Building the Business Case for Contact Center Modernization
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Thank you for joining us here today! Do you ever feel like this guy, standing in your contact center with empty pockets? Your company’s executives may be saying you need to deliver a contact center experience your competitors can’t match -- but they may not be funding what you need. One way to look at it is this: are you having any customer churn? If so, what is the value of customers you lose? If you have customer churn, dollars are walking out your door every single day.
•A contact center makeover can significantly lower your costs
and increase your revenueby over 90%
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That’s why we’re here today. A contact center makeover can significantly lower your costs -- and increase your revenue by over 90%. 90%? Where does this come from? Our financial analysis group and business consulting team worked together to document the actual results of over 160 companies’ contact center modernization projects. The examples you’ll see here today are based on real-life results of these 160+ companies.
So what Bill and I are going to do is to give you some ideas you can use to build a business case to fund what you know your company needs. Our mission is to help you find a piggy bank to fund your contact center makeover.
What is on your makeover list? Web chat is becoming an expectation. And social media? Here you can monitor customer sentiment about your brand, and proactively engage with customers. And there’s not just multi-channel but omnichannel – regardless of how your customers contact you, the agent knows the history of previous interactions There may be additional ways you can use self service Do you still have multiple contact centers, and want to consolidate? What happens in the back office? Your agents could do the best job in the world, but if the back office drops the ball, customer satisfaction plummets. Do you need a tool to manage the back office workload? Speech analytics can help identify opportunities as well as problem areas. Regardless of what is on your makeover list, let’s roll up our sleeves and figure out how to make it happen. But first, let’s take a quick poll to see where most of you are today.
Let’s get started. We’re going to talk about building a business case – and we’ll talk about it from 3 perspectives. In each of these 3 areas, we’ll first talk about some strategies. We’ll look at Boosting efficiency – which lowers costs Reducing infrastructure costs Increasing revenue As we go through strategies in each of these areas, we’ll also look at examples of how you can build the business case for funding those strategies.
You’ve probably heard this oft-repeated fact. Analysts tell us that 60-70% of the costs of a contact center are in agent salaries. I’ve heard this number go as high as 80%.
So it stands to reason that as agent efficiency rises, costs decline. How do we go about making the agents more efficient? What impact will it have on costs? And, how can you use this in your business case?
We’re going to start with a pretty obvious example, and that is a screen pop of customer-relevant information that arrives with each customer contact. Hang with us here – we know that most, if not all of you, have already implemented screen pops. Do you know how much money you’ve saved by doing so? Let’s take a look!
This is the first of several benefit calculators we’re going to be reviewing today. Here, let’s say your agents’ loaded wage is $50,000 per year, your agents work 40 hours per week, and your monthly inbound contact volume is 500,000. Let’s say that 85% of those contacts were eligible for screen pop. Remember the group of 160+ customers I mentioned earlier? Based on composite results from these companies, the most likely value of time saved per interaction is 41 seconds. Look at the potential annual value of those savings – over $1.3M!! So, assuming you’ve already implemented screen pop in your company, your efficiency savings are huge! Perhaps your call volume isn’t this high, or you pay your agents more or less. – Each of these calculators we’ll be reviewing is easily personalized for your own company – just pop in your own values. Now, let’s look at other ways we can boost efficiency and therefore reduce costs. Notes: (Benefit Benchmark Inbound Engagement: Reduction in Handle Time Through Screen Pop): 35 sec. (conservative) 41 sec. (likely) 48 sec. (optimistic)
My oh my, what a variety we see here!! From happy relaxed agents in the upper right quadrant, to agents who… uh… have time to take a little nap, to crazed, overwhelmed agents in another site. Does your company have multiple contact center sites that are in siloes? If so, you may be seeing a bit of this scenario yourself. When you virtualize resources, you balance the workload among everyone. No more naptimes, and no more burial-by-paper. Instead, you have efficient use of resources everywhere.
• All Contact Center teams• All Contact Center locations• Branches offices and retail
stores• Back office• Home workers• Outsourced partners
ContactCenter
BackOffice
HomeWorker
BranchOffice
RetailStore
Outsourcer
ContactCenter
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A virtualized contact center operation lets you use skills wherever they are, across: All Contact Center Teams, wherever they may be located Branch office or retail store employees can help when they’re not busy Back Office Home Workers Outsourced Partners When you balance out the workload, and use intelligent routing strategies across the organization, you get faster and more productive contact resolution. Notes: Customers want to get assistance from someone who has the skills and authority to fix their problem. These skilled people can be anywhere in the organization and often they have capacity to assist at the times when the contact center may need help. You need to use the right available resource where ever they are in the organisation to address a customer’s needs. And by utilizing all of the available resources you are able to better meet the demands of your customers when they need you without increasing the cost to serve.
