracting new center based on their “highly skilled workforce” alone, especially considering that workers with good IT skills are now finding opportunities in other industries outside of the call center realm all across Canada. It could be that as some U.S. firms begin to pull their operations out, the percentage of workers with good IT and customer service skills will begin to increase, thus creating new opportunities for Canada to attract new, “premium” centers which handle more complex, higher value transactions.

Now is the time for Canada officials to start planning carefully -- not panic, but calmly plan. With the right mix of economic incentives and skilled workers, it just could end up attracting the kind of centers it needs to make it through the rough times ahead ….

I was at the Call Center Demo show down in Miami this past week – you know, the call center trade show brought to you by the people who no longer have a print publication focused on the call center industry (heh, heh)?

Anyway, during the show I noticed that a majority of the exhibitors were focused on the workforce optimization space – which by definition includes workforce management, performance management, call recording, quality monitoring. e-learning and analytics. Apparently Tracey Schelmetic, editor of Customer Interaction Solutions, TMC’s illustrious print publication focused on the call center industry, got it right when she dubbed 2008 “The Year of Workforce Optimization” on the front cover of this month’s issue. From the look of this past week’s Call Center Demo show, I’d say she hit the nail on the head.

Breaking down the exhibitor list, there were nine companies offering workforce management; ten companies offering performance management; ten companies offering call recording; nine companies offering QM or “quality assurance;” and 11 companies offering analytics (Web and Speech). Of course, there is duplication in each category, as many of these companies offer a suite of products for addressing some or all of the technology “disciplines” that make up the WFO realm. But bear in mind that there was only a little more than 50 exhibitors!

The thing I see, though, is that the WFO space is becoming so competitive that many of these companies are having a hard time differentiating their products -- as became evident when I asked each of them what made their solutions unique in the marketplace. Beyond the fact the solutions are geared for certain sized markets (SMB or enterprise), and are sometimes tailored for specific industries, many of the vendors (save for a few) were unable to tell me which feature sets or capabilities really distinguished their products from their competitors. A couple of them actually seemed bored from having to explain the capabilities of their solutions over and over (trust me, I understand). Sometimes the emphasis was more on who they interoperate with, the level of scalbility provided, or how their pricing is structured (if offering hosted) than it was about the specific features or capabilities. But to me it seems like it should be the other way around. I know there are major differences between some of the products I saw -- that there key differences between the features and capabilities they provide -- so I'm wondering why that wasn't better conveyed.

One thing that makes me chuckle is how performance management solutions are “working their way up the food chain,” if you will, and how there are now PM solutions geared for trainers, coaches, managers/supervisors -- even company execs. Yes, indeed, it seems like everyone or anyone in an organization can benefit form a little performance management from time to time. I’m wondering if one day soon we’ll see performance management solutions geared for high level executives like COOs ands CFOs. Heck why not performance management for your company president or CEO? Of course, your CEO’s performance would have to be continuously monitored, in real time, by an independent third party (hand picked by the board, of course). And as long we’re going to do that, why not improve accountability among all of our government officials – including our President – and have them operate within the rigors of a standardized performance management solution as well?

And, as long as we’re at it, how about some performance management for the “Big Guy” upstairs too? You know, the ancient one, with the flowing white beard, up in the heavens? Shouldn’t there be a performance management solution designed for Him as well? Afterall, gotta make sure He's holding up His end of the bargain ...

(OK, so I’ve officially lost it …)

A new report from market research firm Datamonitor shows what many of us already know: Companies are starting to pack up and relocate their Canada-based call center operations due to the increasing value of the U.S. dollar and the increasingly unfavorable exchange rate. Even call center outsourcing behemoth Convergys has announced that it will be closing some of its facilities in Canada in the coming months – this news coming directly from the mouth of Convergys CEO David Dougherty.

“Convergys’ announcement of a scale-back on Canadian operations could be the first of many by outsourcers,” warned Peter Ryan, head of contact center outsourcing analysis at Datamonitor, in a press release. He said the decline of the U.S. dollar “has badly eroded the profitability of U.S. outsourcers based in Canada,” and that “Canadian contact center labor is becoming difficult to recruit and retain, further adding to outsourcers’ costs.” In addition there is not enough supply of Spanish-speaking contact center labor in Canada to meet U.S. demand, Ryan said.

If things don’t change soon -- and right now there’s no reason to expect that they will --Datamonitor predicts that companies will be pulling their call centers out of Canada in droves, crippling what has become one of the country’s largest and most profitable industries. They will go out and find new regions for setting up their call centers -- in India, in the Philippines, and in Latin America -- Datamonitor suggests, and some will no doubt want to bring their centers back home to the U.S. too.

Datamonitor says the increasingly unfavorable exchange in Canada “has been a nightmare for American contact center investors.”

“Indeed, since 2004, the CDN has appreciated over 30 percent, which has effectively eroded profit margins and operating cost savings that many U.S. outsourcers had come to rely upon from their Canadian operations,” a press release touting the new Datamonitor report states. “This had been a major selling point for luring American investment north of the border.”

According to the report, a diminished pool of qualified applicants for contact center jobs – which now demand both good technical and interaction skills – is also hurting the contact center industry in Canada. Recruiting good agents has become a serious challenge, particularly when considering recent trends such as the migration of prospective agents from across the country to the burgeoning Alberta oil sands, where firms are paying higher salaries – salaries which contact center industry in Canada simply cannot match. This in turn has led to an increase in overall wages and benefits paid to existing agents in order to keep attrition low – however, outsourcing firms are going to have difficulty bearing these higher wages over the long term and for that reason many of them will begin to pull out.

