Improving Customer Communications

The Sprint Customer Contact Center portfolio answers the business need for solutions that cater to an environment designed to process many types of customer interactions:

inbound/outbound calls voicemail e-mail fax the Web

The traditional call center — a large facility located in a fixed location handling inbound or outbound calls — has given way to a more flexible environment, as well as new terminology that better reflects the various types of interaction your business has with its customers.

Today, customer contact centers can include anything from a telemarketing center to a human resource department. They handle multiple communication methods, including inbound calls, outbound calls, Internet, e-mail and fax.

Customer contact centers improve customer relations by allowing a business to: 

Make ordering personal and simple Reduce on-hold times Ensure customers are greeted professionally with on-hold announcements Avoid interrupting calls to put other calls on hold Reduce the number of abandoned calls

In addition, customer contact centers allow businesses to operate more efficiently and effectively by enabling them to:

Talk to customers live and avoid costly callbacks Distribute calls evenly to all staff members Route calls to agents with the proper skill sets Improve agent productivity Forecast staffing accurately using historical reports Reduce toll-free costs Gain greater control over call information Route after-hour calls to a service number

The Sprint Solution

When it comes to selecting customer contact center solutions or upgrading an existing center, businesses need a solution that provides capabilities and support to meet their needs. Sprint is recognized as an industry leader in end-to-end project management and integration services for call centers. With a team of more than 150 integration specialists and 40 software developers, we are the best-positioned supplier to offer:

Project management Application development Systems integration System support and maintenance

Through arrangements or alliances with industry-leading computer telephony integration (CTI) hardware and software vendors, Sprint offers a range of customer contact center solutions. By combining features to meet specific business needs, we are able to develop a custom call center with benefits for any size or type of business.

Customer contact center services from Sprint include:

Feature-rich, highly reliable network services to enhance contact center operations Customer premises equipment (CPE) including PBX, automatic call distributors (ACD) and interactive voice response (IVR) from leading vendors Comprehensive computer telephony enabling technology support and integration On-site training to enhance the staffing quality and performance of in-house telemarketing or customer care organizations Customized solutions to fit specific contact center needs for maximum efficiency, effectiveness and productivity

Major Components of a Customer Contact Center

The primary components of a customer contact center solution are:

Auto Attendants. An auto attendant automatically answers incoming calls and provides callers with a menu of choices to select from, using just the phone keypad. These menu choices allow callers to listen to prerecorded announcements or to route themselves to a department, group or station. Since auto attendants allow callers to choose common options on their own, there is less need for a human operator to answer incoming calls, and this saves time and money.

Auto attendants can be created for different times of day based on the needs of a business, e.g., day mode and after hours. The system will be programmed to load different attendants at timed intervals, so callers hear appropriate greetings and options.

Automatic Call Distributors. An ACD is a system feature that automatically answers incoming calls. The ACD greets callers and then places them in a holding queue until an agent is available. Sprint recommends using an ACD because it is designed for contact center applications. It ensures that incoming calls are handled within a defined number of rings and that callers are serviced in the order in which they call.

The system plays promotional messages to the callers while they are in the ACD hold queue. Promotional messages are an excellent way to advertise your services to callers.

The ACD Sprint recommends includes skill-based routing, providing for even greater utilization of resources by presenting calls to appropriately skilled agents. Each agent can be assigned multiple skill sets.

The host directed routing functionality of an ACD allows call centers to give "platinum" customers premium service. Platinum customers are routed directly to a group of elite agents who are best able to assist them.

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). CTI provides agents with automatic data retrieval (screen pops) based on caller ID, dialed number or caller entered digits. This capability can significantly improve the ability and time required to address a particular caller's needs. If the call needs to be transferred locally or even across a network, a client/server CTI solution ensures that critical information is transferred with the call.

Custom Reports. The standard reporting capability provided with each system identifies immediate concerns and provides historical perspective. Sprint can design custom reports using Crystal Report Writer to expand the report portfolio. When combined with standard reports, custom reports provide a comprehensive means to measure and manage contact center productivity.

E-mail Integration. E-mail is increasingly becoming an important customer channel. All of the routing, processing and reporting capabilities for inbound callers can be applied to e-mail traffic as well. This means the right agents can be assigned to the right customer interactions regardless of medium.

• E-mail users will grow from 40 million in 1998 to 135 million by 2002 (Pelorus, 1998)
• E-mails sent daily will grow from 100 million in 1997, to 500 million in 2002, and 5 billion in 2005 (The Pelorus Group and Forrester Research)
• E-mail has overtaken voicemail as primary source of communications (Gallup 1997)

E-mail messages can be blended with inbound and outbound calls, enabling agents to switch seamlessly between media types. E-mail is queued together with voice calls allowing retrievals to be performed according to any desired priorities, including message content, e-mail address, contact history, length of time in queue and agent availability.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVRs will automatically answer incoming calls and provide callers with a menu of choices from which to select, using just the phone keypad. An IVR allows callers to route themselves to a department, group or station, as well as, retrieve data, such as account balances or order status. These capabilities allow repetitive caller inquiries to be answered quickly and consistently without the need for a human operator.

Voice Recognition. Voice recognition allows the system to recognize keywords or phases from a caller. Voice recognition is a great application to aid callers who do not have access to the touchtone keypad or are using rotary phones. There are multiple types of voice recognition, including discrete numeric, continuous numeric, alphanumeric, speaker dependent and custom. Sprint will propose the right solution based on the needs of the business.

Web Integration. Sprint's Web solution makes it possible for companies to interact with customers via the Web. This system has open and standard interfaces, which allow Sprint to provide you with custom Web integration. Web integration applications include:

• Web-initiated callback. Allows customers to request, via the Web, an immediate callback or schedule an automatic callback at a later date.
   
• E-mail reply. Allows e-mail responses from a contact center to customer inquiries originating on the Web.

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