You boost efficiency by improving occupancy. If you’re able to leverage your entire workforce, how much can you expect to improve occupancy? Our research shows 15% on the conservative side, 18% is likely, and you may see 20% or more. Notes: From Inbound Engagement PDF: Improved Agent Utilization/Occupancy Intelligent routing strategies allow for common call types to be serviced by the best skilled available agents, which results in faster and more productive contact resolution. Leverage real-time intelligence on workforce, skills and proficiencies allows for a balanced distribution of calls across the overall workforce, not being dependent on a specific setup of queues to deliver interactions to agents.
•Example:• 1,000 agents across all sites• 70% occupancy today• Boost occupancy by 15%• Use fewer agents
– or –handle more contactswithout adding agents
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Queueing theory dictates that this “virtualization” of multiple agent populations into a single pool will increase resource utilization and optimize staffing. You’ll improve forecasting and allow for better scheduling, Let’s look at an example of the economies of scale. Let’s say you have 1,000 agents across all sites, and have an average of 70% occupancy across these sites. If you’re able to boost occupancy by 15% (which is the conservative estimate based on what we we saw on the previous page), what this means is you can handle a LOT more contacts – 15% or more - without adding agents. That translates to big savings.
Let’s look at other ways to boost efficiency. First Contact Resolution. According to Convergys Scorecard Research, taking multiple attempts to resolve an issue or request is THE TOP source of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction makes us leave. When customers aren’t happy, thy may go on line and look for similar products or services, and say adios to the company that was just too hard to do business with. And their dollars walk out the door with them. When we deliver FCR, we make customers happier and boost retention. We save because our customers are not having to contact us again. Overall contact time drops. That means lower costs. Now let’s look at a couple of strategies for delivering First Contact Resolution. (Source: 2011 Convergys Scorecard Research)
You know that Speech Analytics can be a great tool to ensure compliance and to search for problem areas and opportunities. Speech Analytics can also be used to identify problems that inhibit First Contact Resolution. You can search for phrases like “This is the SECOND time I’ve called” and…
And “this is the FOURTH time I’ve called.” O.k., we’ll stop now, you get the point. When we search for these types of phrases, we then figure out what’s needed to preempt these repeat calls.
Another strategy to boost FCR is to give agents immediate access to available subject matter experts, whether in the contact center or elsewhere in the enterprise. Then we eliminate finger pointing and transfers that happen when agents need help with the hard questions and issues. And we help agents drive FCR. Now, we’ve talked about strategies for addressing FCR – what does the business case look like?
In this scenario, let’s say 25% of your customers today are transferred to another agent, or have to call back. Based on results of the companies we worked with, implementing strategies that boost first contact resolution most likely will reduce repeat contacts by 19% or more. Total labor costs drop to the tune of over $570,000 per year. That’s significant. Notes: BC results, Inbound Engagement PDF, Increased First Contact Center Resolution Rates: 16% conservative 19% Likely 22% Optimistic Routing to the most appropriate agent the first time reduces the likelihood that the customer will need to initiate a second (or 3rd or 4th) contact to resolve issues. Improved FCR reduces repeat contacts and associated costs. Not only saving money, but boosting customer sat.
We’ve talked about several ways to boost efficiency by improving First Contact Resolution. Now, let’s look at reducing handle time. Notes: BC Project Business Benefits, ACD Replacement PDF, Reduction of Handle Time Through Intelligent Call Routing (seconds). Conservative – 37 sec. Likely – 44 sec. Optimistic – 50 secs Reduction of Handle Time through intelligent call routing: Intelligent routing strategies allow for common call types to be serviced by the best skilled available agents, resulting in faster and more productive contact resolution. Intelligent routing strategies allow for common call types to be serviced by the best skilled available agents, which results in faster and more productive contact resolution.
An obvious ways to reduce handle time is to use intelligent routing to get each customer or prospect to the right place the first time. A knowledgeable agent can respond more quickly, and likely won’t need to transfer the call or contact. Another way to reduce handle time is to transition some types of calls to digital channels. For simple things, email can be very fast, an FAQ type response. Chats may be longer but can be done in parallel. Our goal is to save time, so transition only the right types of calls to digital. Keep complex inquiries on voice. Let’s look at a benefit calculator to assess the potential impact of transitioning calls to digital.