Another factor resulting in diminished interest in Canada as a location for contact centers is the fact that the country offers so few Spanish-speaking agents. With roughly one third of all U.S. consumers now Spanish-speaking, it is little wonder that so many organizations see multilingual capabilities, in particular English-Spanish, as being critical to their future success. As such, many of the U.S. organizations pulling out of Canada will likely be looking at other “near-shore” options, such as those offered in the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA).

Datamonitor is a leading provider of online data, analytic and forecasting platforms for key vertical sectors. For more information, visit www.datamonitor.com.

Maximizer Software Inc. has released the Entrepreneur Edition of Maximizer CRM 10 – thus rounding out its CRM software suite with a new edition targeted at the small business.

 

Maximizer CRM 10 already included covered the SMB market well with its Group, Professional and Enterprise Editions. Now, with the introduction of the Entrepreneur Edition, the suite has an edition for every size business (including departments within a larger organization), from small to medium to large to enterprise. In fact, Maximizer claims it is now “the only vendor that offers a complete family of CRM products for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that enables a smooth migration from contact management through to full-featured CRM.” Its CRM software suite is now flexible and scalable enough that it can help a business of one grow to become a business of “500 or beyond.”

 

Introduced this past November, Maximizer CRM 10 represents a departure from Maximizer’s previous CRM product line, in that it has eliminated the former stand-alone Enterprise edition found in version 9 and combined it into a more full-spectrum version with different editions to suit the needs of different-sized companies.

The new Entrepreneur Edition covers the “small” end of the spectrum, but as company officials point out, this easy-to-use, turn-key CRM solution offers advanced functionality found on more expensive systems – including, perhaps best of all, CRM for BlackBerry smartphones.

 

Even a small business can benefit from a mobile CRM solution. With mobile CRM, your workers can have access to the critical business information they need via their BlackBerry devices, and the ability to manipulate it in near real time.

Maximizer claims that one big advantage of its software suite is that it lets companies transition to mobile CRM at their own pace (or as the business grows), from basic mobile messaging to full-fledged mobile CRM (with full access to real data, and the ability manipulate it in real time, as well as the ability to conduct transactions remotely).

With Maximizer’s MaxMobile client for BlackBerry working in concert with the mobile version of its platform, mobile workers can have access to their customers, leads, schedules, sales deals and forecasts, and service cases directly on their handsets, through wired or wireless synchronization. As such, changes and updates made in the field can take effect in real time (or near real time) on a server at the central office. Plus, with Maximizer 10, managers can get centralized, Web-based “dashboard” views of business activity and do real time analysis of the data which is coming from every end point, including the mobile devices.

“For budding small businesses, choosing a key technology solution is a critical investment, as both money and resource allocation can make or break the business,” said William Anderson, executive vice president, Maximizer Software, in a press release. “With the release of Entrepreneur Edition, small business owners gain an extremely comprehensive contact management solution that enables them to incorporate best practices in customer care and time management right from the start.”

Another key differentiator for Maximizer CRM 10 is its integration with CanDoGo.com’s on-demand sales and professional coaching solution. Thanks to Maximizer’s partnership with CanDoGo.com, your workers can have anytime access to high quality coaching and training content and other basic business advice from leading experts through their CRM apps. Topics covered range from sales negotiation, to proposals, to leadership and motivation. Users can leverage advice and coaching from more than 150 authors, speakers and professional trainers including Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins and Tony Parinello, in text, audio and video formats.

Maximizer CRM 10 Entrepreneur Edition also offers easier communication and time management with improved Microsoft Outlook integration; improved administration and security to manage small groups; and overall productivity enhancements in on-the-fly reporting, and task management.

For more information, visit www.maximizer.com.

Improving agent performance in the call center requires a holistic approach – not only do you have to a thorough job of assessing agent skills during the recruiting/hiring process, you also have to train your agents to become customer care experts and then continuously improve their skills through ongoing coaching.

Perhaps more importantly, you also need to do a careful job of recruiting and training your call center managers. The manager’s role is becoming increasingly critical today, as so many organizations are now near-shoring or off-shoring their centers and spreading their centers across the globe. In some of these off-shore locations, managers find themselves in a 1:6 manager-to-agent ratio -- and facing major cultural and language barriers. Needless to say there can be some serious challenges for these managers as they try to adapt to their new environments.

But regardless of these challenges, there is a systematic and proven method for organizations to improve operations at their off-shore call centers and boost customer satisfaction. And here we’re talking about a lot more than basic training in customer interaction skills and “accent neutralization.” To learn more, check out this white paper from Ulysses Learning.

Research In Motion is reporting that there is a "critical severity outage" of E-mail service on BlackBerry smartphones across North America, however, the cause of the outage, or how widespread it is, has not yet been reported.

According to a Reuters Canada report, BlackBerry users today received an emergency notification email “regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage.” An AP report says the outage occurred sometime shortly after 3:30 p.m..

The e-mail notification said the outage has affected enterprise clients and "users of the Americas network." Neither the Reuters Canada report or the AP report says how many users in the U.S. and Canada are affected.

TMCnet has been searching the Web for more news on what caused the outage and how long it will take to repair. We’ll let you know as soon as we know …

Geez, first it was the undersea cables and now BlackBerry email service. Wonder how many conspiracy theories are forming around this one ...