NEC Resource Center

Tech professionals love their acronyms, and FCR—First Call Resolution in customer service industries and contact centers is no different. Lately, it seems every vertical industry has its vocabulary; with an acronym for every ideology, methodology, principle, and strategy. Most of these terms have been discussed to death—to the extent that it becomes difficult to get excited about the topic at all. 

FCR is one of the acronyms we don’t see nearly enough of, though; which becomes evident when running a simple search for the term. In fact, search engines seem to return every generic name for FCR other than the one discussed here.

FCR is one of the five most important operational metrics in today’s contact centers and is also one of the key drivers of customer satisfaction. You would think that in a challenging economic environment, one that is increasingly focused on the importance of customer satisfaction in a word-of-mouth-equals-free-marketing-distribution kind of world, that the topic would be written about so extensively that it would dominate search engine results.

So why aren’t we talking about it?

Contacts vs. Calls                            

Customer relationship managers use FCR to mean two principles/metrics that are often used interchangeably—when they shouldn’t be. Is FCR first contact resolution or first call resolution?  The answer to that question depends on your business’ individual needs.

First Contact Resolution incorporates the same principles as first call resolution—which is generally accepted to mean that a contact center agent addresses a customer's need the first time they call, thereby eliminating the need for the customer to follow up with a second call.

First Contact Resolution takes First Call a step further by tracking the contact’s behaviors and providing additional analytics and data based on their actions.

While purists might agree that First Contact Resolution is the better of the two metrics and most reflective of true customer experience, the reality is that purchasing the customer lifecycle tracking software needed to appropriately track the First Contact Resolution metric is often expensive and impractical.

Why impractical?

Well, for the answer, we must look at the Pareto Principle.

The 80/20 Rule

The Pareto Principle—also known as the 80/20 principle—is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. His theory, originally a socio-economic commentary on the distribution of wealth in early 20^th century Italy, was adopted by business strategists in the 1940’s as an all-inclusive philosophy of the “vital few and the trivial many.”

In the context of the call center, this typically means that 80% of customer service calls/requests are coming from 20% of a given customer base.

So, taking the Pareto Principle into consideration means understanding that the customers who are on the phone with your contact center agents today, will likely be the same customers who are on the phone with your agents next week. Knowing this turns the immediate need for First Contact-level tracking into a lower-priority concern.

If you have the budget to spend on customer lifecycle management technology, then you should track that data.

But I’d rather focus on First Call Resolution, and how implementing sound practices with appropriate contact center technology makes it possible to improve this essential performance metric.

What the Statistics Say

Last year, WhitePages and the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI) performed a study of 542 contact center professionals titled “Using Big Data in the Contact Center.”  The study found that 60 percent of contact center managers feel like they are unable to deliver actionable customer service information to agents due to data overload and a lack of focus on customer satisfaction. In addition, the survey found that:

• More than 40 percent of customer contact information is manually recorded by agents instead of fed through automated APIs or Web-based systems, which means reps are often not as connected to relevant customer data as they need to be to guarantee FCR.
• Half of call center agents feel hampered by productivity challenges such as having to ask customers for basic contact information.
• More than a third of contact centers do not collect any data around customer satisfaction, and 15 percent collect it but don’t use it at all.

While there are a great number of businesses continuing to operate with legacy call center equipment and ignore the importance of technology that helps achieve immediate customer satisfaction, today’s customers are becoming increasingly demanding. Customers are becoming more aggressive when comparing prices and are apt to switch their loyalty to your competition because of a poor customer service experience.

The study shows that without the right tools and guidance, agents are neither able to handle the volume of data that is in front of them, nor able to extract the vital pieces of information that they need to drive successful outcomes.

Everyone lately has experienced a terrible call or long hold time. In fact, the entire experience has created a small culture on Twitter that identifies with the hashtag #onholdwith.

Obsolete technology doesn’t give any business the extensibility it needs to answer customer complaints. When you consider that these same businesses are also becoming overwhelmed by data, one wonders whether or not first call resolution as a principle is also becoming obsolete and forgotten.