As is the case with all of these calculators, you’ll input your own call volumes and projections. In this example, let’s say you have a call volume of 500,000 per month, and average handle time is 6 minutes (300 seconds). If that you’re able to migrate 20% of calls to other channels, and drop the handle time by a couple of minutes by doing so, you can save over $800K per year. Notes: Digital calculator. With enhanced contextual information, agents would experience reduced effort to execute positive identification, search customer data, identify intent and other contact related information arriving with the interaction. The time associated with manually executing such such activites is saved, thus saving the on the cost associated with this time. This allows for a reduction in Average Handle Time (AHT).
“Hello, Mr. Smith. Did we answer all your questions during our web chat this afternoon?
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We’ve talked about a number of strategies for boosting efficiency. Another approach is to ensure your agents have the customer’s history. An agent greeting a customer with, “Hello Mr. Smith - I see you’ve been a great customer of ours for 3 years now. Did we answer all your questions about our power tools promotion during our web chat this afternoon?” This is much more impactful than a greeting of “Can I please have your name and account number, and the reason for your call?”
Equipping the agent with a caller’s history is efficient. We’re not wasting valuable agent (and caller) time recapping previous contacts. Look it it from a customer’s perspective. They don’t think in terms of channels. They just want to seamlessly move between mobile, social, chat, web, email, messaging. And they want the agent to know where they’ve been. Now, let’s take a look at the savings that come along with this.
Let’s say contextual data of previous contacts applies only 25% of the time. Based on our customer studies, you’ll likely save an average of at least 44 seconds per interaction. This translates to an annual value of over $440,000. Notes: Digital Calculator, Enhanced Context tab With enhanced contextual information, agents would experience reduced effort to execute positive identification, search customer data, identify intent and other contact related information arriving with the interaction. The time associated with manually executing such such activites is saved, thus saving the on the cost associated with this time. This allows for a reduction in Average Handle Time (AHT). From Benefit Benchmark Digital Engagement PDF: Reduction of handle time through screen pop of cross-channel contact history: Conservative – 37 secs Likely – 44 secs Optimistic- 50 secs The value provides a reduction in handle time thanks to giving agents a consolidated contact history and context of previous interactions across channels. The customer is less likely to need to repeat information already discussed in another channel, because the agent will have a single view of previous chat transcripts, emails, social interactions and call notes. As a result, agents will enjoy a reduction in handle time.
•Is your Workforce Management voice-only? •Do you use multiple channels?•Does WFM manage back office work?
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You can also boost efficiency with cross channel staffing. Was your contact center born in a voice-only world? Do you have multiple channels today, and if so does your WFM application take this into consideration? Are your back-office fulfillment workers scheduled by WFM? If not, considerable efficiency gains are possible.
Based on the companies we worked with, on the conservative side you’ll typically save at least 34%, and potentially 46% or more, when you use a fully integrated schedule management tool to reduce the time spent on manual scheduling. Notes: From Benefit Benchmark Digital Engagement PDF, Automation of cross-channel workforce scheduling (46%) 34% Conservative 40% Likely 46% Optimistic Reduced Labor Cost, or Increased Capacity for Workforce Planners This element considers efficiency gained from using Workforce Manager to manage the agent workforce across all communication channels. Genesys Workforce Management's fully integrated workforce schedule management reduces time spent on manual scheduling, and offers more robust schedule optimization through skills-based real-time scheduling.
So, we’ve explored several examples of cost savings achieved by boosting efficiency. There are, of course, many more we didn’t have time to address. Now Bill is going to take us through the business case associated with reducing infrastructure costs. But first, a quick poll question.
Budget planning is always important. But for IT departments the budget is critical as they work to deliver on the expectations of the business. The CIO and IT manager often cringe when they review budgets and see large line items for Forklift upgrades & migrations High maintenance costs Proprietary overpriced hardware (due to vendor lock-in) Geographic duplication High costs for legacy TDM trunks
Reduce Infrastructure CostsChoose Your Preferred Platform
Hardware
Virtualization
OperatingSystem
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Genesys is a software solution with a robust set of supported environments. Rather than making you adopt to yet another new piece of proprietary hardware, when deploying Genesys software your company and IT department can use your preferred platform with server hardware, virtualization, and Operating System. This offers reduced costs in multiple ways, from utilizing existing know-how for deploying & maintaining, to taking advantage of existing contracts for procurement.
•It is 25% less expensive to work with Open Standards than
vendor-specific solutions.
