Monthly Archives: May 2011

IVR aggravation continues to spawn clever hacks

Posted by Shai on May 30, 2011

People hate phone menus. It’s as simple as that. That frustration spawned the ever-popular GetHuman.com site many years ago. (And it’s many modern copycats.)

Here’s another angle:

VoIP-News had a great article called “50-Plus Hacks and Tips to Get to a Real Person at Any Corporation”.

Your company’s mobile app can greatly improve your call center

Posted by Jason on May 28, 2011

Without exception, the companies I talk to are devoting a lot of effort to their mobile strategy. Anyone with a call center is aware that their unprecedented rise in popularity is changing the game. (IDC predicts that smartphones and tables will together outsell traditional computers in the next 18 months.)

A visual interface is a powerful thing

I find many companies are driven to release a mobile app out of fear that they will lose customers to their competitors who do have an app (or a better one). What they’re missing is that this is also an opportunity to improve the calling experience and lower costs in the call center. That’s because the smart phone is an ideal platform for implementing a visual interface to your call center. We believe that “The future of the call center is a visual interface”.

That interface can then be used by callers to

Steer their call to the right agent, thus reducing misnavigation.
Trigger virtual queuing which can eliminate hold times.
Enter information like a case number or account number, thus reducing call handle times.
Provide post-call feedback.

The good news

The good news is that Fonolo makes it possible and, more importantly, easy for any company to do implement such an interface, both on your web site and on the smart phone.

Come see us at the Avaya User Group Conference

Posted by Mike on May 23, 2011

We’re extremely excited to be in Las Vegas this weekend, at the International Avaya User Group Conference (IAUG).

Today has already been action-packed with sessions and an opening reception.

Check #iaug on Twitter to get a sense for what’s going on.

If you’re attending, please stop by our booth, #910 in the Milano Ballroom, and say hi.

Is your IVR aggravating your customers?

Posted by Shai on May 13, 2011

Dislike for IVR systems is fairly universal. In my line of work, I hear many stories of frustration with the phone menu. Seems everyone has a pet peeve or an outrageous tale to tell. Here are a couple good ones.

Call center commentator Greg Levin writes:

IVR. In many customers’ minds, this three-letter acronym is a four-letter word. It’s not uncommon for callers to mutter a diverse range of other forbidden words whenever interacting – or trying to interact – with a contact center’s IVR system.

Blogger Susan Hura lists some other complaints:

… ads for stuff we don’t want, long legal disclaimers or having to repeat information once transferred to a live call center representative. I hate them all, but my number one complaint is navigating through an interactive voice response (IVR) system only to be told, “Sorry, if you want to do this you’ll have to visit our Web site at www-dot…

What are your IVR complaints? Send them in we’ll compile a list for a future post.

Multi-site call centers make multi-channel communication even harder

Posted by Chris on May 7, 2011

The challenges faced today by the executive in charge of customer service are very different from what they were ten years ago. Since I spend most of my days talking to these executives I have a front-row seat to the dramatic change that is happening in the industry.

The success of the call center used to be measurable with a few key metrics: Average hold time, average handle time, cost per call, first call resolution, etc. But today the dominant challenge is how to manage the different communication channels: Web, phone call, email, chat and social media. In particular, it can be very tricky to keep the experience consistent across those various channels.

Consistency is a big challenge

What makes those challenges even tougher is that, for a company with large call volume (>10m calls per year), it’s a good bet that the call center is multi-site to some extent. Being multi-sited makes it harder to achieve consistency because it impedes both innovation and optimization. Read Shai’s recent post on this for a great overview.

In [multi-site operations] one of the biggest challenges … is providing a consistent experience across all locations… A hosted contact center environment provides a centralized platform from which to do that, and is more flexible than premise-based solutions that can be difficult to manage across multiple sites, regions, time zones, broadband reliability, communications protocols, etc.

- Jon Arnold, Industry Analyst

Fonolo can help

One of our goals at Fonolo is help provide a consistent interface. Behind the scenes, our system automatically stays in sync with your IVR, so all the business rules that are tied to that system are propagated to the visual interface on your website (click-to-call) and your mobile app (tap-to-call). If you want to find out more, drop me a note.

The smartphone will drive the evolution of the call center (cool video)

Posted by Jason on May 6, 2011

The rapid rise of the smartphone is hardly news anymore. But to refocus your attention on just how dramatic it is, here is a video illustrating Android activations over the last few years. (“Activation” is the first time an Android-powered smartphone contacts the network.)

Credits: Android Developer via Android Central.

For more academic view, consider the chart below. It was compiled from data presented by Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker in late 2009:

For Fonolo, this trend is continues to affirm our belief that smartphone will drive the evolution of the call center experience, and more specifically that “The future of the call center is a visual interface”.

Fonolo fixes the dreaded “data pass-through” problem

Posted by Jason on May 5, 2011

Our mission at Fonolo is to fix common aggravations with the call center experience. One common aggravation is the “data pass-through” problem. You may not have heard this phrase before, but you have surely experienced it. Whenever you are asked for information by the IVR and then asked for the same information again by the agent, the culprit is broken data-pass-through.

Why is it so common?

Fixing this integration point seems like an obvious investment for companies to make. Clearly the time required for agents to collect account numbers (or other “call attached” data) has a real cost. As does the aggravation of customers that answer the agent’s request by saying: “I just punched in my number! Why don’t you have that information?”

The problem usually arises because 1) the company is running multiple call centers; 2) it is rare for any two call centers to be built on identical technology; and 3) there are no standards for interoperability between call center equipment. The result is incompatible proprietary systems which means that call centers have to fall back on the lowest common denominator functionality. The following quote says it all:

Most midsize to large contact centers are based on complex and unstable architectures that integrate many disparate technologies into distinct, unique and costly combinations of components … [even] acquiring an IVR system from vendors such as Avaya, Nortel Networks and Genesys does not ensure tight integration with those companies’ ACD or CTI products.

- Yankee Group, “VoIP and Lower TCO will Drive Adoption of Hosted
On-Demand Contact Centers” Yankee Group, April 2006.

Fonolo to the rescue

Fonolo can fix this problem because it lives “outside” the realm of the call center equipment. With our visual interface the caller can enter information before the call and it gets delivered to the agent, regardless of the way the call center is built.