Keeping your customers in focus

Failure to resolve customer issues in the first call results in callbacks and increased total costs. If customers have to call back two or three times to resolve their issue, they may not call back ever again.

No matter how fast your company grows your customer service has to remain razor sharp. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is considerably greater than retaining an existing one.  So how can you work aggressively to make sure that each interaction with your agents ends with resolution? By considering the following:

1. Educate agents and get them involved: Educate your agents and then empower them to improve first call resolution-related processes. Your agents know customers and customer care probably better than anyone. Smart managers actively solicit suggestions and insight from their agents regarding how they may be able to enhance first call resolution performance. Given the opportunity, your call center agents will tell you what tools, training, and workflows are lacking and what processes and metrics are interfering with their ability to resolve customer issues effectively.
2. Consult past records: Don't attempt to solve the problem without doing due diligence. Encourage your agents to review past interactions with their customers for clues and indications about why certain interactions resolve and others do not. Doing so will put your agents in a better place to remedy problems instantly.
3. Install recording software: To get a sense of whether your agents resolve customer queries or escalate them, invest in call recording software which can record and archive every single interaction. Doing so gives your call center managers something to rely on to identify best-in-class behavior and zero in on patterns needing improvement.
4. Optimize workforce management processes: Even the best trained and equipped agents on the planet can’t be successful if they’re over-worked. The same applies if the customer, who has been caged in a queue for 15 minutes, is screaming at them for taking too long when answering the phone. Accurate forecasting and sound scheduling is critical, as is mastering skills-based routing, so callers get sent to the right agent with the right skill set to handle a customer’s specific issue right there on the spot.

Solutions available to your business

Ultimately there is a high cost, in terms of inefficiencies and operational cost, when you continue to operate outdated technologies. Taking inventory of your existing call center technologies can help you determine if it’s time for an overhaul or a simple upgrade.

You don’t have to choose between favorite software and hardware. You can choose to invest in contact centers with automatic call distribution and attendant technologies so that calls coming into your contact center are routed correctly. Many of these technologies now include Unified Communications with presence technology, which can help you identify available subject matter experts instantly.

Check out our whitepaper for more information on Best (and Worst) Practices in Customer Communications.

As many of you know, the National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) is holding their annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana this year. The conference is always the automotive industry event of the year, and if you are attending or have looked at the line-up of guest speakers and session topics, you’ll know 2014 is not disappointing.

With attendance topping 21,000 dealers from around the world, this year’s convention is featuring hundreds of exhibitors showcasing their latest equipment, services, and technology. The conference has also offered an additional treat this year, as dealers have been given the rare chance to meet face-to-face with executives from several major auto manufacturers.

The prevailing need to cut costs and increase sales and service productivity is affecting all dealerships right now. Unified Communications (UC) technology offers a unique way to accomplish both tasks while additionally increasing overall customer satisfaction and Customer Service Index (CSI) scores.

One of the top trends at this year’s convention has been improving business processes with technology and software. This theme looks to have trickled down into many of the session discussions. Session topics have covered advanced digital marketing, dealer data protection, customer relationship management, and mobile device integration. All of these sessions have been designed to educate dealers who are not utilizing, or are interested in learning more about these technologies.

What attendees might yet find surprising, is that a good Unified Communications and Collaboration solution can actually help solve many of the challenges facing today’s dealers and salesmen.

The UC technology in question includes contact centers, IP Telephony, collaboration software, and more. UC can easily shorten your response times to customers, increase your revenues, and lower your operating costs, enabling your dealership to become more efficient and productive with one software application.

Customer Engagement

Sales depend on quick and effective communication. When a prospect or existing customer calls your dealership or walks into your showroom, you want to make the best impression that you can and answer any and all questions the customer may have with ease.