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There’s been a long standing debate between the single vendor proprietary approach, versus the open standards approach using multiple integrated vendors Recently the pendulum has swung towards the open standards approach, recognizing a potential for a large cost savings. This can be attributed to multiple factors, including the general dynamics. With open standards each vendor is constantly challenged to provide the best product at the prevailing market rate. No surprises then that if those companies want repeat business they need to keep up in the future. With Single Vendor solutions, the initial purchase & deployment is often at a market rate, but subsequent orders for expansion or upgrades come at a very high premium
The Genesys approach to Open Standards for our SIP infrastructure builds upon years of experience. A mature ecosystem of partners who embrace the model and know how to meet your needs. The top tier of our SIP infrastructure partners are in the “SIP Select” category. Practically this means pre-validated operation, application notes to get you up to speed quickly, advanced feature integration to address your important use cases.
•“Enterprises should get ready for flexible multichannel operations by ensuring their ACD does not hold them back.•The existing upgrade paths from legacyPBX and ACD suppliers make it difficult for buyers to contemplate the future on their own terms. But there are real alternatives in the marketplace that can put the power back in the hands of the enterprise.”
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Ovum white paper, “Prepare Contact Centers for the Future with SIP”, May 2013 Or, another way to look at it is this – is your ACD getting in the way, keeping you from meeting all these critical requirements? You’ve got this 10 or 15 year contact center infrastructure – so what do you do? Is it in danger of breaking down, is it still under maintenance? And how expensive is that maintenance? Do you have problems adding a new branch office or a new location, or a new contact channel?
When moving to a consolidated architecture with Genesys and supported by our SIP Infrastructure partners, there will be cost savings. Perhaps you’ve been part of multiple mergers and acquisitions and have duplicate equipment. Or perhaps paying premium maintenance costs on the legacy IVR nearing end-of-life. Based on detailed financial investigations and studies, Genesys has found that consolidating the voice infrastructure onto our software-based platform offers typical savings of $300/agent on an annual basis
Customers migrating to the Genesys SIP solution also typically find another advantage. They are often able to retire older ACDs or PBXs. Perhaps these were dedicated to the contact center, or perhaps they served a cross section of agents and enterprise or back-office workers. Replacing the ACD/PBX offers yet additional cost savings BC Results – ACD Replacement PDF – Reduced ACD/PBX recurring Infrastructure Costs: 21% conservative 25% likely 29% optimistic
•“Companies that connect all their customer service channels…
report 89% customer retention, compared to 33% for those that
haven’t.”•- Aberdeen Group
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The Aberdeen Group says that if you connect all your customer service channels, you’re going to have a MUCH higher customer retention rate. These figures are startling. But when you think about it, it makes sense. We all want to do business with companies that make it EASY for us to do interact with them. (Destination CRM article: http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/The-4-Key-Customer-Service-Omnichannel-Considerations-97686.aspx – Aberdeen report “Ominchannel Customer Care”)
Keeping customers - It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?! What is your company’s defection rate today? What makes those customers decide to leave? According to our research with over 160 companies, improved customer retention leads to 26 to 35% increased revenue. That is a big chunk of change!! How do we retain customers? We talked earlier about giving them First Contact Resolution. Another strong contributor is intelligent contact routing. Getting revenue opportunities to the most suitable agents leads to an improved sales closing ratio. Now let’s take a look at our calculators that assess revenue increases. Notes: BC Inbound Engagement PDF: Increased Revenue Due to Improved Customer Retention 25.5 conservative 30% likely 34.5% optimistic
Our Business Consulting team found that intelligent contact routing, combined with pre-existing intelligence on customers (contextual awareness), improves delivery of revenue opportunities to the most suitable agents, leading to improved sales closing ratio. … In fact, far more opportunities than you may be realizing today. In this calculator, let’s say the average revenue per closed sale is $200. Only 10% of calls have revenue potential. If we increase the number of calls able to generate revenue by 81% - the likely figure based the companies we worked with – We generate over $4.8M additional revenue. The range our team found: 69% conservative 81% likely 93% Optimistic Notes: From Inbound Engagement Calculator, Increased Revenue Due to Improved Upgrade Activity:
