World according to Witness Systems
By Toni Kistner, NetworkWorld.com, 03/18/05
I had an interesting lunch meeting recently with Witness Systems--an Atlanta company that develops software for call monitoring, scheduling and training.
Witness says what distinguishes it from other call monitoring companies is the ability to capture not just the conversation between the agent and customer, but all the agent's keystroke and screen data as well, in real time.
The idea is this: When you only capture the phone conversation, there are long gaps when no one speaks, when the agent is accessing customer data, looking for something in the system. Witness says this is when most inefficiencies occur.
So with Witness' sophisticated screen capture software, the supervisor can review how the agent was working with the CRM application and make improvements by providing additional training.
Witness wanted to get on my radar; I wanted to know what they were hearing about virtual call centers.
They, too, were at the Call Center Demo Show in Dallas in January. They were surprised at all the interest in virtual call centers. I wasn't. We all agreed that its the businesses that are driving this movement--looking to cut costs--rather than the technologists building gee-whiz products then trying to convince companies they need them. They see financial services and banking as the top innovators. I would put insurance right up there, too.
While Witness is all for the virtual call center, the folks I met with made some keen observations I've overlooked:
One: When you increase the efficiency of your call center by making it virtual--20% is the typical number cited--how does that affect the back end systems? If you increase call volume by 20%, that could create a backlog of work for the claims processing , order fullfillment, or shipping departments, for example.
Then there's the overarching concept of "call avoidance." It's not enough to make your call center operation more efficient. You need to get at the root cause of the calls. Why are people calling you? Are they having problems filling out a particular form? Concerned because a product they ordered hasn't arrived? By analyzing the types of calls that come in, a company gets a window into much of its operation.
Witness promises to pass along good customers to profile, so stay tuned.
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