Unified Communications Solutions ensure that messages from customers are handled as expediently as possible. UC offers features such as:

• advanced presence capabilities that allow receptionists to see which sales people are available to meet with a walk-in customer,
• enhanced mobility that enable personnel to be available from any location and device,
• and instant messaging that offers a quick way to communicate with colleagues.

Customer Service

Your service department is your main revenue driver (no pun intended). The success of your service department depends on having the right information and the right tools at hand to complete a job. If your service department cannot quickly communicate with salesmen on the floor, with other dealerships, or with customers, then one of your businesses biggest assets becomes inefficient and unprofitable.

Unified Communications technology provides auto dealers with collaborative tools that can keep customers, service, and other dealership personnel in communication with each other easily. Customer service features include:

• appointment reminders that reduce any missed sales appointments or last-minute cancellations resulting in increased revenue,
• integrated Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities that provide self-service options to callers, giving them alternatives to waiting or hanging up,
• one number reachability that enables you to contact your co-workers using their main extensions,
• and real-time snapshots of the contact center delivered via dashboards to service managers.

Staff Productivity

Whether you work on the show floor or in the front office, achieving customer service success means you have to be an efficient communicator. NEC’s Staff Productivity solutions provide you and your staff with efficient communication and automation of routine management tasks, thereby improving your dealerships’ responsiveness to customers’ needs. Some of the staff productivity features include:

• management and operation of a desktop telephone from your PC for easy speed dialing, call management, contact lookup, and seamless CRM integration,
• unified messaging allowing all faxes, e-mails and voice messages to be accessible from one inbox, anywhere,
• a fully-integrated directory system that provides real-time customer information to receptionists and other personnel, enabling them to deliver enhanced and personalized services,
• and intuitive, modular-designed telephones that can be tailored to each individual role.

To learn more about how Unified Communications, contact center, and mobility can help your dealership increase efficiency, productivity and revenue, visit us at booth number 5246 at the New Orleans Convention Center this weekend.  If you can’t make it to the NADA conference, you can read more about NEC’s solutions for the automotive industry here. 

In this post we’re summarizing customer service best (and worst) practices from a recent contact center white paper. Many organizations rely on call centers as an entry point for inbound customer communication. We’ve all been there, frustrated and trapped without the option to connect with a real human to resolve our problem. Yet as IT professionals, we all know that our customer service can either delight or frustrate our customers. In these examples I use the generic term “customers”, but the same holds true for other industries: Guests in hospitality, alumni/students in education, citizens/constituents in government, etc. Here are a few best practices to make sure we end up on the right side of the equation.

Best Practice: Map level of service to value

The key here is to determine and track the customers (or category of customers) that offer you the greatest value and offer them the most appropriate experience. This doesn’t simply have to be about revenue, but could be based on their product or support agreement, or if they’re currently engaged with your sales team. Mapping premium customers to the queue with the shortest wait time, sending them to the most ideal agents through skills-based routing and providing agents with screen-pops with all their pertinent information will maximize efficiencies and business outcomes. This also allows the agent to address the customer by name and reinforce their importance to your company. Call center managers love agent efficiency and like to keep call times short, but the opposite could be true in the case of premium customers. In this case, agents could be rewarded for spending more time with these callers. With the right technology in place, you could have knowledge workers as overflow agents for select customers. This flexibility provides additional ROI of unified communications. Other ways of fast tracking your high value customers include routing them immediately to a live person if they call from a recognized number or you could provide them a direct or priority access number.

Worst Practice - The flipside is to treat every customer the same. Sometimes we try to design the one end all-be all process that puts everyone in the same queue and maps numerous options for every type of call imaginable. As mentioned above, sometimes the drive for shorter wait times and agent goals end up conflicting with the best business outcome. We understand minimizing talk time to increase efficiency stats, but it’s not for every caller. The same goes for self-service options. Don’t force everybody through the same self-service options when you can recognize customers and provide a better level of service.