So when we do things like intelligent routing, we improve customer retention. Customers are matched with the BEST available resource, no matter where that resource is located. Let’s say only 10% of those contacts have some problem or issue that could put them at risk (the easy stuff is handled in self service). Based on our results, improved retention approaches such as getting customers to the best agent, and proactively contacting them if a red flag pops up, you’ll likely see a 30% improvement in retention. If the annual value of each of these customers is just $500, that means you gain $1.5M more revenue per year. We would love to cover other examples, but we want to be mindful of your time today. Keep in mind that these are basic thumbnail calculators, and we also can work with you on more in-depth versions. And every single one of these is tailored to your own unique factors and projections. Now let’s glance at a couple of case studies of companies who have realized big savings with contact center modernization. Notes: Per Inbound Engagement Center PDF, ranges are: 25.5% conservative 30% likely 34.5% optimistic It is easier and more profitable to retain existing customers than to recruit new ones. As such, enterprises want to retain customers that are at risk of churn, thereby earning repeat sales revenue which can yield greater customer lifetime value. However, in many cases customer retention is done reactively (e.g., when a customer requests to close their account), when it may be too late to save that customer relationship. �Instead, the Genesys solution recommends proactively intercepting customers that may be at risk of churn. The interception could take various forms on a variety of channels, and on either inbound or outbound interactions (e.g., a personalized message within the IVR, prioritized routing to a skilled contact center agent, an outbound marketing message (text, email, call) with a special offer, reaching out to a disgruntled customer on a social media channel, etc.). Deciding who, when, and how to intercept can be driven by data, analytics, and business rules that are fed into and controlled by the Genesys solution suite. By proactively intercepting these types of at-risk customers, the contact rate with this segment increases, and furthermore, the retention rate (or “save rate”) also improves. This results in significant additional revenue and margin contribution benefits for the organization.�
"Today, it’s refreshing to walk the floor – the agents aren't focused on the technology, they are focused on helping customers.”
Carter LeeVice President of Information Systems and Technology
Industry: On-line RetailRegion: North America
Ranked Top 5 in customer service by National Retail Federation
Case Study: Overstock.com
Challenges• Poor handling of spikes in call volumes• Inflexible hardware-based infrastructure,
expensive to upgrade and maintain• Lacked comprehensive view of customer
experience
Solution• Genesys contact center suite
Results• Abandon rates decreased 85%• Average hold time decreased 93%• TCO savings of $13.9M over 5 years
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Founded in 1997, Overstock.com is a premier online retailer that offers a wide variety of quality, brand-name merchandise at discount prices. The company provides customers the convenience of online bargain-shopping, while giving manufacturers, distributors and other retailers an alternative sales channel for liquidating inventory. Overstock.com offers 24x7 sales and customer service and support via phone, email, and the Internet—and prides itself on providing customers with white-glove treatment. Challenges Inadequate contact center infrastructure creating an impediment to achieving a stronger focus on customer satisfaction, reducing TCO, and enable differentiation by enhancing the customer experience. Lack of agility in managing fluctuating demand at peak periods coupled with inefficient call routing and an incomplete view across all contact center operations, all driven from a costly and inflexible premise based contact center system. Solution Included a full virtualized contact center with advanced routing, IVR, multi-site transparency, single-view reporting and administration, integrated call monitoring and quality assurance, and integrations to legacy applications. Results 35 point improvement in post-incident NPS from 25% to over 60% 70% reduction in TCO annually Over $2.6 million annual ROI savings and rapid 3.8 month ROI payback period
Industry: TelecommunicationsRegion: Europe, Middle East & Africa
“Genesys worked very well with us as partners. Their strategy mirrored our strategy and our thought process, so it was a natural choice to go with Genesys. Together we continue to strive for the best in customer service.”
Paul AkisterDirector Of Contact CentresBritish Telecom
Case Study: British Telecom
Leading Telecommunications company with 6,000 agents
Challenges• Reducing costs while increasing efficiency• Getting customer experiences right the first time• Complex shift patterns, manual scheduling
Solution• Genesys SIP Contact Center, WFO
Results• Reduced average handle time by 10%• 31% savings in FTE via global virtualization• Improved first contact resolution & customer
experience
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30k voice, 5k email,12k OpenMedia interactions per day • 12k advisors – 80+ sites • Genesys: SIP virtualization & consolidation, Inbound, Outbound, WFM & IWD Challenges Complex shift patterns and individual contracts to manage. Training and investment scheduling done manually and takes too much time. Solution Genesys solution automates scheduling of staff, coaching sessions and team meetings to procure more time for managers to support front line staff. Results Reduced average handle time by 10%. Automated training management down from 3 week effort to 25 minutes. Time to schedule e-learning session from 7+ hours down to 1 hour per day.
We’ve talked about three areas that help us build a business case: Becoming more efficient and therefore lowering costs We touched on the impact of reducing infrastructure costs And we looked at ways to increase revenue And, I’m sure that each and every one of you have thought of other areas we didn’t have time to cover today.
We would love to work with you to build a business case tailor-made for your own company. Thank you for attending our webinar today, and let us know how we can help you.
