In the News

CCF Online 
Customers: All Staff Have Responsibility

Internal call monitoring vital for investment banking to comply with regulations concerning the treatment of customers.

Investment management organisation Brewin Dolphin has extended its use of call recording in its contact centre to cover all interactions in the front and back office to help comply with FSA (Financial Services Authority) regulations.
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1to1 Media
WFM Grows Up—How Three Companies Effectively Use Workforce Management in Their Contact Centers. Addison Lee Delivers Productivity and Service

It's a never-ending struggle heightened by the bad economy: How do contact center managers increase agent productivity while ensuring that those agents work at optimal levels for the customer? Addison Lee created its efficiency gains by staffing its contact center to match spikes in call volume.
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1to1 Media
Rogers Wireless Listens in on Calls, in a Good Way

In the fast changing wireless market, what used to drive customer service calls only two years ago may not drive calls today. Rogers Wireless recognized that to keep up it had to more rapidly identify and adapt to customers ever-evolving needs and expectations.
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CRM Magazine
Adhering to Higher Quality—New York Life Streamlines Its Workforce, Vastly Improving Internal Metrics

It's hard to improve upon what can't be measured—or at least upon what can't be spelled out to workers. Many argue that metrics, both internal and customer-facing, drive the contact center. The lack thereof was a slowly building problem facing the Tampa, Fla., contact center of insurance provider New York Life (NYL).
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Credit Union Times
Bethpage FCU Sees Quick ROI with New Workforce Management Deployment 

The return on an investment in operational efficiency should always be so easy.

Bethpage Federal Credit Union said it plans to save the equivalent of six full-time positions–at about $35,000 each–on its new workforce management platform from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions.

“For us, the ROI is in the budget process,” said Bob Hoppenstedt, senior vice president of member services at $3.4 million Bethpage FCU on New York’s Long Island. “We’re going to break even within a year and a half.”
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1to1 Media
Reporter’s Notebook: SunTrust Tracks Traffic to Improve Service

Years ago, when banks operated on a standard 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday schedule, predicting customer traffic flows did not pose a problem. But as many banks extended their hours to meet customers' changing schedules, their staffing issues became more complex as well.
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CRM Magazine
Workforce Optimization Rises Above the Recession

Regardless of who’s conducting the research, the message seems clear: The workforce optimization (WFO) space continues to grow despite the effect of the recession on many companies’ technology investments. DMG Consulting forecasts 2008 revenue figures for WFO to exceed $2.5 billion. Gartner predicts the sector’s revenues will have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3 percent through 2011, while Datamonitor places its CAGR at 10.3 percent through 2013. Gartner analysts Michael Maoz and Jim Davies wrote that, by 2011, 20 percent of Global 100 businesses will begin to dismantle their traditional contact centers and move to an increasingly distributed model in part because WFO will have made “the need for the agent to be physically located near a supervisor increasingly less important.”
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CRMXchange
The Back Office—Shaping the Customer Experience, One Transaction at a Time

Customer experiences are shaped by many functions, departments and touch points across the customer service value chain.  Store fronts, branch locations and contact centers play important roles.  Another less customer-facing group that is equally critical to the customer service equation is the back office

Many organizations underestimate the impact back-office operations and functions have and how inefficiencies in any one department can ripple into others, resulting in call volume spikes into the customer-facing contact center, mounting customer frustration, and when extreme, churn.  For instance, when companies identify the underlying motives for repeat visits or calls into their stores, branches and centers, they may find incorrect order fulfillment, processing delays and improper billing prompting customers to contact them.  Unnecessary repeat calls or visits due to a lack of quality and process controls in the back office not only impacts the bottom line, but also can signal declines in customer satisfaction. 
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