Best Practice: Communicate proactively

Outbound communications do not necessarily have to be calls (which are often expensive). They can be automatically generated emails (which are cheap). It’s a good idea to proactively contact customers when you have information they need. An example would be sending notifications to same-situation customers. If there’s a known issue you’ve identified in one customer that requires attention and it’s likely to impact others, then notify everyone with the solution. This type of outbound notification can save significant amounts of time and resources for your inbound team. An additional benefit to this type of effort is that it will be perceived in the customer’s mind as exceptional service.

Another example is status updates. You can send notifications when a reported issue changes status (i.e. it goes from “reported” to “in process,” or from “in process” to “resolved”). This information, along with the expected time of delivery or resolution, will be greatly appreciated. Most importantly, when customers know they’re receiving the most up-to-date information, they’re not calling in and tying up your agents. In general, outbound communications are less expensive than inbound communications. When you know the answer to the likely question, it’s more efficient to provide it proactively. Unlike inbound, where the issue is unknown and may require a time consuming discovery process for the agent, outbound communications can be planned in advance.

Worst Practice - Wait for your customers to call you. If you simply wait for customers to call your service department, you’re basically waiting until either they: (a) have a problem serious enough to call, or (b) have gotten really impatient about something they have not yet received. Either way, they are unhappy.

Best Practice: Make communications simple and flexible

The key is to offer customers a number of ways to easily contact you and get the information they’re looking for. The preferred contact method will vary from customer to customer, so it’s important to have all your bases covered. Some want to talk to a live agent no matter what. Some prefer email, chat, or other self-service options to answer their questions or perform transactions. Contact center managers like these options because it lowers costs and improves efficiency by eliminating agent involvement in unnecessary, repetitive interactions. Examples include: account balance, automated bill payment, flight status, service renewal, news/weather/sports access, and so on. These examples are characterized by minimal customer input, involve limited choices, and provide simple and expected feedback.

In addition to numerous contact options, they must be easy to use. Put self-service options requiring more input or more choices on the Internet. Options that require limited input and choice can be both on the Internet and on your Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

For customers that prefer to talk to a live person, offer Callback options to eliminate the need to wait on the phone. The best contact center technologies allow customers to select an option that enables them to simply hang up the phone, but retain their position in queue. When their time comes, the technology automatically calls them back and connects them to a live agent. This works great when the caller is on a mobile phone. And it is a great differentiator – customers perceive this as exceptional service.

Email, Web Chat, and Instant Messaging are perfect options for customers that need agent involvement, but prefer not to wait in queue. Custom apps for mobile devices are continuing to increase in popularity. Additionally, social media is gaining in popularity as a form of customer service, but this is most commonly after one of the traditional forms of customer contact fails. So it’s important to monitor the social channels where your customers are discussing your brand. These tools allow you to identify both positive and negative comments and you can add these mentions to your customer service queue to track to resolution.

Worst Practice - Give them a lot of IVR options in an attempt to maximize self-service. We all cringe when we know we are in for a long session with an automated IVR, especially when there is no way out. Redirecting customers to self-service options can be annoying. Chances are they have considered the options and rejected them. They need to talk to someone and it’s our job to make that easy to do.

To learn more about the best (and worst) practices in customer communication, download the full white paper. 

NEC recently attended the 2013 National Automotive Dealers Association (NADA) Conference in Orlando, Florida. The NADA Convention is the automotive industry event of the year and the world's largest international gathering place for franchised new-vehicle dealers.

NEC participated with Phillip Sherman, CEO of Telecom Advisors Group, Inc. and one of the leading independent automotive industry technology consultants in the nation.

Like many companies today, auto dealerships are interested in the best ways to cut costs and increase the productivity of their sales team and services advisors. The NADA convention gave the perfect opportunity to show the ROI of Unified Communications (UC) technology and demonstrate how it helps the rapidly growing automotive industry reduce cost, improve productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Customer Satisfaction is important in any industry, but particularly in the automotive industry, which relies heavily on its Customer Service Index (CSI) score. For example, JD Power and Associates reported that dealerships with high CSI scores during the first three years of ownership retained 79 percent of dollars spent on maintenance and repairs during the first five years of vehicle ownership.

The auto industry is heavily impacted by technology to help make improvements for both the dealer and the customer. NEC employees were also on hand demonstrating our communications solutions to more than 20,000 conference attendees. With the need for uninterrupted roaming and productivity from any location within a dealership, applications that allow cellular and Wi-Fi roaming were of key interest to attendees. For those automotive dealerships tired of losing revenue due to appointment no-shows, we demonstrated our Appointment Reminder to show them how to alleviate this frustration by simplifying the appointment reminder process and communicating with their customers more efficiently. In the auto sales environment, responding to and distributing call-in and internet leads is critically important. Leveraging contact center technology that queues, distributes and tracks customer opportunities provides dealers with a competitive advantage and the ability to respond as quickly as possible.

To learn how uMobility or Appointment Reminder can enhance your organization click below.

Part II

Long hold times and staff inefficiency are just a few flaws that can affect customer service and experience. In our last post we highlighted the first five of ten ways you can put your contact center to work for you by using it to enhance your campus. Keep reading as we reveal 6-10. 

6. Agent Assignment Flexibility and Statistics

When your contact center has flexible agent assignment capability, the administrative offices can increase or decrease staff available to take calls during peak activity times. There are two methods to accomplish this objective: process and technology.

With the process method, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. At normal times, only those whose primary job function includes answering incoming queries log in to the contact center application. As call volume increases, additional personnel can log in to take calls and relieve any backlog, and log off when the call volume decreases. A unified communications (UC) enabled desktop application for agents simplifies this process by allowing agents to easily view the information that they need through a desktop client.

With the technology solution, again, any individual who takes calls is established as an “agent”. The contact center application is programmed to send calls to back-up personnel only when certain thresholds are met – the number of waiting callers or the longest time any caller has currently waited. The benefit of this technology solution is that it tends to respond more quickly and reliably to spikes in the call volume.

7. Auto Attendant and Campus Directory

The Auto Attendant provides call routing capabilities for the campus. You may recognize this feature as the familiar situation where the caller hears a greeting message and is given up to ten options to begin directing the call – for example, “For Administrative Offices, press 1, Health Center press 2, etc.” Auto Attendant options can be processed several ways: play an automated message, transfer to an extension number or contact center, or further qualify with additional prompts.

You can implement an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system to produce messages that provide answers to common questions. When you do this, it takes the load off of staff, giving them more time to provide assistance to other callers.

8. Mobile and Remote Representatives

You can easily allow your campus representatives to become mobile by merging your contact center technology with wireless technology. Doing so improves efficiency and means that help desk staffers can be reached while providing in-person computer repair, and bookstore personnel can walk around the store to check stock on an item. The “Remote Agent” capability allows staff to be reached even when out of the office. This is an ideal way to provide flexibility to your staff and assure that critical help lines remain open regardless of any campus closure.

9. Outbound: Preview and Power Dialing

Outbound contact center capabilities can improve the accuracy and effectiveness of a fund raising campaign. When the dialing process is automated, time spent on wrong numbers is significantly reduced. You can go a step further and integrate with a database of historical donations, thereby streamlining the information gathering process so solicitation can begin immediately.

Once a campus representative becomes available for the next call, preview dialing enables that individual to preview the information regarding the next call prior to the placement of that call. With the press of a button, the system dials the call. Power dialing is similar, but automatically dials the next call when the representative becomes available, while simultaneously displaying the preview information.

10. Self-Service Applications (IVR and Web)

You can further enhance your contact center efficiency by transferring tasks to self-service applications enabled to work over IVR or web interface. Good candidates for self service are those which integrate a user interface with data in various campus databases, for example, student and personnel records, library services, etc. Self-service applications allow users to access and work with distributed content from a single interface.

A few self service opportunities on a campus include:

• admissions and registration processing and status 
• health and medical database information 
• order status for recent purchases
• password reset 
• time sheets and time tracking 
• benefits administration

You can rest assured that security concerns are addressed by establishing the strongest possible authentication and identity management measures. Single sign-on and identity management applications enable the user to login to multiple locations through a single login manager with a single unique password.
When evaluating applications for potential self-service implementation, the campus should evaluate not just the cost savings but also the improvement in customer service by enabling users to have access at their convenience.

Check out our previous post where we listed the first five ways a contact center can help improve your campus, and, to learn more about the benefits your campus can reap with a UC enabled contact center, download the white paper.

Part 1

We’ve all been that frustrated caller on hold waiting to speak to a “real” person who can address our concerns. While waiting, you’ve probably thought of all the ways your experience could be improved if they would just answer the one or two quick questions you wish to ask. While you can’t get any of your time back, the good news is, there are several contact center features that can minimize your customer’s frustration, and, as a result enhance their experience. It’s no secret that a consolidated, centralized contact center can increase staff efficiency, but how is this increased efficiency accomplished? The following list highlights the first five of ten ways contact centers enhance institutions of higher learning.

1. Contact Routing for Multimedia Contacts

Multimedia contact centers enable students, prospective students and other customers to interact with campus offices however they please – whether by phone, e-mail or Web chat. Regardless of the medium they choose, call routing ensures each student receives the priority attention they deserve.

For example, many campuses may sell tickets to campus events over the Internet. Potential customers include not only students, faculty and staff, but members of the community as well. If your campus contact center offers customers an extra opportunity to have their questions answered by offering a web chat capability, you can very well decrease the number of abandoned shopping carts, while increasing the number of completed sales and simultaneously providing opportunities for personnel in the ticket office to better serve customers.

For offices taking calls from existing students, faculty and staff, contacts can be routed based on campus identification (ID) numbers. This number enables the call to be routed, along with caller information from a stored database, to the most appropriate representative. For prospective students or other callers, the Automatic Number Identification (ANI – typically the caller’s phone number) can be used to route or set a priority to the call.

2. Response Library and E-mail Auto-Response

A knowledge-based library houses responses to frequently asked questions (FAQ). Use of these pre-defined entries can simplify the representative’s job and significantly speed the process of creating responses.

One useful element to store in the knowledge library is a response to be automatically delivered to the sender of a message to give them an idea of when their inquiry may receive attention. When an e-mail is received, the multimedia application should automatically reply with a message acknowledging receipt and committing to a personalized response in a specified timeframe. In doing this, the campus has a much greater opportunity to meet expectations – and met expectations translate into customer satisfaction.

3. Screen Pop

When a caller can be identified by either campus ID or phone number, database information for that caller can be presented in a pop-up window to the representative at the time the call is received. This feature is known as “screen pop” and eliminates the time required for a representative to collect key information from the caller, resulting in increased productivity and improved accuracy.

4. Queue Announcements

At a time of high call volume (which is typical in contact centers), it is inevitable that some callers will wind up in queue waiting to speak to a campus representative. However, implementing queue announcements can discourage callers from hanging up by offering other contact options and providing useful information.
Did you know that a caller in queue is using campus resources – ports in the communications infrastructure, IVR resources, and potentially long distance resources? If this caller becomes frustrated with the wait, hangs up and calls back later, then the campus pays for twice as many resources for that one caller. This costly situation can be avoided by providing information to set the expectation for the caller, making them much less likely to “abandon” their call while waiting in queue. In either case, resources are not wasted since the campus only pays for the caller to wait in queue one time.

5. Callback

Callback can help improve caller satisfaction. In addition, callbacks decrease indirect costs and direct costs. Indirect costs are associated with the ports required to keep calls in queue. Direct costs are reduced as the campus does not incur toll charges for the time the call remains in queue awaiting an answer. The callback capability offers to return the call when an agent becomes available, thus preserving the caller’s place in the queue. The result – reduced resources required to support the call on hold. Additionally, callers can be offered a return call at the time when their call would normally have been answered, or they are offered the opportunity to request a callback at a specific time.

Whether you’re looking to increase productivity and efficiency, enhance student experience, or make a financial impact, your campus or university may have much to gain from a successfully implemented contact center. We’ve just scratched the surface on the benefits you can reap, to learn more, check back for 6-10 and download the White Paper. 

Traditional contact centers: you know, the ones where rows of agents wearing headsets process large volumes of calls? While they’re extremely functional in certain venues, they do not have much of a place in Higher Education. Higher Education is a channel where contact center technology should be used to improve the student experience, streamline administrative processes, increase sales for bookstores and ticket offices, support fund raising campaigns, and enhance the college or university as a whole. To accomplish these goals, contact centers in higher education have a unique profile that influences both practices and communications architecture.

Collegiate contact centers are “casual” or “informal”, meaning they are typically made up of small groups staffed by representatives for whom answering the phone is not their primary job function. For example, these staffers must be enabled to work on projects, attend meetings and carry out other duties that will require them to be away from their desk and, therefore, their phone. Administrative, auxiliary and academic offices around the campus all experience fluctuations in demand for services in relation to the time of year and the progress in the current semester. Contact center technology in a campus or university setting can accomplish unique objectives for the various types of departments as well as accommodate temporary expansions that occur as a result of fluctuations in volume. Contact center opportunities exist in a number of administrative offices; let’s first take a look at how Administration and Student Services are impacted.

As a new semester begins, administrative offices can be overwhelmed by phone calls from students trying to make schedule adjustments, complete financial aid requirements or settle into a residence hall. These offices don’t have the man power to handle the high call volume that results. Ultimately, this means inconvenient back-ups, callers waiting on hold for long periods of time, and growing frustrations. In addition, it takes more time and resources to handle callers during periods of long wait times. Callers are likely to get frustrated, hang up, and call again at a later time. This ties up communications resources twice – once for each call. If the contact center is able to assist the caller the first time, it not only improves customer service, it increases cost effectiveness. Additionally, a beneficial feature of contact centers is the ability to utilize queue announcements which can be used to encourage callers to continue to wait – including providing an estimated wait time or the number of callers currently ahead in the queue.

While adding more staff on a whim is likely the desirable option, it is not typically the most feasible. To accommodate this, there are several contact center technologies available that allow campus departments to respond to the demand of their resources:

• UC-enabled desktop applications allow others to login as an agent and help out as needed. For example, administrative and advising staff can login when call volume is high and view the availability/presence of other co-workers to transfer calls as needed or conference someone in with just a click of a button. 
• Multilevel/multilingual auto-attendant allows you to build a script where the campus can provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or redirect callers to the university Web site to find the information they’re seeking. This can help to decrease the overall call volume that reaches the administrative staff. 
• Applications that deliver phone calls, e-mail and Web chats. Simply hire temporary student workers to help process calls during times of heavy volume. The training is quick and easy, and once trained, these students can provide basic information and execute simple requests so experienced staffers can handle the more complex issues and calls. 
• On each phone or desktop, a display can inform the individual of the number of calls waiting and the time that the longest call has currently waited. This information notifies other department members that the call volume is increasing and enables them to login and take calls until the volume starts to subside again. Where departments can collaborate, the contact center application can be designed to deliver calls to an alternate department in the case of extreme call volumes. This enables a department or group that is potentially less busy at a given moment to help take care of the callers waiting for assistance. 

Campus administrative offices are the “face of the campus” for currently enrolled students as well as prospective students, parents and visitors – all of whom represent potential customers, so to speak. As a result, how calls are handled will directly impact the experience of a current student as well as influence the decisions of prospective students. Both groups represent potential revenue to the campus, so there is little to no room for error or inefficiency. For example, the goodwill of the existing student may eventually influence future monetary donations, and the decision of the prospective student will determine whether their tuition dollars help fund this institution. It’s an ongoing cycle, and, therefore customer service is directly related to “the bottom line”. Download the white paper below to learn more about how the advanced technology of contact centers can improve the “bottom line” in your institute of higher learning.